The Gods Of Mars (9 page)

The eyes of the herald upon the balcony beneath us fell upon the doomed
party as soon as did ours. He raised his head and leaning far out over
the low rail that rimmed his dizzy perch, voiced the shrill, weird wail
that called the demons of this hellish place to the attack.

For an instant the brutes stood with stiffly erected ears, then they
poured from the grove toward the river’s bank, covering the distance
with great, ungainly leaps.

The party had landed and was standing on the sward as the awful horde
came in sight. There was a brief and futile effort of defence. Then
silence as the huge, repulsive shapes covered the bodies of their
victims and scores of sucking mouths fastened themselves to the flesh
of their prey.

I turned away in disgust.

“Their part is soon over,” said Thuvia. “The great white apes get the
flesh when the plant men have drained the arteries. Look, they are
coming now.”

As I turned my eyes in the direction the girl indicated, I saw a dozen
of the great white monsters running across the valley toward the river
bank. Then the sun went down and darkness that could almost be felt
engulfed us.

Thuvia lost no time in leading us toward the corridor which winds back
and forth up through the cliffs toward the surface thousands of feet
above the level on which we had been.

Twice great banths, wandering loose through the galleries, blocked our
progress, but in each instance Thuvia spoke a low word of command and
the snarling beasts slunk sullenly away.

“If you can dissolve all our obstacles as easily as you master these
fierce brutes I can see no difficulties in our way,” I said to the
girl, smiling. “How do you do it?”

She laughed, and then shuddered.

“I do not quite know,” she said. “When first I came here I angered
Sator Throg, because I repulsed him. He ordered me to be thrown into
one of the great pits in the inner gardens. It was filled with banths.
In my own country I had been accustomed to command. Something in my
voice, I do not know what, cowed the beasts as they sprang to attack me.

“Instead of tearing me to pieces, as Sator Throg had desired, they
fawned at my feet. So greatly were Sator Throg and his friends amused
by the sight that they kept me to train and handle the terrible
creatures. I know them all by name. There are many of them wandering
through these lower regions. They are the scavengers. Many prisoners
die here in their chains. The banths solve the problem of sanitation,
at least in this respect.

“In the gardens and temples above they are kept in pits. The therns
fear them. It is because of the banths that they seldom venture below
ground except as their duties call them.”

An idea occurred to me, suggested by what Thuvia had just said.

“Why not take a number of banths and set them loose before us above
ground?” I asked.

Thuvia laughed.

“It would distract attention from us, I am sure,” she said.

She commenced calling in a low singsong voice that was half purr. She
continued this as we wound our tedious way through the maze of
subterranean passages and chambers.

Presently soft, padded feet sounded close behind us, and as I turned I
saw a pair of great, green eyes shining in the dark shadows at our
rear. From a diverging tunnel a sinuous, tawny form crept stealthily
toward us.

Low growls and angry snarls assailed our ears on every side as we
hastened on and one by one the ferocious creatures answered the call of
their mistress.

She spoke a word to each as it joined us. Like well-schooled terriers,
they paced the corridors with us, but I could not help but note the
lathering jowls, nor the hungry expressions with which they eyed Tars
Tarkas and myself.

Soon we were entirely surrounded by some fifty of the brutes. Two
walked close on either side of Thuvia, as guards might walk. The sleek
sides of others now and then touched my own naked limbs. It was a
strange experience; the almost noiseless passage of naked human feet
and padded paws; the golden walls splashed with precious stones; the
dim light cast by the tiny radium bulbs set at considerable distances
along the roof; the huge, maned beasts of prey crowding with low growls
about us; the mighty green warrior towering high above us all; myself
crowned with the priceless diadem of a Holy Thern; and leading the
procession the beautiful girl, Thuvia.

I shall not soon forget it.

Presently we approached a great chamber more brightly lighted than the
corridors. Thuvia halted us. Quietly she stole toward the entrance
and glanced within. Then she motioned us to follow her.

The room was filled with specimens of the strange beings that inhabit
this underworld; a heterogeneous collection of hybrids—the offspring
of the prisoners from the outside world; red and green Martians and the
white race of therns.

Constant confinement below ground had wrought odd freaks upon their
skins. They more resemble corpses than living beings. Many are
deformed, others maimed, while the majority, Thuvia explained, are
sightless.

As they lay sprawled about the floor, sometimes overlapping one
another, again in heaps of several bodies, they suggested instantly to
me the grotesque illustrations that I had seen in copies of Dante’s
Inferno
, and what more fitting comparison? Was this not indeed a
veritable hell, peopled by lost souls, dead and damned beyond all hope?

Picking our way carefully we threaded a winding path across the
chamber, the great banths sniffing hungrily at the tempting prey spread
before them in such tantalizing and defenceless profusion.

Several times we passed the entrances to other chambers similarly
peopled, and twice again we were compelled to cross directly through
them. In others were chained prisoners and beasts.

“Why is it that we see no therns?” I asked of Thuvia.

“They seldom traverse the underworld at night, for then it is that the
great banths prowl the dim corridors seeking their prey. The therns
fear the awful denizens of this cruel and hopeless world that they have
fostered and allowed to grow beneath their feet. The prisoners even
sometimes turn upon them and rend them. The thern can never tell from
what dark shadow an assassin may spring upon his back.

“By day it is different. Then the corridors and chambers are filled
with guards passing to and fro; slaves from the temples above come by
hundreds to the granaries and storerooms. All is life then. You did
not see it because I led you not in the beaten tracks, but through
roundabout passages seldom used. Yet it is possible that we may meet a
thern even yet. They do occasionally find it necessary to come here
after the sun has set. Because of this I have moved with such great
caution.”

But we reached the upper galleries without detection and presently
Thuvia halted us at the foot of a short, steep ascent.

“Above us,” she said, “is a doorway which opens on to the inner
gardens. I have brought you thus far. From here on for four miles to
the outer ramparts our way will be beset by countless dangers. Guards
patrol the courts, the temples, the gardens. Every inch of the
ramparts themselves is beneath the eye of a sentry.”

I could not understand the necessity for such an enormous force of
armed men about a spot so surrounded by mystery and superstition that
not a soul upon Barsoom would have dared to approach it even had they
known its exact location. I questioned Thuvia, asking her what enemies
the therns could fear in their impregnable fortress.

We had reached the doorway now and Thuvia was opening it.

“They fear the black pirates of Barsoom, O Prince,” she said, “from
whom may our first ancestors preserve us.”

The door swung open; the smell of growing things greeted my nostrils;
the cool night air blew against my cheek. The great banths sniffed the
unfamiliar odours, and then with a rush they broke past us with low
growls, swarming across the gardens beneath the lurid light of the
nearer moon.

Suddenly a great cry arose from the roofs of the temples; a cry of
alarm and warning that, taken up from point to point, ran off to the
east and to the west, from temple, court, and rampart, until it sounded
as a dim echo in the distance.

The great Thark’s long-sword leaped from its scabbard; Thuvia shrank
shuddering to my side.

“What is it?” I asked of the girl.

For answer she pointed to the sky.

I looked, and there, above us, I saw shadowy bodies flitting hither and
thither high over temple, court, and garden.

Almost immediately flashes of light broke from these strange objects.
There was a roar of musketry, and then answering flashes and roars from
temple and rampart.

“The black pirates of Barsoom, O Prince,” said Thuvia.

In great circles the air craft of the marauders swept lower and lower
toward the defending forces of the therns.

Volley after volley they vomited upon the temple guards; volley on
volley crashed through the thin air toward the fleeting and illusive
fliers.

As the pirates swooped closer toward the ground, thern soldiery poured
from the temples into the gardens and courts. The sight of them in the
open brought a score of fliers darting toward us from all directions.

The therns fired upon them through shields affixed to their rifles, but
on, steadily on, came the grim, black craft. They were small fliers
for the most part, built for two to three men. A few larger ones there
were, but these kept high aloft dropping bombs upon the temples from
their keel batteries.

At length, with a concerted rush, evidently in response to a signal of
command, the pirates in our immediate vicinity dashed recklessly to the
ground in the very midst of the thern soldiery.

Scarcely waiting for their craft to touch, the creatures manning them
leaped among the therns with the fury of demons. Such fighting! Never
had I witnessed its like before. I had thought the green Martians the
most ferocious warriors in the universe, but the awful abandon with
which the black pirates threw themselves upon their foes transcended
everything I ever before had seen.

Beneath the brilliant light of Mars’ two glorious moons the whole scene
presented itself in vivid distinctness. The golden-haired,
white-skinned therns battling with desperate courage in hand-to-hand
conflict with their ebony-skinned foemen.

Here a little knot of struggling warriors trampled a bed of gorgeous
pimalia; there the curved sword of a black man found the heart of a
thern and left its dead foeman at the foot of a wondrous statue carved
from a living ruby; yonder a dozen therns pressed a single pirate back
upon a bench of emerald, upon whose iridescent surface a strangely
beautiful Barsoomian design was traced out in inlaid diamonds.

A little to one side stood Thuvia, the Thark, and I. The tide of
battle had not reached us, but the fighters from time to time swung
close enough that we might distinctly note them.

The black pirates interested me immensely. I had heard vague rumours,
little more than legends they were, during my former life on Mars; but
never had I seen them, nor talked with one who had.

They were popularly supposed to inhabit the lesser moon, from which
they descended upon Barsoom at long intervals. Where they visited they
wrought the most horrible atrocities, and when they left carried away
with them firearms and ammunition, and young girls as prisoners. These
latter, the rumour had it, they sacrificed to some terrible god in an
orgy which ended in the eating of their victims.

I had an excellent opportunity to examine them, as the strife
occasionally brought now one and now another close to where I stood.
They were large men, possibly six feet and over in height. Their
features were clear cut and handsome in the extreme; their eyes were
well set and large, though a slight narrowness lent them a crafty
appearance; the iris, as well as I could determine by moonlight, was of
extreme blackness, while the eyeball itself was quite white and clear.
The physical structure of their bodies seemed identical with those of
the therns, the red men, and my own. Only in the colour of their skin
did they differ materially from us; that is of the appearance of
polished ebony, and odd as it may seem for a Southerner to say it, adds
to rather than detracts from their marvellous beauty.

But if their bodies are divine, their hearts, apparently, are quite the
reverse. Never did I witness such a malign lust for blood as these
demons of the outer air evinced in their mad battle with the therns.

All about us in the garden lay their sinister craft, which the therns
for some reason, then unaccountable to me, made no effort to injure.
Now and again a black warrior would rush from a near by temple bearing
a young woman in his arms. Straight for his flier he would leap while
those of his comrades who fought near by would rush to cover his escape.

The therns on their side would hasten to rescue the girl, and in an
instant the two would be swallowed in the vortex of a maelstrom of
yelling devils, hacking and hewing at one another, like fiends
incarnate.

But always, it seemed, were the black pirates of Barsoom victorious,
and the girl, brought miraculously unharmed through the conflict, borne
away into the outer darkness upon the deck of a swift flier.

Fighting similar to that which surrounded us could be heard in both
directions as far as sound carried, and Thuvia told me that the attacks
of the black pirates were usually made simultaneously along the entire
ribbon-like domain of the therns, which circles the Valley Dor on the
outer slopes of the Mountains of Otz.

As the fighting receded from our position for a moment, Thuvia turned
toward me with a question.