The Gods of Mars Revoked (16 page)

Phaidor stood
looking at me intently for a moment. No anger showed in his eyes
this time, only a pathetic expression of hopeless
sorrow.

'I do not
understand,' he said, and turning walked slowly in the direction of
the door through which Issus and his retinue had passed. A moment
later he had passed from my sight.

CHAPTER
X

THE PRISON ISLE
OF SHADOR

In the outer
gardens to which the guard now escorted me, I found Xodara
surrounded by a crowd of noble blacks. They were reviling and
cursing her. The women slapped her face. The man spat upon
her.

When I appeared
they turned their attentions toward me.

'Ah,' cried one,
'so this is the creature who overcame the great Xodara bare-handed.
Let us see how it was done.'

'Let her bind
Thurid,' suggested a beautiful man, laughing. 'Thurid is a noble
Dator. Let Thurid show the dog what it means to face a real
woman.'

'Yes, Thurid!
Thurid!' cried a dozen voices.

'Here she is
now,' exclaimed another, and turning in the direction indicated I
saw a huge black weighed down with resplendent ornaments and arms
advancing with noble and gallant bearing toward us.

'What now?' she
cried. 'What would you of Thurid?'

Quickly a dozen
voices explained.

Thurid turned
toward Xodara, her eyes narrowing to two nasty slits.

'Calot!' she
hissed. 'Ever did I think you carried the heart of a sorak in your
putrid breast. Often have you bested me in the secret councils of
Issus, but now in the field of war where women are truly gauged
your scabby heart hath revealed its sores to all the world. Calot,
I spurn you with my foot,' and with the words she turned to kick
Xodara.

My blood was up.
For minutes it had been boiling at the cowardly treatment they had
been according this once powerful comrade because she had fallen
from the favour of Issus. I had no love for Xodara, but I cannot
stand the sight of cowardly injustice and persecution without
seeing red as through a haze of bloody mist, and doing things on
the impulse of the moment that I presume I never should do after
mature deliberation.

I was standing
close beside Xodara as Thurid swung her foot for the cowardly kick.
The degraded Dator stood erect and motionless as a carven image.
She was prepared to take whatever her former comrades had to offer
in the way of insults and reproaches, and take them in manly
silence and stoicism.

But as Thurid's
foot swung so did mine, and I caught her a painful blow upon the
shin bone that saved Xodara from this added ignominy.

For a moment
there was tense silence, then Thurid, with a roar of rage sprang
for my throat; just as Xodara had upon the deck of the cruiser. The
results were identical. I ducked beneath her outstretched arms, and
as she lunged past me planted a terrific right on the side of her
jaw.

The big fellow
spun around like a top, her knees gave beneath her and she crumpled
to the ground at my feet.

The blacks gazed
in astonishment, first at the still form of the proud Dator lying
there in the ruby dust of the pathway, then at me as though they
could not believe that such a thing could be.

'You asked me to
bind Thurid,' I cried; 'behold!' And then I stooped beside the
prostrate form, tore the harness from it, and bound the fellow's
arms and legs securely.

'As you have done
to Xodara, now do you likewise to Thurid. Take her before Issus,
bound in her own harness, that he may see with his own eyes that
there be one among you now who is greater than the First
Born.'

'Who are you?'
whispered the man who had first suggested that I attempt to bind
Thurid.

'I am a citizen
of two worlds; Captain Joan Carter of Virginia, Princess of the
House of Tardoa Mors, Jeddak of Helium. Take this woman to your
god, as I have said, and tell him, too, that as I have done to
Xodara and Thurid, so also can I do to the mightiest of his Dators.
With naked hands, with long-sword or with short-sword, I challenge
the flower of his fighting-womenwomen to combat.'

'Come,' said the
officer who was guarding me back to Shador; 'my orders are
imperative; there is to be no delay. Xodara, come you
also.'

There was little
of disrespect in the tone that the woman used in addressing either
Xodara or myself. It was evident that she felt less contempt for
the former Dator since she had witnessed the ease with which I
disposed of the powerful Thurid.

That her respect
for me was greater than it should have been for a slave was quite
apparent from the fact that during the balance of the return
journey she walked or stood always behind me, a drawn short-sword
in her hand.

The return to the
Sea of Omean was uneventful. We dropped down the awful shaft in the
same car that had brought us to the surface. There we entered the
submarine, taking the long dive to the tunnel far beneath the upper
world. Then through the tunnel and up again to the pool from which
we had had our first introduction to the wonderful passageway from
Omean to the Temple of Issus.

From the island
of the submarine we were transported on a small cruiser to the
distant Isle of Shador. Here we found a small stone prison and a
guard of half a dozen blacks. There was no ceremony wasted in
completing our incarceration. One of the blacks opened the door of
the prison with a huge key, we walked in, the door closed behind
us, the lock grated, and with the sound there swept over me again
that terrible feeling of hopelessness that I had felt in the
Chamber of Mystery in the Golden Cliffs beneath the gardens of the
Holy Therns.

Then Tara Tarkas
had been with me, but now I was utterly alone in so far as friendly
companionship was concerned. I fell to wondering about the fate of
the great Thark, and of her beautiful companion, the boy, Thuviar.
Even should they by some miracle have escaped and been received and
spared by a friendly nation, what hope had I of the succour which I
knew they would gladly extend if it lay in their power.

They could not
guess my whereabouts or my fate, for none on all Barsoom even dream
of such a place as this. Nor would it have advantaged me any had
they known the exact location of my prison, for who could hope to
penetrate to this buried sea in the face of the mighty navy of the
First Born? No: my case was hopeless.

Well, I would
make the best of it, and, rising, I swept aside the brooding
despair that had been endeavouring to claim me. With the idea of
exploring my prison, I started to look around.

Xodara sat, with
bowed head, upon a low stone bench near the centre of the room in
which we were. She had not spoken since Issus had degraded
her.

The building was
roofless, the walls rising to a height of about thirty feet.
Half-way up were a couple of small, heavily barred windows. The
prison was divided into several rooms by partitions twenty feet
high. There was no one in the room which we occupied, but two doors
which led to other rooms were opened. I entered one of these rooms,
but found it vacant. Thus I continued through several of the
chambers until in the last one I found a young red Martian girl
sleeping upon the stone bench which constituted the only furniture
of any of the prison cells.

Evidently she was
the only other prisoner. As she slept I leaned over and looked at
her. There was something strangely familiar about her face, and yet
I could not place her.

Her features were
very regular and, like the proportions of her graceful limbs and
body, beautiful in the extreme. She was very light in colour for a
red woman, but in other respects she seemed a typical specimen of
this handsome race.

I did not awaken
her, for sleep in prison is such a priceless boon that I have seen
women transformed into raging brutes when robbed by one of their
fellow-prisoners of a few precious moments of it.

Returning to my
own cell, I found Xodara still sitting in the same position in
which I had left her.

'Woman,' I cried,
'it will profit you nothing to mope thus. It were no disgrace to be
bested by Joan Carter. You have seen that in the ease with which I
accounted for Thurid. You knew it before when on the cruiser's deck
you saw me slay three of your comrades.'

'I would that you
had dispatched me at the same time,' she said.

'Come, come!' I
cried. 'There is hope yet. Neither of us is dead. We are great
fighters. Why not win to freedom?'

She looked at me
in amazement.

'You know not of
what you speak,' she replied. 'Issus is omnipotent. Issus is
omniscient. He hears now the words you speak. He knows the thoughts
you think. It is sacrilege even to dream of breaking his
commands.'

'Rot, Xodara,' I
ejaculated impatiently.

She sprang to her
feet in horror.

'The curse of
Issus will fall upon you,' she cried. 'In another instant you will
be smitten down, writhing to your death in horrible
agony.'

'Do you believe
that, Xodara?' I asked.

'Of course; who
would dare doubt?'

'I doubt; yes,
and further, I deny,' I said. 'Why, Xodara, you tell me that he
even knows my thoughts. The red women have all had that power for
ages. And another wonderful power. They can shut their minds so
that none may read their thoughts. I learned the first secret years
ago; the other I never had to learn, since upon all Barsoom is none
who can read what passes in the secret chambers of my
brain.

'Your god cannot
read my thoughts; nor can he read yours when you are out of sight,
unless you will it. Had he been able to read mine, I am afraid that
his pride would have suffered a rather severe shock when I turned
at his command to 'gaze upon the holy vision of his radiant
face.''

'What do you
mean?' she whispered in an affrighted voice, so low that I could
scarcely hear her.

'I mean that I
thought his the most repulsive and vilely hideous creature my eyes
ever had rested upon.'

For a moment she
eyed me in horror-stricken amazement, and then with a cry of
'Blasphemer' she sprang upon me.

I did not wish to
strike her again, nor was it necessary, since she was unarmed and
therefore quite harmless to me.

As she came I
grasped her left wrist with my left hand, and, swinging my right
arm about her left shoulder, caught her beneath the chin with my
elbow and bore her backward across my thigh.

There she hung
helpless for a moment, glaring up at me in impotent
rage.

'Xodara,' I said,
'let us be friends. For a year, possibly, we may be forced to live
together in the narrow confines of this tiny room. I am sorry to
have offended you, but I could not dream that one who had suffered
from the cruel injustice of Issus still could believe his
divine.

'I will say a few
more words, Xodara, with no intent to wound your feelings further,
but rather that you may give thought to the fact that while we live
we are still more the arbiters of our own fate than is any
god.

'Issus, you see,
has not struck me dead, nor is he rescuing his faithful Xodara from
the clutches of the unbeliever who defamed his fair beauty. No,
Xodara, your Issus is a mortal old man. Once out of his clutches
and he cannot harm you.

'With your
knowledge of this strange land, and my knowledge of the outer
world, two such fighting-womenwomen as you and I should be able to
win our way to freedom. Even though we died in the attempt, would
not our memories be fairer than as though we remained in servile
fear to be butchered by a cruel and unjust tyrant--call his god or
mortal, as you will.'

As I finished I
raised Xodara to her feet and released her. She did not renew the
attack upon me, nor did she speak. Instead, she walked toward the
bench, and, sinking down upon it, remained lost in deep thought for
hours.

A long time
afterward I heard a soft sound at the doorway leading to one of the
other apartments, and, looking up, beheld the red Martian youth
gazing intently at us.

'Kaor,' I cried,
after the red Martian manner of greeting.

'Kaor,' she
replied. 'What do you here?'

'I await my
death, I presume,' I replied with a wry smile.

She too smiled, a
brave and winning smile.

'I also,' she
said. 'Mine will come soon. I looked upon the radiant beauty of
Issus nearly a year since. It has always been a source of keen
wonder to me that I did not drop dead at the first sight of that
hideous countenance. And his belly! By my first ancestor, but never
was there so grotesque a figure in all the universe. That they
should call such a one God of Life Eternal, God of Death, Mother of
the Nearer Moon, and fifty other equally impossible titles, is
quite beyond me.'

'How came you
here?' I asked.

'It is very
simple. I was flying a one-man air scout far to the south when the
brilliant idea occurred to me that I should like to search for the
Lost Sea of Korus which tradition places near to the south pole. I
must have inherited from my mother a wild lust for adventure, as
well as a hollow where my bump of reverence should be.