The Gods of Mars Revoked (32 page)

My
presence among the women so greatly inspirited them that they fell
upon the luckless whites with such terrible ferocity that within a
few moments we had turned the tables upon them and a second later
as we swarmed their own decks I had the satisfaction of seeing
their commander take the long leap from the bows of her vessel in
token of surrender and defeat.

Then I
joined Kantoa Kan. She had been watching what had taken place on
the deck below, and it seemed to have given her a new thought.
Immediately she passed an order to one of her officers, and
presently the colours of the Princess of Helium broke from every
point of the flagship. A great cheer arose from the women of our
own ship, a cheer that was taken up by every other vessel of our
expedition as they in turn broke my colours from their upper
works.

Then
Kantoa Kan sprang her coup. A signal legible to every sailor of all
the fleets engaged in that fierce struggle was strung aloft upon
the flagship.

'Women
of Helium for the Princess of Helium against all her enemies,' it
read. Presently my colours broke from one of Zata Arras' ships.
Then from another and another. On some we could see fierce battles
waging between the Zodangan soldiery and the Heliumetic crews, but
eventually the colours of the Princess of Helium floated above
every ship that had followed Zata Arras upon our trail--only her
flagship flew them not.

Zata
Arras had brought five thousand ships. The sky was black with the
three enormous fleets. It was Helium against the field now, and the
fight had settled to countless individual duels. There could be
little or no manoeuvering of fleets in that crowded, fire-split
sky.

Zata
Arras' flagship was close to my own. I could see the thin features
of the woman from where I stood. Her Zodangan crew was pouring
broadside after broadside into us and we were returning their fire
with equal ferocity. Closer and closer came the two vessels until
but a few yards intervened. Grapplers and boarders lined the
contiguous rails of each. We were preparing for the death struggle
with our hated enemy.

There
was but a yard between the two mighty ships as the first grappling
irons were hurled. I rushed to the deck to be with my women as they
boarded. Just as the vessels came together with a slight shock, I
forced my way through the lines and was the first to spring to the
deck of Zata Arras' ship. After me poured a yelling, cheering,
cursing throng of Helium's best fighting-womenwomen. Nothing could
withstand them in the fever of battle lust which enthralled
them.

Down
went the Zodangans before that surging tide of war, and as my women
cleared the lower decks I sprang to the forward deck where stood
Zata Arras.

'You
are my prisoner, Zata Arras,' I cried. 'Yield and you shall have
quarter.'

For a
moment I could not tell whether she contemplated acceding to my
demand or facing me with drawn sword. For an instant she stood
hesitating, and then throwing down her arms she turned and rushed
to the opposite side of the deck. Before I could overtake her she
had sprung to the rail and hurled herself headforemost into the
awful depths below.

And
thus came Zata Arras, Jed of Zodanga, to her end.

On and
on went that strange battle. The therns and blacks had not combined
against us. Wherever thern ship met ship of the First Born was a
battle royal, and in this I thought I saw our salvation. Wherever
messages could be passed between us that could not be intercepted
by our enemies I passed the word that all our vessels were to
withdraw from the fight as rapidly as possible, taking a position
to the west and south of the combatants. I also sent an air scout
to the fighting green women in the gardens below to re-embark, and
to the transports to join us.

My
commanders were further instructed than when engaged with an enemy
to draw her as rapidly as possible toward a ship of her hereditary
foeman, and by careful manoeuvring to force the two to engage, thus
leaving her-self free to withdraw. This stratagem worked to
perfection, and just before the sun went down I had the
satisfaction of seeing all that was left of my once mighty fleet
gathered nearly twenty miles southwest of the still terrific battle
between the blacks and whites.

I now
transferred Xodara to another battleship and sent her with all the
transports and five thousand battleships directly overhead to the
Temple of Issus. Carthoris and I, with Kantoa Kan, took the
remaining ships and headed for the entrance to Omean.

Our
plan now was to attempt to make a combined assault upon Issus at
dawn of the following day. Tara Tarkas with her green warriors and
Hora Vastus with the red women, guided by Xodara, were to land
within the garden of Issus or the surrounding plains; while
Carthoris, Kantoa Kan, and I were to lead our smaller force from
the sea of Omean through the pits beneath the temple, which
Carthoris knew so well.

I now
learned for the first time the cause of my ten ships' retreat from
the mouth of the shaft. It seemed that when they had come upon the
shaft the navy of the First Born were already issuing from its
mouth. Fully twenty vessels had emerged, and though they gave
battle immediately in an effort to stem the tide that rolled from
the black pit, the odds against them were too great and they were
forced to flee.

With
great caution we approached the shaft, under cover of darkness. At
a distance of several miles I caused the fleet to be halted, and
from there Carthoris went ahead alone upon a one-man flier to
reconnoitre. In perhaps half an hour she returned to report that
there was no sign of a patrol boat or of the enemy in any form, and
so we moved swiftly and noiselessly forward once more toward
Omean.

At the
mouth of the shaft we stopped again for a moment for all the
vessels to reach their previously appointed stations, then with the
flagship I dropped quickly into the black depths, while one by one
the other vessels followed me in quick succession.

We had
decided to stake all on the chance that we would be able to reach
the temple by the subterranean way and so we left no guard of
vessels at the shaft's mouth. Nor would it have profited us any to
have done so, for we did not have sufficient force all told to have
withstood the vast navy of the First Born had they returned to
engage us.

For
the safety of our entrance upon Omean we depended largely upon the
very boldness of it, believing that it would be some little time
before the First Born on guard there would realize that it was an
enemy and not their own returning fleet that was entering the vault
of the buried sea.

And
such proved to be the case. In fact, four hundred of my fleet of
five hundred rested safely upon the chest of Omean before the first
shot was fired. The battle was short and hot, but there could have
been but one outcome, for the First Born in the carelessness of
fancied security had left but a handful of ancient and obsolete
hulks to guard their mighty harbour.

It was
at Carthoris' suggestion that we landed our prisoners under guard
upon a couple of the larger islands, and then towed the ships of
the First Born to the shaft, where we managed to wedge a number of
them securely in the interior of the great well. Then we turned on
the buoyance rays in the balance of them and let them rise by
themselves to further block the passage to Omean as they came into
contact with the vessels already lodged there.

We now
felt that it would be some time at least before the returning First
Born could reach the surface of Omean, and that we would have ample
opportunity to make for the subterranean passages which lead to
Issus. One of the first steps I took was to hasten personally with
a good-sized force to the island of the submarine, which I took
without resistance on the part of the small guard there.

I
found the submarine in its pool, and at once placed a strong guard
upon it and the island, where I remained to wait the coming of
Carthoris and the others.

Among
the prisoners was Yersted, commander of the submarine. She
recognized me from the three trips that I had taken with her during
my captivity among the First Born.

'How
does it seem,' I asked her, 'to have the tables turned? To be
prisoner of your erstwhile captive?'

She
smiled, a very grim smile pregnant with hidden meaning.

'It
will not be for long, Joan Carter,' she replied. 'We have been
expecting you and we are prepared.'

'So it
would appear,' I answered, 'for you were all ready to become my
prisoners with scarce a blow struck on either side.'

'The
fleet must have missed you,' she said, 'but it will return to
Omean, and then that will be a very different matter--for Joan
Carter.'

'I do
not know that the fleet has missed me as yet,' I said, but of
course she did not grasp my meaning, and only looked
puzzled.

'Many
prisoners travel to Issus in your grim craft, Yersted?' I
asked.

'Very
many,' she assented.

'Might
you remember one whom women called Dejar Thoris?'

'Well,
indeed, for his great beauty, and then, too, for the fact that he
was husband to the first mortal that ever escaped from Issus
through all the countless ages of his godhood. And the way that
Issus remembers his best as the husband of one and the mother of
another who raised their hands against the God of Life
Eternal.'

I
shuddered for fear of the cowardly revenge that I knew Issus might
have taken upon the innocent Dejar Thoris for the sacrilege of his
daughter and his wife.

'And
where is Dejar Thoris now?' I asked, knowing that she would say the
words I most dreaded, but yet I loved his so that I could not
refrain from hearing even the worst about his fate so that it fell
from the lips of one who had seen his but recently. It was to me as
though it brought his closer to me.

'Yesterday the monthly rites of Issus were held,' replied
Yersted, 'and I saw his then sitting in his accustomed place at the
foot of Issus.'

'What,' I cried, 'he is not dead, then?'

'Why,
no,' replied the black, 'it has been no year since he gazed upon
the divine glory of the radiant face of--'

'No
year?' I interrupted.

'Why,
no,' insisted Yersted. 'It cannot have been upward of three hundred
and seventy or eighty days.'

A
great light burst upon me. How stupid I had been! I could scarcely
retain an outward exhibition of my great joy. Why had I forgotten
the great difference in the length of Martian and Earthly years!
The ten Earth years I had spent upon Barsoom had encompassed but
five years and ninety-six days of Martian time, whose days are
forty-one minutes longer than ours, and whose years number six
hundred and eighty-seven days.

I am
in time! I am in time! The words surged through my brain again and
again, until at last I must have voiced them audibly, for Yersted
shook her head.

'In
time to save your Princess?' she asked, and then without waiting
for my reply, 'No, Joan Carter, Issus will not give up his own. He
knows that you are coming, and ere ever a vandal foot is set within
the precincts of the Temple of Issus, if such a calamity should
befall, Dejar Thoris will be put away for ever from the last faint
hope of rescue.'

'You
mean that he will be killed merely to thwart me?' I
asked.

'Not
that, other than as a last resort,' she replied. 'Hast ever heard
of the Temple of the Sun? It is there that they will put him. It
lies far within the inner court of the Temple of Issus, a little
temple that raises a thin spire far above the spires and minarets
of the great temple that surrounds it. Baneath it, in the ground,
there lies the main body of the temple consisting in six hundred
and eighty-seven circular chambers, one below another. To each
chamber a single corridor leads through solid rock from the pits of
Issus.

'As
the entire Temple of the Sun revolves once with each revolution of
Barsoom about the sun, but once each year does the entrance to each
separate chamber come opposite the mouth of the corridor which
forms its only link to the world without.

'Here
Issus puts those who displease him, but whom he does not care to
execute forthwith. Or to punish a noble of the First Born he may
cause her to be placed within a chamber of the Temple of the Sun
for a year. Ofttimes he imprisons an executioner with the
condemned, that death may come in a certain horrible form upon a
given day, or again but enough food is deposited in the chamber to
sustain life but the number of days that Issus has allotted for
mental anguish.

'Thus
will Dejar Thoris die, and his fate will be sealed by the first
alien foot that crosses the threshold of Issus.'

So I
was to be thwarted in the end, although I had performed the
miraculous and come within a few short moments of my divine Prince,
yet was I as far from his as when I stood upon the banks of the
Hudson forty-eight million miles away.

CHAPTER XXI

THROUGH FLOOD AND FLAME

Yersted's information convinced me that there was no time to
be lost. I must reach the Temple of Issus secretly before the
forces under Tara Tarkas assaulted at dawn. Once within its hated
walls I was positive that I could overcome the guards of Issus and
bear away my Prince, for at my back I would have a force ample for
the occasion.