The Gods Of Mars (15 page)

“Begone,” screamed the infuriated little old woman. “Begone, but
instead of the light of the gardens of Issus let you serve as a slave
of this slave who conquered you in the prison on the Isle of Shador in
the Sea of Omean. Take him away out of the sight of my divine eyes.”

Slowly and with high held head the proud Xodar turned and stalked from
the chamber. Issus rose and turned to leave the room by another exit.

Turning to me, she said: “You shall be returned to Shador for the
present. Later Issus will see the manner of your fighting. Go.” Then
she disappeared, followed by her retinue. Only Phaidor lagged behind,
and as I started to follow my guard toward the gardens, the girl came
running after me.

“Oh, do not leave me in this terrible place,” she begged. “Forgive the
things I said to you, my Prince. I did not mean them. Only take me
away with you. Let me share your imprisonment on Shador.” Her words
were an almost incoherent volley of thoughts, so rapidly she spoke.
“You did not understand the honour that I did you. Among the therns
there is no marriage or giving in marriage, as among the lower orders
of the outer world. We might have lived together for ever in love and
happiness. We have both looked upon Issus and in a year we die. Let
us live that year at least together in what measure of joy remains for
the doomed.”

“If it was difficult for me to understand you, Phaidor,” I replied,
“can you not understand that possibly it is equally difficult for you
to understand the motives, the customs and the social laws that guide
me? I do not wish to hurt you, nor to seem to undervalue the honour
which you have done me, but the thing you desire may not be.
Regardless of the foolish belief of the peoples of the outer world, or
of Holy Thern, or ebon First Born, I am not dead. While I live my
heart beats for but one woman—the incomparable Dejah Thoris, Princess
of Helium. When death overtakes me my heart shall have ceased to beat;
but what comes after that I know not. And in that I am as wise as
Matai Shang, Master of Life and Death upon Barsoom; or Issus, Goddess
of Life Eternal.”

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

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

In the outer gardens to which the guard now escorted me, I found Xodar
surrounded by a crowd of noble blacks. They were reviling and cursing
him. The men slapped his face. The woman spat upon him.

When I appeared they turned their attentions toward me.

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

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

“Yes, Thurid! Thurid!” cried a dozen voices.

“Here he 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?” he cried. “What would you of Thurid?”

Quickly a dozen voices explained.

Thurid turned toward Xodar, his eyes narrowing to two nasty slits.

“Calot!” he 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 men 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 he turned to kick Xodar.

My blood was up. For minutes it had been boiling at the cowardly
treatment they had been according this once powerful comrade because he
had fallen from the favour of Issus. I had no love for Xodar, 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 Xodar as Thurid swung his foot for the
cowardly kick. The degraded Dator stood erect and motionless as a
carven image. He was prepared to take whatever his 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 him a painful blow
upon the shin bone that saved Xodar from this added ignominy.

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

The big fellow spun around like a top, his knees gave beneath him and
he 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 Xodar, now do you likewise to Thurid. Take him
before Issus, bound in his own harness, that she may see with her own
eyes that there be one among you now who is greater than the First
Born.”

“Who are you?” whispered the woman who had first suggested that I
attempt to bind Thurid.

“I am a citizen of two worlds; Captain John Carter of Virginia, Prince
of the House of Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium. Take this man to your
goddess, as I have said, and tell her, too, that as I have done to
Xodar and Thurid, so also can I do to the mightiest of her Dators.
With naked hands, with long-sword or with short-sword, I challenge the
flower of her fighting-men to combat.”

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

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

That his 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 he walked or stood always behind me, a drawn short-sword
in his 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 Tars 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 his beautiful companion, the girl,
Thuvia. 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.

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

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 boy sleeping upon the stone bench
which constituted the only furniture of any of the prison cells.

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

His features were very regular and, like the proportions of his
graceful limbs and body, beautiful in the extreme. He was very light
in colour for a red man, but in other respects he seemed a typical
specimen of this handsome race.

I did not awaken him, for sleep in prison is such a priceless boon that
I have seen men 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 Xodar still sitting in the same
position in which I had left him.

“Man,” I cried, “it will profit you nothing to mope thus. It were no
disgrace to be bested by John 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,” he said.

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

He looked at me in amazement.

“You know not of what you speak,” he replied. “Issus is omnipotent.
Issus is omniscient. She hears now the words you speak. She knows the
thoughts you think. It is sacrilege even to dream of breaking her
commands.”

“Rot, Xodar,” I ejaculated impatiently.

He sprang to his feet in horror.

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

“Do you believe that, Xodar?” I asked.

“Of course; who would dare doubt?”

“I doubt; yes, and further, I deny,” I said. “Why, Xodar, you tell me
that she even knows my thoughts. The red men 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 goddess cannot read my thoughts; nor can she read yours when you
are out of sight, unless you will it. Had she been able to read mine,
I am afraid that her pride would have suffered a rather severe shock
when I turned at her command to ‘gaze upon the holy vision of her
radiant face.’”

“What do you mean?” he whispered in an affrighted voice, so low that I
could scarcely hear him.

“I mean that I thought her the most repulsive and vilely hideous
creature my eyes ever had rested upon.”

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

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

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

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

“Xodar,” 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 her
divine.

“I will say a few more words, Xodar, 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 she rescuing her
faithful Xodar from the clutches of the unbeliever who defamed her fair
beauty. No, Xodar, your Issus is a mortal old woman. Once out of her
clutches and she cannot harm you.

“With your knowledge of this strange land, and my knowledge of the
outer world, two such fighting-men 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 her goddess or mortal, as
you will.”

As I finished I raised Xodar to his feet and released him. He did not
renew the attack upon me, nor did he speak. Instead, he 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.