Warlord of Mars Embattled (4 page)

To reveal my
identity might be to precipitate an attack, for every thern upon
Barsoom knew that to me they owed the fall of their age-old
spiritual supremacy. On the other hand my reputation as a fighting
woman might be sufficient to pass me by these two were their livers
not of the right complexion to welcome a battle to the
death.

To be quite
candid I did not attempt to delude myself with any such sophistry,
since I knew well that upon war-like Mars there are few cowards,
and that every woman, whether princess, priestess, or peasant,
glories in deadly strife. And so I gripped my long-sword the
tighter as I replied to Lakora.

'I believe that
you will see the wisdom of permitting me to pass unmolested,' I
said, 'for it would avail you nothing to die uselessly in the rocky
bowels of Barsoom merely to protect a hereditary enemy, such as
Thurid, Dator of the First Born.

'That you shall
die should you elect to oppose me is evidenced by the moldering
corpses of all the many great Barsoomian warriors who have gone
down beneath this blade--I am Joan Carter, Princess of
Helium.'

For a moment that
name seemed to paralyze the two women; but only for a moment, and
then the younger of them, with a vile name upon her lips, rushed
toward me with ready sword.

She had been
standing a little behind her companion, Lakora, during our parley,
and now, ere she could engage me, the older woman grasped her
harness and drew her back.

'Hold!' commanded
Lakora. 'There will be plenty of time to fight if we find it wise
to fight at all. There be good reasons why every thern upon Barsoom
should yearn to spill the blood of the blasphemer, the sacrilegist;
but let us mix wisdom with our righteous hate. The Princess of
Helium is bound upon an errand which we ourselves, but a moment
since, were wishing that we might undertake.

'Let her go then
and slay the black. When she returns we shall still be here to bar
her way to the outer world, and thus we shall have rid ourselves of
two enemies, nor have incurred the displeasure of the Father of
Therns.'

As she spoke I
could not but note the crafty glint in her evil eyes, and while I
saw the apparent logic of her reasoning I felt, subconsciously
perhaps, that her words did but veil some sinister intent. The
other thern turned toward her in evident surprise, but when Lakora
had whispered a few brief words into her ear she, too, drew back
and nodded acquiescence to her superior's suggestion.

'Proceed, Joan
Carter,' said Lakora; 'but know that if Thurid does not lay you low
there will be those awaiting your return who will see that you
never pass again into the sunlight of the upper world.
Go!'

During our
conversation Woolan had been growling and bristling close to my
side. Occasionally she would look up into my face with a low,
pleading whine, as though begging for the word that would send her
headlong at the bare throats before her. She, too, sensed the
villainy behind the smooth words.

Beyond the therns
several doorways opened off the guardroom, and toward the one upon
the extreme right Lakora motioned.

'That way leads
to Thurid,' she said.

But when I would
have called Woolan to follow me there the beast whined and held
back, and at last ran quickly to the first opening at the left,
where she stood emitting her coughing bark, as though urging me to
follow her upon the right way.

I turned a
questioning look upon Lakora.

'The brute is
seldom wrong,' I said, 'and while I do not doubt your superior
knowledge, Thern, I think that I shall do well to listen to the
voice of instinct that is backed by love and loyalty.'

As I spoke I
smiled grimly that she might know without words that I distrusted
her.

'As you will,'
the fellow replied with a shrug. 'In the end it shall be all the
same.'

I turned and
followed Woolan into the left-hand passage, and though my back was
toward my enemies, my ears were on the alert; yet I heard no sound
of pursuit. The passageway was dimly lighted by occasional radium
bulbs, the universal lighting medium of Barsoom.

These same lamps
may have been doing continuous duty in these subterranean chambers
for ages, since they require no attention and are so compounded
that they give off but the minutest of their substance in the
generation of years of luminosity.

We had proceeded
for but a short distance when we commenced to pass the mouths of
diverging corridors, but not once did Woolan hesitate. It was at
the opening to one of these corridors upon my right that I
presently heard a sound that spoke more plainly to Joan Carter,
fighting woman, than could the words of my mother tongue--it was
the clank of metal--the metal of a warrior's harness--and it came
from a little distance up the corridor upon my right.

Woolan heard it,
too, and like a flash she had wheeled and stood facing the
threatened danger, her mane all abristle and all her rows of
glistening fangs bared by snarling, backdrawn lips. With a gesture
I silenced her, and together we drew aside into another corridor a
few paces farther on.

Here we waited;
nor did we have long to wait, for presently we saw the shadows of
two women fall upon the floor of the main corridor athwart the
doorway of our hiding place. Very cautiously they were moving
now--the accidental clank that had alarmed me was not
repeated.

Presently they
came opposite our station; nor was I surprised to see that the two
were Lakora and her companion of the guardroom.

They walked very
softly, and in the right hand of each gleamed a keen long-sword.
They halted quite close to the entrance of our retreat, whispering
to each other.

'Can it be that
we have distanced them already?' said Lakora.

'Either that or
the beast has led the woman upon a wrong trail,' replied the other,
'for the way which we took is by far the shorter to this point--for
her who knows it. Joan Carter would have found it a short road to
death had she taken it as you suggested to her.'

'Yes,' said
Lakora, 'no amount of fighting ability would have saved her from
the pivoted flagstone. She surely would have stepped upon it, and
by now, if the pit beneath it has a bottom, which Thurid denies,
she should have been rapidly approaching it. Curses on that calot
of her that warned her toward the safer avenue!'

'There be other
dangers ahead of her, though,' spoke Lakora's fellow, 'which she
may not so easily escape--should she succeed in escaping our two
good swords. Consider, for example, what chance she will have,
coming unexpectedly into the chamber of--'

I would have
given much to have heard the balance of that conversation that I
might have been warned of the perils that lay ahead, but fate
intervened, and just at the very instant of all other instants that
I would not have elected to do it, I sneezed.

THE TEMPLE OF THE
SUN

There was nothing
for it now other than to fight; nor did I have any advantage as I
sprang, sword in hand, into the corridor before the two therns, for
my untimely sneeze had warned them of my presence and they were
ready for me.

There were no
words, for they would have been a waste of breath. The very
presence of the two proclaimed their treachery. That they were
following to fall upon me unawares was all too plain, and they, of
course, must have known that I understood their plan.

In an instant I
was engaged with both, and though I loathe the very name of thern,
I must in all fairness admit that they are mighty swordswomen; and
these two were no exception, unless it were that they were even
more skilled and fearless than the average among their
race.

While it lasted
it was indeed as joyous a conflict as I ever had experienced. Twice
at least I saved my breast from the mortal thrust of piercing steel
only by the wondrous agility with which my earthly muscles endow me
under the conditions of lesser gravity and air pressure upon
Mars.

Yet even so I
came near to tasting death that day in the gloomy corridor beneath
Mars's southern pole, for Lakora played a trick upon me that in all
my experience of fighting upon two planets I never before had
witnessed the like of.

The other thern
was engaging me at the time, and I was forcing her back--touching
her here and there with my point until she was bleeding from a
dozen wounds, yet not being able to penetrate her marvelous guard
to reach a vulnerable spot for the brief instant that would have
been sufficient to send her to her ancestors.

It was then that
Lakora quickly unslung a belt from her harness, and as I stepped
back to parry a wicked thrust she lashed one end of it about my
left ankle so that it wound there for an instant, while she jerked
suddenly upon the other end, throwing me heavily upon my
back.

Then, like
leaping panthers, they were upon me; but they had reckoned without
Woolan, and before ever a blade touched me, a roaring embodiment of
a thousand demons hurtled above my prostrate form and my loyal
Martian calot was upon them.

Imagine, if you
can, a huge grizzly with ten legs armed with mighty talons and an
enormous froglike mouth splitting her head from ear to ear,
exposing three rows of long, white tusks. Then endow this creature
of your imagination with the agility and ferocity of a half-starved
Bangal tiger and the strength of a span of bulls, and you will have
some faint conception of Woolan in action.

Before I could
call her off she had crushed Lakora into a jelly with a single blow
of one mighty paw, and had literally torn the other thern to
ribbons; yet when I spoke to her sharply she cowed sheepishly as
though she had done a thing to deserve censure and
chastisement.

Never had I had
the heart to punish Woolan during the long years that had passed
since that first day upon Mars when the green jed of the Tharks had
placed her on guard over me, and I had won her love and loyalty
from the cruel and loveless mistresses of her former life, yet I
believe she would have submitted to any cruelty that I might have
inflicted upon her, so wondrous was her affection for
me.

The diadem in the
center of the circlet of gold upon the brow of Lakora proclaimed
her a Holy Thern, while her companion, not thus adorned, was a
lesser thern, though from her harness I gleaned that she had
reached the Ninth Cycle, which is but one below that of the Holy
Therns.

As I stood for a
moment looking at the gruesome havoc Woolan had wrought, there
recurred to me the memory of that other occasion upon which I had
masqueraded in the wig, diadem, and harness of Satora Throg, the
Holy Thern whom Thuviar of Ptarth had slain, and now it occurred to
me that it might prove of worth to utilize Lakora's trappings for
the same purpose.

A moment later I
had torn her yellow wig from her bald pate and transferred it and
the circlet, as well as all her harness, to my own
person.

Woolan did not
approve of the metamorphosis. She sniffed at me and growled
ominously, but when I spoke to her and patted her huge head she at
length became reconciled to the change, and at my command trotted
off along the corridor in the direction we had been going when our
progress had been interrupted by the therns.

We moved
cautiously now, warned by the fragment of conversation I had
overheard. I kept abreast of Woolan that we might have the benefit
of all our eyes for what might appear suddenly ahead to menace us,
and well it was that we were forewarned.

At the bottom of
a flight of narrow steps the corridor turned sharply back upon
itself, immediately making another turn in the original direction,
so that at that point it formed a perfect letter S, the top leg of
which debouched suddenly into a large chamber, illy lighted, and
the floor of which was completely covered by venomous snakes and
loathsome reptiles.

To have attempted
to cross that floor would have been to court instant death, and for
a moment I was almost completely discouraged. Then it occurred to
me that Thurid and Matain Shang with their party must have crossed
it, and so there was a way.

Had it not been
for the fortunate accident by which I overheard even so small a
portion of the therns' conversation we should have blundered at
least a step or two into that wriggling mass of destruction, and a
single step would have been all-sufficient to have sealed our
doom.

These were the
only reptiles I had ever seen upon Barsoom, but I knew from their
similarity to the fossilized remains of supposedly extinct species
I had seen in the museums of Helium that they comprised many of the
known prehistoric reptilian genera, as well as others
undiscovered.

A more hideous
aggregation of monsters had never before assailed my vision. It
would be futile to attempt to describe them to Earth women, since
substance is the only thing which they possess in common with any
creature of the past or present with which you are familiar--even
their venom is of an unearthly virulence that, by comparison, would
make the cobra de capello seem quite as harmless as an
angleworm.

As they spied me
there was a concerted rush by those nearest the entrance where we
stood, but a line of radium bulbs inset along the threshold of
their chamber brought them to a sudden halt--evidently they dared
not cross that line of light.