Books: Thuvia, Maid of Mars
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Edgar Rice Burroughs >> Thuvia, Maid of Mars
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The man looked at her with a grin.
"The Prince of Helium is no fool," he said.
Just then an officer emerged from the tiny cabin. He reprimanded
the warrior for conversing with the prisoner, nor would he himself
reply to any of her inquiries.
No harm was offered her during the journey, and so they came at last
to their destination with the girl no wiser as to her abductors or
their purpose than at first.
Here the flier settled slowly into the plaza of one of those mute
monuments of Mars' dead and forgotten past--the deserted cities
that fringe the sad ochre sea-bottoms where once rolled the mighty
floods upon whose bosoms moved the maritime commerce of the peoples
that are gone for ever.
Thuvia of Ptarth was no stranger to such places. During her
wanderings in search of the River Iss, that time she had set out
upon what, for countless ages, had been the last, long pilgrimage
of Martians, toward the Valley Dor, where lies the Lost Sea of
Korus, she had encountered several of these sad reminders of the
greatness and the glory of ancient Barsoom.
And again, during her flight from the temples of the Holy Therns
with Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, she had seen them, with their
weird and ghostly inmates, the great white apes of Barsoom.
She knew, too, that many of them were used now by the nomadic tribes
of green men, but that among them all was no city that the red
men did not shun, for without exception they stood amidst vast,
waterless tracts, unsuited for the continued sustenance of the
dominant race of Martians.
Why, then, should they be bringing her to such a place? There was
but a single answer. Such was the nature of their work that they
must needs seek the seclusion that a dead city afforded. The girl
trembled at thought of her plight.
For two days her captors kept her within a huge palace that even in
decay reflected the splendour of the age which its youth had known.
Just before dawn on the third day she had been aroused by the voices
of two of her abductors.
"He should be here by dawn," one was saying. "Have her in readiness
upon the plaza--else he will never land. The moment he finds that
he is in a strange country he will turn about--methinks the prince's
plan is weak in this one spot."
"There was no other way," replied the other. "It is wondrous work
to get them both here at all, and even if we do not succeed in
luring him to the ground, we shall have accomplished much."
Just then the speaker caught the eyes of Thuvia upon him, revealed
by the quick-moving patch of light cast by Thuria in her mad race
through the heavens.
With a quick sign to the other, he ceased speaking, and advancing
toward the girl, motioned her to rise. Then he led her out into
the night toward the centre of the great plaza.
"Stand here," he commanded, "until we come for you. We shall
be watching, and should you attempt to escape it will go ill with
you--much worse than death. Such are the prince's orders."
Then he turned and retraced his steps toward the palace, leaving
her alone in the midst of the unseen terrors of the haunted city,
for in truth these places are haunted in the belief of many Martians
who still cling to an ancient superstition which teaches that the
spirits of Holy Therns who die before their allotted one thousand
years, pass, on occasions, into the bodies of the great white apes.
To Thuvia, however, the real danger of attack by one of these
ferocious, manlike beasts was quite sufficient. She no longer
believed in the weird soul transmigration that the therns had taught
her before she was rescued from their clutches by John Carter; but
she well knew the horrid fate that awaited her should one of the
terrible beasts chance to spy her during its nocturnal prowlings.
What was that?
Surely she could not be mistaken. Something had moved, stealthily,
in the shadow of one of the great monoliths that line the avenue
where it entered the plaza opposite her!
Thar Ban, jed among the hordes of Torquas, rode swiftly across the
ochre vegetation of the dead sea-bottom toward the ruins of ancient
Aaanthor.
He had ridden far that night, and fast, for he had but come from
the despoiling of the incubator of a neighbouring green horde with
which the hordes of Torquas were perpetually warring.
His giant thoat was far from jaded, yet it would be well, thought
Thar Ban, to permit him to graze upon the ochre moss which grows to
greater height within the protected courtyards of deserted cities,
where the soil is richer than on the sea-bottoms, and the plants
partly shaded from the sun during the cloudless Martian day.
Within the tiny stems of this dry-seeming plant is sufficient
moisture for the needs of the huge bodies of the mighty thoats,
which can exist for months without water, and for days without even
the slight moisture which the ochre moss contains.
As Thar Ban rode noiselessly up the broad avenue which leads from
the quays of Aaanthor to the great central plaza, he and his mount
might have been mistaken for spectres from a world of dreams, so
grotesque the man and beast, so soundless the great thoat's padded,
nailless feet upon the moss-grown flagging of the ancient pavement.
The man was a splendid specimen of his race. Fully fifteen feet
towered his great height from sole to pate. The moonlight glistened
against his glossy green hide, sparkling the jewels of his heavy
harness and the ornaments that weighted his four muscular arms,
while the upcurving tusks that protruded from his lower jaw gleamed
white and terrible.
At the side of his thoat were slung his long radium rifle and his
great, forty-foot, metal-shod spear, while from his own harness
depended his long-sword and his short-sword, as well as his lesser
weapons.
His protruding eyes and antennae-like ears were turning constantly
hither and thither, for Thar Ban was yet in the country of the
enemy, and, too, there was always the menace of the great white
apes, which, John Carter was wont to say, are the only creatures
that can arouse in the breasts of these fierce denizens of the dead
sea-bottoms even the remotest semblance of fear.
As the rider neared the plaza, he reined suddenly in. His slender,
tubular ears pointed rigidly forward. An unwonted sound had reached
them. Voices! And where there were voices, outside of Torquas,
there, too, were enemies. All the world of wide Barsoom contained
naught but enemies for the fierce Torquasians.
Thar Ban dismounted. Keeping in the shadows of the great monoliths
that line the Avenue of Quays of sleeping Aaanthor, he approached
the plaza. Directly behind him, as a hound at heel, came the
slate-grey thoat, his white belly shadowed by his barrel, his vivid
yellow feet merging into the yellow of the moss beneath them.
In the centre of the plaza Thar Ban saw the figure of a red woman.
A red warrior was conversing with her. Now the man turned and
retraced his steps toward the palace at the opposite side of the
plaza.
Thar Ban watched until he had disappeared within the yawning
portal. Here was a captive worth having! Seldom did a female of
their hereditary enemies fall to the lot of a green man. Thar Ban
licked his thin lips.
Thuvia of Ptarth watched the shadow behind the monolith at the
opening to the avenue opposite her. She hoped that it might be
but the figment of an overwrought imagination.
But no! Now, clearly and distinctly, she saw it move. It came
from behind the screening shelter of the ersite shaft.
The sudden light of the rising sun fell upon it. The girl trembled.
The THING was a huge green warrior!
Swiftly it sprang toward her. She screamed and tried to flee;
but she had scarce turned toward the palace when a giant hand fell
upon her arm, she was whirled about, and half dragged, half carried
toward a huge thoat that was slowly grazing out of the avenue's
mouth on to the ochre moss of the plaza.
At the same instant she turned her face upward toward the whirring
sound of something above her, and there she saw a swift flier
dropping toward her, the head and shoulders of a man leaning far
over the side; but the man's features were deeply shadowed, so that
she did not recognize them.
Now from behind her came the shouts of her red abductors. They
were racing madly after him who dared to steal what they already
had stolen.
As Thar Ban reached the side of his mount he snatched his long
radium rifle from its boot, and, wheeling, poured three shots into
the oncoming red men.
Such is the uncanny marksmanship of these Martian savages that three
red warriors dropped in their tracks as three projectiles exploded
in their vitals.
The others halted, nor did they dare return the fire for fear of
wounding the girl.
Then Thar Ban vaulted to the back of his thoat, Thuvia of Ptarth
still in his arms, and with a savage cry of triumph disappeared
down the black canyon of the Avenue of Quays between the sullen
palaces of forgotten Aaanthor.
Carthoris' flier had not touched the ground before he had sprung
from its deck to race after the swift thoat, whose eight long legs
were sending it down the avenue at the rate of an express train;
but the men of Dusar who still remained alive had no mind to permit
so valuable a capture to escape them.
They had lost the girl. That would be a difficult thing to explain
to Astok; but some leniency might be expected could they carry the
Prince of Helium to their master instead.
So the three who remained set upon Carthoris with their long-swords,
crying to him to surrender; but they might as successfully have cried
aloud to Thuria to cease her mad hurtling through the Barsoomian
sky, for Carthoris of Helium was a true son of the Warlord of Mars
and his incomparable Dejah Thoris.
Carthoris' long-sword had been already in his hand as he leaped from
the deck of the flier, so the instant that he realized the menace
of the three red warriors, he wheeled to face them, meeting their
onslaught as only John Carter himself might have done.
So swift his sword, so mighty and agile his half-earthly muscles,
that one of his opponents was down, crimsoning the ochre moss with
his life-blood, when he had scarce made a single pass at Carthoris.
Now the two remaining Dusarians rushed simultaneously upon the
Heliumite. Three long-swords clashed and sparkled in the moonlight,
until the great white apes, roused from their slumbers, crept
to the lowering windows of the dead city to view the bloody scene
beneath them.
Thrice was Carthoris touched, so that the red blood ran down his
face, blinding him and dyeing his broad chest. With his free hand
he wiped the gore from his eyes, and with the fighting smile of his
father touching his lips, leaped upon his antagonists with renewed
fury.
A single cut of his heavy sword severed the head of one of them, and
then the other, backing away clear of that point of death, turned
and fled toward the palace at his back.
Carthoris made no step to pursue. He had other concern than the
meting of even well-deserved punishment to strange men who masqueraded
in the metal of his own house, for he had seen that these men were
tricked out in the insignia that marked his personal followers.
Turning quickly toward his flier, he was soon rising from the plaza
in pursuit of Thar Ban.
The red warrior whom he had put to flight turned in the entrance
to the palace, and, seeing Carthoris' intent, snatched a rifle from
those that he and his fellows had left leaning against the wall
as they had rushed out with drawn swords to prevent the theft of
their prisoner.
Few red men are good shots, for the sword is their chosen weapon;
so now as the Dusarian drew bead upon the rising flier, and touched
the button upon his rifle's stock, it was more to chance than
proficiency that he owed the partial success of his aim.
The projectile grazed the flier's side, the opaque coating breaking
sufficiently to permit daylight to strike in upon the powder phial
within the bullet's nose. There was a sharp explosion. Carthoris
felt his craft reel drunkenly beneath him, and the engine stopped.
The momentum the air boat had gained carried her on over the city
toward the sea-bottom beyond.
The red warrior in the plaza fired several more shots, none of
which scored. Then a lofty minaret shut the drifting quarry from
his view.
In the distance before him Carthoris could see the green warrior
bearing Thuvia of Ptarth away upon his mighty thoat. The direction
of his flight was toward the north-west of Aaanthor, where lay a
mountainous country little known to red men.
The Heliumite now gave his attention to his injured craft. A close
examination revealed the face that one of the buoyancy tanks had
been punctured, but the engine itself was uninjured.
A splinter from the projectile had damaged one of the control levers
beyond the possibility of repair outside a machine shop; but after
considerable tinkering, Carthoris was able to propel his wounded
flier at low speed, a rate which could not approach the rapid gait
of the thoat, whose eight long, powerful legs carried it over the
ochre vegetation of the dead sea-bottom at terrific speed.
The Prince of Helium chafed and fretted at the slowness of his
pursuit, yet he was thankful that the damage was no worse, for now
he could at least move more rapidly than on foot.
But even this meagre satisfaction was soon to be denied him, for
presently the flier commenced to sag toward the port and by the bow.
The damage to the buoyancy tanks had evidently been more grievous
than he had at first believed.
All the balance of that long day Carthoris crawled erratically through
the still air, the bow of the flier sinking lower and lower, and
the list to port becoming more and more alarming, until at last,
near dark, he was floating almost bowdown, his harness buckled to
a heavy deck ring to keep him from being precipitated to the ground
below.
His forward movement was now confined to a slow drifting with the
gentle breeze that blew out of the south-east, and when this died
down with the setting of the sun, he let the flier sink gently to
the mossy carpet beneath.
Far before him loomed the mountains toward which the green man had
been fleeing when last he had seen him, and with dogged resolution
the son of John Carter, endowed with the indomitable will of his
mighty sire, took up the pursuit on foot.
All that night he forged ahead until, with the dawning of a new
day, he entered the low foothills that guard the approach to the
fastness of the mountains of Torquas.
Rugged, granitic walls towered before him. Nowhere could he discern
an opening through the formidable barrier; yet somewhere into this
inhospitable world of stone the green warrior had borne the woman
of the red man's heart's desire.
Across the yielding moss of the sea-bottom there had been no spoor
to follow, for the soft pads of the thoat but pressed down in his
swift passage the resilient vegetation which sprang up again behind
his fleeting feet, leaving no sign.
But here in the hills, where loose rock occasionally strewed the
way; where black loam and wild flowers partially replaced the sombre
monotony of the waste places of the lowlands, Carthoris hoped to
find some sign that would lead him in the right direction.
Yet, search as he would, the baffling mystery of the trail seemed
likely to remain for ever unsolved.
It was drawing toward the day's close once more when the keen eyes
of the Heliumite discerned the tawny yellow of a sleek hide moving
among the boulders several hundred yards to his left.
Crouching quickly behind a large rock, Carthoris watched the thing
before him. It was a huge banth, one of those savage Barsoomian
lions that roam the desolate hills of the dying planet.
The creature's nose was close to the ground. It was evident that
he was following the spoor of meat by scent.
As Carthoris watched him, a great hope leaped into the man's heart.
Here, possibly, might lie the solution to the mystery he had been
endeavouring to solve. This hungry carnivore, keen always for the
flesh of man, might even now be trailing the two whom Carthoris
sought.
Cautiously the youth crept out upon the trail of the man-eater.
Along the foot of the perpendicular cliff the creature moved,
sniffing at the invisible spoor, and now and then emitting the low
moan of the hunting banth.
Carthoris had followed the creature for but a few minutes when it
disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as though dissolved into
thin air.
The man leaped to his feet. Not again was he to be cheated as the
man had cheated him. He sprang forward at a reckless pace to the
spot at which he last had seen the great, skulking brute.
Before him loomed the sheer cliff, its face unbroken by any aperture
into which the huge banth might have wormed its great carcass.
Beside him was a small, flat boulder, not larger than the deck of
a ten-man flier, nor standing to a greater height than twice his
own stature.
Perhaps the banth was in hiding behind this? The brute might have
discovered the man upon his trail, and even now be lying in wait
for his easy prey.
Cautiously, with drawn long-sword, Carthoris crept around the
corner of the rock. There was no banth there, but something which
surprised him infinitely more than would the presence of twenty
banths.
Before him yawned the mouth of a dark cave leading downward into
the ground. Through this the banth must have disappeared. Was
it his lair? Within its dark and forbidding interior might there
not lurk not one but many of the fearsome creatures?
Carthoris did not know, nor, with the thought that had been spurring
him onward upon the trail of the creature uppermost in his mind,
did he much care; for into this gloomy cavern he was sure the banth
had trailed the green man and his captive, and into it he, too,
would follow, content to give his life in the service of the woman
he loved.
Not an instant did he hesitate, nor yet did he advance rashly; but
with ready sword and cautious steps, for the way was dark, he stole
on. As he advanced, the obscurity became impenetrable blackness.
CHAPTER V
THE FAIR RACE
Downward along a smooth, broad floor led the strange tunnel, for
such Carthoris was now convinced was the nature of the shaft he at
first had thought but a cave.
Before him he could hear the occasional low moans of the banth, and
presently from behind came a similar uncanny note. Another banth
had entered the passageway on HIS trail!
His position was anything but pleasant. His eyes could not penetrate
the darkness even to the distinguishing of his hand before his face,
while the banths, he knew, could see quite well, though absence of
light were utter.
No other sounds came to his ears than the dismal, bloodthirsty
moanings of the beast ahead and the beast behind.
The tunnel had led straight, from where he had entered it beneath
the side of the rock furthest from the unscaleable cliffs, toward
the mighty barrier that had baffled him so long.
Now it was running almost level, and presently he noted a gradual
ascent.
The beast behind him was gaining upon him, crowding him perilously
close upon the heels of the beast in front. Presently he should
have to do battle with one, or both. More firmly he gripped his
weapon.
Now he could hear the breathing of the banth at his heels. Not
for much longer could he delay the encounter.
Long since he had become assured that the tunnel led beneath the
cliffs to the opposite side of the barrier, and he had hoped that
he might reach the moonlit open before being compelled to grapple
with either of the monsters.
The sun had been setting as he entered the tunnel, and the way
had been sufficiently long to assure him that darkness now reigned
upon the world without. He glanced behind him. Blazing out of
the darkness, seemingly not ten paces behind, glared two flaming
points of fire. As the savage eyes met his, the beast emitted a
frightful roar and then he charged.
To face that savage mountain of onrushing ferocity, to stand unshaken
before the hideous fangs that he knew were bared in slavering
blood-thirstiness, though he could not see them, required nerves
of steel; but of such were the nerves of Carthoris of Helium.
He had the brute's eyes to guide his point, and, as true as the
sword hand of his mighty sire, his guided the keen point to one of
those blazing orbs, even as he leaped lightly to one side.
With a hideous scream of pain and rage, the wounded banth hurtled,
clawing, past him. Then it turned to charge once more; but this
time Carthoris saw but a single gleaming point of fiery hate directed
upon him.
Again the needle point met its flashing target. Again the horrid
cry of the stricken beast reverberated through the rocky tunnel,
shocking in its torture-laden shrillness, deafening in its terrific
volume.
But now, as it turned to charge again, the man had no guide whereby
to direct his point. He heard the scraping of the padded feet upon
the rocky floor. He knew the thing was charging down upon him once
again, but he could see nothing.
Yet, if he could not see his antagonist, neither could his antagonist
now see him.
Leaping, as he thought, to the exact centre of the tunnel, he held
his sword point ready on a line with the beast's chest. It was
all that he could do, hoping that chance might send the point into
the savage heart as he went down beneath the great body.
So quickly was the thing over that Carthoris could scarce believe
his senses as the mighty body rushed madly past him. Either he
had not placed himself in the centre of the tunnel, or else the
blinded banth had erred in its calculations.
However, the huge body missed him by a foot, and the creature
continued on down the tunnel as though in pursuit of the prey that
had eluded him.
Carthoris, too, followed the same direction, nor was it long before
his heart was gladdened by the sight of the moonlit exit from the
long, dark passage.
Before him lay a deep hollow, entirely surrounded by gigantic
cliffs. The surface of the valley was dotted with enormous trees,
a strange sight so far from a Martian waterway. The ground itself
was clothed in brilliant scarlet sward, picked out with innumerable
patches of gorgeous wild flowers.
Beneath the glorious effulgence of the two moons the scene was one
of indescribable loveliness, tinged with the weirdness of strange
enchantment.
For only an instant, however, did his gaze rest upon the natural
beauties outspread before him. Almost immediately they were riveted
upon the figure of a great banth standing across the carcass of a
new-killed thoat.
The huge beast, his tawny mane bristling around his hideous head,
kept his eyes fixed upon another banth that charged erratically
hither and thither, with shrill screams of pain, and horrid roars
of hate and rage.
Carthoris quickly guessed that the second brute was the one he had
blinded during the fight in the tunnel, but it was the dead thoat
that centred his interest more than either of the savage carnivores.
The harness was still upon the body of the huge Martian mount, and
Carthoris could not doubt but that this was the very animal upon
which the green warrior had borne away Thuvia of Ptarth.
But where were the rider and his prisoner? The Prince of Helium
shuddered as he thought upon the probability of the fate that had
overtaken them.
Human flesh is the food most craved by the fierce Barsoomian lion,
whose great carcass and giant thews require enormous quantities of
meat to sustain them.
Two human bodies would have but whetted the creature's appetite,
and that he had killed and eaten the green man and the red girl
seemed only too likely to Carthoris. He had left the carcass
of the mighty thoat to be devoured after having consumed the more
tooth-some portion of his banquet.
Now the sightless banth, in its savage, aimless charging and
counter-charging, had passed beyond the kill of its fellow, and
there the light breeze that was blowing wafted the scent of new
blood to its nostrils.
No longer were its movements erratic. With outstretched tail and
foaming jaws it charged straight as an arrow, for the body of the
thoat and the mighty creature of destruction that stood with forepaws
upon the slate-grey side, waiting to defend its meat.
When the charging banth was twenty paces from the dead thoat the
killer gave vent to its hideous challenge, and with a mighty spring
leaped forward to meet it.
The battle that ensued awed even the warlike Barsoomian. The
mad rending, the hideous and deafening roaring, the implacable
savagery of the blood-stained beasts held him in the paralysis
of fascination, and when it was over and the two creatures, their
heads and shoulders torn to ribbons, lay with their dead jaws
still buried in each other's bodies, Carthoris tore himself from
the spell only by an effort of the will.
Hurrying to the side of the dead thoat, he searched for traces of
the girl he feared had shared the thoat's fate, but nowhere could
he discover anything to confirm his fears.
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