The Gods Of Mars (16 page)

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

“Kaor,” he replied. “What do you here?”

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

He too smiled, a brave and winning smile.

“I also,” he 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 her belly! By my first ancestor, but never
was there so grotesque a figure in all the universe. That they should
call such a one Goddess of Life Eternal, Goddess 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 father a wild lust for adventure, as well
as a hollow where my bump of reverence should be.

“I had reached the area of eternal ice when my port propeller jammed,
and I dropped to the ground to make repairs. Before I knew it the air
was black with fliers, and a hundred of these First Born devils were
leaping to the ground all about me.

“With drawn swords they made for me, but before I went down beneath
them they had tasted of the steel of my father’s sword, and I had given
such an account of myself as I know would have pleased my sire had he
lived to witness it.”

“Your father is dead?” I asked.

“He died before the shell broke to let me step out into a world that
has been very good to me. But for the sorrow that I had never the
honour to know my father, I have been very happy. My only sorrow now
is that my mother must mourn me as she has for ten long years mourned
my father.”

“Who was your father?” I asked.

He was about to reply when the outer door of our prison opened and a
burly guard entered and ordered him to his own quarters for the night,
locking the door after him as he passed through into the further
chamber.

“It is Issus’ wish that you two be confined in the same room,” said the
guard when he had returned to our cell. “This cowardly slave of a
slave is to serve you well,” he said to me, indicating Xodar with a
wave of his hand. “If he does not, you are to beat him into
submission. It is Issus’ wish that you heap upon him every indignity
and degradation of which you can conceive.”

With these words he left us.

Xodar still sat with his face buried in his hands. I walked to his
side and placed my hand upon his shoulder.

“Xodar,” I said, “you have heard the commands of Issus, but you need
not fear that I shall attempt to put them into execution. You are a
brave man, Xodar. It is your own affair if you wish to be persecuted
and humiliated; but were I you I should assert my manhood and defy my
enemies.”

“I have been thinking very hard, John Carter,” he said, “of all the new
ideas you gave me a few hours since. Little by little I have been
piecing together the things that you said which sounded blasphemous to
me then with the things that I have seen in my past life and dared not
even think about for fear of bringing down upon me the wrath of Issus.

“I believe now that she is a fraud; no more divine than you or I. More
I am willing to concede—that the First Born are no holier than the
Holy Therns, nor the Holy Therns more holy than the red men.

“The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious belief in
lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above
us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us
continue to believe as they wished us to believe.

“I am ready to cast off the ties that have bound me. I am ready to
defy Issus herself; but what will it avail us? Be the First Born gods
or mortals, they are a powerful race, and we are as fast in their
clutches as though we were already dead. There is no escape.”

“I have escaped from bad plights in the past, my friend,” I replied;
“nor while life is in me shall I despair of escaping from the Isle of
Shador and the Sea of Omean.”

“But we cannot escape even from the four walls of our prison,” urged
Xodar. “Test this flint-like surface,” he cried, smiting the solid
rock that confined us. “And look upon this polished surface; none
could cling to it to reach the top.”

I smiled.

“That is the least of our troubles, Xodar,” I replied. “I will
guarantee to scale the wall and take you with me, if you will help with
your knowledge of the customs here to appoint the best time for the
attempt, and guide me to the shaft that lets from the dome of this
abysmal sea to the light of God’s pure air above.”

“Night time is the best and offers the only slender chance we have, for
then men sleep, and only a dozing watch nods in the tops of the
battleships. No watch is kept upon the cruisers and smaller craft.
The watchers upon the larger vessels see to all about them. It is
night now.”

“But,” I exclaimed, “it is not dark! How can it be night, then?”

He smiled.

“You forget,” he said, “that we are far below ground. The light of the
sun never penetrates here. There are no moons and no stars reflected
in the bosom of Omean. The phosphorescent light you now see pervading
this great subterranean vault emanates from the rocks that form its
dome; it is always thus upon Omean, just as the billows are always as
you see them—rolling, ever rolling over a windless sea.

“At the appointed hour of night upon the world above, the men whose
duties hold them here sleep, but the light is ever the same.”

“It will make escape more difficult,” I said, and then I shrugged my
shoulders; for what, pray, is the pleasure of doing an easy thing?

“Let us sleep on it to-night,” said Xodar. “A plan may come with our
awakening.”

So we threw ourselves upon the hard stone floor of our prison and slept
the sleep of tired men.

Early the next morning Xodar and I commenced work upon our plans for
escape. First I had him sketch upon the stone floor of our cell as
accurate a map of the south polar regions as was possible with the
crude instruments at our disposal—a buckle from my harness, and the
sharp edge of the wondrous gem I had taken from Sator Throg.

From this I computed the general direction of Helium and the distance
at which it lay from the opening which led to Omean.

Then I had him draw a map of Omean, indicating plainly the position of
Shador and of the opening in the dome which led to the outer world.

These I studied until they were indelibly imprinted in my memory. From
Xodar I learned the duties and customs of the guards who patrolled
Shador. It seemed that during the hours set aside for sleep only one
man was on duty at a time. He paced a beat that passed around the
prison, at a distance of about a hundred feet from the building.

The pace of the sentries, Xodar said, was very slow, requiring nearly
ten minutes to make a single round. This meant that for practically
five minutes at a time each side of the prison was unguarded as the
sentry pursued his snail like pace upon the opposite side.

“This information you ask,” said Xodar, “will be all very valuable
after
we get out, but nothing that you have asked has any bearing on
that first and most important consideration.”

“We will get out all right,” I replied, laughing. “Leave that to me.”

“When shall we make the attempt?” he asked.

“The first night that finds a small craft moored near the shore of
Shador,” I replied.

“But how will you know that any craft is moored near Shador? The
windows are far beyond our reach.”

“Not so, friend Xodar; look!”

With a bound I sprang to the bars of the window opposite us, and took a
quick survey of the scene without.

Several small craft and two large battleships lay within a hundred
yards of Shador.

“To-night,” I thought, and was just about to voice my decision to
Xodar, when, without warning, the door of our prison opened and a guard
stepped in.

If the fellow saw me there our chances of escape might quickly go
glimmering, for I knew that they would put me in irons if they had the
slightest conception of the wonderful agility which my earthly muscles
gave me upon Mars.

The man had entered and was standing facing the centre of the room, so
that his back was toward me. Five feet above me was the top of a
partition wall separating our cell from the next.

There was my only chance to escape detection. If the fellow turned, I
was lost; nor could I have dropped to the floor undetected, since he
was no nearly below me that I would have struck him had I done so.

“Where is the white man?” cried the guard of Xodar. “Issus commands
his presence.” He started to turn to see if I were in another part of
the cell.

I scrambled up the iron grating of the window until I could catch a
good footing on the sill with one foot; then I let go my hold and
sprang for the partition top.

“What was that?” I heard the deep voice of the black bellow as my metal
grated against the stone wall as I slipped over. Then I dropped
lightly to the floor of the cell beyond.

“Where is the white slave?” again cried the guard.

“I know not,” replied Xodar. “He was here even as you entered. I am
not his keeper—go find him.”

The black grumbled something that I could not understand, and then I
heard him unlocking the door into one of the other cells on the further
side. Listening intently, I caught the sound as the door closed behind
him. Then I sprang once more to the top of the partition and dropped
into my own cell beside the astonished Xodar.

“Do you see now how we will escape?” I asked him in a whisper.

“I see how you may,” he replied, “but I am no wiser than before as to
how I am to pass these walls. Certain it is that I cannot bounce over
them as you do.”

We heard the guard moving about from cell to cell, and finally, his
rounds completed, he again entered ours. When his eyes fell upon me
they fairly bulged from his head.

“By the shell of my first ancestor!” he roared. “Where have you been?”

“I have been in prison since you put me here yesterday,” I answered.
“I was in this room when you entered. You had better look to your
eyesight.”

He glared at me in mingled rage and relief.

“Come,” he said. “Issus commands your presence.”

He conducted me outside the prison, leaving Xodar behind. There we
found several other guards, and with them the red Martian youth who
occupied another cell upon Shador.

The journey I had taken to the Temple of Issus on the preceding day was
repeated. The guards kept the red boy and myself separated, so that we
had no opportunity to continue the conversation that had been
interrupted the previous night.

The youth’s face had haunted me. Where had I seen him before. There
was something strangely familiar in every line of him; in his carriage,
his manner of speaking, his gestures. I could have sworn that I knew
him, and yet I knew too that I had never seen him before.

When we reached the gardens of Issus we were led away from the temple
instead of toward it. The way wound through enchanted parks to a
mighty wall that towered a hundred feet in air.

Massive gates gave egress upon a small plain, surrounded by the same
gorgeous forests that I had seen at the foot of the Golden Cliffs.

Crowds of blacks were strolling in the same direction that our guards
were leading us, and with them mingled my old friends the plant men and
great white apes.

The brutal beasts moved among the crowd as pet dogs might. If they
were in the way the blacks pushed them roughly to one side, or whacked
them with the flat of a sword, and the animals slunk away as in great
fear.

Presently we came upon our destination, a great amphitheatre situated
at the further edge of the plain, and about half a mile beyond the
garden walls.

Through a massive arched gateway the blacks poured in to take their
seats, while our guards led us to a smaller entrance near one end of
the structure.

Through this we passed into an enclosure beneath the seats, where we
found a number of other prisoners herded together under guard. Some of
them were in irons, but for the most part they seemed sufficiently awed
by the presence of their guards to preclude any possibility of
attempted escape.

During the trip from Shador I had had no opportunity to talk with my
fellow-prisoner, but now that we were safely within the barred paddock
our guards abated their watchfulness, with the result that I found
myself able to approach the red Martian youth for whom I felt such a
strange attraction.

“What is the object of this assembly?” I asked him. “Are we to fight
for the edification of the First Born, or is it something worse than
that?”

“It is a part of the monthly rites of Issus,” he replied, “in which
black men wash the sins from their souls in the blood of men from the
outer world. If, perchance, the black is killed, it is evidence of his
disloyalty to Issus—the unpardonable sin. If he lives through the
contest he is held acquitted of the charge that forced the sentence of
the rites, as it is called, upon him.

“The forms of combat vary. A number of us may be pitted together
against an equal number, or twice the number of blacks; or singly we
may be sent forth to face wild beasts, or some famous black warrior.”

“And if we are victorious,” I asked, “what then—freedom?”

He laughed.

“Freedom, forsooth. The only freedom for us death. None who enters
the domains of the First Born ever leave. If we prove able fighters we
are permitted to fight often. If we are not mighty fighters—” He
shrugged his shoulders. “Sooner or later we die in the arena.”