The Gods Of Mars (17 page)

“And you have fought often?” I asked.

“Very often,” he replied. “It is my only pleasure. Some hundred black
devils have I accounted for during nearly a year of the rites of Issus.
My mother would be very proud could she only know how well I have
maintained the traditions of my father’s prowess.”

“Your father must have been a mighty warrior!” I said. “I have known
most of the warriors of Barsoom in my time; doubtless I knew him. Who
was he?”

“My father was—”

“Come, calots!” cried the rough voice of a guard. “To the slaughter
with you,” and roughly we were hustled to the steep incline that led to
the chambers far below which let out upon the arena.

The amphitheatre, like all I had ever seen upon Barsoom, was built in a
large excavation. Only the highest seats, which formed the low wall
surrounding the pit, were above the level of the ground. The arena
itself was far below the surface.

Just beneath the lowest tier of seats was a series of barred cages on a
level with the surface of the arena. Into these we were herded. But,
unfortunately, my youthful friend was not of those who occupied a cage
with me.

Directly opposite my cage was the throne of Issus. Here the horrid
creature squatted, surrounded by a hundred slave maidens sparkling in
jewelled trappings. Brilliant cloths of many hues and strange patterns
formed the soft cushion covering of the dais upon which they reclined
about her.

On four sides of the throne and several feet below it stood three solid
ranks of heavily armed soldiery, elbow to elbow. In front of these
were the high dignitaries of this mock heaven—gleaming blacks bedecked
with precious stones, upon their foreheads the insignia of their rank
set in circles of gold.

On both sides of the throne stretched a solid mass of humanity from top
to bottom of the amphitheatre. There were as many women as men, and
each was clothed in the wondrously wrought harness of his station and
his house. With each black was from one to three slaves, drawn from
the domains of the therns and from the outer world. The blacks are all
“noble.” There is no peasantry among the First Born. Even the lowest
soldier is a god, and has his slaves to wait upon him.

The First Born do no work. The men fight—that is a sacred privilege
and duty; to fight and die for Issus. The women do nothing, absolutely
nothing. Slaves wash them, slaves dress them, slaves feed them. There
are some, even, who have slaves that talk for them, and I saw one who
sat during the rites with closed eyes while a slave narrated to her the
events that were transpiring within the arena.

The first event of the day was the Tribute to Issus. It marked the end
of those poor unfortunates who had looked upon the divine glory of the
goddess a full year before. There were ten of them—splendid beauties
from the proud courts of mighty Jeddaks and from the temples of the
Holy Therns. For a year they had served in the retinue of Issus;
to-day they were to pay the price of this divine preferment with their
lives; tomorrow they would grace the tables of the court functionaries.

A huge black entered the arena with the young women. Carefully he
inspected them, felt of their limbs and poked them in the ribs.
Presently he selected one of their number whom he led before the throne
of Issus. He addressed some words to the goddess which I could not
hear. Issus nodded her head. The black raised his hands above his
head in token of salute, grasped the girl by the wrist, and dragged her
from the arena through a small doorway below the throne.

“Issus will dine well to-night,” said a prisoner beside me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That was her dinner that old Thabis is taking to the kitchens. Didst
not note how carefully he selected the plumpest and tenderest of the
lot?”

I growled out my curses on the monster sitting opposite us on the
gorgeous throne.

“Fume not,” admonished my companion; “you will see far worse than that
if you live even a month among the First Born.”

I turned again in time to see the gate of a nearby cage thrown open and
three monstrous white apes spring into the arena. The girls shrank in
a frightened group in the centre of the enclosure.

One was on her knees with imploring hands outstretched toward Issus;
but the hideous deity only leaned further forward in keener
anticipation of the entertainment to come. At length the apes spied
the huddled knot of terror-stricken maidens and with demoniacal shrieks
of bestial frenzy, charged upon them.

A wave of mad fury surged over me. The cruel cowardliness of the
power-drunk creature whose malignant mind conceived such frightful
forms of torture stirred to their uttermost depths my resentment and my
manhood. The blood-red haze that presaged death to my foes swam before
my eyes.

The guard lolled before the unbarred gate of the cage which confined
me. What need of bars, indeed, to keep those poor victims from rushing
into the arena which the edict of the gods had appointed as their death
place!

A single blow sent the black unconscious to the ground. Snatching up
his long-sword, I sprang into the arena. The apes were almost upon the
maidens, but a couple of mighty bounds were all my earthly muscles
required to carry me to the centre of the sand-strewn floor.

For an instant silence reigned in the great amphitheatre, then a wild
shout arose from the cages of the doomed. My long-sword circled
whirring through the air, and a great ape sprawled, headless, at the
feet of the fainting girls.

The other apes turned now upon me, and as I stood facing them a sullen
roar from the audience answered the wild cheers from the cages. From
the tail of my eye I saw a score of guards rushing across the
glistening sand toward me. Then a figure broke from one of the cages
behind them. It was the youth whose personality so fascinated me.

He paused a moment before the cages, with upraised sword.

“Come, men of the outer world!” he shouted. “Let us make our deaths
worth while, and at the back of this unknown warrior turn this day’s
Tribute to Issus into an orgy of revenge that will echo through the
ages and cause black skins to blanch at each repetition of the rites of
Issus. Come! The racks without your cages are filled with blades.”

Without waiting to note the outcome of his plea, he turned and bounded
toward me. From every cage that harboured red men a thunderous shout
went up in answer to his exhortation. The inner guards went down
beneath howling mobs, and the cages vomited forth their inmates hot
with the lust to kill.

The racks that stood without were stripped of the swords with which the
prisoners were to have been armed to enter their allotted combats, and
a swarm of determined warriors sped to our support.

The great apes, towering in all their fifteen feet of height, had gone
down before my sword while the charging guards were still some distance
away. Close behind them pursued the youth. At my back were the young
girls, and as it was in their service that I fought, I remained
standing there to meet my inevitable death, but with the determination
to give such an account of myself as would long be remembered in the
land of the First Born.

I noted the marvellous speed of the young red man as he raced after the
guards. Never had I seen such speed in any Martian. His leaps and
bounds were little short of those which my earthly muscles had produced
to create such awe and respect on the part of the green Martians into
whose hands I had fallen on that long-gone day that had seen my first
advent upon Mars.

The guards had not reached me when he fell upon them from the rear, and
as they turned, thinking from the fierceness of his onslaught that a
dozen were attacking them, I rushed them from my side.

In the rapid fighting that followed I had little chance to note aught
else than the movements of my immediate adversaries, but now and again
I caught a fleeting glimpse of a purring sword and a lightly springing
figure of sinewy steel that filled my heart with a strange yearning and
a mighty but unaccountable pride.

On the handsome face of the boy a grim smile played, and ever and anon
he threw a taunting challenge to the foes that faced him. In this and
other ways his manner of fighting was similar to that which had always
marked me on the field of combat.

Perhaps it was this vague likeness which made me love the boy, while
the awful havoc that his sword played amongst the blacks filled my soul
with a tremendous respect for him.

For my part, I was fighting as I had fought a thousand times
before—now sidestepping a wicked thrust, now stepping quickly in to
let my sword’s point drink deep in a foeman’s heart, before it buried
itself in the throat of his companion.

We were having a merry time of it, we two, when a great body of Issus’
own guards were ordered into the arena. On they came with fierce
cries, while from every side the armed prisoners swarmed upon them.

For half an hour it was as though all hell had broken loose. In the
walled confines of the arena we fought in an inextricable
mass—howling, cursing, blood-streaked demons; and ever the sword of
the young red man flashed beside me.

Slowly and by repeated commands I had succeeded in drawing the
prisoners into a rough formation about us, so that at last we fought
formed into a rude circle in the centre of which were the doomed maids.

Many had gone down on both sides, but by far the greater havoc had been
wrought in the ranks of the guards of Issus. I could see messengers
running swiftly through the audience, and as they passed the nobles
there unsheathed their swords and sprang into the arena. They were
going to annihilate us by force of numbers—that was quite evidently
their plan.

I caught a glimpse of Issus leaning far forward upon her throne, her
hideous countenance distorted in a horrid grimace of hate and rage, in
which I thought I could distinguish an expression of fear. It was that
face that inspired me to the thing that followed.

Quickly I ordered fifty of the prisoners to drop back behind us and
form a new circle about the maidens.

“Remain and protect them until I return,” I commanded.

Then, turning to those who formed the outer line, I cried, “Down with
Issus! Follow me to the throne; we will reap vengeance where vengeance
is deserved.”

The youth at my side was the first to take up the cry of “Down with
Issus!” and then at my back and from all sides rose a hoarse shout, “To
the throne! To the throne!”

As one man we moved, an irresistible fighting mass, over the bodies of
dead and dying foes toward the gorgeous throne of the Martian deity.
Hordes of the doughtiest fighting-men of the First Born poured from the
audience to check our progress. We mowed them down before us as they
had been paper men.

“To the seats, some of you!” I cried as we approached the arena’s
barrier wall. “Ten of us can take the throne,” for I had seen that
Issus’ guards had for the most part entered the fray within the arena.

On both sides of me the prisoners broke to left and right for the
seats, vaulting the low wall with dripping swords lusting for the
crowded victims who awaited them.

In another moment the entire amphitheatre was filled with the shrieks
of the dying and the wounded, mingled with the clash of arms and
triumphant shouts of the victors.

Side by side the young red man and I, with perhaps a dozen others,
fought our way to the foot of the throne. The remaining guards,
reinforced by the high dignitaries and nobles of the First Born, closed
in between us and Issus, who sat leaning far forward upon her carved
sorapus bench, now screaming high-pitched commands to her following,
now hurling blighting curses upon those who sought to desecrate her
godhood.

The frightened slaves about her trembled in wide-eyed expectancy,
knowing not whether to pray for our victory or our defeat. Several
among them, proud daughters no doubt of some of Barsoom’s noblest
warriors, snatched swords from the hands of the fallen and fell upon
the guards of Issus, but they were soon cut down; glorious martyrs to a
hopeless cause.

The men with us fought well, but never since Tars Tarkas and I fought
out that long, hot afternoon shoulder to shoulder against the hordes of
Warhoon in the dead sea bottom before Thark, had I seen two men fight
to such good purpose and with such unconquerable ferocity as the young
red man and I fought that day before the throne of Issus, Goddess of
Death, and of Life Eternal.

Man by man those who stood between us and the carven sorapus wood bench
went down before our blades. Others swarmed in to fill the breach, but
inch by inch, foot by foot we won nearer and nearer to our goal.

Presently a cry went up from a section of the stands near by—“Rise
slaves!” “Rise slaves!” it rose and fell until it swelled to a mighty
volume of sound that swept in great billows around the entire
amphitheatre.

For an instant, as though by common assent, we ceased our fighting to
look for the meaning of this new note nor did it take but a moment to
translate its significance. In all parts of the structure the female
slaves were falling upon their masters with whatever weapon came first
to hand. A dagger snatched from the harness of her mistress was waved
aloft by some fair slave, its shimmering blade crimson with the
lifeblood of its owner; swords plucked from the bodies of the dead
about them; heavy ornaments which could be turned into bludgeons—such
were the implements with which these fair women wreaked the long-pent
vengeance which at best could but partially recompense them for the
unspeakable cruelties and indignities which their black masters had
heaped upon them. And those who could find no other weapons used their
strong fingers and their gleaming teeth.