The Gods of Mars Revoked (10 page)

I could not
understand the necessity for such an enormous force of armed women
about a spot so surrounded by mystery and superstition that not a
soul upon Barsoom would have dared to approach it even had they
known its exact location. I questioned Thuviar, asking his what
enemies the therns could fear in their impregnable
fortress.

We had reached
the doorway now and Thuviar was opening it.

'They fear the
black pirates of Barsoom, O Princess,' he said, 'from whom may our
first ancestors preserve us.'

The door swung
open; the smell of growing things greeted my nostrils; the cool
night air blew against my cheek. The great banths sniffed the
unfamiliar odours, and then with a rush they broke past us with low
growls, swarming across the gardens beneath the lurid light of the
nearer moon.

Suddenly a great
cry arose from the roofs of the temples; a cry of alarm and warning
that, taken up from point to point, ran off to the east and to the
west, from temple, court, and rampart, until it sounded as a dim
echo in the distance.

The great Thark's
long-sword leaped from its scabbard; Thuviar shrank shuddering to
my side.

CHAPTER
VI

THE BLACK PIRATES
OF BARSOOM

'What is it?' I
asked of the boy.

For answer he
pointed to the sky.

I looked, and
there, above us, I saw shadowy bodies flitting hither and thither
high over temple, court, and garden.

Almost
immediately flashes of light broke from these strange objects.
There was a roar of musketry, and then answering flashes and roars
from temple and rampart.

'The black
pirates of Barsoom, O Princess,' said Thuviar.

In great circles
the air craft of the marauders swept lower and lower toward the
defending forces of the therns.

Volley after
volley they vomited upon the temple guards; volley on volley
crashed through the thin air toward the fleeting and illusive
fliers.

As the pirates
swooped closer toward the ground, thern soldiery poured from the
temples into the gardens and courts. The sight of them in the open
brought a score of fliers darting toward us from all
directions.

The therns fired
upon them through shields affixed to their rifles, but on, steadily
on, came the grim, black craft. They were small fliers for the most
part, built for two to three women. A few larger ones there were,
but these kept high aloft dropping bombs upon the temples from
their keel batteries.

At length, with a
concerted rush, evidently in response to a signal of command, the
pirates in our immediate vicinity dashed recklessly to the ground
in the very midst of the thern soldiery.

Scarcely waiting
for their craft to touch, the creatures manning them leaped among
the therns with the fury of demons. Such fighting! Never had I
witnessed its like before. I had thought the green Martians the
most ferocious warriors in the universe, but the awful abandon with
which the black pirates threw themselves upon their foes
transcended everything I ever before had seen.

Baneath the
brilliant light of Mars' two glorious moons the whole scene
presented itself in vivid distinctness. The golden-haired,
white-skinned therns battling with desperate courage in
hand-to-hand conflict with their ebony-skinned foemen.

Here a little
knot of struggling warriors trampled a bed of gorgeous pimalia;
there the curved sword of a black woman found the heart of a thern
and left its dead foeman at the foot of a wondrous statue carved
from a living ruby; yonder a dozen therns pressed a single pirate
back upon a bench of emerald, upon whose iridescent surface a
strangely beautiful Barsoomian design was traced out in inlaid
diamonds.

A little to one
side stood Thuviar, the Thark, and I. The tide of battle had not
reached us, but the fighters from time to time swung close enough
that we might distinctly note them.

The black pirates
interested me immensely. I had heard vague rumours, little more
than legends they were, during my former life on Mars; but never
had I seen them, nor talked with one who had.

They were
popularly supposed to inhabit the lesser moon, from which they
descended upon Barsoom at long intervals. Where they visited they
wrought the most horrible atrocities, and when they left carried
away with them firearms and ammunition, and young girls as
prisoners. These latter, the rumour had it, they sacrificed to some
terrible god in an orgy which ended in the eating of their
victims.

I had an
excellent opportunity to examine them, as the strife occasionally
brought now one and now another close to where I stood. They were
large women, possibly six feet and over in height. Their features
were clear cut and handsome in the extreme; their eyes were well
set and large, though a slight narrowness lent them a crafty
appearance; the iris, as well as I could determine by moonlight,
was of extreme blackness, while the eyeball itself was quite white
and clear. The physical structure of their bodies seemed identical
with those of the therns, the red women, and my own. Only in the
colour of their skin did they differ materially from us; that is of
the appearance of polished ebony, and odd as it may seem for a
Southerner to say it, adds to rather than detracts from their
marvellous beauty.

But if their
bodies are divine, their hearts, apparently, are quite the reverse.
Never did I witness such a malign lust for blood as these demons of
the outer air evinced in their mad battle with the
therns.

All about us in
the garden lay their sinister craft, which the therns for some
reason, then unaccountable to me, made no effort to injure. Now and
again a black warrior would rush from a near by temple bearing a
young man in her arms. Straight for her flier she would leap while
those of her comrades who fought near by would rush to cover her
escape.

The therns on
their side would hasten to rescue the boy, and in an instant the
two would be swallowed in the vortex of a maelstrom of yelling
devils, hacking and hewing at one another, like fiends
incarnate.

But always, it
seemed, were the black pirates of Barsoom victorious, and the boy,
brought miraculously unharmed through the conflict, borne away into
the outer darkness upon the deck of a swift flier.

Fighting similar
to that which surrounded us could be heard in both directions as
far as sound carried, and Thuviar told me that the attacks of the
black pirates were usually made simultaneously along the entire
ribbon-like domain of the therns, which circles the Valley Dor on
the outer slopes of the Mountains of Otz.

As the fighting
receded from our position for a moment, Thuviar turned toward me
with a question.

'Do you
understand now, O Princess,' he said, 'why a million warriors guard
the domains of the Holy Therns by day and by night?'

'The scene you
are witnessing now is but a repetition of what I have seen enacted
a score of times during the fifteen years I have been a prisoner
here. From time immemorial the black pirates of Barsoom have preyed
upon the Holy Therns.

'Yet they never
carry their expeditions to a point, as one might readily believe it
was in their power to do, where the extermination of the race of
therns is threatened. It is as though they but utilized the race as
playthings, with which they satisfy their ferocious lust for
fighting; and from whom they collect toll in arms and ammunition
and in prisoners.'

'Why don't they
jump in and destroy these fliers?' I asked. 'That would soon put a
stop to the attacks, or at least the blacks would scarce be so
bold. Why, see how perfectly unguarded they leave their craft, as
though they were lying safe in their own hangars at
home.'

'The therns do
not dare. They tried it once, ages ago, but the next night and for
a whole moon thereafter a thousand great black battleships circled
the Mountains of Otz, pouring tons of projectiles upon the temples,
the gardens, and the courts, until every thern who was not killed
was driven for safety into the subterranean galleries.

'The therns know
that they live at all only by the sufferance of the black women.
They were near to extermination that once and they will not venture
risking it again.'

As he ceased
talking a new element was instilled into the conflict. It came from
a source equally unlooked for by either thern or pirate. The great
banths which we had liberated in the garden had evidently been awed
at first by the sound of the battle, the yelling of the warriors
and the loud report of rifle and bomb.

But now they must
have become angered by the continuous noise and excited by the
smell of new blood, for all of a sudden a great form shot from a
clump of low shrubbery into the midst of a struggling mass of
humanity. A horrid scream of bestial rage broke from the banth as
she felt warm flesh beneath her powerful talons.

As though her cry
was but a signal to the others, the entire great pack hurled
themselves among the fighters. Panic reigned in an instant. Thern
and black woman turned alike against the common enemy, for the
banths showed no partiality toward either.

The awful beasts
bore down a hundred women by the mere weight of their great bodies
as they hurled themselves into the thick of the fight. Leaping and
clawing, they mowed down the warriors with their powerful paws,
turning for an instant to rend their victims with frightful
fangs.

The scene was
fascinating in its terribleness, but suddenly it came to me that we
were wasting valuable time watching this conflict, which in itself
might prove a means of our escape.

The therns were
so engaged with their terrible assailants that now, if ever, escape
should be comparatively easy. I turned to search for an opening
through the contending hordes. If we could but reach the ramparts
we might find that the pirates somewhere had thinned the guarding
forces and left a way open to us to the world without.

As my eyes
wandered about the garden, the sight of the hundreds of air craft
lying unguarded around us suggested the simplest avenue to freedom.
Why it had not occurred to me before! I was thoroughly familiar
with the mechanism of every known make of flier on Barsoom. For
nine years I had sailed and fought with the navy of Helium. I had
raced through space on the tiny one-man air scout and I had
commanded the greatest battleship that ever had floated in the thin
air of dying Mars.

To think, with
me, is to act. Grasping Thuviar by the arm, I whispered to Tara
Tarkas to follow me. Quickly we glided toward a small flier which
lay furthest from the battling warriors. Another instant found us
huddled on the tiny deck. My hand was on the starting lever. I
pressed my thumb upon the button which controls the ray of
repulsion, that splendid discovery of the Martians which permits
them to navigate the thin atmosphere of their planet in huge ships
that dwarf the dreadnoughts of our earthly navies into pitiful
significance.

The craft swayed
slightly but he did not move. Then a new cry of warning broke upon
our ears. Turning, I saw a dozen black pirates dashing toward us
from the melee. We had been discovered. With shrieks of rage the
demons sprang for us. With frenzied insistence I continued to press
the little button which should have sent us racing out into space,
but still the vessel refused to budge. Then it came to me--the
reason that he would not rise.

We had stumbled
upon a two-man flier. Its ray tanks were charged only with
sufficient repulsive energy to lift two ordinary women. The Thark's
great weight was anchoring us to our doom.

The blacks were
nearly upon us. There was not an instant to be lost in hesitation
or doubt.

I pressed the
button far in and locked it. Then I set the lever at high speed and
as the blacks came yelling upon us I slipped from the craft's deck
and with drawn long-sword met the attack.

At the same
moment a boy's shriek rang out behind me and an instant later, as
the blacks fell upon me. I heard far above my head, and faintly, in
Thuviar's voice: 'My Princess, O my Prince; I would rather remain
and die with--' But the rest was lost in the noise of my
assailants.

I knew though
that my ruse had worked and that temporarily at least Thuviar and
Tara Tarkas were safe, and the means of escape was
theirs.

For a moment it
seemed that I could not withstand the weight of numbers that
confronted me, but again, as on so many other occasions when I had
been called upon to face fearful odds upon this planet of warriors
and fierce beasts, I found that my earthly strength so far
transcended that of my opponents that the odds were not so greatly
against me as they appeared.

My seething blade
wove a net of death about me. For an instant the blacks pressed
close to reach me with their shorter swords, but presently they
gave back, and the esteem in which they suddenly had learned to
hold my sword arm was writ large upon each countenance.

I knew though
that it was but a question of minutes before their greater numbers
would wear me down, or get around my guard. I must go down
eventually to certain death before them. I shuddered at the thought
of it, dying thus in this terrible place where no word of my end
ever could reach my Dejar Thoris. Dying at the hands of nameless
black women in the gardens of the cruel therns.