Under the Moons of Mars (35 page)
Read Under the Moons of Mars Online
Authors: John Joseph Adams
Why should we have joined with her? Because she was beautiful? Because she had a sweet voice? I could not mate with her. I found her upsetting and confusing to look upon—worse to listen to. While reclining on our silks and furs she claimed we had no art or industry! I kept staring at the silk she lay on. Where did she think it came from? That my mother spun it out of her posterior? She was cruel and would not even try to learn to speak our language, to enter the heartspace—for that is to become vulnerable, to become raw, to join with us, in something deeper and more terrifying than fellowship or amity which may be broken. Even when we battle for supremacy—and why should we not? Barsoom is dying, and every drop of water or scrap of food is a battle, a battle we know we will one day lose. Only the very strongest can push us one year further, one measly decade or century on through this hard world. How we would like to love the weak as well as the strong. How we would like to mate whenever we wished or give preference to our own blood and work for its supremacy. We cannot afford to. We reign in our instincts so that the Green Men should live, not merely one Green Man. Such a thing is the luxury of men like the Earthman John Carter and his impossibly rich and hospitable world. I cannot imagine a place where only one species rules all. What ease he must have had. Why did he ever land upon us with both his feet?
I do not like him, I said to my mother Sikuva. He humiliated Tars Tarkas! He made him say he learned friendship from that skinny Earthman! The heartspace is bigger than what he calls friendship and has more teeth, too. Why does he think he is better than us? Without us he would have starved to death!
I have felt sorry for Tars Tarkas and his child Sola in my time. I imagine their gentle and loving feelings are a comfort to them, for they could not engage fully with the heartspace. Something was broken in them, and we could see them in the crosshatch only as shadows, vague and hazy. They expressed in the outside world the precious love and adoration and communal feeling that we keep inside, for it would surely be used against us by the other folk of Barsoom, who think so little of us, who break our eggs and dance in the ruined yolk. Poor Sarkoja tried to keep Tars Tarkas and his woman from passing on their unfit blood to a child, but she could not, she was not vigilant enough. I felt sorry for him then, when he piled up the human John Carter with praise, and we burned with anger, for he preened with his war-princess and was made sure of his superiority. We lost face, and could not get it back. We would be ruled by a crippled Tharkian, and even a decadent tyrant was better than one who could not see the world inside us except through a dark glass.
And so I grew to adulthood. I made myself strong, so that one day I could kill the Earthman John Carter and take his metal. I wanted things to be as they were, before he came. I wanted to dream in the heartspace and hunt game and ride the thoats without having to call them good and pretty for a half hour before I could feed myself—for I was always starving. There is never enough on Barsoom. You are never full, unless you are the Earthman John Carter. Unless you are a Red Man licking the yolk off your fingers.
My anger sustained me, it filled out my muscles where meat and bone could not. How dare he? How dare he drive off Sarkoja when she did little more than pinch and bite a
woman who had felt no sorrow while her people destroyed us? How dare he kill our chieftains and take position among us? He had no respect, as he had none for the Apaches he spoke of. I roamed the high hills and wrestled both the great white ape and the banth, and bested them both, for I was becoming great in the fullness of my youth, and I feared nothing except the reedy voice of the Earthman John Carter telling us once more that we were brutes and should follow his lead. I walked alone, I took myself from the heartspace and it grieved me like a blow to the skull, but it was worth it, it was enough, to end the Earthman John Carter and bring my people home once more.
And yet the very day when I resolved that I had achieved my true self, and all my green limbs were hard and hot, when I was ready—oh, I was ready!—I went down into Thark with a blaze in my eyes and a blaze in my heartspace as Falm Rojut returned to the glittering crosshatching of thoughtlines like an inrushing of air and flame. The young ones shrank back from the brightness of Falm Rojut. But Sola herself told me with a haughty smile that the Earthman John Carter had gone, back into the heavens, and was beyond my reach. Sola could not see the blue fire in my heartspace, how I hated her: collaborator and traitor, who gave succor to murderers and would go unpunished. Though the Earthman John Carter had gone, he would never truly be gone. He had put his foot down upon Barsoom and everything around that footprint had begun to die. I could not stay in Thark, which was the center of his rot. I could not look Sola in the eye each day while she preened and smirked and giggled with Tars Tarkas about their friend and how glorious would be the day when he returned. I was a child of Thark—I wanted only to live and hunt and mate and see my people thrive. Instead I could not even take the metal of the interloper, could not even try.
Much later, my rage quieted to a banked ember floating
like a red planet in the heartspace. I challenged the old Jeddak of Hanar Su far over the plains, and she was grateful to lay down the burden of her long life under my blade. I watched my wife lay her eggs. I guarded them from the Red Men and owned several thoats and calots who did their work well. I heard that the Earthman John Carter returned some ten years hence, but by that time I had a community to think of, and I led them deep into the mountains, to be safe from him, from his pride, from his ignorance.
But then, that lonely day when I was so ready to destroy him, when I was so strong, when the sun spilled over my green skin like yolk, I only turned my head to the sky where, somewhere, I knew he hid from me. And I laughed—a long, terrible, awful laugh.
Our laughter was never mirth. It is our greatest grief and mourning, our agony and regret for how things must be on this difficult, painful world, our wishing fate could have gone another way, our crying out for the cruelty and unfair asymmetry of the life that owns us.
It was always our weeping.
1M
y name is Jeks Toron, last padwar of the Free Riders, and personal aide to Dwar Guntha. When he dies, however he dies, I pray I will go with him into the realm of legends and that our song will be sung in Helium for a thousand thousand years.
That is not a heroic boast—I won’t fall upon my sword at the death of my captain; but I have been in a hundred battles with him, and we have grown old together . . . and war is not an old man’s game. For odwars and jedwars, perhaps, but not for fighting men.
Dwar Guntha? Ah, now there is a fighting man. Was he not with John Carter when the Warlord raided the fortress of Issus? Aye, he was there, leading the mutiny of loyal Heliumites against the madness of Zat Arras. He was a man at arms in the palace when Carter was named Jeddak of Jeddaks—Warlord of all Barsoom. And in the years that followed, how many times did Guntha ride out at the head of the Warlord’s
Riders? Look closely at Dwar Guntha’s face and chest, and in the countless overlapping scars you’ll see a map of history, a full account of the wars and battles, rescues, and skirmishes.
Now, though . . . ?
John Carter himself is old. His children and grandchildren, and grandchildren of his grandchildren are old. We Red Men of Helium are long-lived, but that old witch time, as they say, catches up to everyone. Guntha’s right arm is not what it was, and I admit that I am slower on the draw, less sure on the cut, and less dexterous in the riposte than once I was. Even the heroes’ songs for which I and my family have been famous these many generations have become echoes of old tales retold. In these days of peace there are few opportunities for songmakers to tell of great and heroic deeds; just as there are few opportunities for warriors to pass into song in a moment of glorious battle.
It seems to me, and to Guntha, that we live in an age of city men. City men, or, perhaps “civilized” men, seek deaths in bed, just as our great grandfathers once sought that long, last journey down the River Iss.
We spoke of such things, did Dwar Guntha and I, as we sat before a fire, warming our hands on the blaze and our stomachs with red wine. The moons chased each other through the heavens, leaving in their wakes a billion swirling stars. Tomorrow might be our last day, and so many days lay behind us. It sat heavily upon Dwar Guntha that our last great song may already have been sung.
I caught him looking into the flames with a distance at odds with the hawk sharpness he usually displayed.
“What is it?” I asked, and he was a long time answering.
Instead of speaking, he straightened, set aside his cup, and drew his sword from its sheath of cured banth hide. Guntha regarded the blade for a moment, turning it this way and that, studying the play of reflected firelight on the
oiled steel. Then with a sigh he handed it to me.
“Look at it, Jeks,” he said heavily. “This is my third sword. When I was a lad and wearing a fighting man’s rig for the first time I carried my father’s sword. A clunky chopper of Panarian make. My father was a palace guard, you know. Served fifty years and never drew his weapon in anger. First time I used the sword in a real battle I notched the blade on a Tharkian collar. Second time I used it, the blade snapped. When Zat Arras fitted out the fleet to pursue John Carter after he’d returned from Valley Dor, Kantos Kan himself gave him a better sword. Good man, that. He was everything Zat Arras was not, and the sword he gave was a Helium blade. Light and strong and already blooded. It had belonged to a padwar friend of his who died nobly but had no heirs. I used that blade for over twenty years, Jeks. It tasted the blood of Green Men and Black Men, of Plant Men and White Apes. And, aye, it drank the blood of Red Men, too.”
He sighed and reached for his cup.
“But I lost it when my scouting party was taken prisoner in that skirmish down south. Now, why do I tell you, Jeks? That’s where we met, wasn’t it? In the slave pits of An-Kar-Dool. Remember how we broke out? Clawing stones from the floor of our cell and tunneling inch by inch under the wall? Running naked into the forests, wasted by starvation, filthy and unarmed.”
I smiled and nodded. “We were armed when we returned.”
Guntha smiled too, and nodded at the blade. “That was the first time I used that sword. I took it from the ice pirate who sold us into slavery. I snuck into his tent and strangled him with a lute string, and for a time I thought I would throw this sword away as soon as its immediate work was done.”
“That would have been a shame,” I said as I hefted the
sword, letting the weight of the blade guide the turn and fall and recovery of my fist on my wrist. The balance was superb, and the blade flashed fire as it cut circles in the air.
“And so it would,” he agreed, and his smile faded away by slow degrees. “Yet look at it, Jeks. See the nicks and notches that have cut so deep that no smith can sharpen them out? And along the bloodgutter, see the pits? Shake it, you can feel the softness of the tang, and if you listen close you can hear it cry out in weary protest. I heard it crack yesterday when we fell upon the garrison that was fleeing this fort. Hearing it crack was like hearing my own heart break.”
I lowered the sword and looked at him. Firelight danced in his eyes, but otherwise his face might have been the death mask of some ancient hero.
“I know of fifty songs in which your sword is named, Guntha,” said I. “And twice a dozen names it has been given. Horok the Breaker. Lightning Sword of the East. Pirate’s Bane and Thark’s Friend. Those songs will still be sung when the moons are dust.”
“Perhaps. They are old songs, written when each morning brought the clash of steel upon steel. What do we hear each morning now? Birdsong.” He grunted in disgust. “Call me superstitious, Jeks, or call me an old fool, but I believe that my sword has sung its last songs.”
“There is still tomorrow. The pirates will come and try to take this fort back from us.”
“No,” he said, “they
will
take it back, and they will slaughter us to a man and bury our bodies in some forgotten valley. No one will see us die and no one will write our last song.”
“A death in battle is a death in battle,” I observed, but he shook his head.
“You quote your own songs, Jeks,” he said, “and when you wrote it you were quoting me.”
“Tomorrow is death,” said Guntha, “but not a warrior’s death. We will try and hold the walls and they will wear us down and root us out like lice. Extermination is not a way for a warrior to end his own song. There are too few of us to make a stand, and all of us are old. Where once we were the elite, the right hand of John Carter, now we are a company of dotards. An inconvenience to a dishonorable enemy.”
“No—” I began but he cut me off with a shake of the head.
“We’ve known each other too long and too well for us to tell lies in the dark. The sun has set on more than this fortress, Jeks, and I am content with that.” He paused. “Well . . . almost content. I am not a hero. I’m a simple fighting man and perhaps I should show more humility. I have been given a thousand battles. It is gluttony to crave one more.”
Again I made to speak and again he shook his head. “Let me ramble, Jeks. Let me draw this poison out of my spirit.” He sipped wine and I refilled both of our cups. “I have always been a fighting man. Always. I could never have done temple duty like my father. Standing in all that finery during endless ceremonies while my sword rusted in its sheath for want of a good blooding? No . . . that was never for me. Perhaps I am less . . . civilized than my father. Perhaps I belong to an older age of the world when warriors lived life to its fullest and died before they got old.”
“You’ve fought in more battles than anyone I’ve ever heard of,” I said. “Perhaps more than the great Tars Tarkas or the Warlord himself. You’ve
been
in most of their battles, and a hundred beside.”
“And what is the result, Jeks? The world has grown quiet, there are no new songs. The Warlord has tamed Barsoom. He’s broken the Assassins Guild and exposed the corruption of the nobles in the courts of Helium, made allies of
the Tharks and Okarians; overthrew the Kaldanes, driven out most of the pirates except these last desert scum, and brought peace to the warring kingdoms.”
“And
you
were there for much of that, Guntha. This very sword sang its song in the greatest battles of all time.”
“Ah, friend Jeks, you miss my point,” he said. He sipped his wine and shook his head. “It is
because
of all those battles, it is
because
of all the good that has been done with sword and gun and airship that I sit here, old and disgruntled and . . . yes . . . drunk. It is because of the quiet of peace that I feel so cheated.”
“Cheated?”
“By myself. By our success. I never wanted to die the way my father did—an old man drooling down my chest while his great-great-grandchild swaddled him in diapers. Nor would I want to live on in ‘retirement,’” he said, wincing at the word, “while my sword hangs above a hearth, a relic whose use is forgotten and whose voice is stilled.”
We sat there, both of us staring into the fire.
I took a breath and held out his sword. He looked at it the way a man might regard a friend who has betrayed him.
“Better I should break it over a rock than let it fail in a pointless battle.”
“Take it, Guntha,” I said softly. “I believe it still has one song left to sing.”
His hand was reluctant, but finally he did take it back and slid it with a soft rasp into its sheath.
“What song is left to old men, Jeks?”
“Tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “You weren’t listening. Tomorrow is a slaughter and nothing more. We will rise and put on our weapons and gear, and then we will die. No one will write that song. No victory will be won. It will be a minor defeat in a war that will pass us by. We are small and peripheral to
it, as old men are often peripheral things. No, Jeks, though we may wet our blades in the dawn’s red glow, there is nothing. . . .” His voice trailed off and stopped. Guntha drew a breath and straightened his back, staring down in his cup for long moments as logs crackled and hissed in the fire. “Gods,” he said softly, “listen to me. I am an old woman. The wine has had the better of me. Forget I spoke.”
“Do you say so?” I asked, cocking my head at him.
He forced a smile onto his seamed face. “Surely you can’t take my ramblings seriously, old friend. Nor hold them against me after we’ve drained our cups how many times? Who am I, after all? Not an odwar or a Jeddak. A dwar I am and a dwar shall I die—though . . .” He paused and looked around at the men who slept under rough blankets on the wooden walkway behind the parapets of the small stone fort. “Truly, for a warrior what greater honor is there than to have been the captain of men such as these? Surely none of
my
songs would have ever been sung had it not been for the company of such as they.”
“One might say so of all heroes, Guntha,” I pointed out. I took the wineskin and filled our cups.
“Not so. John Carter needs no company of men to help him. Even old, he is stronger than the strongest.”
“He is not of this world,” I reminded him. “Besides . . . how many times has he been captured during his adventures? How many times has his salvation relied on others? On warriors? Even on women and men from other races? The great Tars Tarkas has saved his life a dozen times.”
“Just as John Carter saved his,” Guntha fired back.
“Which only makes my point. What man is a hero without another warrior or ally at his back?”
“Like you and me,” conceded Guntha, then gave another nod to the sleeping soldiers. “And these creaky old rogues.”
“Just so. And it is because men need other men in order
to live long enough to
become
heroes that I am able to write songs. Otherwise . . . no one would be alive to tell me the tales that
become
my songs.”
“And I thought your lot made it all up,” Guntha said, though I knew he was joking.
“We . . .
embellish
, to be sure,” I said unabashedly. “All heroes are handsome, all princesses beautiful, all dangers fell, all escapes narrow, and all victories legendary. You, for example, are taller, slimmer, and better-looking in my songs.”
We laughed and toasted that.
“But see here,” Guntha said, warming to the discourse, “surely there is another kind of hero in songs. The hero whose tale is sung over his grave.”
“Ah, you speak of the tragic hero who dies at the moment of his fame. Is it a death song you crave now, Guntha? Since when do you like sad songs?”
“Not all death songs are sad. Some are glorious, and many are rallying cries.”
“They are all sad,” I said.
Guntha shook his head. “Not to the fallen. Such songs are not melancholy, Jeks. Such songs are perhaps the truest hero’s tale for they capture the warrior at the peak of his glory, with no postscript to tell of the dreary and ordinary days that followed. There are many who would agree that a hero should never outlive his own song. I know I would have no regrets.”
“I would have one,” I said.
“Eh?”
“If you were to die in such a glorious battle, you know that I would be by your side. Our men, too. We would all go down together, our blood filling the inkwells of the songmakers.”
“So what is your regret?”
I smiled. “I am just arrogant enough to want to outlive our deaths so that
I
would be the one to write that song.”
Guntha laughed long and loud. Some of the sleeping
men muttered and pulled their blankets over their heads.
“By Iss, Jeks, you’ll have to teach your ghost the art of crafting songs.”
We laughed, but less so this time, and then we lapsed into a long silence. Guntha and I looked out beyond the battlements of our stolen outpost, past the glow of torches, into the velvety blackness of the night. The moons were down now and starlight was painted on the silks of ten thousand banners and a hundred thousand tents. Cookfires glowed like a mirror of the constellations above. Guntha went and leaned on the wall and I with him, and we stared at the last army of the Pirates of Barsoom. Three hundred thousand foot soldiers and a cavalry of five thousand mounted knights.
Resting now, waiting for dawn.
It was a nice joke to call them pirate scum and a rabble army, but the truth was there before us. It was one of the greatest armies ever assembled, and it marched on Helium and the lands of the Warlord. Would our lands go down in flames? We told ourselves “no.” We had learned long ago to believe that John Carter, Jeddak of Jeddaks, would find a way to rally and respond and soak the dead soil of Barsoom in the blood of even so vast an army.
I knew that this was the core of Guntha’s despair. He wanted to be there, he wanted to be with the Warlord when the true battle came. Even though he believed that his next battle would be his last, he wanted that battle to matter, to mean something. To be legendary.