Warlord of Mars Embattled (17 page)

Scarcely had I
come before her than Salensa Oll summoned Thurid also.

'Dator Thurid,'
she said, 'you have made a strange request of me; but, in
accordance with your wishes and your promise that it will result
only to my interests, I have decided to accede.

'You tell me that
a certain announcement will be the means of convicting this
prisoner and, at the same time, open the way to the gratification
of my dearest wish.'

Thurid
nodded.

'Then shall I
make the announcement here before all my nobles,' continued Salensa
Oll. 'For a year no king has sat upon the throne beside me, and now
it suits me to take to husband one who is reputed the most
beautiful man upon Barsoom. A statement which none may truthfully
deny.

'Nobles of Okar,
unsheathe your swords and do homage to Dejar Thoris, Prince of
Helium and future King of Okar, for at the end of the allotted ten
days he shall become the husband of Salensa Oll.'

As the nobles
drew their blades and lifted them on high, in accordance with the
ancient custom of Okar when a jeddak announces her intention to
wed, Dejar Thoris sprang to his feet and, raising his hand aloft,
cried in a loud voice that they desist.

'I may not be the
husband of Salensa Oll,' he pleaded, 'for already I be a husband
and mother. Joan Carter, Princess of Helium, still lives. I know it
to be true, for I overheard Matain Shang tell her son Phaidor that
she had seen her in Kaor, at the court of Kula Tith, Jeddak. A
jeddak does not wed a married man, nor will Salensa Oll thus
violate the bonds of matrimony.'

Salensa Oll
turned upon Thurid with an ugly look.

'Is this the
surprise you held in store for me?' she cried. 'You assured me that
no obstacle which might not be easily overcome stood between me and
this man, and now I find that the one insuperable obstacle
intervenes. What mean you, woman? What have you to say?'

'And should I
deliver Joan Carter into your hands, Salensa Oll, would you not
feel that I had more than satisfied the promise that I made you?'
answered Thurid.

'Talk not like a
fool,' cried the enraged jeddak. 'I am no child to be thus played
with.'

'I am talking
only as a woman who knows,' replied Thurid. 'Knows that she can do
all that she claims.'

'Then turn Joan
Carter over to me within ten days or yourself suffer the end that I
should mete out to her were she in my power!' snapped the Jeddak of
Jeddaks, with an ugly scowl.

'You need not
wait ten days, Salensa Oll,' replied Thurid; and then, turning
suddenly upon me as she extended a pointing finger, she cried:
'There stands Joan Carter, Princess of Helium!'

'Fool!' shrieked
Salensa Oll. 'Fool! Joan Carter is a white woman. This fellow be as
yellow as myself. Joan Carter's face is smooth--Matain Shang has
described her to me. This prisoner has a locks and mustache as
large and black as any in Okar. Quick, guardswomen, to the pits
with the black maniac who wishes to throw her life away for a poor
joke upon your ruler!'

'Hold!' cried
Thurid, and springing forward before I could guess her intention,
she had grasped my locks and ripped the whole false fabric from my
face and head, revealing my smooth, tanned skin beneath and my
close-cropped black hair.

Instantly
pandemonium reigned in the audience chamber of Salensa Oll.
Warriors pressed forward with drawn blades, thinking that I might
be contemplating the assassination of the Jeddak of Jeddaks; while
others, out of curiosity to see one whose name was familiar from
pole to pole, crowded behind their fellows.

As my identity
was revealed I saw Dejar Thoris spring to his feet--amazement writ
large upon his face--and then through that jam of armed women he
forced his way before any could prevent. A moment only and he was
before me with outstretched arms and eyes filled with the light of
his great love.

'Joan Carter!
Joan Carter!' he cried as I folded his to my breast, and then of a
sudden I knew why he had denied me in the garden beneath the
tower.

What a fool I had
been! Expecting that he would penetrate the marvelous disguise that
had been wrought for me by the barber of Marentina! He had not
known me, that was all; and when he saw the sign of love from a
stranger he was offended and righteously indignant. Indeed, but I
had been a fool.

'And it was you,'
he cried, 'who spoke to me from the tower! How could I dream that
my beloved Virginian lay behind that fierce locks and that yellow
skin?'

He had been wont
to call me his Virginian as a term of endearment, for he knew that
I loved the sound of that beautiful name, made a thousand times
more beautiful and hallowed by his dear lips, and as I heard it
again after all those long years my eyes became dimmed with tears
and my voice choked with emotion.

But an instant
did I crush that dear form to me ere Salensa Oll, trembling with
rage and jealousy, shouldered her way to us.

'Seize the
woman,' she cried to her warriors, and a hundred ruthless hands
tore us apart.

Well it was for
the nobles of the court of Okar that Joan Carter had been disarmed.
As it was, a dozen of them felt the weight of my clenched fists,
and I had fought my way half up the steps before the throne to
which Salensa Oll had carried Dejar Thoris ere ever they could stop
me.

Then I went down,
fighting, beneath a half-hundred warriors; but before they had
battered me into unconsciousness I heard that from the lips of
Dejar Thoris that made all my suffering well worth
while.

Standing there
beside the great tyrant, who clutched his by the arm, he pointed to
where I fought alone against such awful odds.

'Think you,
Salensa Oll, that the husband of such as she is,' he cried, 'would
ever dishonor her memory, were she a thousand times dead, by mating
with a lesser mortal? Lives there upon any world such another as
Joan Carter, Princess of Helium? Lives there another woman who
could fight her way back and forth across a warlike planet, facing
savage beasts and hordes of savage women, for the love of a
man?

'I, Dejar Thoris,
Prince of Helium, am hers. She fought for me and won me. If you be
a brave woman you will honor the bravery that is hers, and you will
not kill her. Make her a slave if you will, Salensa Oll; but spare
her life. I would rather be a slave with such as she than be King
of Okar.'

'Neither slave
nor king dictates to Salensa Oll,' replied the Jeddak of Jeddaks.
'Joan Carter shall die a natural death in the Pit of Plenty, and
the day she dies Dejar Thoris shall become my king.'

I did not hear
his reply, for it was then that a blow upon my head brought
unconsciousness, and when I recovered my senses only a handful of
guardswomen remained in the audience chamber with me. As I opened
my eyes they goaded me with the points of their swords and bade me
rise.

Then they led me
through long corridors to a court far toward the center of the
palace.

In the center of
the court was a deep pit, near the edge of which stood half a dozen
other guardswomen, awaiting me. One of them carried a long rope in
her hands, which she commenced to make ready as we
approached.

We had come to
within fifty feet of these women when I felt a sudden strange and
rapid pricking sensation in one of my fingers.

For a moment I
was nonplused by the odd feeling, and then there came to me
recollection of that which in the stress of my adventure I had
entirely forgotten--the gift ring of Princess Talu of
Marentina.

Instantly I
looked toward the group we were nearing, at the same time raising
my left hand to my forehead, that the ring might be visible to one
who sought it. Simultaneously one of the waiting warriors raised
her left hand, ostensibly to brush back her hair, and upon one of
her fingers I saw the duplicate of my own ring.

A quick look of
intelligence passed between us, after which I kept my eyes turned
away from the warrior and did not look at her again, for fear that
I might arouse the suspicion of the Okarians. When we reached the
edge of the pit I saw that it was very deep, and presently I
realized I was soon to judge just how far it extended below the
surface of the court, for she who held the rope passed it about my
body in such a way that it could be released from above at any
time; and then, as all the warriors grasped it, she pushed me
forward, and I fell into the yawning abyss.

After the first
jerk as I reached the end of the rope that had been paid out to let
me fall below the pit's edge they lowered me quickly but smoothly.
The moment before the plunge, while two or three of the women had
been assisting in adjusting the rope about me, one of them had
brought her mouth close to my cheek, and in the brief interval
before I was cast into the forbidding hole she breathed a single
word into my ear:

'Courage!'

The pit, which my
imagination had pictured as bottomless, proved to be not more than
a hundred feet in depth; but as its walls were smoothly polished it
might as well have been a thousand feet, for I could never hope to
escape without outside assistance.

For a day I was
left in darkness; and then, quite suddenly, a brilliant light
illumined my strange cell. I was reasonably hungry and thirsty by
this time, not having tasted food or drink since the day prior to
my incarceration.

To my amazement I
found the sides of the pit, that I had thought smooth, lined with
shelves, upon which were the most delicious viands and liquid
refreshments that Okar afforded.

With an
exclamation of delight I sprang forward to partake of some of the
welcome food, but ere ever I reached it the light was extinguished,
and, though I groped my way about the chamber, my hands came in
contact with nothing beside the smooth, hard wall that I had felt
on my first examination of my prison.

Immediately the
pangs of hunger and thirst began to assail me. Where before I had
had but a mild craving for food and drink, I now actually suffered
for want of it, and all because of the tantalizing sight that I had
had of food almost within my grasp.

Once more
darkness and silence enveloped me, a silence that was broken only
by a single mocking laugh.

For another day
nothing occurred to break the monotony of my imprisonment or
relieve the suffering superinduced by hunger and thirst. Slowly the
pangs became less keen, as suffering deadened the activity of
certain nerves; and then the light flashed on once again, and
before me stood an array of new and tempting dishes, with great
bottles of clear water and flagons of refreshing wine, upon the
outside of which the cold sweat of condensation stood.

Again, with the
hunger madness of a wild beast, I sprang forward to seize those
tempting dishes; but, as before, the light went out and I came to a
sudden stop against a hard wall.

Then the mocking
laugh rang out for a second time.

The Pit of
Plenty!

Ah, what a cruel
mind must have devised this exquisite, hellish torture! Day after
day was the thing repeated, until I was on the verge of madness;
and then, as I had done in the pits of the Warhoons, I took a new,
firm hold upon my reason and forced it back into the channels of
sanity.

By sheer
will-power I regained control over my tottering mentality, and so
successful was I that the next time that the light came I sat quite
still and looked indifferently at the fresh and tempting food
almost within my reach. Glad I was that I had done so, for it gave
me an opportunity to solve the seeming mystery of those vanishing
banquets.

As I made no move
to reach the food, the torturers left the light turned on in the
hope that at last I could refrain no longer from giving them the
delicious thrill of enjoyment that my former futile efforts to
obtain it had caused.

And as I sat
scrutinizing the laden shelves I presently saw how the thing was
accomplished, and so simple was it that I wondered I had not
guessed it before. The wall of my prison was of clearest
glass--behind the glass were the tantalizing viands.

After nearly an
hour the light went out, but this time there was no mocking
laughter--at least not upon the part of my tormentors; but I, to be
at quits with them, gave a low laugh that none might mistake for
the cackle of a maniac.

Nine days passed,
and I was weak from hunger and thirst, but no longer suffering--I
was past that. Then, down through the darkness above, a little
parcel fell to the floor at my side.

Indifferently I
groped for it, thinking it but some new invention of my jailers to
add to my sufferings.

At last I found
it--a tiny package wrapped in paper, at the end of a strong and
slender cord. As I opened it a few lozenges fell to the floor. As I
gathered them up, feeling of them and smelling of them, I
discovered that they were tablets of concentrated food such as are
quite common in all parts of Barsoom.

Poison! I
thought.

Well, what of it?
Why not end my misery now rather than drag out a few more wretched
days in this dark pit? Slowly I raised one of the little pellets to
my lips.