Warlord of Mars Embattled (23 page)

I had come to
within a quarter of a mile of them when Matain Shang espied me. I
saw her seize Thurid by the shoulder, wheeling her around in my
direction as she pointed to where I was now plainly visible, for
the moment that I knew I had been perceived I cast aside every
attempt at stealth and broke into a mad race for the
flier.

The two redoubled
their efforts at the propeller at which they were working, and
which very evidently was being replaced after having been removed
for some purpose of repair.

They had the
thing completed before I had covered half the distance that lay
between me and them, and then both made a rush for the
boarding-ladder.

Thurid was the
first to reach it, and with the agility of a monkey clambered
swiftly to the boat's deck, where a touch of the button controlling
the buoyancy tanks sent the craft slowly upward, though not with
the speed that marks the well-conditioned flier.

I was still some
hundred yards away as I saw them rising from my grasp.

Back by the city
of Kadabra lay a great fleet of mighty fliers--the ships of Helium
and Ptarth that I had saved from destruction earlier in the day;
but before ever I could reach them Thurid could easily make good
her escape.

As I ran I saw
Matain Shang clambering up the swaying, swinging ladder toward the
deck, while above her leaned the evil face of the First Born. A
trailing rope from the vessel's stern put new hope in me, for if I
could but reach it before it whipped too high above my head there
was yet a chance to gain the deck by its slender aid.

That there was
something radically wrong with the flier was evident from its lack
of buoyancy, and the further fact that though Thurid had turned
twice to the starting lever the boat still hung motionless in the
air, except for a slight drifting with a low breeze from the
north.

Now Matain Shang
was close to the gunwale. A long, claw-like hand was reaching up to
grasp the metal rail.

Thurid leaned
farther down toward her co-conspirator.

Suddenly a raised
dagger gleamed in the upflung hand of the black. Down it drove
toward the white face of the Father of Therns. With a loud shriek
of fear the Holy Hekkador grasped frantically at that menacing
arm.

I was almost to
the trailing rope by now. The craft was still rising slowly, the
while it drifted from me. Then I stumbled on the icy way, striking
my head upon a rock as I fell sprawling but an arm's length from
the rope, the end of which was now just leaving the
ground.

With the blow
upon my head came unconsciousness.

It could not have
been more than a few seconds that I lay senseless there upon the
northern ice, while all that was dearest to me drifted farther from
my reach in the clutches of that black fiend, for when I opened my
eyes Thurid and Matain Shang yet battled at the ladder's top, and
the flier drifted but a hundred yards farther to the south--but the
end of the trailing rope was now a good thirty feet above the
ground.

Goaded to madness
by the cruel misfortune that had tripped me when success was almost
within my grasp, I tore frantically across the intervening space,
and just beneath the rope's dangling end I put my earthly muscles
to the supreme test.

With a mighty,
catlike bound I sprang upward toward that slender strand--the only
avenue which yet remained that could carry me to my vanishing
love.

A foot above its
lowest end my fingers closed. Tightly as I clung I felt the rope
slipping, slipping through my grasp. I tried to raise my free hand
to take a second hold above my first, but the change of position
that resulted caused me to slip more rapidly toward the end of the
rope.

Slowly I felt the
tantalizing thing escaping me. In a moment all that I had gained
would be lost--then my fingers reached a knot at the very end of
the rope and slipped no more.

With a prayer of
gratitude upon my lips I scrambled upward toward the boat's deck. I
could not see Thurid and Matain Shang now, but I heard the sounds
of conflict and thus knew that they still fought--the thern for her
life and the black for the increased buoyancy that relief from the
weight of even a single body would give the craft.

Should Matain
Shang die before I reached the deck my chances of ever reaching it
would be slender indeed, for the black dator need but cut the rope
above me to be freed from me forever, for the vessel had drifted
across the brink of a chasm into whose yawning depths my body would
drop to be crushed to a shapeless pulp should Thurid reach the rope
now.

At last my hand
closed upon the ship's rail and that very instant a horrid shriek
rang out below me that sent my blood cold and turned my horrified
eyes downward to a shrieking, hurtling, twisting thing that shot
downward into the awful chasm beneath me.

It was Matain
Shang, Holy Hekkador, Father of Therns, gone to her last
accounting.

Then my head came
above the deck and I saw Thurid, dagger in hand, leaping toward me.
She was opposite the forward end of the cabin, while I was
attempting to clamber aboard near the vessel's stern. But a few
paces lay between us. No power on earth could raise me to that deck
before the infuriated black would be upon me.

My end had come.
I knew it; but had there been a doubt in my mind the nasty leer of
triumph upon that wicked face would have convinced me. Beyond
Thurid I could see my Dejar Thoris, wide-eyed and horrified,
struggling at his bonds. That he should be forced to witness my
awful death made my bitter fate seem doubly cruel.

I ceased my
efforts to climb across the gunwale. Instead I took a firm grasp
upon the rail with my left hand and drew my dagger.

I should at least
die as I had lived--fighting.

As Thurid came
opposite the cabin's doorway a new element projected itself into
the grim tragedy of the air that was being enacted upon the deck of
Matain Shang's disabled flier.

It was
Phaidor.

With flushed face
and disheveled hair, and eyes that betrayed the recent presence of
mortal tears--above which this proud god had always held
herself--she leaped to the deck directly before me.

In his hand was a
long, slim dagger. I cast a last look upon my beloved prince,
smiling, as women should who are about to die. Then I turned my
face up toward Phaidor--waiting for the blow.

Never have I seen
that beautiful face more beautiful than it was at that moment. It
seemed incredible that one so lovely could yet harbor within his
fair chest a heart so cruel and relentless, and today there was a
new expression in his wondrous eyes that I never before had seen
there--an unfamiliar softness, and a look of suffering.

Thurid was beside
his now--pushing past to reach me first, and then what happened
happened so quickly that it was all over before I could realize the
truth of it.

Phaidor's slim
hand shot out to close upon the black's dagger wrist. His right
hand went high with its gleaming blade.

'That for Matain
Shang!' he cried, and he buried his blade deep in the dator's
breast. 'That for the wrong you would have done Dejar Thoris!' and
again the sharp steel sank into the bloody flesh.

'And that, and
that, and that!' he shrieked, 'for Joan Carter, Princess of
Helium,' and with each word his sharp point pierced the vile heart
of the great villain. Then, with a vindictive shove he cast the
carcass of the First Born from the deck to fall in awful silence
after the body of her victim.

I had been so
paralyzed by surprise that I had made no move to reach the deck
during the awe-inspiring scene which I had just witnessed, and now
I was to be still further amazed by his next act, for Phaidor
extended his hand to me and assisted me to the deck, where I stood
gazing at his in unconcealed and stupefied wonderment.

A wan smile
touched his lips--it was not the cruel and haughty smile of the god
with which I was familiar. 'You wonder, Joan Carter,' he said,
'what strange thing has wrought this change in me? I will tell you.
It is love--love of you,' and when I darkened my brows in
disapproval of his words he raised an appealing hand.

'Wait,' he said.
'It is a different love from mine--it is the love of your prince,
Dejar Thoris, for you that has taught me what true love may
be--what it should be, and how far from real love was my selfish
and jealous passion for you.

'Now I am
different. Now could I love as Dejar Thoris loves, and so my only
happiness can be to know that you and he are once more united, for
in his alone can you find true happiness.

'But I am unhappy
because of the wickedness that I have wrought. I have many sins to
expiate, and though I be deathless, life is all too short for the
atonement.

'But there is
another way, and if Phaidor, son of the Holy Hekkador of the Holy
Therns, has sinned he has this day already made partial reparation,
and lest you doubt the sincerity of his protestations and his
avowal of a new love that embraces Dejar Thoris also, he will prove
his sincerity in the only way that lies open--having saved you for
another, Phaidor leaves you to his embraces.'

With his last
word he turned and leaped from the vessel's deck into the abyss
below.

With a cry of
horror I sprang forward in a vain attempt to save the life that for
two years I would so gladly have seen extinguished. I was too
late.

With tear-dimmed
eyes I turned away that I might not see the awful sight
beneath.

A moment later I
had struck the bonds from Dejar Thoris, and as his dear arms went
about my neck and his perfect lips pressed to mine I forgot the
horrors that I had witnessed and the suffering that I had endured
in the rapture of my reward.

THE NEW
RULER

The flier upon
whose deck Dejar Thoris and I found ourselves after twelve long
years of separation proved entirely useless. His buoyancy tanks
leaked badly. His engine would not start. We were helpless there in
mid air above the arctic ice.

The craft had
drifted across the chasm which held the corpses of Matain Shang,
Thurid, and Phaidor, and now hung above a low hill. Opening the
buoyancy escape valves I permitted his to come slowly to the
ground, and as he touched, Dejar Thoris and I stepped from his deck
and, hand in hand, turned back across the frozen waste toward the
city of Kadabra.

Through the
tunnel that had led me in pursuit of them we passed, walking
slowly, for we had much to say to each other.

He told me of
that last terrible moment months before when the door of his prison
cell within the Temple of the Sun was slowly closing between us. Of
how Phaidor had sprung upon his with uplifted dagger, and of
Thuviar's shriek as he had realized the foul intention of the thern
god.

It had been that
cry that had rung in my ears all the long, weary months that I had
been left in cruel doubt as to my princess' fate; for I had not
known that Thuviar had wrested the blade from the son of Matain
Shang before it had touched either Dejar Thoris or
himself.

He told me, too,
of the awful eternity of his imprisonment. Of the cruel hatred of
Phaidor, and the tender love of Thuviar, and of how even when
despair was the darkest those two red girls had clung to the same
hope and belief--that Joan Carter would find a way to release
them.

Presently we came
to the chamber of Sola. I had been proceeding without thought of
caution, for I was sure that the city and the palace were both in
the hands of my friends by this time.

And so it was
that I bolted into the chamber full into the midst of a dozen
nobles of the court of Salensa Oll. They were passing through on
their way to the outside world along the corridors we had just
traversed.

At sight of us
they halted in their tracks, and then an ugly smile overspread the
features of their leader.

'The author of
all our misfortunes!' she cried, pointing at me. 'We shall have the
satisfaction of a partial vengeance at least when we leave behind
us here the dead and mutilated corpses of the Princess and Prince
of Helium.

'When they find
them,' she went on, jerking her thumb upward toward the palace
above, 'they will realize that the vengeance of the yellow woman
costs her enemies dear. Prepare to die, Joan Carter, but that your
end may be the more bitter, know that I may change my intention as
to meting a merciful death to your princess--possibly he shall be
preserved as a plaything for my nobles.'

I stood close to
the instrument-covered wall--Dejar Thoris at my side. He looked up
at me wonderingly as the warriors advanced upon us with drawn
swords, for mine still hung within its scabbard at my side, and
there was a smile upon my lips.

The yellow
nobles, too, looked in surprise, and then as I made no move to draw
they hesitated, fearing a ruse; but their leader urged them on.
When they had come almost within sword's reach of me I raised my
hand and laid it upon the polished surface of a great lever, and
then, still smiling grimly, I looked my enemies full in the
face.