be plenty of time to fight if we find it wise to fight at all. There be good reasons why every thern upon Barsoom should yearn to spill the blood of the blasphemer, the sacrilegist; but let us mix wisdom with our righteous hate. The Princess of Helium is bound upon an errand which we ourselves, but a moment since, were wishing that we might undertake.
'Let her go then and slay the black. When she returns we shall still be here to bar her way to the outer world, and thus we shall have rid ourselves of two enemies, nor have incurred the displeasure of the Father of Therns.'
As she spoke I could not but note the crafty glint in her evil eyes, and while I saw the apparent logic of her reasoning I felt, subconsciously perhaps, that her words did but veil some sinister intent. The other thern turned toward her in evident surprise, but when Lakora had whispered a few brief words into her ear she, too, drew back and nodded acquiescence to her superior's suggestion.
'Proceed, Joan Carter,' said Lakora; 'but know that if Thurid does not lay you low there will be those awaiting your return who will see that you never pass again into the sunlight of the upper world. Go!'
During our conversation Woolan had been growling and bristling close to my side. Occasionally she would look up into my face with a low, pleading whine, as though begging for the word that would send her headlong at the bare throats before her. She, too, sensed the villainy behind the smooth words.
Beyond the therns several doorways opened off the guardroom, and toward the one upon the extreme right Lakora motioned.
'That way leads to Thurid,' she said.
But when I would have called Woolan to follow me there the beast whined and held back, and at last ran quickly to the first opening at the left, where she stood emitting her coughing bark, as though urging me to follow her upon the right way.
I turned a questioning look upon Lakora.
'The brute is seldom wrong,' I said, 'and while I do not doubt your superior knowledge, Thern, I think that I shall do well to listen to the voice of instinct that is backed by love and loyalty.'
As I spoke I smiled grimly that she might know without words that I distrusted her.
'As you will,' the fellow replied with a shrug. 'In the end it shall be all the same.'
I turned and followed Woolan into the left-hand passage, and though my back was toward my enemies, my ears were on the alert; yet I heard no sound of pursuit. The passageway was dimly lighted by occasional radium bulbs, the universal lighting medium of Barsoom.
These same lamps may have been doing continuous duty in these subterranean chambers for ages, since they require no attention and are so compounded that they give off but the minutest of their substance in the generation of years of luminosity.
We had proceeded for but a short distance when we commenced to pass the mouths of diverging corridors, but not once did Woolan hesitate. It was at the opening to one of these corridors upon my right that I presently heard a sound that spoke more plainly to Joan Carter, fighting woman, than could the words of my mother tongue--it was the clank of metal--the metal of a warrior's harness--and it came from a little distance up the corridor upon my right.
Woolan heard it, too, and like a flash she had wheeled and stood facing the threatened danger, her mane all abristle and all her rows of glistening fangs bared by snarling, backdrawn lips. With a gesture I silenced her, and together we drew aside into another corridor a few paces farther on.
Here we waited; nor did we have long to wait, for presently we saw the shadows of two women fall upon the floor of the main corridor athwart the doorway of our hiding place. Very cautiously they were moving now--the accidental clank that had alarmed me was not repeated.
Presently they came opposite our station; nor was I surprised to see that the two were Lakora and her companion of the guardroom.
They walked very softly, and in the right hand of each gleamed a keen long-sword. They halted quite close to the entrance of our retreat, whispering to each other.
'Can it be that we have distanced them already?' said Lakora.
'Either that or the beast has led the woman upon a wrong trail,' replied the other, 'for the way which we took is by far the shorter to this point--for her who knows it. Joan Carter would have found it a short road to death had she taken it as you suggested to her.'
'Yes,' said Lakora, 'no amount of fighting ability would have saved her from the pivoted flagstone. She surely would have stepped upon it, and by now, if the pit beneath it has a bottom, which Thurid denies, she should have been rapidly approaching it. Curses on that calot of her that warned her toward the safer avenue!'
'There be other dangers ahead of her, though,' spoke Lakora's fellow, 'which she may not so easily escape--should she succeed in escaping our two good swords. Consider, for example, what chance she will have, coming unexpectedly into the chamber of--'
I would have given much to have heard the balance of that conversation that I might have been warned of the perils that lay ahead, but fate intervened, and just at the very instant of all other instants that I would not have elected to do it, I sneezed.
THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN
There was nothing for it now other than to fight; nor did I have any advantage as I sprang, sword in hand, into the corridor before the two therns, for my untimely sneeze had warned them of my presence and they were ready for me.
There were no words, for they would have been a waste of breath. The very presence of the two proclaimed their treachery. That they were following to fall upon me unawares was all too plain, and they, of course, must have known that I understood their plan.
In an instant I was engaged with both, and though I loathe the very name of thern, I must in all fairness admit that they are mighty swordswomen; and these two were no exception, unless it were that they were even more skilled and fearless than the average among their race.
While it lasted it was indeed as joyous a conflict as I ever had experienced. Twice at least I saved my breast from the mortal thrust of piercing steel only by the wondrous agility with which my earthly muscles endow me under the conditions of lesser gravity and air pressure upon Mars.
Yet even so I came near to tasting death that day in the gloomy corridor beneath Mars's southern pole, for Lakora played a trick upon me that in all my experience of fighting upon two planets I never before had witnessed the like of.
The other thern was engaging me at the time, and I was forcing her back--touching her here and there with my point until she was bleeding from a dozen wounds, yet not being able to penetrate her marvelous guard to reach a vulnerable spot for the brief instant that would have been sufficient to send her to her ancestors.
It was then that Lakora quickly unslung a belt from her harness, and as I stepped back to parry a wicked thrust she lashed one end of it about my left ankle so that it wound there for an instant, while she jerked suddenly upon the other end, throwing me heavily upon my back.
Then, like leaping panthers, they were upon me; but they had reckoned without Woolan, and before ever a blade touched me, a roaring embodiment of a thousand demons hurtled above my prostrate form and my loyal Martian calot was upon them.
Imagine, if you can, a huge grizzly with ten legs armed with mighty talons and an enormous froglike mouth splitting her head from ear to ear, exposing three rows of long, white tusks. Then endow this creature of your imagination with the agility and ferocity of a half-starved Bangal tiger and the strength of a span of bulls, and you will have some faint conception of Woolan in action.
Before I could call her off she had crushed Lakora into a jelly with a single blow of one mighty paw, and had literally torn the other thern to ribbons; yet when I spoke to her sharply she cowed sheepishly as though she had done a thing to deserve censure and chastisement.
Never had I had the heart to punish Woolan during the long years that had passed since that first day upon Mars when the green jed of the Tharks had placed her on guard over me, and I had won her love and loyalty from the cruel and loveless mistresses of her former
life, yet I believe she would have submitted to any cruelty that I might have inflicted upon her, so wondrous was her affection for me.
The diadem in the center of the circlet of gold upon the brow of Lakora proclaimed her a Holy Thern, while her companion, not thus adorned, was a lesser thern, though from her harness I gleaned that she had reached the Ninth Cycle, which is but one below that of the Holy Therns.
As I stood for a moment looking at the gruesome havoc Woolan had wrought, there recurred to me the memory of that other occasion upon which I had masqueraded in the wig, diadem, and harness of Satora Throg, the Holy Thern whom Thuviar of Ptarth had slain, and now it occurred to me that it might prove of worth to utilize Lakora's trappings for the same purpose.
A moment later I had torn her yellow wig from her bald pate and transferred it and the circlet, as well as all her harness, to my own person.
Woolan did not approve of the metamorphosis. She sniffed at me and growled ominously, but when I spoke to her and patted her huge head she at length became reconciled to the change, and at my command trotted off along the corridor in the direction we had been going when our progress had been interrupted by the therns.
We moved cautiously now, warned by the fragment of conversation I had overheard. I kept abreast of Woolan that we might have the benefit of all our eyes for what might
Warlord of Mars Embattled Page 5