Warlord of Mars Embattled
Page 8
fighting customs that an honorable woman would rather die than ignore.
She even went so far as to snatch her holy wig from her head and throw it in my face, so as to blind me for a moment while she thrust at my unprotected breast.
When she thrust, however, I was not there, for I had fought with therns before; and while none had ever resorted to precisely that same expedient, I knew them to be the least honorable and most treacherous fighters upon Mars, and so was ever on the alert for some new and devilish subterfuge when I was engaged with one of their race.
But at length she overdid the thing; for, drawing her shortsword, she hurled it, javelinwise, at my body, at the same instant rushing upon me with her long-sword. A single sweeping circle of my own blade caught the flying weapon and hurled it clattering against the far wall, and then, as I sidestepped my antagonist's impetuous rush, I let her have my point full in the stomach as she hurtled by.
Clear to the hilt my weapon passed through her body, and with a frightful shriek she sank to the floor, dead.
Halting only for the brief instant that was required to wrench my sword from the carcass of my late antagonist, I sprang across the chamber to the blank wall beyond, through which the thern had attempted to pass. Here I sought for the secret of its lock, but all to no avail.
In despair I tried to force the thing, but the cold, unyielding stone might well have laughed at my futile, puny endeavors. In fact, I could have sworn that I caught the faint suggestion of taunting laughter from beyond the baffling panel.
In disgust I desisted from my useless efforts and stepped to the chamber's single window.
The slopes of Otz and the distant Valley of Lost Souls held nothing to compel my interest then; but, towering far above me, the tower's carved wall riveted my keenest attention.
Somewhere within that massive pile was Dejar Thoris. Above me I could see windows. There, possibly, lay the only way by which I could reach him. The risk was great, but not too great when the fate of a world's most wondrous man was at stake.
I glanced below. A hundred feet beneath lay jagged granite boulders at the brink of a frightful chasm upon which the tower abutted; and if not upon the boulders, then at the chasm's bottom, lay death, should a foot slip but once, or clutching fingers loose their hold for the fraction of an instant.
But there was no other way and with a shrug, which I must admit was half shudder, I stepped to the window's outer sill and began my perilous ascent.
To my dismay I found that, unlike the ornamentation upon most Heliumetic structures, the edges of the carvings were quite generally rounded, so that at best my every hold was most precarious.
Fifty feet above me commenced a series of projecting cylindrical stones some six inches in diameter. These apparently circled the tower at six-foot intervals, in bands six feet apart; and as each stone cylinder protruded some four or five inches beyond the surface of the other ornamentation, they presented a comparatively easy mode of ascent could I but reach them.
Laboriously I climbed toward them by way of some windows which lay below them, for I hoped that I might find ingress to the tower through one of these, and thence an easier avenue along which to prosecute my search.
At times so slight was my hold upon the rounded surfaces of the carving's edges that a sneeze, a cough, or even a slight gust of wind would have dislodged me and sent me hurtling to the depths below.
But finally I reached a point where my fingers could just clutch the sill of the lowest window, and I was on the point of breathing a sigh of relief when the sound of voices came to me from above through the open window.
'She can never solve the secret of that lock.' The voice was Matain Shang's. 'Let us proceed to the hangar above that we may be far to the south before she finds another way--should that be possible.'
'All things seem possible to that vile calot,' replied another voice, which I recognized as Thurid's.
'Then let us haste,' said Matain Shang. 'But to be doubly sure, I will leave two who shall patrol this runway. Later they may follow us upon another flier--overtaking us at Kaol.'
My upstretched fingers never reached the window's sill. At the first sound of the voices I drew back my hand and clung there to my perilous perch, flattened against the perpendicular wall, scarce daring to breathe.
What a horrible position, indeed, in which to be discovered by Thurid! She had but to lean from the window to push me with her sword's point into eternity.
Presently the sound of the voices became fainter, and once again I took up my hazardous ascent, now more difficult, since more circuitous, for I must climb so as to avoid the windows.
Matain Shang's reference to the hangar and the fliers indicated that my destination lay nothing short of the roof of the tower, and toward this seemingly distant goal I set my face.
The most difficult and dangerous part of the journey was accomplished at last, and it was with relief that I felt my fingers close about the lowest of the stone cylinders.
It is true that these projections were too far apart to make the balance of the ascent anything of a sinecure, but I at least had always within my reach a point of safety to which I might cling in case of accident.
Some ten feet below the roof, the wall inclined slightly inward possibly a foot in the last ten feet, and here the climbing was indeed immeasurably easier, so that my fingers soon clutched the eaves.
As I drew my eyes above the level of the tower's top I saw a flier all but ready to rise.
Upon his deck were Matain Shang, Phaidor, Dejar Thoris, Thuviar of Ptarth, and a few thern warriors, while near his was Thurid in the act of clambering aboard.
She was not ten paces from me, facing in the opposite direction; and what cruel freak of fate should have caused her to turn about just as my eyes topped the roof's edge I may not even guess.
But turn she did; and when her eyes met mine her wicked face lighted with a malignant smile as she leaped toward me, where I was hastening to scramble to the secure footing of the roof.
Dejar Thoris must have seen me at the same instant, for he screamed a useless warning just as Thurid's foot, swinging in a mighty kick, landed full in my face.
Like a felled ox, I reeled and tumbled backward over the tower's side.
ON THE KAOLIAN ROAD
If there be a fate that is sometimes cruel to me, there surely is a kind and merciful Providence which watches over me.
As I toppled from the tower into the horrid abyss below I counted myself already dead; and Thurid must have done likewise, for she evidently did not even trouble herself to look after me, but must have turned and mounted the waiting flier at once.
Ten feet only I fell, and then a loop of my tough, leathern harness caught upon one of the cylindrical stone projections in the tower's surface--and held. Even when I had ceased to fall I could not believe the miracle that had preserved me from instant death, and for a moment I hung there, cold sweat exuding from every pore of my body.
But when at last I had worked myself back to a firm position I hesitated to ascend, since I could not know that Thurid was not still awaiting me above.
Presently, however, there came to my ears the whirring of the propellers of a flier, and as each moment the sound grew fainter I realized that the party had proceeded toward the south without assuring themselves as to my fate.
Cautiously I retraced my way to the roof, and I must admit that it was with no pleasant sensation that I raised my eyes once more above its edge; but, to my relief, there was no one in sight, and a moment later I stood safely upon its broad surface.
To reach the hangar and drag forth the only other flier which it contained was the work of but an instant; and just as the two thern warriors whom Matain Shang had left to prevent this very contingency emerged upon the roof from the tower's interior, I rose above them with a taunting laugh.
Then I dived rapidly to the inner court where I had last seen Woolan, and to my immense relief found the faithful beast still there.
The twelve
great banths lay in the doorways of their lairs, eyeing her and growling ominously, but they had not disobeyed Thuviar's injunction; and I thanked the fate that had made his their keeper within the Golden Cliffs, and endowed his with the kind and sympathetic nature that had won the loyalty and affection of these fierce beasts for him.
Woolan leaped in frantic joy when she discovered me; and as the flier touched the pavement of the court for a brief instant she bounded to the deck beside me, and in the bearlike manifestation of her exuberant happiness all but caused me to wreck the vessel against the courtyard's rocky wall.
Amid the angry shouting of thern guardswomen we rose high above the last fortress of the Holy Therns, and then raced straight toward the northeast and Kaol, the destination which I had heard from the lips of Matain Shang.
Far ahead, a tiny speck in the distance, I made out another flier late in the afternoon. It could be none other than that which bore my lost love and my enemies.
I had gained considerably on the craft by night; and then, knowing that they must have sighted me and would show no lights after dark, I set my destination compass upon her--that wonderful little Martian mechanism which, once attuned to the object of destination, points away toward it, irrespective of every change in its location.
All that night we raced through the Barsoomian void, passing over low hills and dead sea bottoms; above long-deserted cities and populous centers of red