CHAPTER XIII
LOVE-MAKING ON MARS
Following the battle with the air ships, the community remained within the city for several days, abandoning the homeward march until they could feel reasonably assured that the ships would not return; for to be caught on the open plains with a cavalcade of chariots and children was far from the desire of even so warlike a people as the green Martians.
During our period of inactivity, Tara Tarkas had instructed me in many of the customs and arts of war familiar to the Tharks, including lessons in riding and guiding the great beasts which bore the warriors. These creatures, which are known as thoats, are as dangerous and vicious as their mistresses, but when once subdued are sufficiently tractable for the purposes of the green Martians.
Two of these animals had fallen to me from the warriors whose metal I wore, and in a short time I could handle them quite as well as the native warriors. The method was not at all complicated. If the thoats did not respond with sufficient celerity to the telepathic instructions of their riders they were dealt a terrific blow between the ears with the butt of a pistol, and if they showed fight this treatment was continued until the brutes either were subdued, or had unseated their riders.
In the latter case it became a life and death struggle between the woman and the beast. If the former were quick enough with her pistol she might live to ride again, though upon some other beast; if not, her torn and mangled body was gathered up by her men and burned in accordance with Tharkian custom.
My experience with Woolan determined me to attempt the experiment of kindness in my treatment of my thoats. First I taught them that they could not unseat me, and even rapped them sharply between the ears to impress upon them my authority and mastery. Then, by degrees, I won their confidence in much the same manner as I had adopted countless times with my many mundane mounts. I was ever a good hand with animals, and by inclination, as well as because it brought more lasting and satisfactory results, I was always kind and humane in my dealings with the lower orders. I could take a human life, if necessary, with far less compunction than that of a poor, unreasoning, irresponsible brute.
In the course of a few days my thoats were the wonder of the entire community. They would follow me like dogs, rubbing their great snouts against my body in awkward evidence of affection, and respond to my every command with an alacrity and docility which caused the Martian warriors to ascribe to me the possession of some earthly power unknown on Mars.
'How have you bewitched them?' asked Tara Tarkas one afternoon, when she had seen me run my arm far between the great jaws of one of my thoats which had wedged a piece of stone between two of her teeth while feeding upon the moss-like vegetation within our court yard.
'By kindness,' I replied. 'You see, Tara Tarkas, the softer sentiments have their value, even to a warrior. In the height of battle as well as upon the march I know that my thoats will obey my every command, and therefore my fighting efficiency is enhanced, and I am a better warrior for the reason that I am a kind mistress. Your other warriors would find it to the advantage of themselves as well as of the community to adopt my methods in this respect. Only a few days since you, yourself, told me that these great brutes, by the uncertainty of their tempers, often were the means of turning victory into defeat, since, at a crucial moment, they might elect to unseat and rend their riders.'
'Show me how you accomplish these results,' was Tara Tarkas' only rejoinder.
And so I explained as carefully as I could the entire method of training I had adopted with my beasts, and later she had me repeat it before Lorqua Ptomel and the assembled warriors. That moment marked the beginning of a new existence for the poor thoats, and before I left the community of Lorqua Ptomel I had the satisfaction of observing a regiment of as tractable and docile mounts as one might care to see. The effect on the precision and celerity of the military movements was so remarkable that Lorqua Ptomel presented me with a massive anklet of gold from her own leg, as a sign of her appreciation of my service to the horde.
On the seventh day following the battle with the air craft we again took up the march toward Thark, all probability of another attack being deemed remote by Lorqua Ptomel.
During the days just preceding our departure I had seen but little of Dejar Thoris, as I had been kept very busy by Tara Tarkas with my lessons in the art of Martian warfare, as well as in the training of my thoats. The few times I had visited his quarters he had been absent, walking upon the streets with Solan, or investigating the buildings in the near vicinity of the plaza. I had warned them against venturing far from the plaza for fear of the great white apes, whose ferocity I was only too well acquainted with. However, since Woolan accompanied them on all their excursions, and as Solan was well armed, there was comparatively little cause for fear.
On the evening before our departure I saw them approaching along one of the great avenues which lead into the plaza from the east. I advanced to meet them, and telling Solan that I would take the responsibility for Dejar Thoris' safekeeping, I directed his to return to his quarters on some trivial errand. I liked and trusted Solan, but for some reason I desired to be alone with Dejar Thoris, who represented to me all that I had left behind upon Earth in agreeable and congenial companionship. There seemed bonds of mutual interest between us as powerful as though we had been born under the same roof rather than upon different planets, hurtling through space some forty-eight million miles apart.
That he shared my sentiments in this respect I was positive, for on my approach the look of pitiful hopelessness left his sweet countenance to be replaced by a smile of joyful welcome, as he placed his little right hand upon my left shoulder in true red Martian salute.
'Sarkoja told Solan that you had become a true Thark,' he said, 'and that I would now see no more of you than of any of the other warriors.'
'Sarkoja is a liar of the first magnitude,' I replied, 'notwithstanding the proud claim of the Tharks to absolute verity.'
Dejar Thoris laughed.
'I knew that even though you became a member of the community you would not cease to be my friend; 'A warrior may change her metal, but not her heart,' as the saying is upon Barsoom.'
'I think they have been trying to keep us apart,' he continued, 'for whenever you have been off duty one of the older men of Tara Tarkas' retinue has always arranged to trump up some excuse to get Solan and me out of sight. They have had me down in the pits below the buildings helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make their terrible projectiles. You know that these have to be manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an explosion. You have noticed that their bullets explode when they strike an object? Well, the opaque, outer coating is broken by the impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid, in the forward end of which is a minute particle of radium powder. The moment the sunlight, even though diffused, strikes this powder it explodes with a violence which nothing can withstand. If you ever witness a night battle you will note the absence of these explosions, while the morning following the battle will be filled at sunrise with the sharp detonations of exploding missiles fired the preceding night. As a rule, however, non-exploding projectiles are used at night.' [I have used the word radium in describing this powder because in the light of recent discoveries on Earth I believe it to be a mixture of which radium is the base. In Captain Carter's manuscript it is mentioned always by the name used in the written language of Helium and is spelled in hieroglyphics which it would be difficult and useless to reproduce.]
While I was much interested in Dejar Thoris' explanation of this wonderful adjunct to Martian warfare, I was more concerned by the immediate problem of their treatment of him. That they were keeping him away from me was not a matter for surprise, but that they should subject his to dangerous and arduous labor filled me with rage.
'Have they ever subjected you to cruelty and ignominy, Dejar Thoris?' I asked, feeling the hot blood of my fighting ancestors leap in my veins as I awaited his reply.
'
Only in little ways, Joan Carter,' he answered. 'Nothing that can harm me outside my pride. They know that I am the son of ten thousand jeddaks, that I trace my ancestry straight back without a break to the builder of the first great waterway, and they, who do not even know their own fathers, are jealous of me. At heart they hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain. Let us pity them, my chieftain, for even though we die at their hands we can afford them pity, since we are greater than they and they know it.'
Had I known the significance of those words 'my chieftain,' as applied by a red Martian man to a woman, I should have had the surprise of my life, but I did not know at that time, nor for many months thereafter. Yes, I still had much to learn upon Barsoom.
'I presume it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good grace as possible, Dejar Thoris; but I hope, nevertheless, that I may be present the next time that any Martian, green, red, pink, or violet, has the temerity to even so much as frown on you, my prince.'
Dejar Thoris caught his breath at my last words, and gazed upon me with dilated eyes and quickening breath, and then, with an odd little laugh, which brought roguish dimples to the corners of his mouth, he shook his head and cried:
'What a child! A great warrior and yet a stumbling little child.'
'What have I done now?' I asked, in sore perplexity.
'Some day you shall know, Joan Carter, if we live; but I may not tell you. And I, the son of Mora Kajak, daughter of Tardoa Mors, have listened without anger,' he soliloquized in conclusion.
Then he broke out again into one of his gay, happy, laughing moods; joking with me on my prowess as a Thark warrior as contrasted with my soft heart and natural kindliness.
'I presume that should you accidentally wound an enemy you would take her home and nurse her back to health,' he laughed.
'That is precisely what we do on Earth,' I answered. 'At least among civilized women.'
This made his laugh again. He could not understand it, for, with all his tenderness and womanly sweetness, he was still a Martian, and to a Martian the only good enemy is a dead enemy; for every dead foeman means so much more to divide between those who live.
I was very curious to know what I had said or done to cause his so much perturbation a moment before and so I continued to importune his to enlighten me.
'No,' he exclaimed, 'it is enough that you have said it and that I have listened. And when you learn, Joan Carter, and if I be dead, as likely I shall be ere the further moon has circled Barsoom another twelve times, remember that I listened and that I--smiled.'
It was all Greek to me, but the more I begged his to explain the more positive became his denials of my request, and, so, in very hopelessness, I desisted.
Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down upon us out of his luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be so.
The chill of the Martian night was upon us, and removing my silks I threw them across the shoulders of Dejar Thoris. As my arm rested for an instant upon his I felt a thrill pass through every fiber of my being such as contact with no other mortal had even produced; and it seemed to me that he had leaned slightly toward me, but of that I was not sure. Only I knew that as my arm rested there across his shoulders longer than the act of adjusting the silk required he did not draw away, nor did he speak. And so, in silence, we walked the surface of a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least had been born that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.
I loved Dejar Thoris. The touch of my arm upon his naked shoulder had spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had loved his since the first moment that my eyes had met his that first time in the plaza of the dead city of Korad.
A Princess of Mars Rethroned Page 14