CHAPTER XIV
A DUEL TO THE DEATH
My first impulse was to tell his of my love, and then I thought of the helplessness of his position wherein I alone could lighten the burdens of his captivity, and protect him in my poor way against the thousands of hereditary enemies he must face upon our arrival at Thark. I could not chance causing his additional pain or sorrow by declaring a love which, in all probability he did not return. Should I be so indiscreet, his position would be even more unbearable than now, and the thought that he might feel that I was taking advantage of his helplessness, to influence his decision was the final argument which sealed my lips.
'Why are you so quiet, Dejar Thoris?' I asked. 'Possibly you would rather return to Solan and your quarters.'
'No,' he murmured, 'I am happy here. I do not know why it is that I should always be happy and contented when you, Joan Carter, a stranger, are with me; yet at such times it seems that I am safe and that, with you, I shall soon return to my mother's court and feel her strong arms about me and my father's tears and kisses on my cheek.'
'Do people kiss, then, upon Barsoom?' I asked, when he had explained the word he used, in answer to my inquiry as to its meaning.
'Parents, sisters, and brothers, yes; and,' he added in a low, thoughtful tone, 'lovers.'
'And you, Dejar Thoris, have parents and sisters and sisters?'
'Yes.'
'And a--lover?'
He was silent, nor could I venture to repeat the question.
'The woman of Barsoom,' he finally ventured, 'does not ask personal questions of men, except her mother, and the man she has fought for and won.'
'But I have fought--' I started, and then I wished my tongue had been cut from my mouth; for he turned even as I caught myself and ceased, and drawing my silks from his shoulder he held them out to me, and without a word, and with head held high, he moved with the carriage of the king he was toward the plaza and the doorway of his quarters.
I did not attempt to follow him, other than to see that he reached the building in safety, but, directing Woolan to accompany him, I turned disconsolately and entered my own house. I sat for hours cross-legged, and cross-tempered, upon my silks meditating upon the queer freaks chance plays upon us poor devils of mortals.
So this was love! I had escaped it for all the years I had roamed the five continents and their encircling seas; in spite of beautiful men and urging opportunity; in spite of a half-desire for love and a constant search for my ideal, it had remained for me to fall furiously and hopelessly in love with a creature from another world, of a species similar possibly, yet not identical with mine. A man who was hatched from an egg, and whose span of life might cover a thousand years; whose people had strange customs and ideas; a man whose hopes, whose pleasures, whose standards of virtue and of right and wrong might vary as greatly from mine as did those of the green Martians.
Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise for all the riches of Barsoom. Such is love, and such are lovers wherever love is known.
To me, Dejar Thoris was all that was perfect; all that was virtuous and beautiful and noble and good. I believed that from the bottom of my heart, from the depth of my soul on that night in Korad as I sat cross-legged upon my silks while the nearer moon of Barsoom raced through the western sky toward the horizon, and lighted up the gold and marble, and jeweled mosaics of my world-old chamber, and I believe it today as I sit at my desk in the little study overlooking the Hudson. Twenty years have intervened; for ten of them I lived and fought for Dejar Thoris and his people, and for ten I have lived upon his memory.
The morning of our departure for Thark dawned clear and hot, as do all Martian mornings except for the six weeks when the snow melts at the poles.
I sought out Dejar Thoris in the throng of departing chariots, but he turned his shoulder to me, and I could see the red blood mount to his cheek. With the foolish inconsistency of love I held my peace when I might have plead ignorance of the nature of my offense, or at least the gravity of it, and so have effected, at worst, a half conciliation.
My duty dictated that I must see that he was comfortable, and so I glanced into his chariot and rearranged his silks and furs. In doing so I noted with horror that he was heavily chained by one ankle to the side of the vehicle.
'What does this mean?' I cried, turning to Solan.
'Sarkoja thought it best,' he answered, his face betokening his disapproval of the procedure.
Examining the manacles I saw that they fastened with a massive spring lock.
'Where is the key, Solan? Let me have it.'
'Sarkoja wears it, Joan Carter,' he answered.
I turned without further word and sought out Tara Tarkas, to whom I vehemently objected to the unnecessary humiliations and cruelties, as they seemed to my lover's eyes, that were being heaped upon Dejar Thoris.
'Joan Carter,' she answered, 'if ever you and Dejar Thoris escape the Tharks it will be upon this journey. We know that you will not go without him. You have shown yourself a mighty fighter, and we do not wish to manacle you, so we hold you both in the easiest way that will yet ensure security. I have spoken.'
I saw the strength of her reasoning at a flash, and knew that it were futile to appeal from her decision, but I asked that the key be taken from Sarkoja and that he be directed to leave the prisoner alone in future.
'This much, Tara Tarkas, you may do for me in return for the friendship that, I must confess, I feel for you.'
'Friendship?' she replied. 'There is no such thing, Joan Carter; but have your will. I shall direct that Sarkoja cease to annoy the boy, and I myself will take the custody of the key.'
'Unless you wish me to assume the responsibility,' I said, smiling.
She looked at me long and earnestly before she spoke.
'Were you to give me your word that neither you nor Dejar Thoris would attempt to escape until after we have safely reached the court of Tala Hajus you might have the key and throw the chains into the river Iss.'
'It were better that you held the key, Tara Tarkas,' I replied
She smiled, and said no more, but that night as we were making camp I saw her unfasten Dejar Thoris' fetters herself.
With all her cruel ferocity and coldness there was an undercurrent of something in Tara Tarkas which she seemed ever battling to subdue. Could it be a vestige of some human instinct come back from an ancient forbear to haunt her with the horror of her people's ways!
As I was approaching Dejar Thoris' chariot I passed Sarkoja, and the black, venomous look he accorded me was the sweetest balm I had felt for many hours. Lady, how he hated me! It bristled from his so palpably that one might almost have cut it with a sword.
A few moments later I saw his deep in conversation with a warrior named Zada; a big, hulking, powerful brute, but one who had never made a kill among her own chieftains, and a second name only with the metal of some chieftain. It was this custom which entitled me to the names of either of the chieftains I had killed; in fact, some of the warriors addressed me as Dotar Sojat, a combination of the surnames of the two warrior chieftains whose metal I had taken, or, in other words, whom I had slain in fair fight.
As Sarkoja talked with Zada she cast occasional glances in my direction, while he seemed to be urging her very strongly to some action. I paid little attention to it at the time, but the next day I had good reason to recall the circumstances, and at the same time gain a slight insight into the depths of Sarkoja's hatred and the lengths to which he was capable of going to wreak his horrid vengeance on me.
Dejar Thoris would have none of me again on this evening, and though I spoke his name he neither replied, nor conceded by so much as the flutter of an eyelid that he realized my existence. In my extremity I did what most other lovers would have done; I sought word from his through an intimate. In this instance it was Solan whom I intercepted in another part of camp.
'What is the matter wit
h Dejar Thoris?' I blurted out at him. 'Why will he not speak to me?'
Solan seemed puzzled himself, as though such strange actions on the part of two humans were quite beyond him, as indeed they were, poor child.
'He says you have angered him, and that is all he will say, except that he is the son of a jed and the granddaughter of a jeddak and he has been humiliated by a creature who could not polish the teeth of his grandmother's sorak.'
I pondered over this report for some time, finally asking, 'What might a sorak be, Solan?'
'A little animal about as big as my hand, which the red Martian men keep to play with,' explained Solan.
Not fit to polish the teeth of his grandmother's cat! I must rank pretty low in the consideration of Dejar Thoris, I thought; but I could not help laughing at the strange figure of speech, so homely and in this respect so earthly. It made me homesick, for it sounded very much like 'not fit to polish his shoes.' And then commenced a train of thought quite new to me. I began to wonder what my people at home were doing. I had not seen them for years. There was a family of Carters in Virginia who claimed close relationship with me; I was supposed to be a great aunt, or something of the kind equally foolish. I could pass anywhere for twenty-five to thirty years of age, and to be a great aunt always seemed the height of incongruity, for my thoughts and feelings were those of a girl. There was two little kiddies in the Carter family whom I had loved and who had thought there was no one on Earth like Aunt Jack; I could see them just as plainly, as I stood there under the moonlit skies of Barsoom, and I longed for them as I had never longed for any mortals before. By nature a wanderer, I had never known the true meaning of the word home, but the great hall of the Carters had always stood for all that the word did mean to me, and now my heart turned toward it from the cold and unfriendly peoples I had been thrown amongst. For did not even Dejar Thoris despise me! I was a low creature, so low in fact that I was not even fit to polish the teeth of his grandmother's cat; and then my saving sense of humor came to my rescue, and laughing I turned into my silks and furs and slept upon the moon-haunted ground the sleep of a tired and healthy fighting woman.
We broke camp the next day at an early hour and marched with only a single halt until just before dark. Two incidents broke the tediousness of the march. About noon we espied far to our right what was evidently an incubator, and Lorqua Ptomel directed Tara Tarkas to investigate it. The latter took a dozen warriors, including myself, and we raced across the velvety carpeting of moss to the little enclosure.
It was indeed an incubator, but the eggs were very small in comparison with those I had seen hatching in ours at the time of my arrival on Mars.
Tara Tarkas dismounted and examined the enclosure minutely, finally announcing that it belonged to the green women of Warhoon and that the cement was scarcely dry where it had been walled up.
'They cannot be a day's march ahead of us,' she exclaimed, the light of battle leaping to her fierce face.
The work at the incubator was short indeed. The warriors tore open the entrance and a couple of them, crawling in, soon demolished all the eggs with their short-swords. Then remounting we dashed back to join the cavalcade. During the ride I took occasion to ask Tara Tarkas if these Warhoons whose eggs we had destroyed were a smaller people than her Tharks.
'I noticed that their eggs were so much smaller than those I saw hatching in your incubator,' I added.
She explained that the eggs had just been placed there; but, like all green Martian eggs, they would grow during the five-year period of incubation until they obtained the size of those I had seen hatching on the day of my arrival on Barsoom. This was indeed an interesting piece of information, for it had always seemed remarkable to me that the green Martian men, large as they were, could bring forth such enormous eggs as I had seen the four-foot infants emerging from. As a matter of fact, the new-laid egg is but little larger than an ordinary goose egg, and as it does not commence to grow until subjected to the light of the sun the chieftains have little difficulty in transporting several hundreds of them at one time from the storage vaults to the incubators.
Shortly after the incident of the Warhoon eggs we halted to rest the animals, and it was during this halt that the second of the day's interesting episodes occurred. I was engaged in changing my riding cloths from one of my thoats to the other, for I divided the day's work between them, when Zada approached me, and without a word struck my animal a terrific blow with her long-sword.
I did not need a manual of green Martian etiquette to know what reply to make, for, in fact, I was so wild with anger that I could scarcely refrain from drawing my pistol and shooting her down for the brute she was; but she stood waiting with drawn long-sword, and my only choice was to draw my own and meet her in fair fight with her choice of weapons or a lesser one.
This latter alternative is always permissible, therefore I could have used my short-sword, my dagger, my hatchet, or my fists had I wished, and been entirely within my rights, but I could not use firearms or a spear while she held only her long-sword.
I chose the same weapon she had drawn because I knew she prided herself upon her ability with it, and I wished, if I worsted her at all, to do it with her own weapon. The fight that followed was a long one and delayed the resumption of the march for an hour. The entire community surrounded us, leaving a clear space about one hundred feet in diameter for our battle.
Zada first attempted to rush me down as a bull might a wolf, but I was much too quick for her, and each time I side-stepped her rushes she would go lunging past me, only to receive a nick from my sword upon her arm or back. She was soon streaming blood from a half dozen minor wounds, but I could not obtain an opening to deliver an effective thrust. Then she changed her tactics, and fighting warily and with extreme dexterity, she tried to do by science what she was unable to do by brute strength. I must admit that she was a magnificent swordswoman, and had it not been for my greater endurance and the remarkable agility the lesser gravitation of Mars lent me I might not have been able to put up the creditable fight I did against her.
We circled for some time without doing much damage on either side; the long, straight, needle-like swords flashing in the sunlight, and ringing out upon the stillness as they crashed together with each effective parry. Finally Zada, realizing that she was tiring more than I, evidently decided to close in and end the battle in a final blaze of glory for herself; just as she rushed me a blinding flash of light struck full in my eyes, so that I could not see her approach and could only leap blindly to one side in an effort to escape the mighty blade that it seemed I could already feel in my vitals. I was only partially successful, as a sharp pain in my left shoulder attested, but in the sweep of my glance as I sought to again locate my adversary, a sight met my astonished gaze which paid me well for the wound the temporary blindness had caused me. There, upon Dejar Thoris' chariot stood three figures, for the purpose evidently of witnessing the encounter above the heads of the intervening Tharks. There were Dejar Thoris, Solan, and Sarkoja, and as my fleeting glance swept over them a little tableau was presented which will stand graven in my memory to the day of my death.
As I looked, Dejar Thoris turned upon Sarkoja with the fury of a young tigress and struck something from his upraised hand; something which flashed in the sunlight as it spun to the ground. Then I knew what had blinded me at that crucial moment of the fight, and how Sarkoja had found a way to kill me without himself delivering the final thrust. Another thing I saw, too, which almost lost my life for me then and there, for it took my mind for the fraction of an instant entirely from my antagonist; for, as Dejar Thoris struck the tiny mirror from his hand, Sarkoja, his face livid with hatred and baffled rage, whipped out his dagger and aimed a terrific blow at Dejar Thoris; and then Solan, our dear and faithful Solan, sprang between them; the last I saw was the great knife descending upon his shielding breast.
My enemy had recovered from her thrust and was making it extremely interesting for me, so I relucta
ntly gave my attention to the work in hand, but my mind was not upon the battle.
We rushed each other furiously time after time, 'til suddenly, feeling the sharp point of her sword at my breast in a thrust I could neither parry nor escape, I threw myself upon her with outstretched sword and with all the weight of my body, determined that I would not die alone if I could prevent it. I felt the steel tear into my bosom , all went black before me, my head whirled in dizziness, and I felt my knees giving beneath me.