CHAPTER X

Gods of Mars

by Edgar R. Burroughs

CHAPTER X, GODS OF MARS by Edgar R. Burroughs
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THE PRISON ISLE OF SHADOR


In the outer gardens to which the guard now escorted me,
I found Xodar surrounded by a crowd of noble blacks.
They were reviling and cursing him. The men slapped
his face. The woman spat upon him.

When I appeared they turned their attentions toward me.

"Ah," cried one, "so this is the creature who overcame
the great Xodar bare-handed. Let us see how it was done."

"Let him bind Thurid," suggested a beautiful woman,
laughing. "Thurid is a noble Dator. Let Thurid show the
dog what it means to face a real man."

"Yes, Thurid! Thurid!" cried a dozen voices.

"Here he is now," exclaimed another, and turning in the
direction indicated I saw a huge black weighed down with
resplendent ornaments and arms advancing with noble and
gallant bearing toward us.

"What now?" he cried. "What would you of Thurid?"

Quickly a dozen voices explained.

Thurid turned toward Xodar, his eyes narrowing to two nasty slits.

"Calot!" he hissed. "Ever did I think you carried the heart
of a sorak in your putrid breast. Often have you bested me
in the secret councils of Issus, but now in the field of war
where men are truly gauged your scabby heart hath revealed
its sores to all the world. Calot, I spurn you with my foot,"
and with the words he turned to kick Xodar.

My blood was up. For minutes it had been boiling at the cowardly
treatment they had been according this once powerful comrade
because he had fallen from the favour of Issus. I had no love
for Xodar, but I cannot stand the sight of cowardly injustice
and persecution without seeing red as through a haze of bloody mist,
and doing things on the impulse of the moment that I presume
I never should do after mature deliberation.

I was standing close beside Xodar as Thurid swung
his foot for the cowardly kick. The degraded Dator
stood erect and motionless as a carven image.
He was prepared to take whatever his former comrades
had to offer in the way of insults and reproaches,
and take them in manly silence and stoicism.

But as Thurid's foot swung so did mine, and I caught him
a painful blow upon the shin bone that saved Xodar from
this added ignominy.

For a moment there was tense silence, then Thurid,
with a roar of rage sprang for my throat; just as Xodar
had upon the deck of the cruiser. The results were identical.
I ducked beneath his outstretched arms, and as he lunged
past me planted a terrific right on the side of his jaw.

The big fellow spun around like a top, his knees gave
beneath him and he crumpled to the ground at my feet.

The blacks gazed in astonishment, first at the still form
of the proud Dator lying there in the ruby dust of the pathway,
then at me as though they could not believe that such a thing could be.

"You asked me to bind Thurid," I cried; "behold!" And
then I stooped beside the prostrate form, tore the harness
from it, and bound the fellow's arms and legs securely.

"As you have done to Xodar, now do you likewise to Thurid.
Take him before Issus, bound in his own harness, that she
may see with her own eyes that there be one among
you now who is greater than the First Born."

"Who are you?" whispered the woman who had first suggested
that I attempt to bind Thurid.

"I am a citizen of two worlds; Captain John Carter of Virginia,
Prince of the House of Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium.
Take this man to your goddess, as I have said, and tell her,
too, that as I have done to Xodar and Thurid, so also can I
do to the mightiest of her Dators. With naked hands,
with long-sword or with short-sword, I challenge the
flower of her fighting-men to combat."

"Come," said the officer who was guarding me back to Shador;
"my orders are imperative; there is to be no delay.
Xodar, come you also."

There was little of disrespect in the tone that the man used in
addressing either Xodar or myself. It was evident that he felt
less contempt for the former Dator since he had witnessed the
ease with which I disposed of the powerful Thurid.

That his respect for me was greater than it should have
been for a slave was quite apparent from the fact that
during the balance of the return journey he walked or stood
always behind me, a drawn short-sword in his hand.

The return to the Sea of Omean was uneventful. We dropped
down the awful shaft in the same car that had brought
us to the surface. There we entered the submarine,
taking the long dive to the tunnel far beneath the upper
world. Then through the tunnel and up again to the pool
from which we had had our first introduction to the
wonderful passageway from Omean to the Temple of Issus.

From the island of the submarine we were transported
on a small cruiser to the distant Isle of Shador.
Here we found a small stone prison and a guard of half a
dozen blacks. There was no ceremony wasted in completing our
incarceration. One of the blacks opened the door of the prison
with a huge key, we walked in, the door closed behind us,
the lock grated, and with the sound there swept over me
again that terrible feeling of hopelessness that I had felt in
the Chamber of Mystery in the Golden Cliffs beneath the
gardens of the Holy Therns.

Then Tars Tarkas had been with me, but now I was utterly
alone in so far as friendly companionship was concerned. I
fell to wondering about the fate of the great Thark, and of
his beautiful companion, the girl, Thuvia. Even should they
by some miracle have escaped and been received and spared
by a friendly nation, what hope had I of the succour which
I knew they would gladly extend if it lay in their power.

They could not guess my whereabouts or my fate, for none
on all Barsoom even dream of such a place as this. Nor
would it have advantaged me any had they known the exact
location of my prison, for who could hope to penetrate to
this buried sea in the face of the mighty navy of the First
Born? No: my case was hopeless.

Well, I would make the best of it, and, rising, I swept aside
the brooding despair that had been endeavouring to claim me.
With the idea of exploring my prison, I started to look around.

Xodar sat, with bowed head, upon a low stone bench near
the centre of the room in which we were. He had not spoken
since Issus had degraded him.

The building was roofless, the walls rising to a height of
about thirty feet. Half-way up were a couple of small,
heavily barred windows. The prison was divided into several
rooms by partitions twenty feet high. There was no one in
the room which we occupied, but two doors which led to
other rooms were opened. I entered one of these rooms,
but found it vacant. Thus I continued through several of the
chambers until in the last one I found a young red Martian
boy sleeping upon the stone bench which constituted the only
furniture of any of the prison cells.

Evidently he was the only other prisoner. As he slept I
leaned over and looked at him. There was something strangely
familiar about his face, and yet I could not place him.

His features were very regular and, like the proportions
of his graceful limbs and body, beautiful in the extreme.
He was very light in colour for a red man, but in other
respects he seemed a typical specimen of this handsome race.

I did not awaken him, for sleep in prison is such a priceless
boon that I have seen men transformed into raging brutes when
robbed by one of their fellow-prisoners of a few precious
moments of it.

Returning to my own cell, I found Xodar still sitting in the
same position in which I had left him.

"Man," I cried, "it will profit you nothing to mope thus.
It were no disgrace to be bested by John Carter. You have
seen that in the ease with which I accounted for Thurid.
You knew it before when on the cruiser's deck you saw me
slay three of your comrades."

"I would that you had dispatched me at the same time," he said.

"Come, come!" I cried. "There is hope yet. Neither of us is dead.
We are great fighters. Why not win to freedom?"

He looked at me in amazement.

"You know not of what you speak," he replied. "Issus is omnipotent.
Issus is omniscient. She hears now the words you speak.
She knows the thoughts you think. It is sacrilege even
to dream of breaking her commands."

"Rot, Xodar," I ejaculated impatiently.

He sprang to his feet in horror.

"The curse of Issus will fall upon you," he cried.
"In another instant you will be smitten down, writhing
to your death in horrible agony."

"Do you believe that, Xodar?" I asked.

"Of course; who would dare doubt?"

"I doubt; yes, and further, I deny," I said. "Why, Xodar,
you tell me that she even knows my thoughts. The red men
have all had that power for ages. And another wonderful power.
They can shut their minds so that none may read their thoughts.
I learned the first secret years ago; the other I never had to learn,
since upon all Barsoom is none who can read what passes in the
secret chambers of my brain.

"Your goddess cannot read my thoughts; nor can she
read yours when you are out of sight, unless you will it.
Had she been able to read mine, I am afraid that her pride
would have suffered a rather severe shock when I turned at
her command to 'gaze upon the holy vision of her radiant face.'"

"What do you mean?" he whispered in an affrighted
voice, so low that I could scarcely hear him.

"I mean that I thought her the most repulsive and vilely
hideous creature my eyes ever had rested upon."

For a moment he eyed me in horror-stricken amazement,
and then with a cry of "Blasphemer" he sprang upon me.

I did not wish to strike him again, nor was it necessary,
since he was unarmed and therefore quite harmless to me.

As he came I grasped his left wrist with my left hand,
and, swinging my right arm about his left shoulder,
caught him beneath the chin with my elbow and bore
him backward across my thigh.

There he hung helpless for a moment, glaring up at me
in impotent rage.

"Xodar," I said, "let us be friends. For a year, possibly,
we may be forced to live together in the narrow confines of
this tiny room. I am sorry to have offended you, but I could
not dream that one who had suffered from the cruel injustice
of Issus still could believe her divine.

"I will say a few more words, Xodar, with no intent
to wound your feelings further, but rather that you may
give thought to the fact that while we live we are still more
the arbiters of our own fate than is any god.

"Issus, you see, has not struck me dead, nor is she rescuing
her faithful Xodar from the clutches of the unbeliever who
defamed her fair beauty. No, Xodar, your Issus is a mortal
old woman. Once out of her clutches and she cannot harm you.

"With your knowledge of this strange land, and my knowledge
of the outer world, two such fighting-men as you and I
should be able to win our way to freedom. Even though we
died in the attempt, would not our memories be fairer than
as though we remained in servile fear to be butchered by a
cruel and unjust tyrant--call her goddess or mortal, as you will."

As I finished I raised Xodar to his feet and released him.
He did not renew the attack upon me, nor did he speak.
Instead, he walked toward the bench, and, sinking down upon it,
remained lost in deep thought for hours.

A long time afterward I heard a soft sound at the doorway
leading to one of the other apartments, and, looking up,
beheld the red Martian youth gazing intently at us.

"Kaor," I cried, after the red Martian manner of greeting.

"Kaor," he replied. "What do you here?"

"I await my death, I presume," I replied with a wry smile.

He too smiled, a brave and winning smile.

"I also," he said. "Mine will come soon. I looked upon
the radiant beauty of Issus nearly a year since. It has
always been a source of keen wonder to me that I did not
drop dead at the first sight of that hideous countenance.
And her belly! By my first ancestor, but never was there
so grotesque a figure in all the universe. That they should
call such a one Goddess of Life Eternal, Goddess of Death,
Mother of the Nearer Moon, and fifty other equally
impossible titles, is quite beyond me."

"How came you here?" I asked.

"It is very simple. I was flying a one-man air scout far to
the south when the brilliant idea occurred to me that I should
like to search for the Lost Sea of Korus which tradition
places near to the south pole. I must have inherited from my
father a wild lust for adventure, as well as a hollow where
my bump of reverence should be.

"I had reached the area of eternal ice when my port
propeller jammed, and I dropped to the ground to make repairs.
Before I knew it the air was black with fliers, and a
hundred of these First Born devils were leaping to the
ground all about me.

"With drawn swords they made for me, but before I went down
beneath them they had tasted of the steel of my father's
sword, and I had given such an account of myself as I know
would have pleased my sire had he lived to witness it."

"Your father is dead?" I asked.

"He died before the shell broke to let me step out into a
world that has been very good to me. But for the sorrow
that I had never the honour to know my father, I have been
very happy. My only sorrow now is that my mother must
mourn me as she has for ten long years mourned my father."

"Who was your father?" I asked.

He was about to reply when the outer door of our prison
opened and a burly guard entered and ordered him to his
own quarters for the night, locking the door after him
as he passed through into the further chamber.

"It is Issus' wish that you two be confined in the same
room," said the guard when he had returned to our cell.
"This cowardly slave of a slave is to serve you well,"
he said to me, indicating Xodar with a wave of his hand.
"If he does not, you are to beat him into submission.
It is Issus' wish that you heap upon him every indignity
and degradation of which you can conceive."

With these words he left us.

Xodar still sat with his face buried in his hands. I walked
to his side and placed my hand upon his shoulder.

"Xodar," I said, "you have heard the commands of Issus,
but you need not fear that I shall attempt to put them
into execution. You are a brave man, Xodar. It is your own
affair if you wish to be persecuted and humiliated; but
were I you I should assert my manhood and defy my enemies."

"I have been thinking very hard, John Carter," he said,
"of all the new ideas you gave me a few hours since. Little
by little I have been piecing together the things that you
said which sounded blasphemous to me then with the things
that I have seen in my past life and dared not even think
about for fear of bringing down upon me the wrath of Issus.

"I believe now that she is a fraud; no more divine than
you or I. More I am willing to concede--that the First Born
are no holier than the Holy Therns, nor the Holy Therns
more holy than the red men.

"The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious
belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by
those directly above us, to whose personal profit and
aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as
they wished us to believe.

"I am ready to cast off the ties that have bound me. I am
ready to defy Issus herself; but what will it avail us?
Be the First Born gods or mortals, they are a powerful race,
and we are as fast in their clutches as though we were already dead.
There is no escape."

"I have escaped from bad plights in the past, my friend,"
I replied; "nor while life is in me shall I despair of escaping
from the Isle of Shador and the Sea of Omean."

"But we cannot escape even from the four walls of our
prison," urged Xodar. "Test this flint-like surface," he cried,
smiting the solid rock that confined us. "And look upon this
polished surface; none could cling to it to reach the top."

I smiled.

"That is the least of our troubles, Xodar," I replied. "I will
guarantee to scale the wall and take you with me, if you will
help with your knowledge of the customs here to appoint the best
time for the attempt, and guide me to the shaft that lets from the
dome of this abysmal sea to the light of God's pure air above."

"Night time is the best and offers the only slender chance
we have, for then men sleep, and only a dozing watch nods
in the tops of the battleships. No watch is kept upon the
cruisers and smaller craft. The watchers upon the larger
vessels see to all about them. It is night now."

"But," I exclaimed, "it is not dark! How can it be night, then?"

He smiled.

"You forget," he said, "that we are far below ground.
The light of the sun never penetrates here. There are
no moons and no stars reflected in the bosom of Omean.
The phosphorescent light you now see pervading this great
subterranean vault emanates from the rocks that form its dome;
it is always thus upon Omean, just as the billows are always
as you see them--rolling, ever rolling over a windless sea.

"At the appointed hour of night upon the world above,
the men whose duties hold them here sleep, but the light is
ever the same."

"It will make escape more difficult," I said, and then I
shrugged my shoulders; for what, pray, is the pleasure of
doing an easy thing?

"Let us sleep on it to-night," said Xodar. "A plan may
come with our awakening."

So we threw ourselves upon the hard stone floor of our
prison and slept the sleep of tired men.