The Chessmen of Mars (3 page)

The girl drew herself to her full height. "The Jed of Gathol
forgets himself," she exclaimed haughtily.

"The Jed of Gathol would forget everything but you, Tara of
Helium," he replied. Fiercely he pressed the soft hand that he
still retained from the last position of the dance. "I love you,
Tara of Helium," he repeated. "Why should your ears refuse to
hear what your eyes but just now did not refuse to see—and
answer?"

"What meanest thou?" she cried. "Are the men of Gathol such
boors, then?"

"They are neither boors nor fools," he replied, quietly. "They
know when they love a woman—and when she loves them."

Tara of Helium stamped her little foot in anger. "Go!" she said,
"before it is necessary to acquaint my father with the dishonor
of his guest."

She turned and walked away. "Wait!" cried the man. "Just another
word."

"Of apology?" she asked.

"Of prophecy," he said.

"I do not care to hear it," replied Tara of Helium, and left
him standing there. She was strangely unstrung and shortly
thereafter returned to her own quarter of the palace, where she
stood for a long time by a window looking out beyond the scarlet
tower of Greater Helium toward the northwest.

Presently she turned angrily away. "I hate him!" she exclaimed
aloud.

"Whom?" inquired the privileged Uthia.

Tara of Helium stamped her foot. "That ill-mannered boor, the Jed
of Gathol," she replied.

Uthia raised her slim brows.

At the stamping of the little foot, a great beast rose from the
corner of the room and crossed to Tara of Helium where it stood
looking up into her face. She placed her hand upon the ugly head.
"Dear old Woola," she said; "no love could be deeper than yours,
yet it never offends. Would that men might pattern themselves
after you!"

Tara of Helium did not return to her father's guests, but awaited
in her own apartments the word from Djor Kantos which she knew
must come, begging her to return to the gardens. She would then
refuse, haughtily. But no appeal came from Djor Kantos. At first
Tara of Helium was angry, then she was hurt, and always she was
puzzled. She could not understand. Occasionally she thought of
the Jed of Gathol and then she would stamp her foot, for she was
very angry indeed with Gahan. The presumption of the man! He had
insinuated that he read love for him in her eyes. Never had she
been so insulted and humiliated. Never had she so thoroughly
hated a man. Suddenly she turned toward Uthia.

"My flying leather!" she commanded.

"But the guests!" exclaimed the slave girl. "Your father, The
Warlord, will expect you to return."

"He will be disappointed," snapped Tara of Helium.

The slave hesitated. "He does not approve of your flying alone,"
she reminded her mistress.

The young princess sprang to her feet and seized the unhappy
slave by the shoulders, shaking her. "You are becoming
unbearable, Uthia," she cried. "Soon there will be no alternative
than to send you to the public slave-market. Then possibly you
will find a master to your liking."

Tears came to the soft eyes of the slave girl. "It is because I
love you, my princess," she said softly. Tara of Helium melted.
She took the slave in her arms and kissed her.

"I have the disposition of a thoat, Uthia," she said. "Forgive
me! I love you and there is nothing that I would not do for you
and nothing would I do to harm you. Again, as I have so often in
the past, I offer you your freedom."

"I do not wish my freedom if it will separate me from you, Tara
of Helium," replied Uthia. "I am happy here with you—I think
that I should die without you."

Again the girls kissed. "And you will not fly alone, then?"
questioned the slave.

Tara of Helium laughed and pinched her companion. "You persistent
little pest," she cried. "Of course I shall fly—does not Tara of
Helium always do that which pleases her?"

Uthia shook her head sorrowfully. "Alas! she does," she admitted.
"Iron is the Warlord of Barsoom to the influences of all but two.
In the hands of Dejah Thoris and Tara of Helium he is as potters'
clay."

"Then run and fetch my flying leather like the sweet slave you
are," directed the mistress.

Far out across the ochre sea-bottoms beyond the twin cities of
Helium raced the swift flier of Tara of Helium. Thrilling to the
speed and the buoyancy and the obedience of the little craft the
girl drove toward the northwest. Why she should choose that
direction she did not pause to consider. Perhaps because in that
direction lay the least known areas of Barsoom, and, ergo,
Romance, Mystery, and Adventure. In that direction also lay far
Gathol; but to that fact she gave no conscious thought.

She did, however, think occasionally of the jed of that distant
kingdom, but the reaction to these thoughts was scarcely
pleasurable. They still brought a flush of shame to her cheeks
and a surge of angry blood to her heart. She was very angry with
the Jed of Gathol, and though she should never see him again she
was quite sure that hate of him would remain fresh in her memory
forever. Mostly her thoughts revolved about another—Djor Kantos.
And when she thought of him she thought also of Olvia Marthis of
Hastor. Tara of Helium thought that she was jealous of the fair
Olvia and it made her very angry to think that. She was angry
with Djor Kantos and herself, but she was not angry at all with
Olvia Marthis, whom she loved, and so of course she was not
jealous really. The trouble was, that Tara of Helium had failed
for once to have her own way. Djor Kantos had not come running
like a willing slave when she had expected him, and, ah, here was
the nub of the whole thing! Gahan, Jed of Gathol, a stranger, had
been a witness to her humiliation. He had seen her unclaimed at
the beginning of a great function and he had had to come to her
rescue to save her, as he doubtless thought, from the inglorious
fate of a wall-flower. At the recurring thought, Tara of Helium
could feel her whole body burning with scarlet shame and then she
went suddenly white and cold with rage; whereupon she turned her
flier about so abruptly that she was all but torn from her
lashings upon the flat, narrow deck. She reached home just before
dark. The guests had departed. Quiet had descended upon the
palace. An hour later she joined her father and mother at the
evening meal.

"You deserted us, Tara of Helium," said John Carter. "It is not
what the guests of John Carter should expect."

"They did not come to see me," replied Tara of Helium. "I did not
ask them."

"They were no less your guests," replied her father.

The girl rose, and came and stood beside him and put her arms
about his neck.

"My proper old Virginian," she cried, rumpling his shock of black
hair.

"In Virginia you would be turned over your father's knee and
spanked," said the man, smiling.

She crept into his lap and kissed him. "You do not love me any
more," she announced. "No one loves me," but she could not
compose her features into a pout because bubbling laughter
insisted upon breaking through.

"The trouble is there are too many who love you," he said. "And
now there is another."

"Indeed!" she cried. "What do you mean?"

"Gahan of Gathol has asked permission to woo you."

The girl sat up very straight and tilted her chin in the air. "I
would not wed with a walking diamond-mine," she said. "I will not
have him."

"I told him as much," replied her father, "and that you were as
good as betrothed to another. He was very courteous about it; but
at the same time he gave me to understand that he was accustomed
to getting what he wanted and that he wanted you very much. I
suppose it will mean another war. Your mother's beauty kept
Helium at war for many years, and—well, Tara of Helium, if I
were a young man I should doubtless be willing to set all Barsoom
afire to win you, as I still would to keep your divine mother,"
and he smiled across the sorapus table and its golden service at
the undimmed beauty of Mars' most beautiful woman.

"Our little girl should not yet be troubled with such matters,"
said Dejah Thoris. "Remember, John Carter, that you are not
dealing with an Earth child, whose span of life would be more
than half completed before a daughter of Barsoom reached actual
maturity."

"But do not the daughters of Barsoom sometimes marry as early as
twenty?" he insisted.

"Yes, but they will still be desirable in the eyes of men after
forty generations of Earth folk have returned to dust—there is
no hurry, at least, upon Barsoom. We do not fade and decay here
as you tell me those of your planet do, though you, yourself,
belie your own words. When the time seems proper Tara of Helium
shall wed with Djor Kantos, and until then let us give the matter
no further thought."

"No," said the girl, "the subject irks me, and I shall not marry
Djor Kantos, or another—I do not intend to wed."

Her father and mother looked at her and smiled. "When Gahan of
Gathol returns he may carry you off," said the former.

"He has gone?" asked the girl.

"His flier departs for Gathol in the morning," John Carter
replied.

"I have seen the last of him then," remarked Tara of Helium with
a sigh of relief.

"He says not," returned John Carter.

The girl dismissed the subject with a shrug and the conversation
passed to other topics. A letter had arrived from Thuvia of
Ptarth, who was visiting at her father's court while Carthoris,
her mate, hunted in Okar. Word had been received that the Tharks
and Warhoons were again at war, or rather that there had been an
engagement, for war was their habitual state. In the memory of
man there had been no peace between these two savage green
hordes—only a single temporary truce. Two new battleships had
been launched at Hastor. A little band of holy therns was
attempting to revive the ancient and discredited religion of
Issus, who they claimed still lived in spirit and had
communicated with them. There were rumors of war from Dusar. A
scientist claimed to have discovered human life on the further
moon. A madman had attempted to destroy the atmosphere plant.
Seven people had been assassinated in Greater Helium during the
last ten zodes, (the equivalent of an Earth day).

Following the meal Dejah Thoris and The Warlord played at jetan,
the Barsoomian game of chess, which is played upon a board of a
hundred alternate black and orange squares. One player has twenty
black pieces, the other, twenty orange pieces. A brief
description of the game may interest those Earth readers who care
for chess, and will not be lost upon those who pursue this
narrative to its conclusion, since before they are done they will
find that a knowledge of jetan will add to the interest and the
thrills that are in store for them.

The men are placed upon the board as in chess upon the first two
rows next the players. In order from left to right on the line of
squares nearest the players, the jetan pieces are Warrior,
Padwar, Dwar, Flier, Chief, Princess, Flier, Dwar, Padwar,
Warrior. In the next line all are Panthans except the end pieces,
which are called Thoats, and represent mounted warriors.

The Panthans, which are represented as warriors with one feather,
may move one space in any direction except backward; the Thoats,
mounted warriors with three feathers, may move one straight and
one diagonal, and may jump intervening pieces; Warriors, foot
soldiers with two feathers, straight in any direction, or
diagonally, two spaces; Padwars, lieutenants wearing two
feathers, two diagonal in any direction, or combination; Dwars,
captains wearing three feathers, three spaces straight in any
direction, or combination; Fliers, represented by a propellor
with three blades, three spaces in any direction, or combination,
diagonally, and may jump intervening pieces; the Chief, indicated
by a diadem with ten jewels, three spaces in any direction,
straight, or diagonal; Princess, diadem with a single jewel, same
as Chief, and can jump intervening pieces.

The game is won when a player places any of his pieces on the
same square with his opponent's Princess, or when a Chief takes a
Chief. It is drawn when a Chief is taken by any opposing piece
other than the opposing Chief; or when both sides have been
reduced to three pieces, or less, of equal value, and the game is
not terminated in the following ten moves, five apiece. This is
but a general outline of the game, briefly stated.

It was this game that Dejah Thoris and John Carter were playing
when Tara of Helium bid them good night, retiring to her own
quarters and her sleeping silks and furs. "Until morning, my
beloved," she called back to them as she passed from the
apartment, nor little did she guess, nor her parents, that this
might indeed be the last time that they would ever set eyes upon
her.

The morning broke dull and gray. Ominous clouds billowed
restlessly and low. Beneath them torn fragments scudded toward
the northwest. From her window Tara of Helium looked out upon
this unusual scene. Dense clouds seldom overcast the Barsoomian
sky. At this hour of the day it was her custom to ride one of
those small thoats that are the saddle animals of the red
Martians, but the sight of the billowing clouds lured her to a
new adventure. Uthia still slept and the girl did not disturb
her. Instead, she dressed quietly and went to the hangar upon the
roof of the palace directly above her quarters where her own
swift flier was housed. She had never driven through the clouds.
It was an adventure that always she had longed to experience. The
wind was strong and it was with difficulty that she maneuvered
the craft from the hangar without accident, but once away it
raced swiftly out above the twin cities. The buffeting winds
caught and tossed it, and the girl laughed aloud in sheer joy of
the resultant thrills. She handled the little ship like a
veteran, though few veterans would have faced the menace of such
a storm in so light a craft. Swiftly she rose toward the clouds,
racing with the scudding streamers of the storm-swept fragments,
and a moment later she was swallowed by the dense masses
billowing above. Here was a new world, a world of chaos unpeopled
except for herself; but it was a cold, damp, lonely world and she
found it depressing after the novelty of it had been dissipated,
by an overpowering sense of the magnitude of the forces surging
about her. Suddenly she felt very lonely and very cold and very
little. Hurriedly, therefore, she rose until presently her craft
broke through into the glorious sunlight that transformed the
upper surface of the somber element into rolling masses of
burnished silver. Here it was still cold, but without the
dampness of the clouds, and in the eye of the brilliant sun her
spirits rose with the mounting needle of her altimeter. Gazing at
the clouds, now far beneath, the girl experienced the sensation
of hanging stationary in mid-heaven; but the whirring of her
propellor, the wind beating upon her, the high figures that rose
and fell beneath the glass of her speedometer, these told her
that her speed was terrific. It was then that she determined to
turn back.