THE CHESSMEN OF MARS
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
CONTENTS
PRELUDE - John Carter Comes to Earth
I Tara in a Tantrum
II At the Gale's Mercy
III The Headless Humans
IV Captured
V The Perfect Brain
VI In the Toils of Horror
VII A Repellent Sight
VIII Close Work
IX Adrift Over Strange Regions
X Entrapped
XI The Choice of Tara
XII Ghek Plays Pranks
XIII A Desperate Deed
XIV At Ghek's Command
XV The Old Man of the Pits
XVI Another Change of Name
XVII A Play to the Death
XVIII A Task for Loyalty
XIX The Menace of the Dead
XX The Charge of Cowardice
XXI A Risk for Love
XXII At the Moment of Marriage
THE CHESSMEN OF MARS
PRELUDE
JOHN CARTER COMES TO EARTH
Shea had just beaten me at chess, as usual, and, also as usual, I had
gleaned what questionable satisfaction I might by twitting him with
this indication of failing mentality by calling his attention for the
_n_th time to that theory, propounded by certain scientists, which is
based upon the assertion that phenomenal chess players are always found
to be from the ranks of children under twelve, adults over seventy-two
or the mentally defective--a theory that is lightly ignored upon those
rare occasions that I win. Shea had gone to bed and I should have
followed suit, for we are always in the saddle here before sunrise; but
instead I sat there before the chess table in the library, idly blowing
smoke at the dishonored head of my defeated king.
While thus profitably employed I heard the east door of the living-room
open and someone enter. I thought it was Shea returning to speak with
me on some matter of tomorrow's work; but when I raised my eyes to the
doorway that connects the two rooms I saw framed there the figure of a
bronzed giant, his otherwise naked body trapped with a jewel-encrusted
harness from which there hung at one side an ornate short-sword and at
the other a pistol of strange pattern. The black hair, the steel-gray
eyes, brave and smiling, the noble features--I recognized them at once,
and leaping to my feet I advanced with outstretched hand.
"John Carter!" I cried. "You?"
"None other, my son," he replied, taking my hand in one of his and
placing the other upon my shoulder.
"And what are you doing here?" I asked. "It has been long years since
you revisited Earth, and never before in the trappings of Mars. Lord!
but it is good to see you--and not a day older in appearance than when
you trotted me on your knee in my babyhood. How do you explain it, John
Carter, Warlord of Mars, or do you try to explain it?"
"Why attempt to explain the inexplicable?" he replied. "As I have told
you before, I am a very old man. I do not know how old I am. I recall
no childhood; but recollect only having been always as you see me now
and as you saw me first when you were five years old. You, yourself,
have aged, though not as much as most men in a corresponding number of
years, which may be accounted for by the fact that the same blood runs
in our veins; but I have not aged at all. I have discussed the question
with a noted Martian scientist, a friend of mine; but his theories are
still only theories. However, I am content with the fact--I never age,
and I love life and the vigor of youth.
"And now as to your natural question as to what brings me to Earth
again and in this, to earthly eyes, strange habiliment. We may thank
Kar Komak, the bowman of Lothar. It was he who gave me the idea upon
which I have been experimenting until at last I have achieved success.
As you know I have long possessed the power to cross the void in
spirit, but never before have I been able to impart to inanimate things
a similar power. Now, however, you see me for the first time precisely
as my Martian fellows see me--you see the very short-sword that has
tasted the blood of many a savage foeman; the harness with the devices
of Helium and the insignia of my rank; the pistol that was presented to
me by Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark.
"Aside from seeing you, which is my principal reason for being here,
and satisfying myself that I can transport inanimate things from Mars
to Earth, and therefore animate things if I so desire, I have no
purpose. Earth is not for me. My every interest is upon Barsoom--my
wife, my children, my work; all are there. I will spend a quiet evening
with you and then back to the world I love even better than I love
life."
As he spoke he dropped into the chair upon the opposite side of the
chess table.
"You spoke of children," I said. "Have you more than Carthoris?"
"A daughter," he replied, "only a little younger than Carthoris, and,
barring one, the fairest thing that ever breathed the thin air of dying
Mars. Only Dejah Thoris, her mother, could be more beautiful than Tara
of Helium."
For a moment he fingered the chessmen idly. "We have a game on Mars
similar to chess," he said, "very similar. And there is a race there
that plays it grimly with men and naked swords. We call the game jetan.
It is played on a board like yours, except that there are a hundred
squares and we use twenty pieces on each side. I never see it played
without thinking of Tara of Helium and what befell her among the
chessmen of Barsoom. Would you like to hear her story?"
I said that I would and so he told it to me, and now I shall try to
re-tell it for you as nearly in the words of The Warlord of Mars as I
can recall them, but in the third person. If there be inconsistencies
and errors, let the blame fall not upon John Carter, but rather upon my
faulty memory, where it belongs. It is a strange tale and utterly
Barsoomian.
CHAPTER I
TARA IN A TANTRUM
Tara of Helium rose from the pile of silks and soft furs upon which she
had been reclining, stretched her lithe body languidly, and crossed
toward the center of the room, where, above a large table, a bronze
disc depended from the low ceiling. Her carriage was that of health and
physical perfection--the effortless harmony of faultless coordination.
A scarf of silken gossamer crossing over one shoulder was wrapped about
her body; her black hair was piled high upon her head. With a wooden
stick she tapped upon the bronze disc, lightly, and presently the
summons was answered by a slave girl, who entered, smiling, to be
greeted similarly by her mistress.
"Are my father's guests arriving?" asked the princess.
"Yes, Tara of Helium, they come," replied the slave. "I have seen
Kantos Kan, Overlord of the Navy, and Prince Soran of Ptarth, and Djor
Kantos, son of Kantos Kan," she shot a roguish glance at her mistress
as she mentioned Djor Kantos' name, "and--oh, there were others, many
have come."
"The bath, then, Uthia," said her mistress. "And why, Uthia," she
added, "do you look thus and smile when you mention the name of Djor
Kantos?"
The slave girl laughed gaily. "It is so plain to all that he worships
you," she replied.
"It is not plain to me," said Tara of Helium. "He is the friend of my
brother, Carthoris, and so he is here much; but not to see me. It is
his friendship for Carthoris that brings him thus often to the palace
of my father."
"But Carthoris is hunting in the north with Talu, Jeddak of Okar,"
Uthia reminded her.
"My bath, Uthia!" cried Tara of Helium. "That tongue of yours will
bring you to some misadventure yet."
"The bath is ready, Tara of Helium," the girl responded, her eyes still
twinkling with merriment, for she well knew that in the heart of her
mistress was no anger that could displace the love of the princess for
her slave. Preceding the daughter of The Warlord she opened the door of
an adjoining room where lay the bath--a gleaming pool of scented water
in a marble basin. Golden stanchions supported a chain of gold
encircling it and leading down into the water on either side of marble
steps. A glass dome let in the sun-light, which flooded the interior,
glancing from the polished white of the marble walls and the procession
of bathers and fishes, which, in conventional design, were inlaid with
gold in a broad band that circled the room.
Tara of Helium removed the scarf from about her and handed it to the
slave. Slowly she descended the steps to the water, the temperature of
which she tested with a symmetrical foot, undeformed by tight shoes and
high heels--a lovely foot, as God intended that feet should be and
seldom are. Finding the water to her liking, the girl swam leisurely to
and fro about the pool. With the silken ease of the seal she swam, now
at the surface, now below, her smooth muscles rolling softly beneath
her clear skin--a wordless song of health and happiness and grace.
Presently she emerged and gave herself into the hands of the slave
girl, who rubbed the body of her mistress with a sweet smelling
semi-liquid substance contained in a golden urn, until the glowing skin
was covered with a foamy lather, then a quick plunge into the pool, a
drying with soft towels, and the bath was over. Typical of the life of
the princess was the simple elegance of her bath--no retinue of useless
slaves, no pomp, no idle waste of precious moments. In another half
hour her hair was dried and built into the strange, but becoming,
coiffure of her station; her leathern trappings, encrusted with gold
and jewels, had been adjusted to her figure and she was ready to mingle
with the guests that had been bidden to the midday function at the
palace of The Warlord.
As she left her apartments to make her way to the gardens where the
guests were congregating, two warriors, the insignia of the House of
the Prince of Helium upon their harness, followed a few paces behind
her, grim reminders that the assassin's blade may never be ignored upon
Barsoom, where, in a measure, it counterbalances the great natural span
of human life, which is estimated at not less than a thousand years.
As they neared the entrance to the garden another woman, similarly
guarded, approached them from another quarter of the great palace. As
she neared them Tara of Helium turned toward her with a smile and a
happy greeting, while her guards knelt with bowed heads in willing and
voluntary adoration of the beloved of Helium. Thus always, solely at
the command of their own hearts, did the warriors of Helium greet Dejah
Thoris, whose deathless beauty had more than once brought them to
bloody warfare with other nations of Barsoom. So great was the love of
the people of Helium for the mate of John Carter it amounted
practically to worship, as though she were indeed the goddess that she
looked.
The mother and daughter exchanged the gentle, Barsoomian, "kaor" of
greeting and kissed. Then together they entered the gardens where the
guests were. A huge warrior drew his short-sword and struck his metal
shield with the flat of it, the brazen sound ringing out above the
laughter and the speech.
"The Princess comes!" he cried. "Dejah Thoris! The Princess comes! Tara
of Helium!" Thus always is royalty announced. The guests arose; the two
women inclined their heads; the guards fell back upon either side of
the entrance-way; a number of nobles advanced to pay their respects;
the laughing and the talking were resumed and Dejah Thoris and her
daughter moved simply and naturally among their guests, no suggestion
of differing rank apparent in the bearing of any who were there, though
there was more than a single Jeddak and many common warriors whose only
title lay in brave deeds, or noble patriotism. Thus it is upon Mars
where men are judged upon their own merits rather than upon those of
their grandsires, even though pride of lineage be great.
Tara of Helium let her slow gaze wander among the throng of guests
until presently it halted upon one she sought. Was the faint shadow of
a frown that crossed her brow an indication of displeasure at the sight
that met her eyes, or did the brilliant rays of the noonday sun
distress her? Who may say! She had been reared to believe that one day
she should wed Djor Kantos, son of her father's best friend. It had
been the dearest wish of Kantos Kan and The Warlord that this should
be, and Tara of Helium had accepted it as a matter of all but
accomplished fact. Djor Kantos had seemed to accept the matter in the
same way. They had spoken of it casually as something that would, as a
matter of course, take place in the indefinite future, as, for
instance, his promotion in the navy, in which he was now a padwar; or
the set functions of the court of her grandfather, Tardos Mors, Jeddak
of Helium; or Death. They had never spoken of love and that had puzzled
Tara of Helium upon the rare occasions she gave it thought, for she
knew that people who were to wed were usually much occupied with the
matter of love and she had all of a woman's curiosity--she wondered
what love was like. She was very fond of Djor Kantos and she knew that
he was very fond of her. They liked to be together, for they liked the
same things and the same people and the same books and their dancing
was a joy, not only to themselves but to those who watched them. She
could not imagine wanting to marry anyone other than Djor Kantos.
So perhaps it was only the sun that made her brows contract just the
tiniest bit at the same instant that she discovered Djor Kantos sitting
in earnest conversation with Olvia Marthis, daughter of the Jed of
Hastor. It was Djor Kantos' duty immediately to pay his respects to
Dejah Thoris and Tara of Helium; but he did not do so and presently the
daughter of The Warlord frowned indeed. She looked long at Olvia
Marthis, and though she had seen her many times before and knew her
well, she looked at her today through new eyes that saw, apparently for
the first time, that the girl from Hastor was noticeably beautiful even
among those other beautiful women of Helium. Tara of Helium was
disturbed. She attempted to analyze her emotions; but found it
difficult. Olvia Marthis was her friend--she was very fond of her and
she felt no anger toward her. Was she angry with Djor Kantos? No, she
finally decided that she was not. It was merely surprise, then, that
she felt--surprise that Djor Kantos could be more interested in another
than in herself. She was about to cross the garden and join them when
she heard her father's voice directly behind her.
"Tara of Helium!" he called, and she turned to see him approaching with
a strange warrior whose harness and metal bore devices with which she
was unfamiliar. Even among the gorgeous trappings of the men of Helium
and the visitors from distant empires those of the stranger were
remarkable for their barbaric splendor. The leather of his harness was
completely hidden beneath ornaments of platinum thickly set with
brilliant diamonds, as were the scabbards of his swords and the ornate
holster that held his long, Martian pistol. Moving through the sunlit
garden at the side of the great Warlord, the scintillant rays of his
countless gems enveloping him as in an aureole of light imparted to his
noble figure a suggestion of godliness.
"Tara of Helium, I bring you Gahan, Jed of Gathol," said John Carter,
after the simple Barsoomian custom of presentation.
"Kaor! Gahan, Jed of Gathol," returned Tara of Helium.
"My sword is at your feet, Tara of Helium," said the young chieftain.
The Warlord left them and the two seated themselves upon an ersite
bench beneath a spreading sorapus tree.
"Far Gathol," mused the girl. "Ever in my mind has it been connected
with mystery and romance and the half-forgotten lore of the ancients. I
cannot think of Gathol as existing today, possibly because I have never
before seen a Gatholian."
"And perhaps too because of the great distance that separates Helium
and Gathol, as well as the comparative insignificance of my little free
city, which might easily be lost in one corner of mighty Helium," added
Gahan. "But what we lack in power we make up in pride," he continued,
laughing. "We believe ours the oldest inhabited city upon Barsoom. It
is one of the few that has retained its freedom, and this despite the
fact that its ancient diamond mines are the richest known and, unlike
practically all the other fields, are today apparently as inexhaustible
as ever."
"Tell me of Gathol," urged the girl. "The very thought fills me with
interest," nor was it likely that the handsome face of the young jed
detracted anything from the glamour of far Gathol.
Nor did Gahan seem displeased with the excuse for further monopolizing
the society of his fair companion. His eyes seemed chained to her
exquisite features, from which they moved no further than to a rounded
breast, part hid beneath its jeweled covering, a naked shoulder or the
symmetry of a perfect arm, resplendent in bracelets of barbaric
magnificence.
"Your ancient history has doubtless told you that Gathol was built upon
an island in Throxeus, mightiest of the five oceans of old Barsoom. As
the ocean receded Gathol crept down the sides of the mountain, the
summit of which was the island upon which she had been built, until
today she covers the slopes from summit to base, while the bowels of
the great hill are honeycombed with the galleries of her mines.
Entirely surrounding us is a great salt marsh, which protects us from
invasion by land, while the rugged and ofttimes vertical topography of
our mountain renders the landing of hostile airships a precarious
undertaking."
"That, and your brave warriors?" suggested the girl.
Gahan smiled. "We do not speak of that except to enemies," he said,
"and then with tongues of steel rather than of flesh."
"But what practice in the art of war has a people which nature has thus
protected from attack?" asked Tara of Helium, who had liked the young
jed's answer to her previous question, but yet in whose mind persisted
a vague conviction of the possible effeminacy of her companion,
induced, doubtless, by the magnificence of his trappings and weapons
which carried a suggestion of splendid show rather than grim utility.
"Our natural barriers, while they have doubtless saved us from defeat
on countless occasions, have not by any means rendered us immune from
attack," he explained, "for so great is the wealth of Gathol's diamond
treasury that there yet may be found those who will risk almost certain
defeat in an effort to loot our unconquered city; so thus we find
occasional practice in the exercise of arms; but there is more to
Gathol than the mountain city. My country extends from Polodona
(Equator) north ten karads and from the tenth karad west of Horz to the
twentieth west, including thus a million square haads, the greater
proportion of which is fine grazing land where run our great herds of
thoats and zitidars.
"Surrounded as we are by predatory enemies our herdsmen must indeed be
warriors or we should have no herds, and you may be assured they get
plenty of fighting. Then there is our constant need of workers in the
mines. The Gatholians consider themselves a race of warriors and as
such prefer not to labor in the mines. The law is, however, that each
male Gatholian shall give an hour a day in labor to the government.
That is practically the only tax that is levied upon them. They prefer
however, to furnish a substitute to perform this labor, and as our own
people will not hire out for labor in the mines it has been necessary
to obtain slaves, and I do not need to tell you that slaves are not won
without fighting. We sell these slaves in the public market, the
proceeds going, half and half, to the government and the warriors who
bring them in. The purchasers are credited with the amount of labor
performed by their particular slaves. At the end of a year a good slave
will have performed the labor tax of his master for six years, and if
slaves are plentiful he is freed and permitted to return to his own
people."
"You fight in platinum and diamonds?" asked Tara, indicating his
gorgeous trappings with a quizzical smile.
Gahan laughed. "We are a vain people," he admitted, good-naturedly,
"and it is possible that we place too much value on personal
appearances. We vie with one another in the splendor of our
accoutrements when trapped for the observance of the lighter duties of
life, though when we take the field our leather is the plainest I ever
have seen worn by fighting men of Barsoom. We pride ourselves, too,
upon our physical beauty, and especially upon the beauty of our women.
May I dare to say, Tara of Helium, that I am hoping for the day when
you will visit Gathol that my people may see one who is really
beautiful?"
"The women of Helium are taught to frown with displeasure upon the
tongue of the flatterer," rejoined the girl, but Gahan, Jed of Gathol,
observed that she smiled as she said it.
A bugle sounded, clear and sweet, above the laughter and the talk. "The
Dance of Barsoom!" exclaimed the young warrior. "I claim you for it,
Tara of Helium."
The girl glanced in the direction of the bench where she had last seen
Djor Kantos. He was not in sight. She inclined her head in assent to
the claim of the Gatholian. Slaves were passing among the guests,
distributing small musical instruments of a single string. Upon each
instrument were characters which indicated the pitch and length of its
tone. The instruments were of skeel, the string of gut, and were shaped
to fit the left forearm of the dancer, to which it was strapped. There
was also a ring wound with gut which was worn between the first and
second joints of the index finger of the right hand and which, when
passed over the string of the instrument, elicited the single note
required of the dancer.
The guests had risen and were slowly making their way toward the
expanse of scarlet sward at the south end of the gardens where the
dance was to be held, when Djor Kantos came hurriedly toward Tara of
Helium. "I claim--" he exclaimed as he neared her; but she interrupted
him with a gesture.
"You are too late, Djor Kantos," she cried in mock anger. "No laggard
may claim Tara of Helium; but haste now lest thou lose also Olvia
Marthis, whom I have never seen wait long to be claimed for this or any
other dance."
"I have already lost her," admitted Djor Kantos ruefully.
"And you mean to say that you came for Tara of Helium only after having
lost Olvia Marthis?" demanded the girl, still simulating displeasure.
"Oh, Tara of Helium, you know better than that," insisted the young
man. "Was it not natural that I should assume that you would expect me,
who alone has claimed you for the Dance of Barsoom for at least twelve
times past?"
"And sit and play with my thumbs until you saw fit to come for me?" she
questioned. "Ah, no, Djor Kantos; Tara of Helium is for no laggard,"
and she threw him a sweet smile and passed on toward the assembling
dancers with Gahan, Jed of far Gathol.
The Dance of Barsoom bears a relation similar to the more formal
dancing functions of Mars that The Grand March does to ours, though it
is infinitely more intricate and more beautiful. Before a Martian youth
of either sex may attend an important social function where there is
dancing, he must have become proficient in at least three dances--The
Dance of Barsoom, his national dance, and the dance of his city. In
these three dances the dancers furnish their own music, which never
varies; nor do the steps or figures vary, having been handed down from
time immemorial. All Barsoomian dances are stately and beautiful, but
The Dance of Barsoom is a wondrous epic of motion and harmony--there is
no grotesque posturing, no vulgar or suggestive movements. It has been
described as the interpretation of the highest ideals of a world that
aspired to grace and beauty and chastity in woman, and strength and
dignity and loyalty in man.
Today, John Carter, Warlord of Mars, with Dejah Thoris, his mate, led
in the dancing, and if there was another couple that vied with them in
possession of the silent admiration of the guests it was the
resplendent Jed of Gathol and his beautiful partner. In the
ever-changing figures of the dance the man found himself now with the
girl's hand in his and again with an arm about the lithe body that the
jeweled harness but inadequately covered, and the girl, though she had
danced a thousand dances in the past, realized for the first time the
personal contact of a man's arm against her naked flesh. It troubled
her that she should notice it, and she looked up questioningly and
almost with displeasure at the man as though it was his fault. Their
eyes met and she saw in his that which she had never seen in the eyes
of Djor Kantos. It was at the very end of the dance and they both
stopped suddenly with the music and stood there looking straight into
each other's eyes. It was Gahan of Gathol who spoke first.
"Tara of Helium, I love you!" he said.
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!"