AT THE GALE'S MERCY
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.
The first attempt she made above the clouds, but it was unsuccessful.
To her surprise she discovered that she could not even turn against the
high wind, which rocked and buffeted the frail craft. Then she dropped
swiftly to the dark and wind-swept zone between the hurtling clouds and
the gloomy surface of the shadowed ground. Here she tried again to
force the nose of the flier back toward Helium, but the tempest seized
the frail thing and hurled it remorselessly about, rolling it over and
over and tossing it as it were a cork in a cataract. At last the girl
succeeded in righting the flier, perilously close to the ground. Never
before had she been so close to death, yet she was not terrified. Her
coolness had saved her, that and the strength of the deck lashings that
held her. Traveling with the storm she was safe, but where was it
bearing her? She pictured the apprehension of her father and mother
when she failed to appear at the morning meal. They would find her
flier missing and they would guess that somewhere in the path of the
storm it lay a wrecked and tangled mass upon her dead body, and then
brave men would go out in search of her, risking their lives; and that
lives would be lost in the search, she knew, for she realized now that
never in her life-time had such a tempest raged upon Barsoom.
She must turn back! She must reach Helium before her mad lust for
thrills had cost the sacrifice of a single courageous life! She
determined that greater safety and likelihood of success lay above the
clouds, and once again she rose through the chilling, wind-tossed
vapor. Her speed again was terrific, for the wind seemed to have
increased rather than to have lessened. She sought gradually to check
the swift flight of her craft, but though she finally succeeded in
reversing her motor the wind but carried her on as it would. Then it
was that Tara of Helium lost her temper. Had her world not always bowed
in acquiescence to her every wish? What were these elements that they
dared to thwart her? She would demonstrate to them that the daughter of
The Warlord was not to be denied! They would learn that Tara of Helium
might not be ruled even by the forces of nature!
And so she drove her motor forward again and then with her firm, white
teeth set in grim determination she drove the steering lever far down
to port with the intention of forcing the nose of her craft straight
into the teeth of the wind, and the wind seized the frail thing and
toppled it over upon its back, and twisted and turned it and hurled it
over and over; the propellor raced for an instant in an air pocket and
then the tempest seized it again and twisted it from its shaft, leaving
the girl helpless upon an unmanageable atom that rose and fell, and
rolled and tumbled--the sport of the elements she had defied. Tara of
Helium's first sensation was one of surprise--that she had failed to
have her own way. Then she commenced to feel concern--not for her own
safety but for the anxiety of her parents and the dangers that the
inevitable searchers must face. She reproached herself for the
thoughtless selfishness that had jeopardized the peace and safety of
others. She realized her own grave danger, too; but she was still
unterrified, as befitted the daughter of Dejah Thoris and John Carter.
She knew that her buoyancy tanks might keep her afloat indefinitely,
but she had neither food nor water, and she was being borne toward the
least-known area of Barsoom. Perhaps it would be better to land
immediately and await the coming of the searchers, rather than to allow
herself to be carried still further from Helium, thus greatly reducing
the chances of early discovery; but when she dropped toward the ground
she discovered that the violence of the wind rendered an attempt to
land tantamount to destruction and she rose again, rapidly.
Carried along a few hundred feet above the ground she was better able
to appreciate the Titanic proportions of the storm than when she had
flown in the comparative serenity of the zone above the clouds, for now
she could distinctly see the effect of the wind upon the surface of
Barsoom. The air was filled with dust and flying bits of vegetation and
when the storm carried her across an irrigated area of farm land she
saw great trees and stone walls and buildings lifted high in air and
scattered broadcast over the devastated country; and then she was
carried swiftly on to other sights that forced in upon her
consciousness a rapidly growing conviction that after all Tara of
Helium was a very small and insignificant and helpless person. It was
quite a shock to her self-pride while it lasted, and toward evening she
was ready to believe that it was going to last forever. There had been
no abatement in the ferocity of the tempest, nor was there indication
of any. She could only guess at the distance she had been carried for
she could not believe in the correctness of the high figures that had
been piled upon the record of her odometer. They seemed unbelievable
and yet, had she known it, they were quite true--in twelve hours she
had flown and been carried by the storm full seven thousand haads. Just
before dark she was carried over one of the deserted cities of ancient
Mars. It was Torquas, but she did not know it. Had she, she might
readily have been forgiven for abandoning the last vestige of hope, for
to the people of Helium Torquas seems as remote as do the South Sea
Islands to us. And still the tempest, its fury unabated, bore her on.
All that night she hurtled through the dark beneath the clouds, or rose
to race through the moonlit void beneath the glory of Barsoom's two
satellites. She was cold and hungry and altogether miserable, but her
brave little spirit refused to admit that her plight was hopeless even
though reason proclaimed the truth. Her reply to reason, sometime
spoken aloud in sudden defiance, recalled the Spartan stubbornness of
her sire in the face of certain annihilation: "I still live!"
That morning there had been an early visitor at the palace of The
Warlord. It was Gahan, Jed of Gathol. He had arrived shortly after the
absence of Tara of Helium had been noted, and in the excitement he had
remained unannounced until John Carter had happened upon him in the
great reception corridor of the palace as The Warlord was hurrying out
to arrange for the dispatch of ships in search of his daughter.
Gahan read the concern upon the face of The Warlord. "Forgive me if I
intrude, John Carter," he said. "I but came to ask the indulgence of
another day since it would be fool-hardy to attempt to navigate a ship
in such a storm."
"Remain, Gahan, a welcome guest until you choose to leave us," replied
The Warlord; "but you must forgive any seeming inattention upon the
part of Helium until my daughter is restored to us."
"You daughter! Restored! What do you mean?" exclaimed the Gatholian. "I
do not understand."
"She is gone, together with her light flier. That is all we know. We
can only assume that she decided to fly before the morning meal and was
caught in the clutches of the tempest. You will pardon me, Gahan, if I
leave you abruptly--I am arranging to send ships in search of her;" but
Gahan, Jed of Gathol, was already speeding in the direction of the
palace gate. There he leaped upon a waiting thoat and followed by two
warriors in the metal of Gathol, he dashed through the avenues of
Helium toward the palace that had been set aside for his entertainment.