The Chessmen of Mars (11 page)

The words seemed to release her momentarily from the spell.
Quickly she turned away her eyes.

"Look at me!" commanded Luud.

Tara of Helium kept her eyes averted. She felt a new strength, or
at least a diminution of the creature's power over her. Had she
stumbled upon the secret of its uncanny domination over her will?
She dared not hope. With eyes averted she turned toward the
aperture through which those baleful eyes had drawn her. Again
Luud commanded her to stop, but the voice alone lacked all
authority to influence her. It was not like the eyes. She heard
the creature whistle and knew that it was summoning assistance,
but because she did not dare look toward it she did not see it
turn and concentrate its gaze upon the great, headless body lying
by the further wall.

The girl was still slightly under the spell of the creature's
influence—she had not regained full and independent domination
of her powers. She moved as one in the throes of some hideous
nightmare—slowly, painfully, as though each limb was hampered by
a great weight, or as she were dragging her body through a
viscous fluid. The aperture was close, ah, so close, yet,
struggle as she would, she seemed to be making no appreciable
progress toward it.

Behind her, urged on by the malevolent power of the great brain,
the headless body crawled upon all-fours toward her. At last she
had reached the aperture. Something seemed to tell her that once
beyond it the domination of the kaldane would be broken. She was
almost through into the adjoining chamber when she felt a heavy
hand close upon her ankle. The rykor had reached forth and seized
her, and though she struggled the thing dragged her back into the
room with Luud. It held her tight and drew her close, and then,
to her horror, it commenced to caress her.

"You see now," she heard Luud's dull voice, "the futility of
revolt—and its punishment."

Tara of Helium fought to defend herself, but pitifully weak were
her muscles against this brainless incarnation of brute power.
Yet she fought, fought on in the face of hopeless odds for the
honor of the proud name she bore—fought alone, she whom the
fighting men of a mighty empire, the flower of Martian chivalry,
would gladly have lain down their lives to save.

The cruiser Vanator careened through the tempest. That she had not
been dashed to the ground, or twisted by the force of the
elements into tangled wreckage, was due entirely to the caprice
of Nature. For all the duration of the storm she rode, a helpless
derelict, upon those storm-tossed waves of wind. But for all the
dangers and vicissitudes they underwent, she and her crew might
have borne charmed lives up to within an hour of the abating of
the hurricane. It was then that the catastrophe occurred—a
catastrophe indeed to the crew of the Vanator and the kingdom of
Gathol.

The men had been without food or drink since leaving Helium, and
they had been hurled about and buffeted in their lashings until
all were worn to exhaustion. There was a brief lull in the storm
during which one of the crew attempted to reach his quarters,
after releasing the lashings which had held him to the precarious
safety of the deck. The act in itself was a direct violation of
orders and, in the eyes of the other members of the crew, the
effect, which came with startling suddenness, took the form of a
swift and terrible retribution. Scarce had the man released the
safety snaps ere a swift arm of the storm-monster encircled the
ship, rolling it over and over, with the result that the
foolhardy warrior went overboard at the first turn.

Unloosed from their lashing by the constant turning and twisting
of the ship and the force of the wind, the boarding and landing
tackle had been trailing beneath the keel, a tangled mass of
cordage and leather. Upon the occasions that the Vanator rolled
completely over, these things would be wrapped around her until
another revolution in the opposite direction, or the wind itself,
carried them once again clear of the deck to trail, whipping in
the storm, beneath the hurtling ship.

Into this fell the body of the warrior, and as a drowning man
clutches at a straw so the fellow clutched at the tangled cordage
that caught him and arrested his fall. With the strength of
desperation he clung to the cordage, seeking frantically to
entangle his legs and body in it. With each jerk of the ship his
hand holds were all but torn loose, and though he knew that
eventually they would be and that he must be dashed to the ground
beneath, yet he fought with the madness that is born of
hopelessness for the pitiful second which but prolonged his
agony.

It was upon this sight then that Gahan of Gathol looked, over the
edge of the careening deck of the Vanator, as he sought to learn
the fate of his warrior. Lashed to the gunwale close at hand a
single landing leather that had not fouled the tangled mass
beneath whipped free from the ship's side, the hook snapping at
its outer end. The Jed of Gathol grasped the situation in a
single glance. Below him one of his people looked into the eyes
of Death. To the jed's hand lay the means for succor.

There was no instant's hesitation. Casting off his deck lashings,
he seized the landing leather and slipped over the ship's side.
Swinging like a bob upon a mad pendulum he swung far out and back
again, turning and twisting three thousand feet above the surface
of Barsoom, and then, at last, the thing he had hoped for
occurred. He was carried within reach of the cordage where the
warrior still clung, though with rapidly diminishing strength.
Catching one leg on a loop of the tangled strands Gahan pulled
himself close enough to seize another quite near to the fellow.
Clinging precariously to this new hold the jed slowly drew in the
landing leather, down which he had clambered until he could grasp
the hook at its end. This he fastened to a ring in the warrior's
harness, just before the man's weakened fingers slipped from
their hold upon the cordage.

Temporarily, at least, he had saved the life of his subject,
and now he turned his attention toward insuring his own safety.
Inextricably entangled in the mess to which he was clinging were
numerous other landing hooks such as he had attached to the
warrior's harness, and with one of these he sought to secure
himself until the storm should abate sufficiently to permit him
to climb to the deck, but even as he reached for one that swung
near him the ship was caught in a renewed burst of the storm's
fury, the thrashing cordage whipped and snapped to the lunging of
the great craft and one of the heavy metal hooks, lashing through
the air, struck the Jed of Gathol fair between the eyes.

Momentarily stunned, Gahan's fingers slipped from their hold upon
the cordage and the man shot downward through the thin air of
dying Mars toward the ground three thousand feet beneath, while
upon the deck of the rolling Vanator his faithful warriors clung
to their lashings all unconscious of the fate of their beloved
leader; nor was it until more than an hour later, after the storm
had materially subsided, that they realized he was lost, or knew
the self-sacrificing heroism of the act that had sealed his doom.
The Vanator now rested upon an even keel as she was carried along
by a strong, though steady, wind. The warriors had cast off their
deck lashings and the officers were taking account of losses and
damage when a weak cry was heard from oversides, attracting their
attention to the man hanging in the cordage beneath the keel.
Strong arms hoisted him to the deck and then it was that the
crew of the Vanator learned of the heroism of their jed and his
end. How far they had traveled since his loss they could only
vaguely guess, nor could they return in search of him in the
disabled condition of the ship. It was a saddened company that
drifted onward through the air toward whatever destination Fate
was to choose for them.

And Gahan, Jed of Gathol—what of him? Plummet-like he fell for a
thousand feet and then the storm seized him in its giant clutch
and bore him far aloft again. As a bit of paper borne upon a gale
he was tossed about in mid-air, the sport and plaything of the
wind. Over and over it turned him and upward and downward it
carried him, but after each new sally of the element he was
brought nearer to the ground. The freaks of cyclonic storms are
the rule of cyclonic storms, demolish giant trees, and in the
same gust they transport frail infants for miles and deposit them
unharmed in their wake.

And so it was with Gahan of Gathol. Expecting momentarily to be
dashed to destruction he presently found himself deposited gently
upon the soft, ochre moss of a dead sea-bottom, bodily no worse
off for his harrowing adventure than in the possession of a
slight swelling upon his forehead where the metal hook had struck
him. Scarcely able to believe that Fate had dealt thus gently
with him, the jed arose slowly, as though more than half
convinced that he should discover crushed and splintered bones
that would not support his weight. But he was intact. He looked
about him in a vain effort at orientation. The air was filled
with flying dust and debris. The Sun was obliterated. His vision
was confined to a radius of a few hundred yards of ochre moss and
dust-filled air. Five hundred yards away in any direction there
might have arisen the walls of a great city and he not known it.
It was useless to move from where he was until the air cleared,
since he could not know in what direction he was moving, and so
he stretched himself upon the moss and waited, pondering the fate
of his warriors and his ship, but giving little thought to his
own precarious situation.

Lashed to his harness were his swords, his pistols, and a dagger,
and in his pocket-pouch a small quantity of the concentrated
rations that form a part of the equipment of the fighting men of
Barsoom. These things together with trained muscles, high
courage, and an undaunted spirit sufficed him for whatever
misadventures might lie between him and Gathol, which lay in what
direction he knew not, nor at what distance.

The wind was falling rapidly and with it the dust that obscured
the landscape. That the storm was over he was convinced, but he
chafed at the inactivity the low visibility put upon him, nor did
conditions better materially before night fell, so that he was
forced to await the new day at the very spot at which the tempest
had deposited him. Without his sleeping silks and furs he spent a
far from comfortable night, and it was with feelings of unmixed
relief that he saw the sudden dawn burst upon him. The air was
now clear and in the light of the new day he saw an undulating
plain stretching in all directions about him, while to the
northwest there were barely discernible the outlines of low
hills. Toward the southeast of Gathol was such a country, and as
Gahan surmised the direction and the velocity of the storm to
have carried him somewhere in the vicinity of the country he
thought he recognized, he assumed that Gathol lay behind the
hills he now saw, whereas, in reality, it lay far to the
northeast.

It was two days before Gahan had crossed the plain and reached
the summit of the hills from which he hoped to see his own
country, only to meet at last with disappointment. Before him
stretched another plain, of even greater proportions than that he
had but just crossed, and beyond this other hills. In one
material respect this plain differed from that behind him in that
it was dotted with occasional isolated hills. Convinced, however,
that Gathol lay somewhere in the direction of his search he
descended into the valley and bent his steps toward the
northwest.

For weeks Gahan of Gathol crossed valleys and hills in search of
some familiar landmark that might point his way toward his native
land, but the summit of each succeeding ridge revealed but
another unfamiliar view. He saw few animals and no men, until he
finally came to the belief that he had fallen upon that fabled
area of ancient Barsoom which lay under the curse of her olden
gods—the once rich and fertile country whose people in their
pride and arrogance had denied the deities, and whose punishment
had been extermination.

And then, one day, he scaled low hills and looked into an
inhabited valley—a valley of trees and cultivated fields and
plots of ground enclosed by stone walls surrounding strange
towers. He saw people working in the fields, but he did not rush
down to greet them. First he must know more of them and whether
they might be assumed to be friends or enemies. Hidden by
concealing shrubbery he crawled to a vantage point upon a hill
that projected further into the valley, and here he lay upon
his belly watching the workers closest to him. They were still
quite a distance from him and he could not be quite sure of them,
but there was something verging upon the unnatural about them.
Their heads seemed out of proportion to their bodies—too large.

For a long time he lay watching them and ever more forcibly it
was borne in upon his consciousness that they were not as he, and
that it would be rash to trust himself among them. Presently he
saw a couple appear from the nearest enclosure and slowly
approach those who were working nearest to the hill where he lay
in hiding. Immediately he was aware that one of these differed
from all the others. Even at the greater distance he noted that
the head was smaller and as they approached, he was confident
that the harness of one of them was not as the harness of its
companion or of that of any of those who tilled the fields.

The two stopped often, apparently in argument, as though one
would proceed in the direction that they were going while the
other demurred. But each time the smaller won reluctant consent
from the other, and so they came closer and closer to the last
line of workers toiling between the enclosure from which they had
come and the hill where Gahan of Gathol lay watching, and then
suddenly the smaller figure struck its companion full in the
face. Gahan, horrified, saw the latter's head topple from its
body, saw the body stagger and fall to the ground. The man half
rose from his concealment the better to view the happening in the
valley below. The creature that had felled its companion was
dashing madly in the direction of the hill upon which he was
hidden, it dodged one of the workers that sought to seize it.
Gahan hoped that it would gain its liberty, why he did not know
other than at closer range it had every appearance of being a
creature of his own race. Then he saw it stumble and go down and
instantly its pursuers were upon it. Then it was that Gahan's
eyes chanced to return to the figure of the creature the fugitive
had felled.