Under the Moons of Mars (13 page)

She knew where she would find her army.

Every night, she tells them stories. She has always told them stories.

Days are spent on training: How to use a longsword, how to wield a spear and aim a rifle, how to disable an enemy in hand-to-hand combat, how to live off the land, how to scavenge food and track water, how to hide from white apes and banths, how to ambush vulnerable travelers and take what is needed, how to survive and how to kill and why the two are inseparable. But it is the nights that matter. It is the stories that keep her going, and it is the stories that make these children, her children, an army.

“The man was a stranger to us, as we were strangers to him, and yet he did not hesitate to interfere. He curried favor with his strange powers, and he slaughtered those who would not bend to his will. This man—”

“John Carter,” they say, in unison. This is their role, and they relish it.

“—was unlike all who dwell on Barsoom, for this man had it in his power and will to lie. To close off his mind and cache his whims. He was a deceiver, and he brought this corruption to the heart of the Tharks. He claimed to come from another world.”

“Lies.”

“He claimed to offer his allegiance to Lorquas Ptomel and Tars Tarkas.”

“Lies.”

“Lies!”

“He claims to be strong.”

“But he is weak.”

“He claims to be noble and true.”

“But he is hollow.”

“He claims to love this world.”

“But he loves only himself.”

Sarkoja does not believe in love. What she feels for her children is far greater. They are a part of her, powerful limbs that respond to her every will. Their thoughts are her thoughts; no part of them has not been molded by her. She has given them an identical dream and for six years they have pursued it with identical single-mindedness; they circle her and listen to the stories with identically rapt gazes.

But she must admit, they are not identical. Projal is clumsy with his dagger, while Biquas is too easily distracted—by sudden noises, by tricks of the light, by, more than once, one of his four arms, flickering at the edge of his field of vision.

And then there is Rok, who has no equal with the sword and no rival to his strength or purity of will. Rok, who was the first to contribute to the telling of the stories, whose booming responses inspired the others to join him. Rok, who was the first to learn to speak, and as soon as he did, pestered her nonstop with questions about John Carter, whose name had been his first word, as it was for them all. Had she believed in such a thing as love, Rok would have been the most deserving of it. But fortunately for them both, she believes only in strength, and that she has given him instead.

“He can die,” they chant, and chant again, until their voices merge with the wild howls of the plains and it as if the night itself calls for John Carter’s blood.

They are not all Green Martians. There are those among them with two arms rather than four; those who toddle on spindly legs at half the height of a grown Thark. Those who were once tended, as babes, by the weak Red Men who dwelt in cities and pretended to a civility and superiority they had not earned. There are those who, in another life, would have been her enemies.

But they are all her children.

The city of Zodanga was filled with orphans. She did not intend to steal them. Not at first.

The first Red child came upon them as they were pawing through a burned-out weapons cache, piling rifles and ammunition into Rok’s large sack. The child’s skin was smeared with ash; long waves of black hair nearly obscured her face. She stood frozen in a crumbling doorway, mouth slack, eyes taking in the sight of the two plundering Tharks. Sarkoja knew that to the child, she must look like a monster, large and hungry, and that she could not risk the child’s scream. She raised her pistol.

But Rok stayed her hand.

And because he was Rok, she allowed it.

“Who are you?” the child asked. She held her hands behind her back and her head down. “What more can you take from us that you have not already stolen?”

Sarkoja realized that the child had mistaken her for one of the army that had stormed, looted, and finally razed the city. “I have stolen nothing,” she said. “I take only what I need, to avenge what was stolen from me, by the man John Carter.”

The girl tossed her hair from her face, revealing a gaze that rivaled the sun for heat and fury. “John Carter killed my father,” she said. “Slit his throat while he was sleeping, when his only crime was doing his job, guarding a threshold John Carter saw fit to pass. I watched from the shadows, and I saw the knife cut his throat and the blood slide out. I waited for John Carter to pass, and then I threw myself on my father, I pressed the torn flaps of flesh together between my hands, tried to force the torn skin back together, but the blood flowed through my fingers. I sat in a pool of my father’s blood, and as his life leaked away, I watched the city burn.”

“Dead,” the child said. “She would have died of grief and hunger, surely, but John Carter’s men did not give her that chance. He is from a different world, they say. He had no quarrel with us, nor we with him. And yet we are ruined. While he continues to breathe. They say he is loved.”

“Not by me,” Rok said, his voice a growl.

“Nor by me,” Sarkoja said.

“I will kill him,” the girl said, and showed them her hands. In her tiny, tight fist, she clenched a long, silver blade. “Someday. I will find a way.”

Sarkoja laughed, and when the child did not recoil from the harsh sound, so painful to Red ears, the sound that all Barsoom knew to mean carnage, she knew her suspicions were right. “Perhaps,” she told the child, “you have found one.”

The child was Zana Lor, and she was the first. There were many other children who had lost their parents to John Carter’s orgy of destruction, but Sarkoja chose carefully. She found the children who spared no time for weeping or bemoaning their fate, the children who fixed their sight on what must be done. She looked for the familiar—the hate that blazed in her own heart, the physical need for justice. And when she found these children, she took them.

They came willingly, as did the women—for someone needed to care for the children, who were far more helpless than the young Tharks. There were plenty of women too, for John Carter had been an effective widow-maker, cutting a swath of death through the city’s husbands, fathers, and sons. Again, she selected only those women who hungered for his blood, who lost no time mourning the fallen but instead devoted themselves to vengeance.

So the young ones were fed and bathed, but they were not mothered; they were molded by no one but Sarkoja, and they listened to her stories as attentively as the women, as attentively as the Tharks. They learned to fight with the same weapons and though they were smaller and weaker, they were all the more determined, because they did not need to rely on stories. They knew why John Carter needed to die without Sarkoja telling them, and they had capacity for more anger than she had ever imagined their fragile bodies could contain.

None of them could match Zana Lor for white-hot anger. The girl glowed bright with fury. She was destined for great things, Sarkoja knew, and Rok saw it as well. Night after night, Zana and Rok trained together, her swift, sure movements matching his as they sliced their swords through the night air. She was like no Red Man Sarkoja had ever known.

She rarely slept, and when she did, she screamed.

Tomorrow.

She has waited eight years.

She has watched her children grow, and grow strong.

Two days ago, John Carter set off with Tars Tarkas and two Red Men of Helium on a ride through the desert, in search of adventure or solitude or more souls to kill; this she does not know, nor does she care. He sets off on such a course once every six months, and this time, the unexpected awaits him.

Two days ago, her army took off in pursuit, keeping enough distance between themselves and their prey that they will not be detected, not until they lay the trap and strike, and then it will be too late.

It is a strange time for all, so she tells herself.

It is nothing.

“He will see a girl lying in the desert.”

They gather as she speaks, as they always do, for hers is the only voice that matters, and it is their beacon in the darkness.

“She will be wounded, innocent, beautiful.”

They knew from the stories that John Carter was powerless against a beautiful female. All others, he destroyed without thought, but these women he believed it was his duty to save.

“He will dismount, and call his fellows to dismount, and they will tend to her wounds and offer her sustenance and service. That is when we will strike.”

There were nervous murmurs of assent, a single cheer. The night was electric with anticipation. The stars themselves seemed eager.

“Zana,” she says. “You will bait the trap. It will be your honor.”

There is a silence. Heads are bowed. It is an honor indeed, one she knows they all crave. But it must be Zana.

“But she will not survive it!” Rok is not at the fore of the group, close enough to receive her embrace, as he always was in his youth. He speaks from the very back, but he speaks loudly, and there can be no mistaking his words.

“It is her honor,” Sarkoja says, and this should be enough.

“Then this will offer him even more to save her from,” Sarkoja says, “and all the more distraction from the real threat.”

“And when the trap is sprung, and we attack, who will save her then?” Rok shouts. “She will fall, if not by our hands, then by his.”

“Then that is how it will be,” Sarkoja says. She fixes her gaze on Zana, who meets it, unflinching. The child, no longer a child, says nothing.

Sarkoja nods. “The plan is good. Many of us may not live to see another sunset, and this, too, is good, because we will die knowing we have saved our world. Tomorrow . . .”

“John Carter will die,” her children say.

But not Rok. Rok says nothing.

Not until the others have retreated into sleep. He comes to her in the night; he comes to beg for the girl’s life.

“Forego the ambush,” he tells her. “We will challenge him to battle, as equals, as custom demands. We will face him on even ground, not sneak and skulk like cowards. This is the Thark way, as you have taught us.”

“John Carter is not our equal!” she roars.

He bears the wrath. He was never one to be afraid.

“He is not our equal,” she repeats, with steely calm. “And we, I fear, are not his, not on the battlefield. The man John Carter has powers that no living creature should possess. He has the strength of ten Tharks, and if he is to die, we must allow ourselves to violate custom, in service of ending his greater violation. It is the only way.”

“Then choose someone else,” he tells her. “Choose anyone.”

“It cannot be anyone; it must be her.”