Under the Moons of Mars (14 page)

Zana is the bravest, Zana is the strongest, Zana is the angriest. This is the only reason. This and no other.
She does not speak this aloud. He can read it within her. He should not have to. It is truth; it should live within him already.

“To punish me,” he says. “Because I need her alive, you consign her to death.”

Sarkoja does not ask what it means, this need. Perhaps she would rather not know.

“She is only a young girl,” he says. “She deserves a better life.”

“I did not teach you to speak like that,” Sarkoja says. “I did not teach you to
think
like that. Her life is no more or less precious than yours, than Yezqe’s, than Libor’s, than mine. It derives its value from its use to us, her people. It is worth only as much to her as it is worth to our cause. Zana knows that. All my children know that. But you—”

“She is only a young girl,” he says. “Please.”

“This is beneath you.” She can feel his raw need, and it disgusts her. She has let him get too close to the girl. It is not natural, for a Thark and a Red girl to share so much. The girl has corrupted him. It is her fault for allowing it, Sarkoja knows. For being lenient and ignoring what she knows to be true.

No longer.

“Begging for the life of a female, as if she cannot choose for herself. You speak like the man John Carter,” she tells Rok. He does not flinch from the insult.

“She chose nothing,” Rok says. “You chose for her. You chose for us all.”

The dagger is cold in her hand.

It is shameful, to strike an enemy while he sleeps. It is cowardly.

But they are all her children, and the strong cannot survive the depredations of the weak. This is why only the most perfect of eggs are allowed to endure. Even the hardest stone, if riven with faults, will shatter with a single blow. So it is for the Tharks; so it is for her family. Aberrations, defects, weaklings cannot be tolerated. Sacrifices must be made.

Rok has proven himself weak. And so, the sacrifice.

He moans softly in his sleep.

He has always done this, since he was newly hatched, lacking the words to express his needs, lacking even the needs themselves. She gave him both. She gave him everything.

There had once been another hatchling, a single Thark who should have died so that the Tharks could flourish. It had been Sarkoja’s duty to dispatch the child, and she had failed. All that followed could have been prevented, had she struck that fatal blow. But the child slipped away; the child lived, and grew up to be Sola, and saved the life of the man John Carter, and blamed Sarkoja for all her miseries, and brought ruin to the world.

A sharp blade brought down with the right velocity, at the right angle, would kill him instantly. There would be no struggle and no pain.

But again, she fails. And this time, it is a failure of will.

The excitement of tomorrow, the anticipation, the culmination of a lifetime of training and rage: He is, surely, not thinking clearly. Perhaps, neither is she. Tomorrow, she will speak with him again. She will explain the facts of their lives, and she will brook no argument. Either he will accept his duty, or he will die—not like an animal, slaughtered in his sleep, but like a Thark, on his feet, girded for battle.

But when the sun rises on tomorrow, he is gone.

It goes perfectly, exactly as planned. Zana lies in the desert, a gash in her leg, her limbs artfully splayed, her face tear-stained, her lips ruby red. Sarkoja and her warriors have secreted themselves behind the jagged rocks that jut from the desert floor. They watch John Carter steer his thoat toward the girl. Sarkoja silently rejoices: He is
alone
. Her army, thirty strong, against his one. It will be over nearly before they have time to savor their victory.

The man John Carter dismounts. He is even smaller than she remembers him. Uglier, too. It is unthinkable that this creature should have caused so much damage. But his reign of ruin nears an end. Sarkoja raises a hand and gives her soldiers the signal. John Carter walks slowly to the girl, kneels by her side. The warriors raise their weapons. They take aim.

“Sarkoja!” Libor shouts, then there is the sharp report of a radium rifle, and he is down.

Sarkoja whirls around. John Carter’s men are everywhere, Red Men and Tharks alike, swarming over her army, their rifles firing, their swords slashing. Their ambush has been ambushed.

For there is Zana, still on the ground. The man John Carter has disappeared into the thick of battle. Another figure has replaced him by Zana’s side: Rok. Sarkoja is close enough to hear his final words. “For you,” he says. “To save you.”

He has betrayed them all to John Carter; he has betrayed them all to love.

Sarkoja cannot move.

Zana bares her teeth, and gazes up at him as fiercely as she did the day they met, when visions of death and destruction danced in her eyes and Sarkoja promised to make her fondest wish come true. She says nothing. Her only response is the knife, the same knife she held in her tiny fist that first day, the same knife around which her small body has curled while she slept, night after night, while she ate and breathed and lived for a single purpose that Rok has stolen away. Zana is wounded, but the knife is sharp, her aim sure. Rok cannot block it, or perhaps will not. He is dead before his head cracks to the ground.

“I gave you a chance,” says a voice behind her, and still, Sarkoja cannot move. She is too heavy with shame. Zana, the Red girl, found the strength to do what Sarkoja could not. And because of her failure, her children are falling; her children are screaming. A radium shell tears into Zana and blows a hole through her midsection. Her body goes limp. The knife falls from her hand.

The battlefield is littered with Sarkoja’s lifeless children. Libor has fallen. Projal has fallen.

“You should not have come back,” says the voice.

Yezque has fallen. Biquas has fallen.

“Turn around,” says the voice. “I will not strike you from behind.”

She turns to face Tars Tarkas.

Sarkoja staggers. She throws her weight against Tars Tarkas, pummeling him with her remaining fists. The ground is slippery beneath her, slippery with her own blood. His longsword dances. She is too slow for him, and slower with each gash and wound. The blood is leaving her, carrying with it her strength. Hers is the only fight that still continues; her army has fallen.

“It was for you,” she tells Tars Tarkas, choking on the blood that fills her throat. “To save you.”

He laughs.

And then Sarkoja is on the ground, her strength fled, her life fleeing in its wake. Through blurry, bloodshot eyes she sees John Carter summon his men and congratulate them on their victory. She sees John Carter and Tars Tarkas embrace. She sees them check Rok’s body for signs of life; she sees their sorrow that this new friend, this
hero
, has sacrificed himself for their survival.

This is too much.

There is strength in her yet, strength in her rage, and she rises to her knees, then to her feet, drags herself toward the monster, muscles through his pathetic defenders, she will not be stopped, she will push on, push forward, until John Carter’s neck is between her hands. She squeezes the life from his fragile body, snaps his brittle bones; she sees his empty eyes roll back in his head; she sees his face go slack; she sees his spirit depart.

She sees what she wants to see.

She can feel John Carter’s neck in her grip, but her hands clutch empty air. And then they drop to her sides, and she lies still.

She dies believing she has done the world a great service. That someday all will be grateful. All will hallow the name of Sarkoja, warrior of justice.

She dies a hero in her own heart. She dies a victor.

She dies, and they set her body afire, and soon the apes and the ulsios will come and pick through the ashes and gnaw at her smoldering remains.

She dies, and she will not be mourned, and she will not be remembered.

She dies, and John Carter lives.

She will not be avenged.

L
isten, my clutchmates. Listen as I tell you how I met my master, John Carter. How we fought the ilthurs, how we fled from the Tharks into the mountains and valleys of this land, where I lost my master. How I came at last to the lost valley of our songs, where water flows and the trees give pleasant shade, and met the others of our kind. Where I learned—

But let me begin as I ought to, with praise for our mother, Awala, the fierce, the many-tusked, protector of her clutch. She longed to raise her children in freedom, so when her time came, she hid from the Tharks in one of the buildings of this city, which once belonged to the Orovars of our songs but now belongs to the Tharks, whose slaves we are.

There she sang her birthing song and laid us, seven eggs in a hollow she had dug in the dirt, where the floor tiles had long ago cracked. The warm earth held us as we grew, learning her songs even as we lay curled in our eggs, learning to sing with our minds, together as a clutch, my brothers and sisters.

Listen, my clutchmates. You remember how we hatched out of our shells in that chamber, how for seven days we ate nothing but that ilthur, gnawing it although our teeth were still soft. How we would not eat our mother, even though we were starving because we had no mother to hunt for us. After seven days we were found by Sola of the Tharks, who brought us to her master, Tas Tharvas. There we were raised as our kind are raised, as slaves to the Tharks.

Sola was kind to us. She fed us well and crooned to us with her mind, almost as our mother would have, although she could not hear our songs. Remember how we tumbled over the floor and each other, chasing a ball. Wala lying on her back, her legs flailing. Awol falling on his nose in his eagerness. Lawala and Oola bumping into each other, Alool singing a song of triumph when at last he cornered it. Olawa stealing it from him. Those were good days, with food and song, my brothers and sisters.

But soon enough, we were trained as our kind is among the Tharks. We were given food enough for five, and made to fight one another for it. We were taught to fight ulsios, thules, bakaras, all to prepare us for when we were adults and would fight in the arena for the amusements of the Tharks. What saved us then, my brothers and sisters? What kept us from wounding one another more than we had to, working together to defeat the mindless animals that the Tharks sent against us? It was the song we shared, mind to mind, as I am singing to you now.