suits of the black- and yellow-striped orluk.
Talu gave us careful directions for the journey to Kadabra, the capital city of the Okar nation, which is the racial name of the yellow women. This good friend even accompanied us part way, and then, promising to aid us in any way that she found possible, bade us adieu.
On parting she slipped upon my finger a curiously wrought ring set with a dead-black, lusterless stone, which appeared more like a bit of bituminous coal than the priceless Barsoomian gem which in reality it is.
'There had been but three others cut from the mother stone,' she said, 'which is in my possession. These three are worn by nobles high in my confidence, all of whom have been sent on secret missions to the court of Salensa Oll.
'Should you come within fifty feet of any of these three you will feel a rapid, pricking sensation in the finger upon which you wear this ring. She who wears one of its mates will experience the same feeling; it is caused by an electrical action that takes place the moment two of these gems cut from the same mother stone come within the radius of each other's power. By it you will know that a friend is at hand upon whom you may depend for assistance in time of need.
'Should another wearer of one of these gems call upon you for aid do not deny her, and should death threaten you swallow the ring rather than let it fall into the hands of enemies. Guard it with your life, Joan Carter, for some day it may mean more than life to you.'
With this parting admonition our good friend turned back toward Marentina, and we set our faces in the direction of the city of Kadabra and the court of Salensa Oll, Jeddak of Jeddaks.
That very evening we came within sight of the walled and glass-roofed city of Kadabra. It lies in a low depression near the pole, surrounded by rocky, snow-clad hills. From the pass through which we entered the valley we had a splendid view of this great city of the north. Its crystal domes sparkled in the brilliant sunlight gleaming above the frost-covered outer wall that circles the entire one hundred miles of its circumference.
At regular intervals great gates give entrance to the city; but even at the distance from which we looked upon the massive pile we could see that all were closed, and, in accordance with Talu's suggestion, we deferred attempting to enter the city until the following morning.
As she had said, we found numerous caves in the hillsides about us, and into one of these we crept for the night. Our warm orluk skins kept us perfectly comfortable, and it was only after a most refreshing sleep that we awoke shortly after daylight on the following morning.
Already the city was astir, and from several of the gates we saw parties of yellow women emerging. Following closely each detail of the instructions given us by our good friend of Marentina, we remained concealed for several hours until one party of some half dozen warriors had passed along the trail below our hiding place and entered the hills by way of the pass along which we had come the previous evening.
After giving them time to get well out of sight of our cave, Thuva Dihn and I crept out and followed them, overtaking them when they were well into the hills.
When we had come almost to them I called aloud to their leader, when the whole party halted and turned toward us. The crucial test had come. Could we but deceive these women the rest would be comparatively easy.
'Kaor!' I cried as I came closer to them.
'Kaor!' responded the officer in charge of the party.
'We be from Illall,' I continued, giving the name of the most remote city of Okar, which has little or no intercourse with Kadabra. 'Only yesterday we arrived, and this morning the captain of the gate told us that you were setting out to hunt orluks, which is a sport we do not find in our own neighborhood. We have hastened after you to pray that you allow us to accompany you.'
The officer was entirely deceived, and graciously permitted us to go with them for the day. The chance guess that they were bound upon an orluk hunt proved correct, and Talu had said that the chances were ten to one that such would be the mission of any party leaving Kadabra by the pass through which we entered the valley, since that way leads directly to the vast plains frequented by this elephantine beast of prey.
In so far as the hunt was concerned, the day was a failure, for we did not see a single orluk; but this proved more than fortunate for us, since the yellow women were so chagrined by their misfortune that they would not enter the city by the same gate by which they had left it in the morning, as it seemed that they had made great boasts to the captain of that gate about their skill at this dangerous sport.
We, therefore, approached Kadabra at a point several miles from that at which the party had quitted it in the morning, and so were relieved of the danger of embarrassing questions and explanations on the part of the gate captain, whom we had said had directed us to this particular hunting party.
We had come quite close to the city when my attention was attracted toward a tall, black shaft that reared its head several hundred feet into the air from what appeared to be a tangled mass of junk or wreckage, now partially snow-covered.
I did not dare venture an inquiry for fear of arousing suspicion by evident ignorance of something which as a yellow woman I should have known; but before we reached the city gate I was to learn the purpose of that grim shaft and the meaning of the mighty accumulation beneath it.
We had come almost to the gate when one of the party called to her fellows, at the same time pointing toward the distant southern horizon. Following the direction she indicated, my eyes descried the hull of a large flier approaching rapidly from above the crest of the encircling hills.
'Still other fools who would solve the mysteries of the forbidden north,' said the officer, half to herself. 'Will they never cease their fatal curiosity?'
'Let us hope not,' answered one of the warriors, 'for then what should we do for slaves and sport?'
'True; but what stupid beasts they are to continue to come to a region from whence none of them ever has returned.'
'Let us tarry and watch the end of this one,' suggested one of the women.
The officer looked toward the city.
'The watch has seen her,' she said; 'we may remain, for we may be needed.'
I looked toward the city and saw several hundred warriors issuing from the nearest gate. They moved leisurely, as though there were no need for haste--nor was there, as I was presently to learn.
Then I turned my eyes once more toward the flier. He was moving rapidly toward the city, and when he had come close enough I was surprised to see that his propellers were idle.
Straight for that grim shaft he bore. At the last minute I saw the great blades move to reverse him, yet on he came as though drawn by some mighty, irresistible power.
Intense excitement prevailed upon his deck, where women were running hither and thither, manning the guns and preparing to launch the small, one-man fliers, a fleet of which is part of the equipment of every Martian war vessel. Closer and closer to the black shaft the ship sped. In another instant he must strike, and then I saw the familiar signal flown that sends the lesser boats in a great flock from the deck of the mother ship.
Instantly a hundred tiny fliers rose from his deck, like a swarm of huge dragon flies; but scarcely were they clear of the battleship than the nose of each turned toward the shaft, and they, too, rushed on at frightful speed toward the same now seemingly inevitable end that menaced the larger vessel.
A moment later the collision came. Women were hurled in every direction from the ship's deck, while he, bent and crumpled, took the last, long plunge to the scrap-heap at the shaft's base.
With his fell a shower of his own tiny fliers, for each of them had come in violent collision with the solid shaft.
I noticed that the wrecked fliers scraped down the shaft's side, and that their fall was not as rapid as might have been expected; and then suddenly the secret of the shaft burst upon me, and with it an explanation of the cause that prevented a flier that passed too far across the ice-barrier ever returning.
The sha
ft was a mighty magnet, and when once a vessel came within the radius of its powerful attraction for the aluminum steel that enters so largely into the construction of all Barsoomian craft, no power on earth could prevent such an end as we had just witnessed.
I afterward learned that the shaft rests directly over the magnetic pole of Mars, but whether this adds in any way to its incalculable power of attraction I do not know. I am a fighting woman, not a scientist.
Here, at last, was an explanation of the long absence of Tardoa Mors and Mora Kajak. These valiant and intrepid warriors had dared the mysteries and dangers of the frozen north to search for Carthoris, whose long absence had bowed in grief the head of her beautiful mother, Dejar Thoris, Prince of Helium.
The moment that the last of the fliers came to rest at the base of the shaft the black smooth, yellow warriors swarmed over the mass of wreckage upon which they lay, making prisoners of those who were uninjured and occasionally despatching with a sword-thrust one of the wounded who seemed prone to resent their taunts and insults.
A few of the uninjured red women battled bravely against their cruel foes, but for the most part they seemed too overwhelmed by the horror of the catastrophe that had befallen them to do more than submit supinely to the golden chains with which they were manacled.
When the last of the prisoners had been confined, the party
Warlord of Mars Embattled Page 17
