Softly, from behind her, she heard her brother whisper, “Careful.”
But she offered them neither abuse nor apologies, and after a moment they got some signal and moved to remove the thoat and walk the warrior off the board. (He cast a grateful glance over his shoulder, and she nodded back.)
She was still focused on the victory, and it took her a moment to realize how much closer she had moved to the ranks of the orange.
Thuvia was looking across the board at her husband, shaking her head in terror. Djor Cantos was looking straight at Tara with an expression that could cut marble.
Then she realized what the orange Kaldane had had in mind when he’d arranged the move.
It was a trap.
If she took two more squares, she was going to challenge the Chief.
The game moved on, but Tara was frozen, staring into the face of an old friend with whom she had just become comfortable again, after a painful absence.
Djor had looked away and now stood watching the board, frozen with dread. Beside him, Thuvia reached out a sympathetic hand.
“The Black Chief is challenged!” Tara heard.
She turned. Though the first challenge to a Chief was usually to test his skill rather than to take the board, she knew this Game had gotten ugly when she saw that the orange had sent a dwar, a captain, for the fight.
This was for the kill.
Tara knew Carthoris would win—the only person who outclassed him with a blade was their father—but she could not think even of his being wounded, and she watched the battle with a sour stomach, fearing at any moment to hear the Captain’s blade slicing home.
When the Captain fell to the ground, Tara let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, and it was so loud that Carthoris looked up from the body and smiled at her, so quickly no one else could see.
Then the Gamemaster called, “Warrior challenges Chief!”
Tara spun to look at Djor Kantos, who was moving forward as if his feet were in lead sandals.
“No!” cried Carthoris from behind her.
She stepped forward too, her sword at the ready.
Djor’s face was stony, and she wondered if he had planned some hero’s suicide for himself while he’d been waiting.
Not now, she thought; don’t you dare give up now that we’re friends again at last.
He stepped close, and raised his sword.
Then he murmured, “I hope you have an escape planned, or your brother is going to be very upset with me.”
Relief flooded her, so sharp it was like pain.
“He’ll be the least of your problems once I’m done with you,” she said, and took a fighting stance.
Then they began.
It looked to the Kaldanes like a battle between two equals of skill; only Carthoris would know that it was their old dexterity figures, which looked dangerous but never struck.
(It felt, for a moment, like home.)
When they were pressed shoulder to shoulder, swords locked, Tara whispered quickly about the gate, and the fliers’ tower.
“When?” he asked, over the clang of metal.
Even as he asked it, she realized.
“Now,” she said. “It has to be now.”
“All right,” Djor said.
And the next moment, he had spun away from her, and the sword was flying out of his hand.
It struck one of the slavemasters and pinned him to the sand like an insect. Beside him, his fellow staggered backward with a squeal.
Even before the outcry rose from the Kaldanes in the arena, Tara was running for her brother.
“Here,” she said, shoving her sword into the hands of the black Princess. “If you’re fighting, fight.”
The Princess blinked, but took a grip on the sword that looked passable.
Carthoris was shaking his head, but already his sword was in Tara’s hands, and they were halfway to the gate.
“Those who would be free must fight!” Carthoris called.
Nearly all the remaining pieces shouldered their weapons and bolted.
Ahead of her, Thuvia and Djor were already at the gate, dragging it aside. The guard vanished under Djor’s sword, and Thuvia braced herself at the other side against any oncomers.
Beside Tara, Carthoris was keeping pace, and they were nearly at the gate and free.
Then she crashed to the ground.
There was a searing pain in her right leg, and she knew at once that she had been struck—a knife, or a simple blade-disc.
Carthoris was already turning back.
“No!” she shouted.
But because he was her brother, he didn’t listen; because he was her brother, he would risk death for her, too.
She heard the whistling of other blades as they seemed to bloom from the sand, and she knew that before he could get hold of her, he’d be struck.
Then, from behind her, she heard the clang of metal against metal.
The thoat-rider she had spared was standing over her.
“They’ll be sending soldiers soon,” he said without taking his eyes off the edge of the arena. “Go!”
Carthoris hauled her up by the ribs, and the two of them staggered together for the safety of the gate.
“Are they safe?” Tara gasped between breaths.
“They have made it out of the gateway, at least,” Carthoris said. “If you hurry, we might not even die.”
Tara could have hit him; instead, she ran faster.
Behind them came the cry of a wounded man.
Die with honor, Tara thought, with a pang of loss that was worse than the wound.
But her legs had not given out on her entirely; she ran against her brother with one blood-slicked foot, and then ahead of them was the gate, and the tunnel to the street, and then, if they lived, the fliers home.
The streets were full of panic, but not of swords, and they made good time, Tara slipping once or twice as her bloody heel skidded on the pavement.
By the time they reached the flier platform, the battle was struck in earnest. The Kaldanes had sent troops to reinforce the platform. Thuvia was farthest ahead, darting toward one of the fliers. The jetan-men in black and orange had fallen back, and were fighting side by side against the monstrous bodies of Kaldane troops, and from the side of the platform that was flush against the city, reinforcements were already coming.
Djor had hung back, and when he saw them coming, he reached for Tara to help ease her brother’s burden.
“Help Thuvia!” Djor called, and Carthoris disappeared into the melee.
Djor surveyed the oncoming soldiers. “This will be an ugly fight,” he said.
Tara grimaced. “Then put me somewhere, and give me a sword.”
“I’ll put you at my back,” he said, “and we’ll see if we can take some of the fight out of them.”
A shortsword appeared in her hand, and she braced herself as best she could.
“And if we die today,” said Djor, “know that it did me good to be your friend again.”
Tara could think of nothing to say—she could not say “Die with honor,” not to him—and instead she only raised her sword and prepared to fight.
One of the Kaldanes caught sight of her and began the charge along the edges of the platform, skirting the battle to reach her faster.
Warrior challenges the Chief, she thought.
Then there was the roar of engines, and the screams of the Kaldanes from below, and Tara looked up and saw a flier descending, bearing the crest of Dejah Thoris, come to take them home.
As soon as Tara was home and out from under the doctor’s stitches, she sent for her husband, Gahan.
“Tell him nothing of what has happened,” she told the messenger. “Let it wait until I can tell it.”
That night, she lay on a chaise in her quarters, with Carthoris and Thuvia and Djor beside her.
Djor was his old self, open and easy, and Carthoris as he always was, and Tara thought it would have been worth the danger
just to have Djor as her friend again. (To have a brother back was something that needed no words.)
“The Kaldanes have blades either rusted or poisoned,” said Tara. “My whole leg burned when it struck me.”
“Their blades might be trying harder to kill you,” Carthoris pointed out. “You’ve triumphed over them so many times it has made them angry.”
“I can triumph over you, too,” she said. “I am advised not to stand; that doesn’t mean I cannot fight.”
A messenger interrupted—Gahan had arrived.
Thuvia smiled and stood. “I will greet him,” she said. “Do not test yourself. Your will is greater than your need.”
“It would never be the reverse,” Carthoris said, and Djor nodded once in agreement.
Tara had no ready answer for the praise of a brother and a near-brother.
Behind them the sun was setting, and the warm light of the Barsoom sun bathed the room around them in just the way she’d grown up with.
Though she would have to leave Helium soon and return to her husband’s city, this was the way she would always consider the light to be most beautiful.
Some things, maybe, did not have to change after all.
“Tara?” Carthoris cut in. “Is everything all right? How do you feel?”
She smiled and said, “At home.”
In the first book in the Barsoom series, A Princess of Mars, we are introduced to John Carter as he’s prospecting for gold in Arizona. When he runs afoul of a local tribe of Apache Indians, he seeks refuge in a cave, where he collapses from exhaustion. Upon awakening he finds himself paralyzed, unable to turn and glimpse the haunting presence that he senses in the cave with him. (The Indians flee in terror from this apparition.) Later, Carter finds himself staring down at his lifeless body. He wanders outside and stares up at the night sky, and finds himself drawn across outer space to Mars. And Carter’s not the only Earthman to have this strange experience. In The Master Mind of Mars, a World War I soldier named Ulysses Paxton awakens on Barsoom after being mortally wounded. Our next tale tells of yet another Earthman who finds himself on Barsoom, though he’s a very different sort from the gentlemanly John Carter of Virginia. A Princess of Mars begins in the Wild West, and in many ways Barsoom is a colorful echo of the West, with its tribes of hostile natives galloping about. Of course, on Barsoom the hostile natives have four arms, and their mounts have eight legs, but the flavor is much the same, and this next tale emphasizes that Western flavor to its utmost, with an irascible narrator who don’t take no guff from anyone.
A SIDEKICK OF MARS
BY GARTH NIX
I’d guess you, like what seems to be most of the world these days, have read about John Carter, and his adventures and whatnot on the red planet we call Mars and the locals there call Barsoom. But I bet you’ve never read nothing about one Lamentation of Wordly Sin Jones, who was right there by J. C.’s side for more than a sixth of the time by my calculation but don’t get a mention at all in any of the write-ups. Not even under the name by which Carter knew me, which wasn’t the full moniker my god-fearin’ parents dished up but the shorter, easier to get your mouth around Lam Jones.
See? I bet you’re castin’ your mind back through all those books and not remembering any Lam Jones, which is a downright insult, being as I was there, as I said, some eighteen percent of the time, only to get left out when Carter got back to Earth and decided to tell his tales to that nephew of his.
Not that Carter told it all, oh no, he was right reticent on a couple of matters. He could be downright closemouthed when it suited him, and probably still is, since for all I know he’s living yet, me not having seen him for some considerable time due to him being back on Barsoom and me being back here on this green Earth. Where I hopes I will stay, come to think of it, though how long that will be is anyone’s guess, there not being anyone alive who knows what in God’s name that buffalo hide scroll I took off the body of that Indian did to me, aside from wrestling me right out of my flesh and flinging me off to the red planet and back again like a damn hot chestnut juggled between two hands.
Let me tell you how I first met up with Captain John Carter . . . but I s’pose I’m getting ahead of myself. As I was saying, Lam Jones is what I been known by since I was going on fourteen, except for a period in the Union Army when I was called Private Jones and then Corporal Jones and finally Quartermaster-Sergeant Jones, but as soon as the war was done with, not so long after my nineteenth birthday, I got back to being plain old Lam Jones again.
Me fighting for the North probably was the first thing that put Carter off me, him being a rebel and all. Or maybe like a lot of hot-blooded, rip-roaring cavalry types, he just hated quartermasters. There must have been a dozen or more occasions when I had to face down some shouting colonel or major who wanted something that I either just didn’t have in the stores, or couldn’t give them without a paper signed by the appropriate officer, not just any jumped up Brigadier-General. Why, sometimes what they wanted had to be approved by General Meigs himself, and it was a marvel to me that these officers couldn’t understand a simple procedure and put their request through the proper channels in an approved fashion.
Now I’m getting behind. Suffice to say that at the end of the war, there I was, plain old Lam Jones again, left by the tide of battle (though not the sharp end of it) in a three-saloon town, with a meager bounty from a grateful government, that being I got to keep my Spencer carbine, a rusty old saber I’d never used, and two hundred and two dollars in back pay, most of it paper money which passed at a discount in favor of gold.
Gold! Like a lot of folks around then, I was mad for the yellow metal, and I’d set my sights on getting a whole lot more of it than the three Miss Liberty coins I had in my poke. That’s why I went west as soon as I could, and sure enough I struck it lucky right away in Arizona, when I met a fellow called Nine-Tenths Noah, an old-time miner, who reckoned he knew a prime spot for a strike, only he needed a partner and a stake on account of him being a vagrant drunk.
To cut a long story down to size, we did well in our gold-diggings. Despite Nine-Tenths Noah being a soak of the first degree, being pretty much permanently pickled (as the nine-tenths referred), he knew his business and he provided the brains of the operation, while I provided the stake and then the digging power. I guess I ain’t mentioned that short as I am from foot to crown, I am nearly as wide as tall, and all of it muscle. Some folks even tried calling me The Block, on account of my physique, back in the regiment, until I showed ’em I was against it.
That might well be another reason Carter misliked mentioning me in his stories. Sure, he was taller and had the looks and all, but I was stronger. He could jump farther, having the better balance, but when it came to grip and lift, I left him in the red dust. We had a thoat-lifting contest once (I ’spect you know a thoat is a Martian horse-thing) when we were both sozzled on the stuff that passes for whiskey on Barsoom. I lifted my thoat clear above my head, and he only got his to shoulder-height. It kicked him when he threw it down too, and he was kind of upset about the whole thing the next day, and blamed me for it, though it had been his idea all along. He wasn’t a drinker, in a usual way, so maybe his wife, that Dejah Thoris, gave him a scold when he staggered back to the palace.
Anyways, that was much later. Back on Earth, Old Noah’s nose had led us right, and I was digging out a lot of gold. All through the winter of 1866 we kept at it, and it was only when spring had started to come over and the snow melt begun that we realized that we were down to the final nasty-looking hunk of salt beef, there was but one sack of flour left, and Noah was having to dive headfirst into his puncheon of snakebite whiskey to dip his cup. We’d left it kind of late to resupply, which might surprise you what with me being a former quartermaster and all. It was the gold that did it. As long as more of it kept coming out of the mine, neither of us could bear to stop.
The nearest town was four days away, walking. I don’t hold much with riding, being as I said,
more square than rectangular in shape. I had to shorten stirrups so high as to provoke ridicule, and there weren’t many horses that liked my weight none, either. So leading three mules, I left Noah behind to guard the mine, on account of him being incapable of walking any considerable distance. There was even a chance he might sober up while I was gone. He couldn’t ever ration his drinking and there was only six gallons left.
Only I never did make it back in the nine days I’d reckoned, which was four to walk out, a day’s business and four days back. In fact, I hardly got a mile from the mine.
It was Indians that done this, leastways one particular Indian. We hadn’t seen any Indians at all over the winter, though we knew we were on Apache land. The mine was in a narrow mountain canyon, with few trees or foliage, and no hunting to speak of, so I suppose it wasn’t worth a visit. I didn’t know much about the Apache myself, or Indians in general, having been raised in Pennsylvania and never being in the West before. Noah had taught me a few signs to get along, but I hoped I’d never get close enough to need ’em, nor my Sharps carbine or the Colt Army .44 I had stuck in my pants neither.
I wasn’t thinking about Indians, or much else neither, ’cept the slap-up meal I was going to have in town, when I just about tripped over the legs of a fellow, lying straight across the narrow path that was the only way out of the eastern end of the canyon. I jumped back into my lead mule, who protested at this kind of unexpected treatment. It let out a bray that echoed down the canyon walls and that didn’t help me none as I was scrabbling to get my Colt out, it having slipped down a piece and the hammer getting stuck under my waistband.
With the gun in my hand I steadied a little, maybe also because the fellow wasn’t moving at all. His bare legs were across the trail, but the top half of him were stuck in a little cave mouth I’d never noticed before, in the almost sheer canyon side. I called out to him, but he never moved. So I bent down and dragged him out, and had to jump back again as a huge snake come out with him, sounding its damn rattle as it lunged at me. I fired at once, and blasted it in half, the gunshot and the snake rattlin’ and writhing about, making my lead mule decide to push past me and take off, with the others at its heels.
Under the Moons of Mars Page 17
