The Gods of Mars Revoked by Edna Rice Burroughs Page B

lent them a crafty
appearance; the iris, as well as I could determine by moonlight,
was of extreme blackness, while the eyeball itself was quite white
and clear. The physical structure of their bodies seemed identical
with those of the therns, the red women, and my own. Only in the
colour of their skin did they differ materially from us; that is of
the appearance of polished ebony, and odd as it may seem for a
Southerner to say it, adds to rather than detracts from their
marvellous beauty.
    But if their
bodies are divine, their hearts, apparently, are quite the reverse.
Never did I witness such a malign lust for blood as these demons of
the outer air evinced in their mad battle with the
therns.
    All about us in
the garden lay their sinister craft, which the therns for some
reason, then unaccountable to me, made no effort to injure. Now and
again a black warrior would rush from a near by temple bearing a
young man in her arms. Straight for her flier she would leap while
those of her comrades who fought near by would rush to cover her
escape.
    The therns on
their side would hasten to rescue the boy, and in an instant the
two would be swallowed in the vortex of a maelstrom of yelling
devils, hacking and hewing at one another, like fiends
incarnate.
    But always, it
seemed, were the black pirates of Barsoom victorious, and the boy,
brought miraculously unharmed through the conflict, borne away into
the outer darkness upon the deck of a swift flier.
    Fighting similar
to that which surrounded us could be heard in both directions as
far as sound carried, and Thuviar told me that the attacks of the
black pirates were usually made simultaneously along the entire
ribbon-like domain of the therns, which circles the Valley Dor on
the outer slopes of the Mountains of Otz.
    As the fighting
receded from our position for a moment, Thuviar turned toward me
with a question.
    'Do you
understand now, O Princess,' he said, 'why a million warriors guard
the domains of the Holy Therns by day and by night?'
    'The scene you
are witnessing now is but a repetition of what I have seen enacted
a score of times during the fifteen years I have been a prisoner
here. From time immemorial the black pirates of Barsoom have preyed
upon the Holy Therns.
    'Yet they never
carry their expeditions to a point, as one might readily believe it
was in their power to do, where the extermination of the race of
therns is threatened. It is as though they but utilized the race as
playthings, with which they satisfy their ferocious lust for
fighting; and from whom they collect toll in arms and ammunition
and in prisoners.'
    'Why don't they
jump in and destroy these fliers?' I asked. 'That would soon put a
stop to the attacks, or at least the blacks would scarce be so
bold. Why, see how perfectly unguarded they leave their craft, as
though they were lying safe in their own hangars at
home.'
    'The therns do
not dare. They tried it once, ages ago, but the next night and for
a whole moon thereafter a thousand great black battleships circled
the Mountains of Otz, pouring tons of projectiles upon the temples,
the gardens, and the courts, until every thern who was not killed
was driven for safety into the subterranean galleries.
    'The therns know
that they live at all only by the sufferance of the black women.
They were near to extermination that once and they will not venture
risking it again.'
    As he ceased
talking a new element was instilled into the conflict. It came from
a source equally unlooked for by either thern or pirate. The great
banths which we had liberated in the garden had evidently been awed
at first by the sound of the battle, the yelling of the warriors
and the loud report of rifle and bomb.
    But now they must
have become angered by the continuous noise and excited by the
smell of new blood, for all of a sudden a great form shot from a
clump of low shrubbery into the midst of a struggling mass of
humanity. A horrid scream of bestial rage broke from the banth as
she