JERRY found his antagonist a swordsman of unusual talent. And as he fought, there were many times when he was only able to save himself from the touch that would have sent him to the sacrifice pen by the agility which his Earth-trained muscles afforded him on Mars.
And it was this same factor which, in the end, gave him the advantage. For his opponent, evidently fearful of the derision of the horde, pressed so fiercely that he tired himself. Soon Jerry was only playing with the man who had been the idol of the Torturer’s warriors. But he quickly put an end to it by marking the chest of the jendus just above the heart.
The face of the latter was a study in mixed emotions—surprise, chagrin, and hurt vanity. But Jerry’s attention was distracted from him by the voice of the masked man on the divan.
“You have made good your boast, slave,” he said, “and we are ready to appoint you a jendus in our army if you will prove your devotion to our cause by truthfully answering any questions I may put to you. Fail to do so, and there is still the sacrifice pens. What is your name?”
“Men call me Gudo, the slave.”
“Slave of whom?”
“Of Her Highness Nisha Novil.”
“Ah! And you mean to tell me that Her Highness would send a swordsman of your ability to work on the canal?”
“That was where she sent me, Your Majesty.”
“Are you of the brown race of Kalsivar?”
“If I am not,” said Jerry with a smile, “what am I?”
“That is what I mean to find out—in a moment,” said Sarkis. He turned to a slave and issued a curt order. The latter dashed away, returning a moment later with a large basin of water. The Torturer took a small flask from his pouch, and uncorking it, poured several drops of a clear liquid into the water. After stirring it with his dagger he beckoned to Jerry. “Come and stand before me,” he commanded.
The Earthman did as directed.
Taking the basin from the slave’s hands, Sarkis commanded: “Remove our head-cloak.”
As soon as he had complied, Jerry was drenched from head to foot by the contents of that basin. To his surprise and horror, he saw that wherever the water had touched, his skin had resumed its normal color.
“And now,” said the Torturer, a note of exultation in his hollow tones, “who are you?”
“I am Jerry Morgan of Earth.”
“And not the slave of Nisha Novil?”
“No.”
“Nor yet a member of the brown race of Kalsivar. Nor do men call you Gudo. You have lied to me, and you know the penalty. To the sacrifice pens with him. And see that he is the first victim to greet the great Lord Sun at his rising tomorrow.”
Jerry was hustled away through the jeering crowd to the gate of a large inclosure, surrounded by a stone wall thirty feet in height. A guard opened the gate, and he was hurled through by his burly conductors.
A big hand reached out to help him. It was the hand of Yewd, the fisherman.
“I did not think to see you here,” said the giant, “and with your rightful color restored. This Sarkis must be a wizard, in very truth.”
“At least he is a good guesser,” replied Jerry, “or what is more probable, is someone who saw me at the court of Numin Vil.
“There may be some truth in that. I have heard that the Torturer spends much time away from his army, and that he comes and goes alone in his great metal flying machine. Each time he leaves, he flies straight toward the sun until his craft is lost to view, and gives out that he is returning to his home in the sun.”
“I’m afraid he would need a better insulated suit and mask than the ones he is wearing for a visit to the sun,” said Jerry. “Can his people actually believe he goes there?”
“Many of them do,” replied Yewd. “Others, I am convinced, only pretend. They have joined forces with him because he has always been victorious, and because his raids afford much loot.”
While they were talking the last of the victims from the raid was thrust into the pen. And shortly thereafter, night fell with the suddenness common to Mars, where there is little light refraction in the thin dry atmosphere, and no perceptible twilight. The pen was plunged into instant darkness.
In the deeper shadow of the wall, Jerry was carrying on a whispered conversation with Yewd.
“You say the pen is on the edge of the lake, and that the gawrs swim riderless only a short distance from the shore?” he asked.
“If they remain as they were before I was brought hither. But I don’t see how it will be possible for you to leap to the top of the wall.”
“That is a detail you must take on faith. In any event, we are all doomed men, and an attempt to escape cannot put us in worse case.”
“You are right,” agreed Yewd. “Let us then pass the word among the others, and see who is willing to make the attempt with us.”
“Tell them to take off their belts and give them to you,” Jerry said, “and I will do likewise. Twenty belts will easily reach over the top of the wall and to the ground on the other side. I’ll meet you here when we have made the rounds.”
A few moments later Yewd and Jerry collided in the darkness. “Have you some belts?” asked the Earthman.
“More than we need,” the giant replied. “I have twenty-seven.”
“And I have thirty-two,” Jerry told him. “We will construct two lines. Every man is coming with us, and thus we will be able to get them over the wall with more speed.”
As soon as the two long chains of belts had been fastened together, Yewd cleared a path for Jerry. Absolute silence had been enjoined upon all, but there was a subdued murmur of wonder as they heard the Earthman run and spring, and a moment later saw him outlined against the stars as he drew himself up onto the wall.
The end of each chain of belts had been hooked to the back of his own belt. But he left them there for a moment, as he paused to cast a swift, cautious look around him. There were no guards between him and the water’s edge. Most of the campfires had burned down to beds of glowing coals, but the sounds of revelry were loud and there was the mixed medley of songs, and drunken quarrels.
Assured that the way was clear, Jerry swiftly unhooked the two chains of belts, and lowered one on each side of him until ten belts had passed each hand and he knew that the ground had been reached. Then he gave one line a gentle shake, after which he gripped it with both hands and braced himself on the opposite side of the wall. A heavy weight was thrown on that chain of belts, but Jerry’s powerful earthly muscles were more than capable of supporting it. And in a few moments Yewd was on the wall beside him.
Yewd jerked a signal to the men beneath him, and as soon as the line grew taut, descended on the other side, where he grasped the ends of both lines.
Retaining his seat on the top of the wall, Jerry directed operations by signaling to those below each time a man had reached the top of the wall on either line, until he had counted sixty, and the pit was emptied. Then, drawing up the ends of the lines, he dropped them on the outside, and letting himself down as low as possible by hanging on to the outer rim of the wall, dropped after them.
Silently the men resumed their belts, and then, forming a great human chain by clasping hands in the dark, they silently advanced to the water’s edge. Here they paused for a moment, while Yewd whispered the final instructions.
“Remember, not a sound or a splash,” he cautioned. “It may be that we will become separated from one cause or another. If so, our place of rendezvous will be the southern end of the Tarvaho Marsh. Pass the word along, then swim out, seize the gawr nearest you, and fly straight north.”
The human chain broke into its units, with the exception of Yewd and Jerry. Because the latter knew nothing whatever about managing a gawr, the two had decided to attempt to make their escape on the same bird-beast.
A short swim brought them to the side of a great bird-beast which snorted and shook its head as the two men climbed to its back. Yewd, seated in front, unsnapped the ends of the two chains which trammeled the creature’s wings by being hooked through perforations in the membrane around one of the wing-bones. The double purpose of these chains became evident to Jerry when, a moment later, the giant fisherman snapped one to his own belt and the other to that of the Earthman.
“It is customary for a rider to attach both chains to his belt each time he mounts a gawr,” explained Yewd, “to prevent his falling to the ground in case he slips from his saddle. But since there are two of us, we must be content with one chain each.”
There was a light rod, fastened at one end to a short rope which was hooked around the gawr’s neck, and at the other, to the pommel of the saddle. The giant now raised the rod, whereupon the great bird-beast swam swiftly forward, then took to the air with a mighty flapping of wings. This was the signal which had been agreed upon for the others to take off. And their advent into the air was followed by a mighty splashing and flapping all about them.
It was followed, too, by shouts from several of the sentinels who had heard the noise and thought the bird-beasts had been attacked by some of the monster saurians which were known to inhabit the marsh.
But before the mounted guards had reached the remainder of the herd, the sixty stolen gawrs were silently winging their way northward in the darkness, high above the marsh. Pursuit parties were instantly organized, to fly in all directions, as it was impossible to tell which way the fugitives had gone.
In the meantime Jerry and his party flew steadily toward the north, unable to see each other in the darkness and guided solely by the blazing stellar constellations overhead, with which every Martian is familiar.
Presently, however, the nearer moon popped above the western horizon, and by its light Jerry saw that the gawr which he and Yewd bestrode had fallen quite a distance behind the other bird-beasts.
“Looks as if we are going to be late for the rendezvous.”
“The creature has a double, nay a treble burden,” replied Yewd. “I weigh as much as two average men, and you are not small, by any means.”
They lagged farther and farther behind until their fellow fugitives were out of sight. Shortly thereafter the beast fluttered groundward despite Yewd’s frantic tugs at the guiding rod. Although they were now flying over the desert, far to the north of the marsh where Sarkis was encamped, the bird-beast had selected a small, tree-covered oasis at which to land.
As soon as it alighted it folded its wings, ran in under the trees and splashed into a shallow pool, where it knelt, taking sips of water and refusing to rise or move.
Yewd unsnapped the ends of the chains from his and Jerry’s belts—then fastened them to the gawr’s wings.
“We may as well dismount and get some rest, ourselves. It will not stir from this place until it has fully recovered from its fatigue.”
They accordingly got down from the saddle and stretched themselves out on the sand beneath the thick canopy of trees. Scarcely had they done so when Jerry saw baridium torches flashing overhead, and looking up, saw a large party of flying warriors.
“Deza be praised!” exclaimed Yewd. “We have been preserved from capture by the sudden weariness of our bird-beast, and the thick foliage above this oasis. Had it continued to fly with us at the rate we were traveling we should soon have been overhauled.”
When the last of their pursuers had passed, Jerry settled down once more in his bed of sand.
He was awakened by a slanting shaft of bright sunlight, which had penetrated the surrounding foliage and shone directly in his face. Sitting up and looking about him, he saw that Yewd had already arisen and was standing beside the pool looking at the gawr, which had slumped over in a most unnatural position.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Come and see for yourself,” Yewd told him. “We are in sore straits.”
Hurrying to the giant’s side, Jerry saw that the bird-beast was dead. Blood had drooled down from the corners of its beak to form a congealing, bluish red pool upon the bank.
“What killed it?” Jerry asked.
Yewd pointed to the place where neck and body joined. From this spot several sharp spines projected through the skin.
“It swallowed a dagger fish. Must have been dying when we mounted it back at the marsh. The wonder is that the creature carried us this far.”
“Looks as if we’ll have to walk the rest of the way,” the Earthman observed.
“It looks as if we are doomed. For between us and the Tarvaho Marsh is an immense stretch of trackless desert, inhabited by fierce beasts, hostile tribes, and deadly insects.”