At The Gale's Mercy

: The Chessmen Of Mars

Tara of Helium did not return to her father's guests, but awaited

in her own apartments the word from Djor Kantos which she knew

must come, begging her to return to the gardens. She would then

refuse, haughtily. But no appeal came from Djor Kantos. At first

Tara of Helium was angry, then she was hurt, and always she was

puzzled. She could not understand. Occasionally she thought of

the Jed of Gathol and then she would
tamp her foot, for she was

very angry indeed with Gahan. The presumption of the man! He had

insinuated that he read love for him in her eyes. Never had she

been so insulted and humiliated. Never had she so thoroughly

hated a man. Suddenly she turned toward Uthia.



"My flying leather!" she commanded.



"But the guests!" exclaimed the slave girl. "Your father, The

Warlord, will expect you to return."



"He will be disappointed," snapped Tara of Helium.



The slave hesitated. "He does not approve of your flying alone,"

she reminded her mistress.



The young princess sprang to her feet and seized the unhappy

slave by the shoulders, shaking her. "You are becoming

unbearable, Uthia," she cried. "Soon there will be no alternative

than to send you to the public slave-market. Then possibly you

will find a master to your liking."



Tears came to the soft eyes of the slave girl. "It is because I

love you, my princess," she said softly. Tara of Helium melted.

She took the slave in her arms and kissed her.



"I have the disposition of a thoat, Uthia," she said. "Forgive

me! I love you and there is nothing that I would not do for you

and nothing would I do to harm you. Again, as I have so often in

the past, I offer you your freedom."



"I do not wish my freedom if it will separate me from you, Tara

of Helium," replied Uthia. "I am happy here with you--I think

that I should die without you."



Again the girls kissed. "And you will not fly alone, then?"

questioned the slave.



Tara of Helium laughed and pinched her companion. "You persistent

little pest," she cried. "Of course I shall fly--does not Tara of

Helium always do that which pleases her?"



Uthia shook her head sorrowfully. "Alas! she does," she admitted.

"Iron is the Warlord of Barsoom to the influences of all but two.

In the hands of Dejah Thoris and Tara of Helium he is as potters'

clay."



"Then run and fetch my flying leather like the sweet slave you

are," directed the mistress.



* * * * *



Far out across the ochre sea-bottoms beyond the twin cities of

Helium raced the swift flier of Tara of Helium. Thrilling to the

speed and the buoyancy and the obedience of the little craft the

girl drove toward the northwest. Why she should choose that

direction she did not pause to consider. Perhaps because in that

direction lay the least known areas of Barsoom, and, ergo,

Romance, Mystery, and Adventure. In that direction also lay far

Gathol; but to that fact she gave no conscious thought.



She did, however, think occasionally of the jed of that distant

kingdom, but the reaction to these thoughts was scarcely

pleasurable. They still brought a flush of shame to her cheeks

and a surge of angry blood to her heart. She was very angry with

the Jed of Gathol, and though she should never see him again she

was quite sure that hate of him would remain fresh in her memory

forever. Mostly her thoughts revolved about another--Djor Kantos.

And when she thought of him she thought also of Olvia Marthis of

Hastor. Tara of Helium thought that she was jealous of the fair

Olvia and it made her very angry to think that. She was angry

with Djor Kantos and herself, but she was not angry at all with

Olvia Marthis, whom she loved, and so of course she was not

jealous really. The trouble was, that Tara of Helium had failed

for once to have her own way. Djor Kantos had not come running

like a willing slave when she had expected him, and, ah, here was

the nub of the whole thing! Gahan, Jed of Gathol, a stranger, had

been a witness to her humiliation. He had seen her unclaimed at

the beginning of a great function and he had had to come to her

rescue to save her, as he doubtless thought, from the inglorious

fate of a wall-flower. At the recurring thought, Tara of Helium

could feel her whole body burning with scarlet shame and then she

went suddenly white and cold with rage; whereupon she turned her

flier about so abruptly that she was all but torn from her

lashings upon the flat, narrow deck. She reached home just before

dark. The guests had departed. Quiet had descended upon the

palace. An hour later she joined her father and mother at the

evening meal.



"You deserted us, Tara of Helium," said John Carter. "It is not

what the guests of John Carter should expect."



"They did not come to see me," replied Tara of Helium. "I did not

ask them."



"They were no less your guests," replied her father.



The girl rose, and came and stood beside him and put her arms

about his neck.



"My proper old Virginian," she cried, rumpling his shock of black

hair.



"In Virginia you would be turned over your father's knee and

spanked," said the man, smiling.



She crept into his lap and kissed him. "You do not love me any

more," she announced. "No one loves me," but she could not

compose her features into a pout because bubbling laughter

insisted upon breaking through.



"The trouble is there are too many who love you," he said. "And

now there is another."



"Indeed!" she cried. "What do you mean?"



"Gahan of Gathol has asked permission to woo you."



The girl sat up very straight and tilted her chin in the air. "I

would not wed with a walking diamond-mine," she said. "I will not

have him."



"I told him as much," replied her father, "and that you were as

good as betrothed to another. He was very courteous about it; but

at the same time he gave me to understand that he was accustomed

to getting what he wanted and that he wanted you very much. I

suppose it will mean another war. Your mother's beauty kept

Helium at war for many years, and--well, Tara of Helium, if I

were a young man I should doubtless be willing to set all Barsoom

afire to win you, as I still would to keep your divine mother,"

and he smiled across the sorapus table and its golden service at

the undimmed beauty of Mars' most beautiful woman.



"Our little girl should not yet be troubled with such matters,"

said Dejah Thoris. "Remember, John Carter, that you are not

dealing with an Earth child, whose span of life would be more

than half completed before a daughter of Barsoom reached actual

maturity."



"But do not the daughters of Barsoom sometimes marry as early as

twenty?" he insisted.



"Yes, but they will still be desirable in the eyes of men after

forty generations of Earth folk have returned to dust--there is

no hurry, at least, upon Barsoom. We do not fade and decay here

as you tell me those of your planet do, though you, yourself,

belie your own words. When the time seems proper Tara of Helium

shall wed with Djor Kantos, and until then let us give the matter

no further thought."



"No," said the girl, "the subject irks me, and I shall not marry

Djor Kantos, or another--I do not intend to wed."



Her father and mother looked at her and smiled. "When Gahan of

Gathol returns he may carry you off," said the former.



"He has gone?" asked the girl.



"His flier departs for Gathol in the morning," John Carter

replied.



"I have seen the last of him then," remarked Tara of Helium with

a sigh of relief.



"He says not," returned John Carter.



The girl dismissed the subject with a shrug and the conversation

passed to other topics. A letter had arrived from Thuvia of

Ptarth, who was visiting at her father's court while Carthoris,

her mate, hunted in Okar. Word had been received that the Tharks

and Warhoons were again at war, or rather that there had been an

engagement, for war was their habitual state. In the memory of

man there had been no peace between these two savage green

hordes--only a single temporary truce. Two new battleships had

been launched at Hastor. A little band of holy therns was

attempting to revive the ancient and discredited religion of

Issus, who they claimed still lived in spirit and had

communicated with them. There were rumors of war from Dusar. A

scientist claimed to have discovered human life on the further

moon. A madman had attempted to destroy the atmosphere plant.

Seven people had been assassinated in Greater Helium during the

last ten zodes, (the equivalent of an Earth day).



Following the meal Dejah Thoris and The Warlord played at jetan,

the Barsoomian game of chess, which is played upon a board of a

hundred alternate black and orange squares. One player has twenty

black pieces, the other, twenty orange pieces. A brief

description of the game may interest those Earth readers who care

for chess, and will not be lost upon those who pursue this

narrative to its conclusion, since before they are done they will

find that a knowledge of jetan will add to the interest and the

thrills that are in store for them.



The men are placed upon the board as in chess upon the first two

rows next the players. In order from left to right on the line of

squares nearest the players, the jetan pieces are Warrior,

Padwar, Dwar, Flier, Chief, Princess, Flier, Dwar, Padwar,

Warrior. In the next line all are Panthans except the end pieces,

which are called Thoats, and represent mounted warriors.



The Panthans, which are represented as warriors with one feather,

may move one space in any direction except backward; the Thoats,

mounted warriors with three feathers, may move one straight and

one diagonal, and may jump intervening pieces; Warriors, foot

soldiers with two feathers, straight in any direction, or

diagonally, two spaces; Padwars, lieutenants wearing two

feathers, two diagonal in any direction, or combination; Dwars,

captains wearing three feathers, three spaces straight in any

direction, or combination; Fliers, represented by a propellor

with three blades, three spaces in any direction, or combination,

diagonally, and may jump intervening pieces; the Chief, indicated

by a diadem with ten jewels, three spaces in any direction,

straight, or diagonal; Princess, diadem with a single jewel, same

as Chief, and can jump intervening pieces.



The game is won when a player places any of his pieces on the

same square with his opponent's Princess, or when a Chief takes a

Chief. It is drawn when a Chief is taken by any opposing piece

other than the opposing Chief; or when both sides have been

reduced to three pieces, or less, of equal value, and the game is

not terminated in the following ten moves, five apiece. This is

but a general outline of the game, briefly stated.



It was this game that Dejah Thoris and John Carter were playing

when Tara of Helium bid them good night, retiring to her own

quarters and her sleeping silks and furs. "Until morning, my

beloved," she called back to them as she passed from the

apartment, nor little did she guess, nor her parents, that this

might indeed be the last time that they would ever set eyes upon

her.



The morning broke dull and gray. Ominous clouds billowed

restlessly and low. Beneath them torn fragments scudded toward

the northwest. From her window Tara of Helium looked out upon

this unusual scene. Dense clouds seldom overcast the Barsoomian

sky. At this hour of the day it was her custom to ride one of

those small thoats that are the saddle animals of the red

Martians, but the sight of the billowing clouds lured her to a

new adventure. Uthia still slept and the girl did not disturb

her. Instead, she dressed quietly and went to the hangar upon the

roof of the palace directly above her quarters where her own

swift flier was housed. She had never driven through the clouds.

It was an adventure that always she had longed to experience. The

wind was strong and it was with difficulty that she maneuvered

the craft from the hangar without accident, but once away it

raced swiftly out above the twin cities. The buffeting winds

caught and tossed it, and the girl laughed aloud in sheer joy of

the resultant thrills. She handled the little ship like a

veteran, though few veterans would have faced the menace of such

a storm in so light a craft. Swiftly she rose toward the clouds,

racing with the scudding streamers of the storm-swept fragments,

and a moment later she was swallowed by the dense masses

billowing above. Here was a new world, a world of chaos unpeopled

except for herself; but it was a cold, damp, lonely world and she

found it depressing after the novelty of it had been dissipated,

by an overpowering sense of the magnitude of the forces surging

about her. Suddenly she felt very lonely and very cold and very

little. Hurriedly, therefore, she rose until presently her craft

broke through into the glorious sunlight that transformed the

upper surface of the somber element into rolling masses of

burnished silver. Here it was still cold, but without the

dampness of the clouds, and in the eye of the brilliant sun her

spirits rose with the mounting needle of her altimeter. Gazing at

the clouds, now far beneath, the girl experienced the sensation

of hanging stationary in mid-heaven; but the whirring of her

propellor, the wind beating upon her, the high figures that rose

and fell beneath the glass of her speedometer, these told her

that her speed was terrific. It was then that she determined to

turn back.



The first attempt she made above the clouds, but it was

unsuccessful. To her surprise she discovered that she could not

even turn against the high wind, which rocked and buffeted the

frail craft. Then she dropped swiftly to the dark and wind-swept

zone between the hurtling clouds and the gloomy surface of the

shadowed ground. Here she tried again to force the nose of the

flier back toward Helium, but the tempest seized the frail thing

and hurled it remorselessly about, rolling it over and over and

tossing it as it were a cork in a cataract. At last the girl

succeeded in righting the flier, perilously close to the ground.

Never before had she been so close to death, yet she was not

terrified. Her coolness had saved her, that and the strength of

the deck lashings that held her. Traveling with the storm she was

safe, but where was it bearing her? She pictured the apprehension

of her father and mother when she failed to appear at the morning

meal. They would find her flier missing and they would guess that

somewhere in the path of the storm it lay a wrecked and tangled

mass upon her dead body, and then brave men would go out in

search of her, risking their lives; and that lives would be lost

in the search, she knew, for she realized now that never in her

life-time had such a tempest raged upon Barsoom.



She must turn back! She must reach Helium before her mad lust for

thrills had cost the sacrifice of a single courageous life! She

determined that greater safety and likelihood of success lay

above the clouds, and once again she rose through the chilling,

wind-tossed vapor. Her speed again was terrific, for the wind

seemed to have increased rather than to have lessened. She sought

gradually to check the swift flight of her craft, but though she

finally succeeded in reversing her motor the wind but carried her

on as it would. Then it was that Tara of Helium lost her temper.

Had her world not always bowed in acquiescence to her every wish?

What were these elements that they dared to thwart her? She would

demonstrate to them that the daughter of The Warlord was not to

be denied! They would learn that Tara of Helium might not be

ruled even by the forces of nature!



And so she drove her motor forward again and then with her firm,

white teeth set in grim determination she drove the steering

lever far down to port with the intention of forcing the nose of

her craft straight into the teeth of the wind, and the wind

seized the frail thing and toppled it over upon its back, and

twisted and turned it and hurled it over and over; the propellor

raced for an instant in an air pocket and then the tempest seized

it again and twisted it from its shaft, leaving the girl helpless

upon an unmanageable atom that rose and fell, and rolled and

tumbled--the sport of the elements she had defied. Tara of

Helium's first sensation was one of surprise--that she had failed

to have her own way. Then she commenced to feel concern--not for

her own safety but for the anxiety of her parents and the dangers

that the inevitable searchers must face. She reproached herself

for the thoughtless selfishness that had jeopardized the peace

and safety of others. She realized her own grave danger, too; but

she was still unterrified, as befitted the daughter of Dejah

Thoris and John Carter. She knew that her buoyancy tanks might

keep her afloat indefinitely, but she had neither food nor water,

and she was being borne toward the least-known area of Barsoom.

Perhaps it would be better to land immediately and await the

coming of the searchers, rather than to allow herself to be

carried still further from Helium, thus greatly reducing the

chances of early discovery; but when she dropped toward the

ground she discovered that the violence of the wind rendered an

attempt to land tantamount to destruction and she rose again,

rapidly.



Carried along a few hundred feet above the ground she was better

able to appreciate the Titanic proportions of the storm than when

she had flown in the comparative serenity of the zone above the

clouds, for now she could distinctly see the effect of the wind

upon the surface of Barsoom. The air was filled with dust and

flying bits of vegetation and when the storm carried her across

an irrigated area of farm land she saw great trees and stone

walls and buildings lifted high in air and scattered broadcast

over the devastated country; and then she was carried swiftly on

to other sights that forced in upon her consciousness a rapidly

growing conviction that after all Tara of Helium was a very small

and insignificant and helpless person. It was quite a shock to

her self-pride while it lasted, and toward evening she was ready

to believe that it was going to last forever. There had been no

abatement in the ferocity of the tempest, nor was there

indication of any. She could only guess at the distance she had

been carried for she could not believe in the correctness of the

high figures that had been piled upon the record of her odometer.

They seemed unbelievable and yet, had she known it, they were

quite true--in twelve hours she had flown and been carried by the

storm full seven thousand haads. Just before dark she was carried

over one of the deserted cities of ancient Mars. It was Torquas,

but she did not know it. Had she, she might readily have been

forgiven for abandoning the last vestige of hope, for to the

people of Helium Torquas seems as remote as do the South Sea

Islands to us. And still the tempest, its fury unabated, bore her

on.



All that night she hurtled through the dark beneath the clouds,

or rose to race through the moonlit void beneath the glory of

Barsoom's two satellites. She was cold and hungry and altogether

miserable, but her brave little spirit refused to admit that her

plight was hopeless even though reason proclaimed the truth. Her

reply to reason, sometime spoken aloud in sudden defiance,

recalled the Spartan stubbornness of her sire in the face of

certain annihilation: "I still live!"



That morning there had been an early visitor at the palace of The

Warlord. It was Gahan, Jed of Gathol. He had arrived shortly

after the absence of Tara of Helium had been noted, and in the

excitement he had remained unannounced until John Carter had

happened upon him in the great reception corridor of the palace

as The Warlord was hurrying out to arrange for the dispatch of

ships in search of his daughter.



Gahan read the concern upon the face of The Warlord. "Forgive me

if I intrude, John Carter," he said. "I but came to ask the

indulgence of another day since it would be fool-hardy to attempt

to navigate a ship in such a storm."



"Remain, Gahan, a welcome guest until you choose to leave us,"

replied The Warlord; "but you must forgive any seeming

inattention upon the part of Helium until my daughter is restored

to us."



"You daughter! Restored! What do you mean?" exclaimed the

Gatholian. "I do not understand."



"She is gone, together with her light flier. That is all we know.

We can only assume that she decided to fly before the morning

meal and was caught in the clutches of the tempest. You will

pardon me, Gahan, if I leave you abruptly--I am arranging to send

ships in search of her;" but Gahan, Jed of Gathol, was already

speeding in the direction of the palace gate. There he leaped

upon a waiting thoat and followed by two warriors in the metal of

Gathol, he dashed through the avenues of Helium toward the palace

that had been set aside for his entertainment.



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