When Hell Broke Loose

: The Gods Of Mars

Early the next morning Xodar and I commenced work upon our plans for

escape. First I had him sketch upon the stone floor of our cell as

accurate a map of the south polar regions as was possible with the

crude instruments at our disposal--a buckle from my harness, and the

sharp edge of the wondrous gem I had taken from Sator Throg.



From this I computed the general direction of Helium and the distance

at w ich it lay from the opening which led to Omean.



Then I had him draw a map of Omean, indicating plainly the position of

Shador and of the opening in the dome which led to the outer world.



These I studied until they were indelibly imprinted in my memory. From

Xodar I learned the duties and customs of the guards who patrolled

Shador. It seemed that during the hours set aside for sleep only one

man was on duty at a time. He paced a beat that passed around the

prison, at a distance of about a hundred feet from the building.



The pace of the sentries, Xodar said, was very slow, requiring nearly

ten minutes to make a single round. This meant that for practically

five minutes at a time each side of the prison was unguarded as the

sentry pursued his snail like pace upon the opposite side.



"This information you ask," said Xodar, "will be all very valuable

AFTER we get out, but nothing that you have asked has any bearing on

that first and most important consideration."



"We will get out all right," I replied, laughing. "Leave that to me."



"When shall we make the attempt?" he asked.



"The first night that finds a small craft moored near the shore of

Shador," I replied.



"But how will you know that any craft is moored near Shador? The

windows are far beyond our reach."



"Not so, friend Xodar; look!"



With a bound I sprang to the bars of the window opposite us, and took a

quick survey of the scene without.



Several small craft and two large battleships lay within a hundred

yards of Shador.



"To-night," I thought, and was just about to voice my decision to

Xodar, when, without warning, the door of our prison opened and a guard

stepped in.



If the fellow saw me there our chances of escape might quickly go

glimmering, for I knew that they would put me in irons if they had the

slightest conception of the wonderful agility which my earthly muscles

gave me upon Mars.



The man had entered and was standing facing the centre of the room, so

that his back was toward me. Five feet above me was the top of a

partition wall separating our cell from the next.



There was my only chance to escape detection. If the fellow turned, I

was lost; nor could I have dropped to the floor undetected, since he

was no nearly below me that I would have struck him had I done so.



"Where is the white man?" cried the guard of Xodar. "Issus commands

his presence." He started to turn to see if I were in another part of

the cell.



I scrambled up the iron grating of the window until I could catch a

good footing on the sill with one foot; then I let go my hold and

sprang for the partition top.



"What was that?" I heard the deep voice of the black bellow as my metal

grated against the stone wall as I slipped over. Then I dropped

lightly to the floor of the cell beyond.



"Where is the white slave?" again cried the guard.



"I know not," replied Xodar. "He was here even as you entered. I am

not his keeper--go find him."



The black grumbled something that I could not understand, and then I

heard him unlocking the door into one of the other cells on the further

side. Listening intently, I caught the sound as the door closed behind

him. Then I sprang once more to the top of the partition and dropped

into my own cell beside the astonished Xodar.



"Do you see now how we will escape?" I asked him in a whisper.



"I see how you may," he replied, "but I am no wiser than before as to

how I am to pass these walls. Certain it is that I cannot bounce over

them as you do."



We heard the guard moving about from cell to cell, and finally, his

rounds completed, he again entered ours. When his eyes fell upon me

they fairly bulged from his head.



"By the shell of my first ancestor!" he roared. "Where have you been?"



"I have been in prison since you put me here yesterday," I answered.

"I was in this room when you entered. You had better look to your

eyesight."



He glared at me in mingled rage and relief.



"Come," he said. "Issus commands your presence."



He conducted me outside the prison, leaving Xodar behind. There we

found several other guards, and with them the red Martian youth who

occupied another cell upon Shador.



The journey I had taken to the Temple of Issus on the preceding day was

repeated. The guards kept the red boy and myself separated, so that we

had no opportunity to continue the conversation that had been

interrupted the previous night.



The youth's face had haunted me. Where had I seen him before. There

was something strangely familiar in every line of him; in his carriage,

his manner of speaking, his gestures. I could have sworn that I knew

him, and yet I knew too that I had never seen him before.



When we reached the gardens of Issus we were led away from the temple

instead of toward it. The way wound through enchanted parks to a

mighty wall that towered a hundred feet in air.



Massive gates gave egress upon a small plain, surrounded by the same

gorgeous forests that I had seen at the foot of the Golden Cliffs.



Crowds of blacks were strolling in the same direction that our guards

were leading us, and with them mingled my old friends the plant men and

great white apes.



The brutal beasts moved among the crowd as pet dogs might. If they

were in the way the blacks pushed them roughly to one side, or whacked

them with the flat of a sword, and the animals slunk away as in great

fear.



Presently we came upon our destination, a great amphitheatre situated

at the further edge of the plain, and about half a mile beyond the

garden walls.



Through a massive arched gateway the blacks poured in to take their

seats, while our guards led us to a smaller entrance near one end of

the structure.



Through this we passed into an enclosure beneath the seats, where we

found a number of other prisoners herded together under guard. Some of

them were in irons, but for the most part they seemed sufficiently awed

by the presence of their guards to preclude any possibility of

attempted escape.



During the trip from Shador I had had no opportunity to talk with my

fellow-prisoner, but now that we were safely within the barred paddock

our guards abated their watchfulness, with the result that I found

myself able to approach the red Martian youth for whom I felt such a

strange attraction.



"What is the object of this assembly?" I asked him. "Are we to fight

for the edification of the First Born, or is it something worse than

that?"



"It is a part of the monthly rites of Issus," he replied, "in which

black men wash the sins from their souls in the blood of men from the

outer world. If, perchance, the black is killed, it is evidence of his

disloyalty to Issus--the unpardonable sin. If he lives through the

contest he is held acquitted of the charge that forced the sentence of

the rites, as it is called, upon him.



"The forms of combat vary. A number of us may be pitted together

against an equal number, or twice the number of blacks; or singly we

may be sent forth to face wild beasts, or some famous black warrior."



"And if we are victorious," I asked, "what then--freedom?"



He laughed.



"Freedom, forsooth. The only freedom for us death. None who enters

the domains of the First Born ever leave. If we prove able fighters we

are permitted to fight often. If we are not mighty fighters--" He

shrugged his shoulders. "Sooner or later we die in the arena."



"And you have fought often?" I asked.



"Very often," he replied. "It is my only pleasure. Some hundred black

devils have I accounted for during nearly a year of the rites of Issus.

My mother would be very proud could she only know how well I have

maintained the traditions of my father's prowess."



"Your father must have been a mighty warrior!" I said. "I have known

most of the warriors of Barsoom in my time; doubtless I knew him. Who

was he?"



"My father was--"



"Come, calots!" cried the rough voice of a guard. "To the slaughter

with you," and roughly we were hustled to the steep incline that led to

the chambers far below which let out upon the arena.



The amphitheatre, like all I had ever seen upon Barsoom, was built in a

large excavation. Only the highest seats, which formed the low wall

surrounding the pit, were above the level of the ground. The arena

itself was far below the surface.



Just beneath the lowest tier of seats was a series of barred cages on a

level with the surface of the arena. Into these we were herded. But,

unfortunately, my youthful friend was not of those who occupied a cage

with me.



Directly opposite my cage was the throne of Issus. Here the horrid

creature squatted, surrounded by a hundred slave maidens sparkling in

jewelled trappings. Brilliant cloths of many hues and strange patterns

formed the soft cushion covering of the dais upon which they reclined

about her.



On four sides of the throne and several feet below it stood three solid

ranks of heavily armed soldiery, elbow to elbow. In front of these

were the high dignitaries of this mock heaven--gleaming blacks bedecked

with precious stones, upon their foreheads the insignia of their rank

set in circles of gold.



On both sides of the throne stretched a solid mass of humanity from top

to bottom of the amphitheatre. There were as many women as men, and

each was clothed in the wondrously wrought harness of his station and

his house. With each black was from one to three slaves, drawn from

the domains of the therns and from the outer world. The blacks are all

"noble." There is no peasantry among the First Born. Even the lowest

soldier is a god, and has his slaves to wait upon him.



The First Born do no work. The men fight--that is a sacred privilege

and duty; to fight and die for Issus. The women do nothing, absolutely

nothing. Slaves wash them, slaves dress them, slaves feed them. There

are some, even, who have slaves that talk for them, and I saw one who

sat during the rites with closed eyes while a slave narrated to her the

events that were transpiring within the arena.



The first event of the day was the Tribute to Issus. It marked the end

of those poor unfortunates who had looked upon the divine glory of the

goddess a full year before. There were ten of them--splendid beauties

from the proud courts of mighty Jeddaks and from the temples of the

Holy Therns. For a year they had served in the retinue of Issus;

to-day they were to pay the price of this divine preferment with their

lives; tomorrow they would grace the tables of the court functionaries.



A huge black entered the arena with the young women. Carefully he

inspected them, felt of their limbs and poked them in the ribs.

Presently he selected one of their number whom he led before the throne

of Issus. He addressed some words to the goddess which I could not

hear. Issus nodded her head. The black raised his hands above his

head in token of salute, grasped the girl by the wrist, and dragged her

from the arena through a small doorway below the throne.



"Issus will dine well to-night," said a prisoner beside me.



"What do you mean?" I asked.



"That was her dinner that old Thabis is taking to the kitchens. Didst

not note how carefully he selected the plumpest and tenderest of the

lot?"



I growled out my curses on the monster sitting opposite us on the

gorgeous throne.



"Fume not," admonished my companion; "you will see far worse than that

if you live even a month among the First Born."



I turned again in time to see the gate of a nearby cage thrown open and

three monstrous white apes spring into the arena. The girls shrank in

a frightened group in the centre of the enclosure.



One was on her knees with imploring hands outstretched toward Issus;

but the hideous deity only leaned further forward in keener

anticipation of the entertainment to come. At length the apes spied

the huddled knot of terror-stricken maidens and with demoniacal shrieks

of bestial frenzy, charged upon them.



A wave of mad fury surged over me. The cruel cowardliness of the

power-drunk creature whose malignant mind conceived such frightful

forms of torture stirred to their uttermost depths my resentment and my

manhood. The blood-red haze that presaged death to my foes swam before

my eyes.



The guard lolled before the unbarred gate of the cage which confined

me. What need of bars, indeed, to keep those poor victims from rushing

into the arena which the edict of the gods had appointed as their death

place!



A single blow sent the black unconscious to the ground. Snatching up

his long-sword, I sprang into the arena. The apes were almost upon the

maidens, but a couple of mighty bounds were all my earthly muscles

required to carry me to the centre of the sand-strewn floor.



For an instant silence reigned in the great amphitheatre, then a wild

shout arose from the cages of the doomed. My long-sword circled

whirring through the air, and a great ape sprawled, headless, at the

feet of the fainting girls.



The other apes turned now upon me, and as I stood facing them a sullen

roar from the audience answered the wild cheers from the cages. From

the tail of my eye I saw a score of guards rushing across the

glistening sand toward me. Then a figure broke from one of the cages

behind them. It was the youth whose personality so fascinated me.



He paused a moment before the cages, with upraised sword.



"Come, men of the outer world!" he shouted. "Let us make our deaths

worth while, and at the back of this unknown warrior turn this day's

Tribute to Issus into an orgy of revenge that will echo through the

ages and cause black skins to blanch at each repetition of the rites of

Issus. Come! The racks without your cages are filled with blades."



Without waiting to note the outcome of his plea, he turned and bounded

toward me. From every cage that harboured red men a thunderous shout

went up in answer to his exhortation. The inner guards went down

beneath howling mobs, and the cages vomited forth their inmates hot

with the lust to kill.



The racks that stood without were stripped of the swords with which the

prisoners were to have been armed to enter their allotted combats, and

a swarm of determined warriors sped to our support.



The great apes, towering in all their fifteen feet of height, had gone

down before my sword while the charging guards were still some distance

away. Close behind them pursued the youth. At my back were the young

girls, and as it was in their service that I fought, I remained

standing there to meet my inevitable death, but with the determination

to give such an account of myself as would long be remembered in the

land of the First Born.



I noted the marvellous speed of the young red man as he raced after the

guards. Never had I seen such speed in any Martian. His leaps and

bounds were little short of those which my earthly muscles had produced

to create such awe and respect on the part of the green Martians into

whose hands I had fallen on that long-gone day that had seen my first

advent upon Mars.



The guards had not reached me when he fell upon them from the rear, and

as they turned, thinking from the fierceness of his onslaught that a

dozen were attacking them, I rushed them from my side.



In the rapid fighting that followed I had little chance to note aught

else than the movements of my immediate adversaries, but now and again

I caught a fleeting glimpse of a purring sword and a lightly springing

figure of sinewy steel that filled my heart with a strange yearning and

a mighty but unaccountable pride.



On the handsome face of the boy a grim smile played, and ever and anon

he threw a taunting challenge to the foes that faced him. In this and

other ways his manner of fighting was similar to that which had always

marked me on the field of combat.



Perhaps it was this vague likeness which made me love the boy, while

the awful havoc that his sword played amongst the blacks filled my soul

with a tremendous respect for him.



For my part, I was fighting as I had fought a thousand times

before--now sidestepping a wicked thrust, now stepping quickly in to

let my sword's point drink deep in a foeman's heart, before it buried

itself in the throat of his companion.



We were having a merry time of it, we two, when a great body of Issus'

own guards were ordered into the arena. On they came with fierce

cries, while from every side the armed prisoners swarmed upon them.



For half an hour it was as though all hell had broken loose. In the

walled confines of the arena we fought in an inextricable

mass--howling, cursing, blood-streaked demons; and ever the sword of

the young red man flashed beside me.



Slowly and by repeated commands I had succeeded in drawing the

prisoners into a rough formation about us, so that at last we fought

formed into a rude circle in the centre of which were the doomed maids.



Many had gone down on both sides, but by far the greater havoc had been

wrought in the ranks of the guards of Issus. I could see messengers

running swiftly through the audience, and as they passed the nobles

there unsheathed their swords and sprang into the arena. They were

going to annihilate us by force of numbers--that was quite evidently

their plan.



I caught a glimpse of Issus leaning far forward upon her throne, her

hideous countenance distorted in a horrid grimace of hate and rage, in

which I thought I could distinguish an expression of fear. It was that

face that inspired me to the thing that followed.



Quickly I ordered fifty of the prisoners to drop back behind us and

form a new circle about the maidens.



"Remain and protect them until I return," I commanded.



Then, turning to those who formed the outer line, I cried, "Down with

Issus! Follow me to the throne; we will reap vengeance where vengeance

is deserved."



The youth at my side was the first to take up the cry of "Down with

Issus!" and then at my back and from all sides rose a hoarse shout, "To

the throne! To the throne!"



As one man we moved, an irresistible fighting mass, over the bodies of

dead and dying foes toward the gorgeous throne of the Martian deity.

Hordes of the doughtiest fighting-men of the First Born poured from the

audience to check our progress. We mowed them down before us as they

had been paper men.



"To the seats, some of you!" I cried as we approached the arena's

barrier wall. "Ten of us can take the throne," for I had seen that

Issus' guards had for the most part entered the fray within the arena.



On both sides of me the prisoners broke to left and right for the

seats, vaulting the low wall with dripping swords lusting for the

crowded victims who awaited them.



In another moment the entire amphitheatre was filled with the shrieks

of the dying and the wounded, mingled with the clash of arms and

triumphant shouts of the victors.



Side by side the young red man and I, with perhaps a dozen others,

fought our way to the foot of the throne. The remaining guards,

reinforced by the high dignitaries and nobles of the First Born, closed

in between us and Issus, who sat leaning far forward upon her carved

sorapus bench, now screaming high-pitched commands to her following,

now hurling blighting curses upon those who sought to desecrate her

godhood.



The frightened slaves about her trembled in wide-eyed expectancy,

knowing not whether to pray for our victory or our defeat. Several

among them, proud daughters no doubt of some of Barsoom's noblest

warriors, snatched swords from the hands of the fallen and fell upon

the guards of Issus, but they were soon cut down; glorious martyrs to a

hopeless cause.



The men with us fought well, but never since Tars Tarkas and I fought

out that long, hot afternoon shoulder to shoulder against the hordes of

Warhoon in the dead sea bottom before Thark, had I seen two men fight

to such good purpose and with such unconquerable ferocity as the young

red man and I fought that day before the throne of Issus, Goddess of

Death, and of Life Eternal.



Man by man those who stood between us and the carven sorapus wood bench

went down before our blades. Others swarmed in to fill the breach, but

inch by inch, foot by foot we won nearer and nearer to our goal.



Presently a cry went up from a section of the stands near by--"Rise

slaves!" "Rise slaves!" it rose and fell until it swelled to a mighty

volume of sound that swept in great billows around the entire

amphitheatre.



For an instant, as though by common assent, we ceased our fighting to

look for the meaning of this new note nor did it take but a moment to

translate its significance. In all parts of the structure the female

slaves were falling upon their masters with whatever weapon came first

to hand. A dagger snatched from the harness of her mistress was waved

aloft by some fair slave, its shimmering blade crimson with the

lifeblood of its owner; swords plucked from the bodies of the dead

about them; heavy ornaments which could be turned into bludgeons--such

were the implements with which these fair women wreaked the long-pent

vengeance which at best could but partially recompense them for the

unspeakable cruelties and indignities which their black masters had

heaped upon them. And those who could find no other weapons used their

strong fingers and their gleaming teeth.



It was at once a sight to make one shudder and to cheer; but in a brief

second we were engaged once more in our own battle with only the

unquenchable battle cry of the women to remind us that they still

fought--"Rise slaves!" "Rise slaves!"



Only a single thin rank of men now stood between us and Issus. Her

face was blue with terror. Foam flecked her lips. She seemed too

paralysed with fear to move. Only the youth and I fought now. The

others all had fallen, and I was like to have gone down too from a

nasty long-sword cut had not a hand reached out from behind my

adversary and clutched his elbow as the blade was falling upon me. The

youth sprang to my side and ran his sword through the fellow before he

could recover to deliver another blow.



I should have died even then but for that as my sword was tight wedged

in the breastbone of a Dator of the First Born. As the fellow went

down I snatched his sword from him and over his prostrate body looked

into the eyes of the one whose quick hand had saved me from the first

cut of his sword--it was Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang.



"Fly, my Prince!" she cried. "It is useless to fight them longer. All

within the arena are dead. All who charged the throne are dead but you

and this youth. Only among the seats are there left any of your

fighting-men, and they and the slave women are fast being cut down.

Listen! You can scarce hear the battle-cry of the women now for nearly

all are dead. For each one of you there are ten thousand blacks within

the domains of the First Born. Break for the open and the sea of

Korus. With your mighty sword arm you may yet win to the Golden Cliffs

and the templed gardens of the Holy Therns. There tell your story to

Matai Shang, my father. He will keep you, and together you may find a

way to rescue me. Fly while there is yet a bare chance for flight."



But that was not my mission, nor could I see much to be preferred in

the cruel hospitality of the Holy Therns to that of the First Born.



"Down with Issus!" I shouted, and together the boy and I took up the

fight once more. Two blacks went down with our swords in their vitals,

and we stood face to face with Issus. As my sword went up to end her

horrid career her paralysis left her, and with an ear-piercing shriek

she turned to flee. Directly behind her a black gulf suddenly yawned

in the flooring of the dais. She sprang for the opening with the youth

and I close at her heels. Her scattered guard rallied at her cry and

rushed for us. A blow fell upon the head of the youth. He staggered

and would have fallen, but I caught him in my left arm and turned to

face an infuriated mob of religious fanatics crazed by the affront I

had put upon their goddess, just as Issus disappeared into the black

depths beneath me.