第63章

At the clash of steel, palace guards rushed to the scene from other parts of the great building until those who would have defended U-Thor were outnumbered two to one, and then the jed of Manatos slowly withdrew with his forces, and fighting his way through the corridors and chambers of the palace came at last to the avenue.Here he was reinforced by the little army that had marched with him into Manator.Slowly they retreated toward The Gate of Enemies between the rows of silent people looking down upon them from the balconies and there, within the city walls, they made their stand.

In a dimly-lighted chamber beneath the palace of O-Tar the jeddak, Turan the panthan lowered Tara of Helium from his arms and faced her."I am sorry, Princess," he said, "that I was forced to disobey your commands, or to abandon Ghek; but there was no other way.Could he have saved you I would have stayed in his place.Tell me that you forgive me.""How could I do less?" she replied graciously."But it seemed cowardly to abandon a friend.""Had we been three fighting men it had been different," he said.

"We could only have remained and died together, fighting; but you know, Tara of Helium, that we may not jeopardize a woman's safety even though we risk the loss of honor.""I know that, Turan," she said; "but no one may say that you have risked honor, who knows the honor and bravery that are yours."He heard her with surprise for these were the first words that she had spoken to him that did not savor of the attitude of a princess to a panthan--though it was more in her tone than the actual words that he apprehended the difference.How at variance were they to her recent repudiation of him! He could not fathom her, and so he blurted out the question that had been in his mind since she had told O-Tar that she did not know him.

"Tara of Helium," he said, "your words are balm to the wound you gave me in the throne room of O-Tar.Tell me, Princess, why you denied me."She turned her great, deep eyes up to his and in them was a little of reproach.

"You did not guess," she asked, "that it was my lips alone and not my heart that denied you? O-Tar had ordered that I die, more because I was a companion of Ghek than because of any evidence against me, and so I knew that if I acknowledged you as one of us, you would be slain, too.""It was to save me, then?" he cried, his face suddenly lighting.

"It was to save my brave panthan," she said in a low voice.

"Tara of Helium," said the warrior, dropping to one knee, "your words are as food to my hungry heart," and he took her fingers in his and pressed them to his lips.

Gently she raised him to his feet."You need not tell me, kneeling," she said, softly.

Her hand was still in his as he rose and they were very close, and the man was still flushed with the contact of her body since he had carried her from the throne room of O-Tar.He felt his heart pounding in his breast and the hot blood surging through his veins as he looked at her beautiful face, with its downcast eyes and the half-parted lips that he would have given a kingdom to possess, and then he swept her to him and as he crushed her against his breast his lips smothered hers with kisses.

But only for an instant.Like a tigress the girl turned uponhim, striking him, and thrusting him away.She stepped back, her head high and her eyes flashing fire."You would dare?" she cried."You would dare thus defile a princess of Helium?"His eyes met hers squarely and there was no shame and no remorse in them.

"Yes, I would dare," he said."I would dare love Tara of Helium;but I would not dare defile her or any woman with kisses that were not prompted by love of her alone." He stepped closer to her and laid his hands upon her shoulders."Look into my eyes, daughter of The Warlord," he said, "and tell me that you do not wish the love of Turan, the panthan.""I do not wish your love," she cried, pulling away."I hate you!"and then turning away she bent her head into the hollow of her arm, and wept.

The man took a step toward her as though to comfort her when he was arrested by the sound of a crackling laugh behind him.

Wheeling about, he discovered a strange figure of a man standing in a doorway.It was one of those rarities occasionally to be seen upon Barsoom--an old man with the signs of age upon him.

Bent and wrinkled, he had more the appearance of a mummy than a man.

"Love in the pits of O-Tar!" he cried, and again his thin laughter jarred upon the silence of the subterranean vaults."Astrange place to woo! A strange place to woo, indeed! When I was a young man we roamed in the gardens beneath giant pimalias and stole our kisses in the brief shadows of hurtling Thuria.We came not to the gloomy pits to speak of love; but times have changed and ways have changed, though I had never thought to live to see the time when the way of a man with a maid, or a maid with a man would change.Ah, but we kissed them then! And what if they objected, eh? What if they objected? Why, we kissed them more.

Ey, ey, those were the days!" and he cackled again."Ey, well do I recall the first of them I ever kissed, and I've kissed an army of them since; she was a fine girl, but she tried to slip a dagger into me while I was kissing her.Ey, ey, those were the days! But I kissed her.She's been dead over a thousand years now, but she was never kissed again like that while she lived, I'll swear, not since she's been dead, either.And then there was that other --" but Turan, seeing a thousand or more years of osculatory memoirs portending, interrupted.