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Updated: June 29, 2025
She, too, guessed all that hung upon the action of the coming moment. For many years Dusar and Ptarth had been at peace with each other. Their great merchant ships plied back and forth between the larger cities of the two nations.
The journey to Dusar seemed interminable to the impatient Carthoris, though as a matter of fact it was quickly accomplished. Some time before they reached their destination they met and spoke with another Dusarian war flier. From it they learned that a great battle was soon to be fought south-east of Dusar.
He did not see him stoop with ear close pressed to a tiny ventilator. "May the white apes take us all," cried Astok ruefully, "if we are not in as ugly a snarl as you have ever seen! Nutus thinks that we have her in hiding far away from Dusar. He has bidden me bring her here." He paused. No man should have heard from his lips the thing he was trying to tell.
Even now, far above the gold-shot scarlet dome of the jeddak's palace, she could see the huge bulk of a giant freighter taking its majestic way through the thin Barsoomian air toward the west and Dusar.
"It is the Thuria," whispered one of the Dusarian warriors. "I would know her in the blackness of the pits among ten thousand other craft." "Right you are!" exclaimed Vas Kor, who had come on deck. And then he hailed: "Kaor, Thuria!" "Kaor!" came presently from above after a brief silence. Then: "What ship?" "Cruiser-transport Kalksus, Vas Kor of Dusar." "Good!" came from above.
Then the nearer moon, rising above the surrounding foliage, touched their faces, lighting all with the brilliancy of her silver rays. Thuvia of Ptarth saw only strangers warriors in the harness of Dusar. Now she took fright, but too late! Before she could voice but a single cry, rough hands seized her. A heavy silken scarf was wound about her head.
Thirteen and a half thousand haads away lay Ptarth a stiff thirty-hour journey for the swiftest of fliers, and between Dusar and Ptarth might lie half the navy of Dusar, for in this direction was the reported seat of the great naval battle that even now might be in progress.
Even as it was, it would be nip and tuck as to who came first to her side. Again he turned his face in her direction, and now, from Aaanthor way, he saw a new force hastening toward them two medium-sized war craft and even at the distance they still were from him he discerned the device of Dusar upon their bows. Now, indeed, seemed little hope for Thuvia of Ptarth.
With savage warriors of the hordes of Torquas charging toward her from one direction, and no less implacable enemies, in the form of the creatures of Astok, Prince of Dusar, bearing down upon her from another, while only a banth, a red warrior, and an unarmed bowman were near to defend her, her plight was quite hopeless and her cause already lost ere ever it was contested.
As the warship, bearing Astok back to the court of his father, turned toward the west, Thuvia of Ptarth, sitting upon the same bench where the Prince of Dusar had affronted her, watched the twinkling lights of the craft growing smaller in the distance. Beside her, in the brilliant light of the nearer moon, sat Carthoris.
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