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Updated: May 7, 2025
As Jav leaped toward him Carthoris laid his hand upon the hilt of his long-sword. The Lotharian halted. The great apartment was empty save for the four at the dais, yet as Jav stepped back from the menace of the Heliumite's threatening attitude the latter found himself surrounded by a score of bowmen. From whence had they sprung? Both Carthoris and Thuvia looked their astonishment.
He has deserted you to your fate to save himself. Come, be Jav's!" Thuvia of Ptarth rose to her full height, her lifted shoulder turned toward the man, her haughty chin upraised, a scornful twist to her lips. "You lie!" she said quietly, "the Heliumite knows less of disloyalty than he knows of fear, and of fear he is as ignorant as the unhatched young." "Then where is he?" taunted the Lotharian.
I eat, I sleep" he paused, casting a meaning look upon the girl "I love!" Thuvia could not mistake the palpable meaning of his words and expression. She turned away with a little shrug of disgust that was not lost upon the Lotharian. He came close to her and seized her arm. "Why not Jav?" he cried. "Who more honourable than the second of the world's most ancient race? Your Heliumite? He has gone.
"It is most uncanny." "I cannot account for it," replied Carthoris, "unless we have gone mad." Carthoris turned quickly toward the Lotharian. The fellow was smiling broadly. "I thought that you just said that there were no soldiers in Lothar," said the Heliumite, with a gesture toward the guardsmen. "What are these?" "Ask Tario," replied the other. "We shall soon be before him."
She was about to make some reply when a fearful shriek broke from the lips of the Lotharian. "The end is coming!" he cried. "The end is coming! The floor! The floor! Oh, Komal, be merciful!" Thuvia and Carthoris did not need to look at the floor to be aware of the strange movement that was taking place. Slowly the marble flagging was sinking in all directions toward the centre.
The last of the Lotharian females perished ages since, upon that cruel and terrible journey across the muddy plains that fringed the half-dried seas, when the green hordes scourged us across the world to this our last hiding-place our impregnable fortress of Lothar. "Scarce twenty thousand men of all the countless millions of our race lived to reach Lothar. Among us were no women and no children.
Kar Komak turned toward the Heliumite, a grim smile upon his lips. "Why should we fight," he asked. "Against such fearful odds? There is another way a better way. Look!" He pointed toward the companion-way that led below deck. The green men, a handful of them, had already reached the Thuria's deck, as Carthoris glanced in the direction the Lotharian had indicated.
Carthoris was horrified. He cursed himself for his stupidity, and yet he knew that the fiendish power which the Lotharian had invoked to confuse him might have deceived any.
"Remain here with Jav," she had heard him say, "while I go to search for the passage through the cliffs." She had dropped back in surprise and disappointment, for she knew that there was no reason why she should not have accompanied him. Certainly she should have been safer with him than left here alone with the Lotharian. And Jav watched the two and smiled his cunning smile.
The Lotharian looked at Carthoris in wide-eyed astonishment as the full purport of the suggestion bore in upon his understanding. "Why not?" he murmured. The savage ape bearing the mighty bludgeon was slinking toward Carthoris. The Heliumite's fingers were working as he kept his eyes upon his executioner. Kar Komak bent his gaze penetratingly upon the apes.
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