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Updated: May 7, 2025
"There is one," she replied, "who would come, and, coming, dare to cut you down upon your own throne, if he thought that you had offered affront to Thuvia of Ptarth!" "Who, Jav?" asked Tario. "Not Jav, nor any other soft-skinned Lotharian," she replied; "but a real man, a real warrior Carthoris of Helium!" Again the man laughed at her. "You forget the bowmen," he reminded her.
"I have learned to like you, red man," he said; "but do not forget that Tario is still my jeddak, and that Tario has commanded that you remain here." Carthoris was about to reply, when there came faintly to the ears of both a woman's cry for help. With a sweep of his arm the Prince of Helium brushed the Lotharian aside, and with drawn sword sprang into the corridor without.
"According to Tario, it is but necessary that we all unite in imagining that there are no dead Torquasians beneath our walls, and there will be none, nor any need of scavenging banths." "You, then, do not hold Tario's beliefs?" asked Carthoris. "In part only," replied the Lotharian. "I believe, in fact I know, that there are some truly ethereal creatures. Tario is one, I am convinced.
"Then, too," continued the Lotharian, "there is always the hope, which with us is little short of belief, that some day these materializations will merge into the real that they will remain, some of them, after we have dissolved their fellows, and that thus we shall have discovered a means for perpetuating our dying race. "Some there are who claim already to have accomplished the thing.
For several minutes the Lotharian eyed his prisoner, for such Carthoris now realized himself to be. "I am half convinced that you are real," he said at last. Carthoris laughed. "Of course I am real," he said. "What caused you to doubt it? Can you not see me, feel me?" "So may I see and feel the bowmen," replied Jav, "and yet we all know that they, at least, are not real."
Carthoris and Thuvia looked in the direction the Lotharian had indicated, expecting to see some strange and fearful creature in human form; but to their astonishment they saw the broad head and great-maned shoulders of a huge banth, the largest that either ever had seen. Slowly and with dignity the mighty beast advanced into the room.
Carthoris shouted to the Lotharian, warning him back, for he knew that he could but uselessly sacrifice his life by placing himself, all unarmed, in the path of the cruel and relentless savages. But Kar Komak never hesitated. With shouts of encouragement to his new friend, he hurried onward toward the Prince of Helium.
As the fellow drew closer, Carthoris halted to await his coming. He knew that the man was unarmed, and that he was apparently a Lotharian, for his skin was white and his hair auburn. He approached the Heliumite without sign of fear, and when quite close called out the cheery Barsoomian "kaor" of greeting. "Who are you?" asked Carthoris. "I am Kar Komak, odwar of the bowmen," replied the other.
Carthoris tried to explain that the Torquasians ruled but a relatively tiny part of the surface of Barsoom, and even this only because their domain held nothing to attract the red race; but the Lotharian could not seem to conceive of anything beyond the valley of Lothar other than a trackless waste peopled by the ferocious green hordes of Torquas.
"What is to be our fate?" asked the Heliumite. "Tell me, man! Shake off your terror long enough to tell me, so I may be prepared to sell my life and that of the Princess of Ptarth as dearly as possible." "Komal!" whispered Jav. "We are to be devoured by Komal!" "Your deity?" asked Carthoris. The Lotharian nodded his head. Then he pointed toward a low doorway at one end of the chamber.
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