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At last he managed to articulate intelligibly. "Die!" he shrieked. "Die!" and then he turned toward the exit at his back. Jav leaped forward, screaming in terror. "Have pity, Tario! Have pity! Remember the long ages that I have served you faithfully. Remember all that I have done for Lothar. Do not condemn me now to the death hideous. Save me! Save me!"
One could almost have sworn the man believed these creatures of his strange hypnotic power to be real flesh and blood. With hoarse battle cries they charged the bowmen of Tario. Barbed shafts flew thick and fast. Men fell, and the ground was red with gore. Carthoris and Thuvia had difficulty in reconciling the reality of it all with their knowledge of the truth.
"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.
"So then I bethought the scheme to hurl our bowmen through the gates upon them. You have seen this day how well it works. For ages they have come down upon us at intervals, but always with the same results." "And all this is due to your intellect, Jav?" asked Carthoris. "I should think that you would be high in the councils of your people." "I am," replied Jav, proudly. "I am next to Tario."
Now shall Jav be Jeddak of Lothar!" As he finished, Tario opened his eyes and then quickly sat up. "Traitor! Assassin!" he screamed, and then: "Kadar! Kadar!" which is the Barsoomian for guard. Jav went sickly white. He fell upon his belly, wriggling toward Tario. "Oh, my Jeddak, my Jeddak!" he whimpered. "Jav had no hand in this.
"Why is it," she asked, "that you observe such careful nicety in the regulation of your creatures when Tario knows quite as well as you that they are but figments of your brain? Why not permit them simply to dissolve into thin air until you again require their futile service?" "You do not understand them," replied Jav. "While they exist they are real.
His steel had cut but empty air his antagonist had vanished there were no bowmen in the room! "It is evident that these are strangers," said Tario to Jav. "Let us first determine that they knowingly affronted us before we take measures for punishment."
And yet, as she saw him coming across the marble floor of the audience chamber of Tario of Lothar, his fine eyes filled with apprehension for her safety, his splendid figure personifying all that is finest in the fighting men of martial Mars, she could not believe that any faintest trace of perfidy lurked beneath so glorious an exterior.
"Now we all know that mind is all, though we may differ in the interpretation of its various manifestations. Tario maintains that there is no such thing as substance, all being created from the substanceless matter of the brain. "We realists, however, know better.
"But their arrows slew the green warriors," insisted Thuvia. "Let us go before Tario," replied the Lotharian. "He will tell you that which he deems it best you know. I might tell you too much." "Who is Tario?" asked Carthoris. "Jeddak of Lothar," replied the guide, leading them up the broad avenue down which they had but a moment since seen the phantom army marching.
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