The Gods of Mars | Page 6

would have known them
on the instant for what they were, for where else in all the universe is
their like duplicated?
There were two men and four females in the party and their ornaments
denoted them as members of different hordes, a fact which tended to
puzzle me infinitely, since the various hordes of green men of Barsoom
are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never, except on that
single historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas of Thark gathered a
hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from several hordes to
march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue Dejah Thoris,
Princess of Helium, from the clutches of Than Kosis, had I seen green
Martians of different hordes associated in other than mortal combat.
But now they stood back to back, facing, in wide-eyed amazement, the
very evidently hostile demonstrations of a common enemy.
Both men and women were armed with long-swords and daggers, but
no firearms were in evidence, else it had been short shrift for the
gruesome plant men of Barsoom.
Presently the leader of the plant men charged the little party, and his
method of attack was as remarkable as it was effective, and by its very
strangeness was the more potent, since in the science of the green
warriors there was no defence for this singular manner of attack, the
like of which it soon was evident to me they were as unfamiliar with as
they were with the monstrosities which confronted them.
The plant man charged to within a dozen feet of the party and then,
with a bound, rose as though to pass directly above their heads. His

powerful tail was raised high to one side, and as he passed close above
them he brought it down in one terrific sweep that crushed a green
warrior's skull as though it had been an eggshell.
The balance of the frightful herd was now circling rapidly and with
bewildering speed about the little knot of victims. Their prodigious
bounds and the shrill, screeching purr of their uncanny mouths were
well calculated to confuse and terrorize their prey, so that as two of
them leaped simultaneously from either side, the mighty sweep of those
awful tails met with no resistance and two more green Martians went
down to an ignoble death.
There were now but one warrior and two females left, and it seemed
that it could be but a matter of seconds ere these, also, lay dead upon
the scarlet sward.
But as two more of the plant men charged, the warrior, who was now
prepared by the experiences of the past few minutes, swung his mighty
long-sword aloft and met the hurtling bulk with a clean cut that clove
one of the plant men from chin to groin.
The other, however, dealt a single blow with his cruel tail that laid both
of the females crushed corpses upon the ground.
As the green warrior saw the last of his companions go down and at the
same time perceived that the entire herd was charging him in a body, he
rushed boldly to meet them, swinging his long-sword in the terrific
manner that I had so often seen the men of his kind wield it in their
ferocious and almost continual warfare among their own race.
Cutting and hewing to right and left, he laid an open path straight
through the advancing plant men, and then commenced a mad race for
the forest, in the shelter of which he evidently hoped that he might find
a haven of refuge.
He had turned for that portion of the forest which abutted on the cliffs,
and thus the mad race was taking the entire party farther and farther
from the boulder where I lay concealed.

As I had watched the noble fight which the great warrior had put up
against such enormous odds my heart had swelled in admiration for
him, and acting as I am wont to do, more upon impulse than after
mature deliberation, I instantly sprang from my sheltering rock and
bounded quickly toward the bodies of the dead green Martians, a
well-defined plan of action already formed.
Half a dozen great leaps brought me to the spot, and another instant
saw me again in my stride in quick pursuit of the hideous monsters that
were rapidly gaining on the fleeing warrior, but this time I grasped a
mighty long-sword in my hand and in my heart was the old blood lust
of the fighting man, and a red mist swam before my eyes and I felt my
lips respond to my heart in the old smile that has ever marked me in the
midst of the joy of battle.
Swift as I was I was none too soon, for the green warrior