Thuvia Maid of Mars | Page 5

air and depositing him in a crumpled heap within the centre of the
pimalia bush beside the ersite bench.
Her champion turned toward the girl. "Kaor, Thuvia of Ptarth!" he cried. "It seems that
fate timed my visit well."
"Kaor, Carthoris of Helium!" the princess returned the young man's greeting, "and what
less could one expect of the son of such a sire?"
He bowed his acknowledgment of the compliment to his father, John Carter, Warlord of
Mars. And then the guardsmen, panting from their charge, came up just as the Prince of
Dusar, bleeding at the mouth, and with drawn sword, crawled from the entanglement of
the pimalia.
Astok would have leaped to mortal combat with the son of Dejah Thoris, but the
guardsmen pressed about him, preventing, though it was clearly evident that naught
would have better pleased Carthoris of Helium.
"But say the word, Thuvia of Ptarth," he begged, "and naught will give me greater
pleasure than meting to this fellow the punishment he has earned."
"It cannot be, Carthoris," she replied. "Even though he has forfeited all claim upon my
consideration, yet is he the guest of the jeddak, my father, and to him alone may he
account for the unpardonable act he has committed."
"As you say, Thuvia," replied the Heliumite. "But afterward he shall account to Carthoris,
Prince of Helium, for this affront to the daughter of my father's friend." As he spoke,

though, there burned in his eyes a fire that proclaimed a nearer, dearer cause for his
championship of this glorious daughter of Barsoom.
The maid's cheek darkened beneath the satin of her transparent skin, and the eyes of
Astok, Prince of Dusar, darkened, too, as he read that which passed unspoken between
the two in the royal gardens of the jeddak.
"And thou to me," he snapped at Carthoris, answering the young man's challenge.
The guard still surrounded Astok. It was a difficult position for the young officer who
commanded it. His prisoner was the son of a mighty jeddak; he was the guest of Thuvan
Dihn--until but now an honoured guest upon whom every royal dignity had been
showered. To arrest him forcibly could mean naught else than war, and yet he had done
that which in the eyes of the Ptarth warrior merited death.
The young man hesitated. He looked toward his princess. 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. 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.
By a word she might plunge these two mighty nations into a bloody conflict that would
drain them of their bravest blood and their incalculable riches, leaving them all helpless
against the inroads of their envious and less powerful neighbors, and at last a prey to the
savage green hordes of the dead sea-bottoms.
No sense of fear influenced her decision, for fear is seldom known to the children of
Mars. It was rather a sense of the responsibility that she, the daughter of their jeddak, felt
for the welfare of her father's people.
"I called you, Padwar," she said to the lieutenant of the guard, "to protect the person of
your princess, and to keep the peace that must not be violated within the royal gardens of
the jeddak. That is all. You will escort me to the palace, and the Prince of Helium will
accompany me."
Without another glance in the direction of Astok she turned, and taking Carthoris'
proffered hand, moved slowly toward the massive marble pile that housed the ruler of
Ptarth and his glittering court. On either side marched a file of guardsmen. Thus Thuvia
of Ptarth found a way out of a dilemma, escaping the necessity of placing her father's
royal guest under forcible restraint, and at the same time separating the two princes, who
otherwise would have been at each other's throat the moment she and the guard had
departed.
Beside the pimalia stood Astok, his dark eyes narrowed to mere slits of hate beneath his
lowering brows as he watched the retreating forms of the woman who had aroused the
fiercest passions of his nature and the man whom he now believed to be the one who
stood between his love and its consummation.

As they disappeared within the structure Astok shrugged his shoulders, and with a
murmured oath crossed the gardens toward another wing of the building where he and his
retinue were housed.
That night he took formal leave of