The Gods Of Mars Read Free Page A

could look forward or
backward, or to either side without turning their heads, here the
strange antennae-like ears rising from the tops of their foreheads; and
the additional pair of arms extending from midway between the shoulders
and the hips.
    Even without the glossy green hide and the metal ornaments which
denoted the tribes to which they belonged, I 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