Under the Moons of Mars Page 10

  The first Red child came upon them as they were pawing through a burned-out weapons cache, piling rifles and ammunition into Rok’s large sack. The child’s skin was smeared with ash; long waves of black hair nearly obscured her face. She stood frozen in a crumbling doorway, mouth slack, eyes taking in the sight of the two plundering Tharks. Sarkoja knew that to the child, she must look like a monster, large and hungry, and that she could not risk the child’s scream. She raised her pistol.

  But Rok stayed her hand.

  And because he was Rok, she allowed it.

  “Who are you?” the child asked. She held her hands behind her back and her head down. “What more can you take from us that you have not already stolen?”

  Sarkoja realized that the child had mistaken her for one of the army that had stormed, looted, and finally razed the city. “I have stolen nothing,” she said. “I take only what I need, to avenge what was stolen from me, by the man John Carter.”

  The girl tossed her hair from her face, revealing a gaze that rivaled the sun for heat and fury. “John Carter killed my father,” she said. “Slit his throat while he was sleeping, when his only crime was doing his job, guarding a threshold John Carter saw fit to pass. I watched from the shadows, and I saw the knife cut his throat and the blood slide out. I waited for John Carter to pass, and then I threw myself on my father, I pressed the torn flaps of flesh together between my hands, tried to force the torn skin back together, but the blood flowed through my fingers. I sat in a pool of my father’s blood, and as his life leaked away, I watched the city burn.”

  “And your mother?” Sarkoja asked.

  “Dead,” the child said. “She would have died of grief and hunger, surely, but John Carter’s men did not give her that chance. He is from a different world, they say. He had no quarrel with us, nor we with him. And yet we are ruined. While he continues to breathe. They say he is loved.”

  “Not by me,” Rok said, his voice a growl.

  “Nor by me,” Sarkoja said.

  “I will kill him,” the girl said, and showed them her hands. In her tiny, tight fist, she clenched a long, silver blade. “Someday. I will find a way.”

  Sarkoja laughed, and when the child did not recoil from the harsh sound, so painful to Red ears, the sound that all Barsoom knew to mean carnage, she knew her suspicions were right. “Perhaps,” she told the child, “you have found one.”

  The child was Zana Lor, and she was the first. There were many other children who had lost their parents to John Carter’s orgy of destruction, but Sarkoja chose carefully. She found the children who spared no time for weeping or bemoaning their fate, the children who fixed their sight on what must be done. She looked for the familiar—the hate that blazed in her own heart, the physical need for justice. And when she found these children, she took them.

  They came willingly, as did the women—for someone needed to care for the children, who were far more helpless than the young Tharks. There were plenty of women too, for John Carter had been an effective widow-maker, cutting a swath of death through the city’s husbands, fathers, and sons. Again, she selected only those women who hungered for his blood, who lost no time mourning the fallen but instead devoted themselves to vengeance.

  She followed only one rule: Never did she take a woman with child. There was attachment there, and attachment was weakness, distraction. She had no use for mothers. Thus the women she did choose had no use for children.

  So the young ones were fed and bathed, but they were not mothered; they were molded by no one but Sarkoja, and they listened to her stories as attentively as the women, as attentively as the Tharks. They learned to fight with the same weapons and though they were smaller and weaker, they were all the more determined, because they did not need to rely on stories. They knew why John Carter needed to die without Sarkoja telling them, and they had capacity for more anger than she had ever imagined their fragile bodies could contain.

  None of them could match Zana Lor for white-hot anger. The girl glowed bright with fury. She was destined for great things, Sarkoja knew, and Rok saw it as well. Night after night, Zana and Rok trained together, her swift, sure movements matching his as they sliced their swords through the night air. She was like no Red Man Sarkoja had ever known.

  She rarely slept, and when she did, she screamed.

  Tomorrow.

  She has waited eight years.

  She has watched her children grow, and grow strong.

  Two days ago, John Carter set off with Tars Tarkas and two Red Men of Helium on a ride through the desert, in search of adventure or solitude or more souls to kill; this she does not know, nor does she care. He sets off on such a course once every six months, and this time, the unexpected awaits him.

  Two days ago, her army took off in pursuit, keeping enough distance between themselves and their prey that they will not be detected, not until they lay the trap and strike, and then it will be too late.

  Two days ago, she saw Rok and Zana together, their heads bent so close that their foreheads kissed, Red girl and Green man in solemn communion, and though it is not natural, and though Rok has of late been keeping his distance so as to keep his thoughts close, and though she has misgivings, because she has seen this posture, this tenderness before, she ignores it. Because they have all waited eight years, and now, tomorrow, comes the reckoning.

  It is a strange time for all, so she tells herself.

  It is nothing.

  “He will see a girl lying in the desert.”

  They gather as she speaks, as they always do, for hers is the only voice that matters, and it is their beacon in the darkness.

  “She will be wounded, innocent, beautiful.”

  They knew from the stories that John Carter was powerless against a beautiful female. All others, he destroyed without thought, but these women he believed it was his duty to save.

  “He will dismount, and call his fellows to dismount, and they will tend to her wounds and offer her sustenance and service. That is when we will strike.”

  There were nervous murmurs of assent, a single cheer. The night was electric with anticipation. The stars themselves seemed eager.

  “Zana,” she says. “You will bait the trap. It will be your honor.”

  There is a silence. Heads are bowed. It is an honor indeed, one she knows they all crave. But it must be Zana.

  “But she will not survive it!” Rok is not at the fore of the group, close enough to receive her embrace, as he always was in his youth. He speaks from the very back, but he speaks loudly, and there can be no mistaking his words.

  “It is her honor,” Sarkoja says, and this should be enough.

  Rok persists. “You propose to leave her injured and alone. Defenseless—what if a banth should happen on her before John Carter appears?”

  “Then this will offer him even more to save her from,” Sarkoja says, “and all the more distraction from the real threat.”

  “And when the trap is sprung, and we attack, who will save her then?” Rok shouts. “She will fall, if not by our hands, then by his.”

  “Then that is how it will be,” Sarkoja says. She fixes her gaze on Zana, who meets it, unflinching. The child, no longer a child, says nothing.

  Sarkoja nods. “The plan is good. Many of us may not live to see another sunset, and this, too, is good, because we will die knowing we have saved our world. Tomorrow . . .”

  “John Carter will die,” her children say.

  But not Rok. Rok says nothing.

  Not until the others have retreated into sleep. He comes to her in the night; he comes to beg for the girl’s life.

  “Forego the ambush,” he tells her. “We will challenge him to battle, as equals, as custom demands. We will face him on even ground, not sneak and skulk like cowards. This is the Thark way, as you have taught us.”

  “John Carter is not our equal!” she roars.

  He bears the wrath. He was never one to be afraid.

  “He is not our equal,”
she repeats, with steely calm. “And we, I fear, are not his, not on the battlefield. The man John Carter has powers that no living creature should possess. He has the strength of ten Tharks, and if he is to die, we must allow ourselves to violate custom, in service of ending his greater violation. It is the only way.”

  “Then choose someone else,” he tells her. “Choose anyone.”

  “It cannot be anyone; it must be her.”

  “Why?”

  Zana is the bravest, Zana is the strongest, Zana is the angriest. This is the only reason. This and no other. She does not speak this aloud. He can read it within her. He should not have to. It is truth; it should live within him already.

  “To punish me,” he says. “Because I need her alive, you consign her to death.”

  Sarkoja does not ask what it means, this need. Perhaps she would rather not know.

  “She is only a young girl,” he says. “She deserves a better life.”

  “I did not teach you to speak like that,” Sarkoja says. “I did not teach you to think like that. Her life is no more or less precious than yours, than Yezqe’s, than Libor’s, than mine. It derives its value from its use to us, her people. It is worth only as much to her as it is worth to our cause. Zana knows that. All my children know that. But you—”

  “She is only a young girl,” he says. “Please.”

  “This is beneath you.” She can feel his raw need, and it disgusts her. She has let him get too close to the girl. It is not natural, for a Thark and a Red girl to share so much. The girl has corrupted him. It is her fault for allowing it, Sarkoja knows. For being lenient and ignoring what she knows to be true.

  No longer.

  “Begging for the life of a female, as if she cannot choose for herself. You speak like the man John Carter,” she tells Rok. He does not flinch from the insult.

  “She chose nothing,” Rok says. “You chose for her. You chose for us all.”

  The dagger is cold in her hand.

  It is shameful, to strike an enemy while he sleeps. It is cowardly.

  And Rok is not her enemy. Rok is her child.

  But they are all her children, and the strong cannot survive the depredations of the weak. This is why only the most perfect of eggs are allowed to endure. Even the hardest stone, if riven with faults, will shatter with a single blow. So it is for the Tharks; so it is for her family. Aberrations, defects, weaklings cannot be tolerated. Sacrifices must be made.

  Rok has proven himself weak. And so, the sacrifice.

  He moans softly in his sleep.

  He has always done this, since he was newly hatched, lacking the words to express his needs, lacking even the needs themselves. She gave him both. She gave him everything.

  There had once been another hatchling, a single Thark who should have died so that the Tharks could flourish. It had been Sarkoja’s duty to dispatch the child, and she had failed. All that followed could have been prevented, had she struck that fatal blow. But the child slipped away; the child lived, and grew up to be Sola, and saved the life of the man John Carter, and blamed Sarkoja for all her miseries, and brought ruin to the world.

  A sharp blade brought down with the right velocity, at the right angle, would kill him instantly. There would be no struggle and no pain.

  But again, she fails. And this time, it is a failure of will.

  The excitement of tomorrow, the anticipation, the culmination of a lifetime of training and rage: He is, surely, not thinking clearly. Perhaps, neither is she. Tomorrow, she will speak with him again. She will explain the facts of their lives, and she will brook no argument. Either he will accept his duty, or he will die—not like an animal, slaughtered in his sleep, but like a Thark, on his feet, girded for battle.

  It will not come to that, she assures herself. He is Rok, and he has never disappointed her. He deserves the chance he has fought and longed for, the chance to stand by her side when the moment comes. Tomorrow, they will slay and triumph, as it should be, together.

  But when the sun rises on tomorrow, he is gone.

  It goes perfectly, exactly as planned. Zana lies in the desert, a gash in her leg, her limbs artfully splayed, her face tear-stained, her lips ruby red. Sarkoja and her warriors have secreted themselves behind the jagged rocks that jut from the desert floor. They watch John Carter steer his thoat toward the girl. Sarkoja silently rejoices: He is alone. Her army, thirty strong, against his one. It will be over nearly before they have time to savor their victory.

  The man John Carter dismounts. He is even smaller than she remembers him. Uglier, too. It is unthinkable that this creature should have caused so much damage. But his reign of ruin nears an end. Sarkoja raises a hand and gives her soldiers the signal. John Carter walks slowly to the girl, kneels by her side. The warriors raise their weapons. They take aim.

  “Sarkoja!” Libor shouts, then there is the sharp report of a radium rifle, and he is down.

  Sarkoja whirls around. John Carter’s men are everywhere, Red Men and Tharks alike, swarming over her army, their rifles firing, their swords slashing. Their ambush has been ambushed.

  A Thark knocks her to the ground. Sarkoja smashes the hilt of her sword into his leg, then, as he stumbles, flicks it around and draws blood. She stabs him once, twice, then uses his lifeless body as a shield to block the slashing longsword of an advancing Red Man. He is even more easily dispatched. A kick to the gut, a blade to the throat, and he folds into himself, spurting fountains of red. The enemy surrounds her, but they are no match for her fury. She kills one, then another, working her way through the thrashing crowd, desperate to reach John Carter—but as a space opens before her, she stops, transfixed.

  For there is Zana, still on the ground. The man John Carter has disappeared into the thick of battle. Another figure has replaced him by Zana’s side: Rok. Sarkoja is close enough to hear his final words. “For you,” he says. “To save you.”

  He has betrayed them all to John Carter; he has betrayed them all to love.

  Sarkoja cannot move.

  Zana bares her teeth, and gazes up at him as fiercely as she did the day they met, when visions of death and destruction danced in her eyes and Sarkoja promised to make her fondest wish come true. She says nothing. Her only response is the knife, the same knife she held in her tiny fist that first day, the same knife around which her small body has curled while she slept, night after night, while she ate and breathed and lived for a single purpose that Rok has stolen away. Zana is wounded, but the knife is sharp, her aim sure. Rok cannot block it, or perhaps will not. He is dead before his head cracks to the ground.

  “I gave you a chance,” says a voice behind her, and still, Sarkoja cannot move. She is too heavy with shame. Zana, the Red girl, found the strength to do what Sarkoja could not. And because of her failure, her children are falling; her children are screaming. A radium shell tears into Zana and blows a hole through her midsection. Her body goes limp. The knife falls from her hand.

  The battlefield is littered with Sarkoja’s lifeless children. Libor has fallen. Projal has fallen.

  “You should not have come back,” says the voice.

  Yezque has fallen. Biquas has fallen.

  “Turn around,” says the voice. “I will not strike you from behind.”

  She turns to face Tars Tarkas.

  “I have hoped for this moment,” he says. Sarkoja raises her longsword. But the great warrior is too quick. His blade slices cleanly through her shoulder; the sword and the arm that grips it drop to the ground.

  Sarkoja staggers. She throws her weight against Tars Tarkas, pummeling him with her remaining fists. The ground is slippery beneath her, slippery with her own blood. His longsword dances. She is too slow for him, and slower with each gash and wound. The blood is leaving her, carrying with it her strength. Hers is the only fight that still continues; her army has fallen.

  “It was for you,” she tells Tars Tarkas, choking on the blood that fills her throat. “To save you.”

  He lau
ghs.

  And then Sarkoja is on the ground, her strength fled, her life fleeing in its wake. Through blurry, bloodshot eyes she sees John Carter summon his men and congratulate them on their victory. She sees John Carter and Tars Tarkas embrace. She sees them check Rok’s body for signs of life; she sees their sorrow that this new friend, this hero, has sacrificed himself for their survival.

  This is too much.

  There is strength in her yet, strength in her rage, and she rises to her knees, then to her feet, drags herself toward the monster, muscles through his pathetic defenders, she will not be stopped, she will push on, push forward, until John Carter’s neck is between her hands. She squeezes the life from his fragile body, snaps his brittle bones; she sees his empty eyes roll back in his head; she sees his face go slack; she sees his spirit depart.

  She sees what she wants to see.

  She sees the dreams behind her lids, as she lies in the dirt with blood pooling around her shuddering body. She sees nothing of the real, of John Carter approaching her body, smiling because she writhes in pain.

  She can feel John Carter’s neck in her grip, but her hands clutch empty air. And then they drop to her sides, and she lies still.

  She dies believing she has done the world a great service. That someday all will be grateful. All will hallow the name of Sarkoja, warrior of justice.

  She dies a hero in her own heart. She dies a victor.

  She dies, and they set her body afire, and soon the apes and the ulsios will come and pick through the ashes and gnaw at her smoldering remains.

  She dies, and she will not be mourned, and she will not be remembered.

  She dies, and John Carter lives.

  She will not be avenged.

  The first race on Barsoom was the Orovars, white-skinned men and women with blond or auburn hair. A million years before John Carter’s arrival, the Orovars built the great cities of Korad, Aaanothor, and Horz, and they controlled an empire that stretched from pole to pole. However, as the oceans dried up, this empire began to fray, and the Orovars foresaw that their race did not possess the hardy constitution necessary to thrive on a dying planet, and so they bred the Red Men to be their successors, and by the time of John Carter’s arrival the Orovars were generally believed to be extinct. Of course, John Carter knew nothing of this at first. Barsoom to him was a strange and hostile place. But he did manage to make a few friends in those early days, including his trusty pet Woola, a doglike species known as a calot, which possess eight legs and a pair of long tusks. Woola was initially ordered to guard John Carter and keep him from wandering off and falling afoul of the four-armed white apes who haunt the abandoned cities of Barsoom. Carter once petted Woola the way one would scratch any hound, and the beast, who had known only the cruelty of life among the Tharks, afterward became ever-loyal. Our next tale is told from the point of view of Woola, and fills us in on some of the amazing adventures of that faithful beast that John Carter was not around to witness.