Under the Moons of Mars Read online

  He raised his sword with an unsteady hand.

  This gave Kaz time to free his own sword, one of Gar Kofan’s keepsakes. He blocked Aav Kanan’s weak strike and the two slowly fumbled around, Aav gasping for air and trying to gain the strength to strike, and Kaz doing his best to stay free of the wicked blade.

  With each sword thrust, they both weakened. For Aav it was the air getting thinner and thinner. For Kaz, it was the heavy sword and his small stature. The warriors no longer stood in a circle around them: they’d started to sit down, out of breath and dizzy.

  Aav Kanan raised his sword with two hands over his head, and began laughing. “It was just air,” he said. “Worthless, useless, air.”

  When he swung, Kaz hit him on the head with his sword handle, and the confused Jedwar stumbled, tripped, and fell onto the point of his own sword. He cried out, and then lay on his side, holding the wound and falling silent.

  The canister of air gasped and whistled, and gave out. There was nothing to breathe but the thinning atmosphere now. But his ability to build things had saved him. Without the strength of real air to breathe from his device, he would have died instantly at Aav Kanan’s many hands.

  Kaz staggered to the top of their hiding place and watched the atmosphere plant with what he thought were his last breaths. He watched as a flier hastily landed. He watched as a strange warrior with no color ran to the doors. It was Jan Kahrtr himself. The rumors were true, he wasn’t dead, he had escaped Warhoon somehow, and allied himself with the Red warriors.

  He opened the doors—how, Kaz couldn’t tell—and the half-dead technicians ran inside.

  And then Kaz passed out.

  When Kaz awoke, it was to the sweet taste of fresh air. The Warhoons walked up to his resting place. “Kaz Kanan!” they called out, as they offered him all Aav Kanan’s possessions. By the right of combat, Kaz was Jedwar now.

  Him, Kaz, a Jedwar, by right of battle! Who could have imagined such a thing? Kaz Kanan, he repeated to himself, a Jedwar of Barsoom.

  He looked around. That meant that these Warhoons were his to lead. What great things could he do as a leader when he returned to Warhoon? There were parts of the city that could be rebuilt. There were ruins that he could command be explored. He could turn Warhoon into a great city. A more powerful one, even.

  But every warrior who wanted to prove himself would challenge him to a duel to the death to take the title of Jedwar from him. No, Kaz realized, they would not take his orders happily. Because his orders would have nothing to do with blood, and fighting, and conquest. And if he helped his people become even more powerful, what would they do with that power?

  There would be more spilled blood and fighting. And it would steal him away from being able to tinker, to think, and to hunt for answers. No good would come of it, he realized.

  So he left the Warhoons, confused, with Aav Kanan’s body and possessions, as he led the thoats and the wagon away from the canal and the atmosphere plant.

  There was more in Barsoom than just the city of Warhoon and its warriors, Kaz thought. More than bloodsport in the arena, or the challenge of battles. And for him, maybe there could be more than just repairing rifles. Rumors said Tharks moved about in the city of Helium. Perhaps Kaz could pass as a Thark, and learn the technologies of the Red warriors.

  Or maybe he would travel farther than just Helium.

  He didn’t know. But the air had never tasted sweeter, and the morning had never held more promise.

  When John Carter first arrived on Barsoom, he was captured by the Tharks, one of the tribes of giant, green, four-armed men who roam the dead sea bottoms and who dwell amid the ruins of ancient cities. Carter soon learned that these strange alien warriors are hatched from eggs and that they possess limited telepathic abilities. Carter’s strength at arms earned him the respect of the Tharks, and also earned him a position of authority among them, but he soon ran afoul of Sarkoja, an old woman who had positioned herself as the most fervent proponent of the cruel morality of the Tharks, a code that forbids all affection. When Carter witnessed Sarkoja’s mistreatment of the prisoner Dejah Thoris, the lovely red-skinned princess who would later become his wife, he threatened to kill Sarkoja, thus earning the woman’s eternal enmity. Carter then befriended Sola, whose kindly heart made her an aberration among her people, and soon learned her secret—that she was a product of a forbidden love between the great warrior Tars Tarkas and a sweet and loving woman named Gozava, who had been tortured by Sarkoja but who had died rather than reveal the name of her lover or the identity of her daughter. Tars Tarkas did not know that Sola was his daughter, and when the truth was revealed to him, he warned Sarkoja to leave and never come back. Our next tale explores what happens next in the life of the bitter, vindictive Sarkoja.

  VENGEANCE OF MARS

  BY ROBIN WASSERMAN

  These are the things she knows: blood and pain, dust and rock.

  Hunger.

  Hate.

  The man from elsewhere is a smudge on the horizon, but she will not close the distance. Not yet.

  Patience. She knows this, too. All too well. Eight years she has waited. Amassed her forces and nurtured their hate. Watched the man from afar, noted his habits, his weaknesses, his desires.

  Weakness and desire: She knows these to be the same.

  She desires his blood flowing through her fingers, staining the desert floor. She craves his moans of agony, the last gasps of his puny lungs, the slackness of death as his soul escapes his body and takes its last voyage. Surely not to the Valley Dor, for there can be no eternal berth in paradise for one like him, for one who has brought such hell down upon her and her world. She desires the longsword in her hand, the swift and sure strike, the final blow that will send him home.

  But she is stronger than her desires. She has waited. And now she will wait one more sundown and one more sunrise, and then he will die.

  Tomorrow, Sarkoja will kill John Carter, the madman monster of Barsoom, and all will hallow her name.

  Vengeance. This she knows above all. And tomorrow, the man John Carter will know it, too.

  They expected her to die. A warning, Tars Tarkas called it, allowing her a chance to flee before he took his final revenge. This supposed mercy was nothing but another sign of his disease, the infection that John Carter had brought to her world. That Tars Tarkas, the mightiest of all the Tharks in all Barsoom, should show mercy—it was an abomination.

  She had saved him once from corruption, from the so-called love for that female. It had been disgusting, their secret rendezvous, their cooing passion, the soft spots he exposed to her and loved in her, their shared ecstasies of weakness—for what was attachment, what was so-called love but the worst kind of weakness, the fault-line of civilization, the flaw that had been eradicated all those generations ago? The female was an atavism, a parasite, and Tars Tarkas her prey. Sarkoja had rescued him from his sorry fate and cauterized the wound: Once the female was gone, Tars Tarkas returned to his natural state of glory. It was not in the nature of the Tharks to deceive, but she had allowed herself one small lie of omission, and behaved as if she knew nothing of his crimes. This sacrifice she had made for him, and for their people, so he could someday rule. He had made adequate use of the gift. For many years, there was no Thark harder, stronger, truer to the spirit of the Green Martians.

  And then came the man John Carter, and he was worse than the female, because his venom spread. As it was in the wild, so it was among the Tharks: The weakest was first to fall.

  Sola’s betrayal was no surprise. But for Tars Tarkas, of all Tharks, to succumb to the man John Carter’s lies, this was unthinkable. For Tars Tarkas to cast her out, though she had been his most loyal female, his most dogged servant, this too was unthinkable. But for him to do so as an act of mercy, to consign her to a coward’s death, this was intolerable.

  He had offered her a weakling’s way out, and she had taken it, for it seemed even she was not immune to the poison, the diseased e
motions coursing through her tribe. She had successfully walled herself away from the most obvious enemies, those cancers of love, friendship, guilt, kindness. But she had discovered in herself a will to live that exceeded her will for honor and battle glory, and for this, she had the man John Carter to blame.

  He would pay.

  Three weeks she had passed roaming the dead seas, the sun rising and setting without incident. She had begun to believe she would live—refusing to ask herself, live for what, live with whom, live how, when her tribe had turned its backs to her and when all reputation and glory were lost.

  She was eating the last of her supplies, a tasteless handful of stale nuts, when the first blow fell. A troupe of Warhoon scouts. They asked no questions, solicited no alliance or intel, only struck at her with their short-blades, one blow after another, and this was right, this was the true way, and for the first time since Tars Tarkas had offered her his diseased mercy, she felt her burdens lift, and laughed at the glee of slashing and bashing and killing, even as their daggers skinned the flesh from her bones and ripped jagged gashes in her face, her arms, her chest. War was life, life was war, and it was only in battle that she truly came alive, whirling and dancing on her sturdy limbs, hurling one of the larger males off his feet and stomping his face as she targeted his brother.

  Three of them fell to her hand, and when the others left her for dead, it was these bodies that kept her alive, one mouthful at a time.

  When the white apes approached, she buried herself beneath the dirt and soft yellow moss, carving a small tunnel in the earth through which to breathe. They roamed through the gnawed bones of the dead, sensing her presence, frustrated by her camouflage. She listened to them padding above her, and knew that if a thick white paw plunged through the shallow mound of dirt, she would be unable to defend herself. She was weak, bloodstained—finished. And as she lay there, as she waited for the River Iss to beckon, she let her mind play over the past, and wonder. For perhaps all she knew was wrong, and Tars Tarkas was right. Perhaps the man John Carter had brought truth to Barsoom; perhaps the brutal, cold life of kill after kill was less than necessary; perhaps there was another way. Perhaps it was so, because somewhere the man John Carter walked the earth, stupidly happy with his weak female, and somewhere the betrayer Tars Tarkas and the defective Sola embraced and delighted in their perverse and unnatural bond, while Sarkoja lay desiccated and disintegrating, food for the white apes.

  Even Barsoom could not be so unjust. The gods would not allow it.

  And so, if she fell and John Carter rose, perhaps that was as it should be.

  This she allowed herself to believe, for the long moment of silence after the white apes padded away, leaving her intact and alive. It would be easier, she thought, to stay beneath the earth in her cool and shallow grave, and let Barsoom reclaim her.

  Then came the wind.

  A great wind, sweeping the yellow plains.

  An invisible hand, lifting the dirt from her broken body.

  She opened her eyes, and she saw sky.

  From that moment, she never questioned again. Barsoom wanted her to live.

  And that could only mean Barsoom wanted John Carter to die.

  She walked.

  When she could no longer walk, she crawled.

  Through valleys, over shallow hills, across dry riverbeds that carved ribbons through the endless yellow plains.

  Through heat that scorched her throat and set her empty belly on fire.

  Through cold that numbed her limbs and frosted her open wounds.

  There was no more food; no more water. There was no destination, except forward. No thought, except forward.

  She would go on until she could go on no longer.

  The structure before her was low and made of a gleaming glass. Within, carefully arranged, the eggs waited. Rows and rows of eggs, their shells thinning, their hidden creatures stirring, limbs creaking and stretching, their time nearing, the outside world calling.

  Sarkoja did not see the incubator. She saw nothing of the world before her. Legs carried her forward. Arms clawed the dirt. Mechanically, she slurped from the miracle, the thin fountain of water that trickled from a weak underground spring, her body drawn to the moisture like a thoat to a trough, but she knew none of this. She saw only the visions of her fevered brain, visions of a wrathful army, their weapons raised in might and right. She saw Sola broken on the ground; she saw John Carter, his dumb, zitidar-like eyes wide in fear as her army mowed him down. She saw Tars Tarkas rise again, purged of all poison, and saw herself at his side. She tasted blood, and tasted joy.

  For two days, she dreamed of death. And when she awoke, when the gray curtain lifted from her eyes and she took in the eggs, each hard shell protecting a life as yet untainted by flaw or failure, she knew that the fever dreams had not been dreams at all, but visions of a future she could now make manifest.

  She knew where she would find her army.

  Every night, she tells them stories. She has always told them stories.

  Days are spent on training: How to use a longsword, how to wield a spear and aim a rifle, how to disable an enemy in hand-to-hand combat, how to live off the land, how to scavenge food and track water, how to hide from white apes and banths, how to ambush vulnerable travelers and take what is needed, how to survive and how to kill and why the two are inseparable. But it is the nights that matter. It is the stories that keep her going, and it is the stories that make these children, her children, an army.

  “The man was a stranger to us, as we were strangers to him, and yet he did not hesitate to interfere. He curried favor with his strange powers, and he slaughtered those who would not bend to his will. This man—”

  “John Carter,” they say, in unison. This is their role, and they relish it.

  “—was unlike all who dwell on Barsoom, for this man had it in his power and will to lie. To close off his mind and cache his whims. He was a deceiver, and he brought this corruption to the heart of the Tharks. He claimed to come from another world.”

  “Lies.”

  “He claimed to offer his allegiance to Lorquas Ptomel and Tars Tarkas.”

  “Lies.”

  “He claimed that Sarkoja had betrayed her people and her leader.”

  “Lies!”

  “He claims to be strong.”

  “But he is weak.”

  “He claims to be noble and true.”

  “But he is hollow.”

  “He claims to love this world.”

  “But he loves only himself.”

  Sarkoja does not believe in love. What she feels for her children is far greater. They are a part of her, powerful limbs that respond to her every will. Their thoughts are her thoughts; no part of them has not been molded by her. She has given them an identical dream and for six years they have pursued it with identical single-mindedness; they circle her and listen to the stories with identically rapt gazes.

  But she must admit, they are not identical. Projal is clumsy with his dagger, while Biquas is too easily distracted—by sudden noises, by tricks of the light, by, more than once, one of his four arms, flickering at the edge of his field of vision.

  And then there is Rok, who has no equal with the sword and no rival to his strength or purity of will. Rok, who was the first to contribute to the telling of the stories, whose booming responses inspired the others to join him. Rok, who was the first to learn to speak, and as soon as he did, pestered her nonstop with questions about John Carter, whose name had been his first word, as it was for them all. Had she believed in such a thing as love, Rok would have been the most deserving of it. But fortunately for them both, she believes only in strength, and that she has given him instead.

  “He killed many of the males and females who gave you life,” she says, for the last time, because after tomorrow, there will be no more need for stories, after tomorrow they will have only one story to tell: the story of their triumph and John Carter’s death. “But his crimes are far more gr
ave. He killed the spirit of the Tharks. He ripped out its heart and stomped on it with his puny feet. He stole your legacy and corrupted your brothers and sisters, who now look to him as a god. He is power-mad and bloodthirsty and knows nothing of nobility or custom. He believes that people should do as they feel and not as they must. He believes the good of the one—the only one mattering to him—is worth the slaughter of the many. The slaughter of our people, and our way. There is only one hope for cleansing Barsoom of his taint. He claims to be our savior, but there is only one thing he can do to save us.”

  “He can die,” they chant, and chant again, until their voices merge with the wild howls of the plains and it as if the night itself calls for John Carter’s blood.

  They are not all Green Martians. There are those among them with two arms rather than four; those who toddle on spindly legs at half the height of a grown Thark. Those who were once tended, as babes, by the weak Red Men who dwelt in cities and pretended to a civility and superiority they had not earned. There are those who, in another life, would have been her enemies.

  But they are all her children.

  The city of Zodanga was filled with orphans. She did not intend to steal them. Not at first.

  She crept into the city in search of food and weaponry. She had sent the children into the broken skyline, warning them to stay close to one another and not be intimidated by the Red Men. She had taught them how to disappear into shadows and how to kill in silence, and Zodanga was nearly in ruins—John Carter and his army had seen to that. She had no doubt they would escape detection and return to camp with what was needed. Still, she kept Rok by her side. Of all of them, he was the one she could least afford to lose.