A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs (good books to read for adults .TXT) 📗

this unwarranted temerity. Throw down your sword; you cannot hope to overcome four of us,” he added with a grim smile.

My reply was a quick thrust which left me but three antagonists and I can assure you that they were worthy of my metal. They had me backed against the wall in no time, fighting for my life. Slowly I worked my way to a corner of the room where I could force them to come at me only one at a time, and thus we fought upward of twenty minutes; the clanging of steel on steel producing a veritable bedlam in the little room.

The noise had brought Dejah Thoris to the door of her apartment, and there she stood throughout the conflict with Sola at her back peering over her shoulder. Her face was set and emotionless and I knew that she did not recognize me, nor did Sola.

Finally a lucky cut brought down a second guardsman and then, with only two opposing me, I changed my tactics and rushed them down after the fashion of my fighting that had won me many a victory. The third fell within ten seconds after the second, and the last lay dead upon the bloody floor a few moments later. They were brave men and noble fighters, and it grieved me that I had been forced to kill them, but I would have willingly depopulated all Barsoom could I have reached the side of my Dejah Thoris in no other way.

Sheathing my bloody blade I advanced toward my Martian Princess, who still stood mutely gazing at me without sign of recognition.

“Who are you, Zodangan?” she whispered. “Another enemy to harass me in my misery?”

“I am a friend,” I answered, “a once cherished friend.”

“No friend of Helium’s princess wears that metal,” she replied, “and yet the voice! I have heard it before; it is not⁠—it cannot be⁠—no, for he is dead.”

“It is, though, my Princess, none other than John Carter,” I said. “Do you not recognize, even through paint and strange metal, the heart of your chieftain?”

As I came close to her she swayed toward me with outstretched hands, but as I reached to take her in my arms she drew back with a shudder and a little moan of misery.

“Too late, too late,” she grieved. “O my chieftain that was, and whom I thought dead, had you but returned one little hour before⁠—but now it is too late, too late.”

“What do you mean, Dejah Thoris?” I cried. “That you would not have promised yourself to the Zodangan prince had you known that I lived?”

“Think you, John Carter, that I would give my heart to you yesterday and today to another? I thought that it lay buried with your ashes in the pits of Warhoon, and so today I have promised my body to another to save my people from the curse of a victorious Zodangan army.”

“But I am not dead, my princess. I have come to claim you, and all Zodanga cannot prevent it.”

“It is too late, John Carter, my promise is given, and on Barsoom that is final. The ceremonies which follow later are but meaningless formalities. They make the fact of marriage no more certain than does the funeral cortege of a jeddak again place the seal of death upon him. I am as good as married, John Carter. No longer may you call me your princess. No longer are you my chieftain.”

“I know but little of your customs here upon Barsoom, Dejah Thoris, but I do know that I love you, and if you meant the last words you spoke to me that day as the hordes of Warhoon were charging down upon us, no other man shall ever claim you as his bride. You meant them then, my princess, and you mean them still! Say that it is true.”

“I meant them, John Carter,” she whispered. “I cannot repeat them now for I have given myself to another. Ah, if you had only known our ways, my friend,” she continued, half to herself, “the promise would have been yours long months ago, and you could have claimed me before all others. It might have meant the fall of Helium, but I would have given my empire for my Tharkian chief.”

Then aloud she said: “Do you remember the night when you offended me? You called me your princess without having asked my hand of me, and then you boasted that you had fought for me. You did not know, and I should not have been offended; I see that now. But there was no one to tell you what I could not, that upon Barsoom there are two kinds of women in the cities of the red men. The one they fight for that they may ask them in marriage; the other kind they fight for also, but never ask their hands. When a man has won a woman he may address her as his princess, or in any of the several terms which signify possession. You had fought for me, but had never asked me in marriage, and so when you called me your princess, you see,” she faltered, “I was hurt, but even then, John Carter, I did not repulse you, as I should have done, until you made it doubly worse by taunting me with having won me through combat.”

“I do not need ask your forgiveness now, Dejah Thoris,” I cried. “You must know that my fault was of ignorance of your Barsoomian customs. What I failed to do, through implicit belief that my petition would be presumptuous and unwelcome, I do now, Dejah Thoris; I ask you to be my wife, and by all the Virginian fighting blood that flows in my veins you shall be.”

“No, John Carter, it is useless,” she cried, hopelessly, “I may never be yours while Sab Than lives.”

“You have sealed his death warrant, my princess⁠—Sab Than dies.”

“Nor that either,” she hastened to explain. “I may not wed the man who slays