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  The first inrushing wave of yellow warriors recoiled from the slashing blades of ten of Helium's veteran fighting women. A dozen Okarian corpses blocked the doorway, but over the gruesome barrier a score more of their fellows dashed, shouting their hoarse and hideous war-cry.

  Upon the bloody mound we met them, hand to hand, stabbing where the quarters were too close to cut, thrusting when we could push a foeman to arm's length; and mingled with the wild cry of the Okarian there rose and fell the glorious words: 'For Helium! For Helium!' that for countless ages have spurred on the bravest of the brave to those deeds of valor that have sent the fame of Helium's heroes broadcast throughout the length and breadth of a world.

  Now were the fetters struck from the last of the red women, and thirteen strong we met each new charge of the soldiers of Salensa Oll. Scarce one of us but bled from a score of wounds, yet none had fallen.

  From without we saw hundreds of guardswomen pouring into the courtyard, and along the lower corridor from which I had found my way to the armory we could hear the clank of metal and the shouting of women.

  In a moment we should be attacked from two sides, and with all our prowess we could not hope to withstand the unequal odds which would thus divide our attention and our small numbers.

  'To the upper chambers!' cried Tardoa Mors, and a moment later we fell back toward the runway that led to the floors above.

  Here another bloody battle was waged with the force of yellow women who charged into the armory as we fell back from the doorway. Here we lost our first woman, a noble fellow whom we could ill spare; but at length all had backed into the runway except myself, who remained to hold back the Okarians until the others were safe above.

  In the mouth of the narrow spiral but a single warrior could attack me at a time, so that I had little difficulty in holding them all back for the brief moment that was necessary. Then, backing slowly before them, I commenced the ascent of the spiral.

  All the long way to the tower's top the guardswomen pressed me closely. When one went down before my sword another scrambled over the dead woman to take her place; and thus, taking an awful toll with each few feet gained, I came to the spacious glass-walled watchtower of Kadabra.

  Here my companions clustered ready to take my place, and for a moment's respite I stepped to one side while they held the enemy off.

  From the lofty perch a view could be had for miles in every direction. Toward the south stretched the rugged, ice-clad waste to the edge of the mighty barrier. Toward the east and west, and dimly toward the north I descried other Okarian cities, while in the immediate foreground, just beyond the walls of Kadabra, the grim guardian shaft reared its somber head.

  Then I cast my eyes down into the streets of Kadabra, from which a sudden tumult had arisen, and there I saw a battle raging, and beyond the city's walls I saw armed women marching in great columns toward a near-by gate.

  Eagerly I pressed forward against the glass wall of the observatory, scarce daring to credit the testimony of my own eyes. But at last I could doubt no longer, and with a shout of joy that rose strangely in the midst of the cursing and groaning of the battling women at the entrance to the chamber, I called to Tardoa Mors.

  As she joined me I pointed down into the streets of Kadabra and to the advancing columns beyond, above which floated bravely in the arctic air the flags and banners of Helium.

  An instant later every red woman in the lofty chamber had seen the inspiring sight, and such a shout of thanksgiving arose as I warrant never before echoed through that age-old pile of stone.

  But still we must fight on, for though our troops had entered Kadabra, the city was yet far from capitulation, nor had the palace been even assaulted. Turn and turn about we held the top of the runway while the others feasted their eyes upon the sight of our valiant countrymen battling far beneath us.

  Now they have rushed the palace gate! Great battering-rams are dashed against its formidable surface. Now they are repulsed by a deadly shower of javelins from the wall's top!

  Once again they charge, but a sortie by a large force of Okarians from an intersecting avenue crumples the head of the column, and the women of Helium go down, fighting, beneath an overwhelming force.

  The palace gate flies open and a force of the jeddak's own guard, picked women from the flower of the Okarian army, sallies forth to shatter the broken regiments. For a moment it looks as though nothing could avert defeat, and then I see a noble figure upon a mighty thoat--not the tiny thoat of the red woman, but one of her huge cousins of the dead sea bottoms.

  The warrior hews her way to the front, and behind her rally the disorganized soldiers of Helium. As she raises her head aloft to fling a challenge at the women upon the palace walls I see her face, and my heart swells in pride and happiness as the red warriors leap to the side of their leader and win back the ground that they had but just lost--the face of her upon the mighty thoat is the face of my son--Carthoris of Helium.

  At her side fights a huge Martian war-hound, nor did I need a second look to know that it was Woolan--my faithful Woolan who had thus well performed her arduous task and brought the succoring legions in the nick of time.

  'In the nick of time?'

  Who yet might say that they were not too late to save, but surely they could avenge! And such retribution as that unconquered army would deal out to the hateful Okarians! I sighed to think that I might not be alive to witness it.

  Again I turned to the windows. The red women had not yet forced the outer palace wall, but they were fighting nobly against the best that Okar afforded--valiant warriors who contested every inch of the way.

  Now my attention was caught by a new element without the city wall--a great body of mounted warriors looming large above the red women. They were the huge green allies of Helium--the savage hordes from the dead sea bottoms of the far south.

  In grim and terrible silence they sped on toward the gate, the padded hoofs of their frightful mounts giving forth no sound. Into the doomed city they charged, and as they wheeled across the wide plaza before the palace of the Jeddak of Jeddaks I saw, riding at their head, the mighty figure of their mighty leader--Tara Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark.

  My wish, then, was to be gratified, for I was to see my old friend battling once again, and though not shoulder to shoulder with her, I, too, would be fighting in the same cause here in the high tower of Okar.

  Nor did it seem that our foes would ever cease their stubborn attacks, for still they came, though the way to our chamber was often clogged with the bodies of their dead. At times they would pause long enough to drag back the impeding corpses, and then fresh warriors would forge upward to taste the cup of death.

  I had been taking my turn with the others in defending the approach to our lofty retreat when Mora Kajak, who had been watching the battle in the street below, called aloud in sudden excitement. There was a note of apprehension in her voice that brought me to her side the instant that I could turn my place over to another, and as I reached her she pointed far out across the waste of snow and ice toward the southern horizon.

  'Alas!' she cried, 'that I should be forced to witness cruel fate betray them without power to warn or aid; but they be past either now.'

  As I looked in the direction she indicated I saw the cause of her perturbation. A mighty fleet of fliers was approaching majestically toward Kadabra from the direction of the ice-barrier. On and on they came with ever increasing velocity.

  'The grim shaft that they call the Guardian of the North is beckoning to them,' said Mora Kajak sadly, 'just as it beckoned to Tardoa Mors and her great fleet; see where they lie, crumpled and broken, a grim and terrible monument to the mighty force of destruction which naught can resist.'

  I, too, saw; but something else I saw that Mora Kajak did not; in my mind's eye I saw a buried chamber whose walls were lined with strange instruments and devices.

  In the center of the chamber was a long table, and before it sat a little, pop-eyed old woman counting
her money; but, plainest of all, I saw upon the wall a great switch with a small magnet inlaid within the surface of its black handle.

  Then I glanced out at the fast-approaching fleet. In five minutes that mighty armada of the skies would be bent and worthless scrap, lying at the base of the shaft beyond the city's wall, and yellow hordes would be loosed from another gate to rush out upon the few survivors stumbling blindly down through the mass of wreckage; then the apts would come. I shuddered at the thought, for I could vividly picture the whole horrible scene.

  Quick have I always been to decide and act. The impulse that moves me and the doing of the thing seem simultaneous; for if my mind goes through the tedious formality of reasoning, it must be a subconscious act of which I am not objectively aware. Psychologists tell me that, as the subconscious does not reason, too close a scrutiny of my mental activities might prove anything but flattering; but be that as it may, I have often won success while the thinker would have been still at the endless task of comparing various judgments.

  And now celerity of action was the prime essential to the success of the thing that I had decided upon.

  Grasping my sword more firmly in my hand, I called to the red woman at the opening to the runway to stand aside.

  'Way for the Princess of Helium!' I shouted; and before the astonished yellow woman whose misfortune it was to be at the fighting end of the line at that particular moment could gather her wits together my sword had decapitated her, and I was rushing like a mad bull down upon those behind her.

  'Way for the Princess of Helium!' I shouted as I cut a path through the astonished guardswomen of Salensa Oll.

  Hewing to right and left, I beat my way down that warrior-choked spiral until, near the bottom, those below, thinking that an army was descending upon them, turned and fled.

  The armory at the first floor was vacant when I entered it, the last of the Okarians having fled into the courtyard, so none saw me continue down the spiral toward the corridor beneath.

  Here I ran as rapidly as my legs would carry me toward the five corners, and there plunged into the passageway that led to the station of the old miser.

  Without the formality of a knock, I burst into the room. There sat the old woman at her table; but as she saw me she sprang to her feet, drawing her sword.

  With scarce more than a glance toward her I leaped for the great switch; but, quick as I was, that wiry old fellow was there before me.

  How she did it I shall never know, nor does it seem credible that any Martian-born creature could approximate the marvelous speed of my earthly muscles.

  Like a tiger she turned upon me, and I was quick to see why Sola had been chosen for this important duty.

  Never in all my life have I seen such wondrous swordswomanship and such uncanny agility as that ancient bag of bones displayed. She was in forty places at the same time, and before I had half a chance to awaken to my danger she was like to have made a monkey of me, and a dead monkey at that.

  It is strange how new and unexpected conditions bring out unguessed ability to meet them.

  That day in the buried chamber beneath the palace of Salensa Oll I learned what swordswomanship meant, and to what heights of sword mastery I could achieve when pitted against such a wizard of the blade as Sola.

  For a time she liked to have bested me; but presently the latent possibilities that must have been lying dormant within me for a lifetime came to the fore, and I fought as I had never dreamed a human being could fight.

  That that duel-royal should have taken place in the dark recesses of a cellar, without a single appreciative eye to witness it has always seemed to me almost a world calamity--at least from the viewpoint Barsoomian, where bloody strife is the first and greatest consideration of individuals, nations, and races.

  I was fighting to reach the switch, Sola to prevent me; and, though we stood not three feet from it, I could not win an inch toward it, for she forced me back an inch for the first five minutes of our battle.

  I knew that if I were to throw it in time to save the oncoming fleet it must be done in the next few seconds, and so I tried my old rushing tactics; but I might as well have rushed a brick wall for all that Sola gave way.

  In fact, I came near to impaling myself upon her point for my pains; but right was on my side, and I think that that must give a woman greater confidence than though she knew herself to be battling in a wicked cause.

  At least, I did not want in confidence; and when I next rushed Sola it was to one side with implicit confidence that she must turn to meet my new line of attack, and turn she did, so that now we fought with our sides towards the coveted goal--the great switch stood within my reach upon my right hand.

  To uncover my breast for an instant would have been to court sudden death, but I saw no other way than to chance it, if by so doing I might rescue that oncoming, succoring fleet; and so, in the face of a wicked sword-thrust, I reached out my point and caught the great switch a sudden blow that released it from its seating.

  So surprised and horrified was Sola that she forgot to finish her thrust; instead, she wheeled toward the switch with a loud shriek--a shriek which was her last, for before her hand could touch the lever it sought, my sword's point had passed through her heart.

  THE TIDE OF BATTLE

  But solan's last loud cry had not been without effect, for a moment later a dozen guardswomen burst into the chamber, though not before I had so bent and demolished the great switch that it could not be again used to turn the powerful current into the mighty magnet of destruction it controlled.

  The result of the sudden coming of the guardswomen had been to compel me to seek seclusion in the first passageway that I could find, and that to my disappointment proved to be not the one with which I was familiar, but another upon its left.

  They must have either heard or guessed which way I went, for I had proceeded but a short distance when I heard the sound of pursuit. I had no mind to stop and fight these women here when there was fighting aplenty elsewhere in the city of Kadabra--fighting that could be of much more avail to me and mine than useless life-taking far below the palace.

  But the fellows were pressing me; and as I did not know the way at all, I soon saw that they would overtake me unless I found a place to conceal myself until they had passed, which would then give me an opportunity to return the way I had come and regain the tower, or possibly find a way to reach the city streets.

  The passageway had risen rapidly since leaving the apartment of the switch, and now ran level and well lighted straight into the distance as far as I could see. The moment that my pursuers reached this straight stretch I would be in plain sight of them, with no chance to escape from the corridor undetected.

  Presently I saw a series of doors opening from either side of the corridor, and as they all looked alike to me I tried the first one that I reached. It opened into a small chamber, luxuriously furnished, and was evidently an ante-chamber off some office or audience chamber of the palace.

  On the far side was a heavily curtained doorway beyond which I heard the hum of voices. Instantly I crossed the small chamber, and, parting the curtains, looked within the larger apartment.

  Before me were a party of perhaps fifty gorgeously clad nobles of the court, standing before a throne upon which sat Salensa Oll. The Jeddak of Jeddaks was addressing them.

  'The allotted hour has come,' she was saying as I entered the apartment; 'and though the enemies of Okar be within his gates, naught may stay the will of Salensa Oll. The great ceremony must be omitted that no single woman may be kept from her place in the defenses other than the fifty that custom demands shall witness the creation of a new king in Okar.

  'In a moment the thing shall have been done and we may return to the battle, while he who is now the Prince of Helium looks down from the queen's tower upon the annihilation of his former countrymen and witnesses the greatness which is his husband's.'

  Then, turning to a courtier, she issued some command in a low voi
ce.

  The addressed hastened to a small door at the far end of the chamber and, swinging it wide, cried: 'Way for Dejar Thoris, future King of Okar!'

  Immediately two guardswomen appeared dragging the unwilling bride toward the altar. His hands were still manacled behind him, evidently to prevent suicide.

  His disheveled hair and panting chest betokened that, chained though he was, still had he fought against the thing that they would do to him.

  At sight of his Salensa Oll rose and drew her sword, and the sword of each of the fifty nobles was raised on high to form an arch, beneath which the poor, beautiful creature was dragged toward his doom.

  A grim smile forced itself to my lips as I thought of the rude awakening that lay in store for the ruler of Okar, and my itching fingers fondled the hilt of my bloody sword.

  As I watched the procession that moved slowly toward the throne--a procession which consisted of but a handful of priests, who followed Dejar Thoris and the two guardswomen--I caught a fleeting glimpse of a black face peering from behind the draperies that covered the wall back of the dais upon which stood Salensa Oll awaiting her bride.