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Page 59
Even in the hands of the giant green men bridle reins would be
hopelessly futile against the mad savagery and mastodonic strength
of the thoat, and so they are guided by that strange telepathic
power with which the men of Mars have learned to communicate in a
crude way with the lower orders of their planet.
With difficulty Carthoris urged the two beasts to the gate, where,
leaning down, he raised the latch. Then the thoat that he was
riding placed his great shoulder to the skeel-wood planking, pushed
through, and a moment later the man and the two beasts were swinging
silently down the avenue to the edge of the plaza, where Kar Komak
hid.
Here Carthoris found considerable difficulty in subduing the second
thoat, and as Kar Komak had never before ridden one of the beasts,
it seemed a most hopeless job; but at last the bowman managed to
scramble to the sleek back, and again the two beasts fled softly
down the moss-grown avenues toward the open sea-bottom beyond the
city.
All that night and the following day and the second night they
rode toward the north-east. No indication of pursuit developed,
and at dawn of the second day Carthoris saw in the distance the
waving ribbon of great trees that marked one of the long Barsoomian
water-ways.
Immediately they abandoned their thoats and approached the cultivated
district on foot. Carthoris also discarded the metal from his
harness, or such of it as might serve to identify him as a Heliumite,
or of royal blood, for he did not know to what nation belonged this
waterway, and upon Mars it is always well to assume every man and
nation your enemy until you have learned the contrary.
It was mid-forenoon when the two at last entered one of the roads
that cut through the cultivated districts at regular intervals,
joining the arid wastes on either side with the great, white,
central highway that follows through the centre from end to end of
the far-reaching, threadlike farm lands.
The high wall surrounding the fields served as a protection against
surprise by raiding green hordes, as well as keeping the savage
banths and other carnivora from the domestic animals and the human
beings upon the farms.
Carthoris stopped before the first gate he came to, pounding for
admission. The young man who answered his summons greeted the
two hospitably, though he looked with considerable wonder upon the
white skin and auburn hair of the bowman.
After he had listened for a moment to a partial narration of their
escape from the Torquasians, he invited them within, took them to
his house and bade the servants there prepare food for them.
As they waited in the low-ceiled, pleasant living room of the
farmhouse until the meal should be ready, Carthoris drew his host
into conversation that he might learn his nationality, and thus
the nation under whose dominion lay the waterway where circumstance
had placed him.
"I am Hal Vas," said the young man, "son of Vas Kor, of Dusar, a
noble in the retinue of Astok, Prince of Dusar. At present I am
Dwar of the Road for this district."
Carthoris was very glad that he had not disclosed his identity, for
though he had no idea of anything that had transpired since he had
left Helium, or that Astok was at the bottom of all his misfortunes,
he well knew that the Dusarian had no love for him, and that he
could hope for no assistance within the dominions of Dusar.
"And who are you?" asked Hal Vas. "By your appearance I take you
for a fighting man, but I see no insignia upon your harness. Can
it be that you are a panthan?"
Now, these wandering soldiers of fortune are common upon Barsoom,
where most men love to fight. They sell their services wherever
war exists, and in the occasional brief intervals when there is
no organized warfare between the red nations, they join one of the
numerous expeditions that are constantly being dispatched against
the green men in protection of the waterways that traverse the
wilder portions of the globe.
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