THE BRONZE MAN OF MARS
BY L. E. MODESITT, JR.
It’s a terrible thing to be the son born of a great love story, perhaps the greatest in the recent history of Gathol—to be the son of Pan Dan Chee, the only Orovar to leave the hidden sanctuary of ancient Horz in hundreds of thousands of years, who offered his sword to my mother at first glance, and then fought his way across the rugged terrain of Barsoom. After protecting her honor the entire way, he arrived just in time to break the siege of Gathol, which was under attack by millions of the frozen men of Panar. If that were not enough of a burden, it is even more terrible to be the great-grandson of the most famous warrior of Barsoom. Yes, my mother was Llana of Gathol, the granddaughter of the Jeddak of Jeddaks, John Carter, whose accomplishments and legends are so vast as to be beyond enumerating . . . as well as unbelievable to those who do not know him.
Those accomplishments were the reason I now stood in the ancient city of Horz, listening, in the darkness, to the shuffling feet of the creatures that scurried within. I had heard that the ulsios of Horz were far larger than the knee-high creatures that frequented the depths and declivities of most cities. I turned slowly, torch in one hand, sword in the other, searching for the first sign of one of the repulsive needle-toothed rodents.
I barely managed to get my blade up in time to slash-block the leap of the creature that had suddenly leapt at me—an ulsio almost twice the size of any I’d ever seen in my explorations of the depths beneath Gathol. My quick defense barely deflected the beast, however, and it took another series of cut-and-thrusts to leave it gasping for life on the ancient stone pavement, missing three of its six legs by the time it finally expired. Leaving me no time to celebrate, another leapt forward out of the gloom. I dispatched it quickly with a slash to the neck, removing its head with one clean strike. The sight of me removing its head was apparently sufficient to quell any further attack, for, although another followed at a distance, it clearly decided that feasting on its own kind was preferable to the risk I posed.
And how, you might wonder, did I come to be prowling the pits of Horz, whose dark depths had been unprobed (except by my father and great-grandfather) in hundreds of thousands of years? Horz—once heralded as the greatest of the now-dead cities of Barsoom, and the queen city and most magnificent port on the vanished Throxeus—had been built downward over the eons—to follow the dwindling ocean—then largely abandoned.
My journey to Horz was inevitable, for from the moment I left the egg it was clear I did not look like either of my parents. My mother possessed the fair-skinned redness and red hair of a princess of Barsoom, while my father had the white skin and blond hair of an Orovar. I, meanwhile, appeared before my mother with golden bronze skin and reddish bronze hair. There had been, in the long history of Barsoom, white men, yellow men, black men, green men, and even plant men . . . but never, until my birth, a bronze man. Add to that the gray eyes of my great-grandfather, and I possessed an appearance unlike anyone in Gathol—at least until my brother left the egg some ten years later, but he’ll have to tell his own tale.
When my father saw me, he swallowed . . . and then began to teach me everything he knew about swords. He had others teach me to fight with nothing but my body, a skill at which he was less adept . . . for he was an Orovar, and his weapon was the blade—though he was expert with the radium rifle as well. My parents would not let me leave the palace until they were convinced that I was a match for all but the finest of swordsmen. That training that took years and years, naturally, because all too many of the men of Barsoom are indeed accomplished with the blade.
That did not mean I had no adventures as a youth—for the palace of Gathol is vast indeed, and some of those deep chambers had seen no man for centuries before I entered them. In those depths and darknesses I found some adventure; I fought off ulsios, and feral calots, and once even a banth that had found an ancient tunnel and made its way through haads of underground passages to the palace. Vanquishing a banth would have given me some small stature . . . but, alas, I had no proof, for, as I ran it through, it had thrashed about, and then rolled backward into a shaft that descended into such depths that I never heard the impact of its fall. Had I told anyone that tale, I would have been the laughingstock of all Gathol.
On an unusually warm morning, prior to my journey to Horz, I had stepped into the small side courtyard of the palace where I made a practice of exercising, only to find the lovely Jasras Kan sitting on one of the ersite benches.
“Kaor, Jasras.”
“The same to you, Dan Lan Chee.”
“You are most beauteous this morning, as you are every morning and evening. . . .”
“Words . . . polished words, and words alone are but sounds and flattery. . . .” Like her mother, Rojas, Jasras said what she meant, if less politely.
“I would flatter you, for you deserve it,” I said.
“Without deeds behind the words, those words are like the wind. What have you done in your life, Dan Lan Chee? You are among the best Jetan players in Gathol, but that is but a game of mental skill. You have illustrious ancestors, but you have never even left Gathol. . . .”
Strictly speaking, her words were not true. I had taken my personal flier hundreds of haads from Gathol, even into the frigid lands of the last remaining Panars. I’d served under my father when he led a force against the Yellow Men of Barsoom, but I had not distinguished myself individually. For all the skill required to move padwars and princesses across the squares of the gameboard, Jetan did not hazard the body. While I had heard that in times long before Jeddaks had played Jetan with real warriors on a life-size courtyard gameboard, I myself had never partaken of such a game, although I had heard stories about my grandmother Tara having been forced into playing as a live piece in one.
Those quiet words of Jasras Kan had bitten deep into my mind, much as I would have liked to dismiss them. For Jasras was a worthy prize, a woman of wit and beauty, if of a wit sometimes too sharp. She was also the daughter of Rojas, once a princess of the invisible people, and of Garis Kan, an odwar of Hastor, who had won the heart, or at least the mind and body, of Rojas after she had returned to Gathol with my mother. Rojas had aided my mother’s return from her abduction by Hin Abtol, as had my father and great-grandfather, but none of them would ever speak of it, only her rescue and adventurous return.
What else could I do? That very afternoon, I stocked my flier and set out for Horz, seeking to establish some honor by doing something my father had not: recovering the ancient and wondrous devices used by the near-immortal and evil Lum Tar O, who had preserved warriors for tens of thousands of years, creating food and sustenance from nothing, while surviving for untold generations in the depths beneath Horz. Hundreds upon hundreds of my ancestors had distinguished themselves by their blades, and Jasras was not a woman to be impressed by mere feats of arms; I was determined to do more than that. I had to.
For days, I flew north and west, my directional compass holding my flier on course while I slept, over haads and haads of ochre moss that grew on the lands that had once held oceans, seeing not a soul in all that time. Late on the fifth day, I beheld Horz, a sweep of buildings at the west end of a vast plateau. As I neared the city, despite the tales I had heard, I was awed at its size, and at the buildings and towers, magnificent still in their partial ruin. Following what I recalled of the little my father had said—and what he had demanded that I tell no one, on my honor as his son—I took care to circle the uppermost level of ancient Horz, avoiding the great courtyard that was doubtless still watched by the remaining Orovars, for they would put to death any outsiders for fear that others would come to take their secrets—especially, no doubt, their secret of creating food and water from nearly nothing.