hough the words were
few, the unimpassioned tone carried unfathomable depths of cold
contempt.

"Better all that you have threatened," she said, "than you."

Then she turned her back upon him and went to stand once more before
the east window, gazing with sad eyes toward distant Ptarth.

Astok wheeled and left the room, returning after a short interval
of time with food and drink.

"Here," he said, "is sustenance until I return again. The next to
enter this apartment will be your executioner. Commend yourself to
your ancestors, Thuvia of Ptarth, for within a few days you shall
be with them."

Then he was gone.

Half an hour later he was interviewing an officer high in the navy
of Dusar.

"Whither went Vas Kor?" he asked. "He is not at his palace."

"South, to the great waterway that skirts Torquas," replied the
other. "His son, Hal Vas, is Dwar of the Road there, and thither
has Vas Kor gone to enlist recruits among the workers on the farms."

"Good," said Astok, and a half-hour more found him rising above
Dusar in his swiftest flier.

CHAPTER XIII

TURJUN, THE PANTHAN

The face of Carthoris of Helium gave no token of the emotions that
convulsed him inwardly as he heard from the lips of Hal Vas that
Helium was at war with Dusar, and that fate had thrown him into
the service of the enemy.

That he might utilize this opportunity to the good of Helium scarce
sufficed to outweigh the chagrin he felt that he was not fighting
in the open at the head of his own loyal troops.

To escape the Dusarians might prove an easy matter; and then again
it might not. Should they suspect his loyalty (and the loyalty
of an impressed panthan was always open to suspicion), he might
not find an opportunity to elude their vigilance until after the
termination of the war, which might occur within days, or, again,
only after long and weary years of bloodshed.

He recalled that history recorded wars in which actual military
operations had been carried on without cessation for five or six
hundred years, and even now there were nations upon Barsoom with
which Helium had made no peace within the history of man.

The outlook was not cheering. He could not guess that within a
few hours he would be blessing the fate that had thrown him into
the service of Dusar.

"Ah!" exclaimed Hal Vas. "Here is my father now. Kaor! Vas Kor.
Here is one you will be glad to meet--a doughty panthan--" He
hesitated.

"Turjun," i