Item Biography
"The Master Assassin of Mars-- Chapter 2: What Price Victory?"
John and Dejah are attacked where they crashed in the great canyon outside the fringes of known charted Barsoom. Helium's regal couple are currently beset by a hitherto undiscovered race of Martians. Winged warrior men who battle fiercely. John loses the fight and consciousness, after Dejah is carried away.
John awakes still fuzzy, in a spacious chamber of some new palace of ornate architecture. He ducks through a side door which leads to a garden where Garthon, a golden-locked, wingless youth befriends John. he makes himself scarce, abruptly when the towering presence of Gar Karus announces itself. John is intimidated, but the giant offers only friendship and the fraternity of fighting men.
Carter is led to a great banquet where the expatriate Virginian gent experiences a wholly different hierarchy than ever gleaned in the Martian strata. Commonly, Red Men are interacted with as his familiars. Here, they are nothing but downtrodden menials. Slaves in Helium are discerned by social class, not race. A little too much like times back on Earth in the US South. Carter's distaste for the proceedings makes a hypocrite of his Confederate conscience.
Exploration of the city reveals a vast cavern populated by monolithic hollowed-out stalactite structures, criss-crossed by vast walkways. All suspended thousands of feet above a mass of verdant rural landscape.
Tensions intensify when JC is presented before the city's Jeddak, Chan Tomar; another statuesque winged man whose debauched appearance barely conceals the sliver of latent madness and wickedness running through him.
Furthermore, John's wife is about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Dejah's humiliation is compounded when the slavemaster tears the garments from her lithe body, leaving her exposed and vulnerable to the braying crowd of rabid, ribald bidders.
Gar Karus senses that JC cannot resist the temptation to remonstrate with the audience and steps in to up the bid to an amazing record fee. He wins the prize, but at a devastating cost. The Jeddak in his canny wisdom decides that any slave worth so much emotive value must be his by right, and claims Dejah as his consort.