A Swordsman of Mars

SYNOPSIS

I envision a series of at least three books, perhaps five, laid on the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but involving none of the characters or settings used in his famous novels.

On page 23 of Chessmen of Mars, Burroughs states that the region northwest of Helium is one of the least-known areas of the planet. It is completely unknown to the Heliumites, who have never ventured into those parts. I have chosen this, the Xanthus, region as the setting of my new Mars books, so as to avoid employing any of the cities or regions used by Burroughs.

And, since the Heliumites know nothing of the Xanthus region, the inhabitants of the Xanthus region can know nothing of Helium or the other southern cities. In this way, I can avoid using or even mentioning by name any of the characters invented by Burroughs.

The only place-names of his invention which appear in these projected books will be the name Barsoom itself, and the names of the two moons. Without exception, all other place or personal names are of my own coinage, although done, of course, closely in line with the Burroughsian style of names.

This should defuse the Estate from any legal action, since nobody can possibly own an imaginary place or invented combinations of letters such as “thoat” or “jeddak.”

After the events described in the three opening chapters of the first book, Jad Tedron displays his sword-skills before the gamesmaster, and demonstrates his prowess in the arena for the next few days. During these days, panthans and vagabond warriors display their skills before the throng, hoping for employment. Jad Tedron secures sleeping quarters in a public house and moors his flier on its rooftop hangar facilities. Ulvius Spome receives his commission for recruiting Jad Tedron from the gamesmaster, and tries to insinuate himself into closer friendship with Tedron but is repulsed.

Walking home from the games one evening, Tedron surprises three masked assassins attacking a lone man, and goes to aid him. He slays one of the assassins and drives the others off, but is slightly wounded in the fray. The man he rescued, Ptol Kovus, is a member of the noble House of Ptol; he takes Tedron home and sees that his wounds are tended to. Since he fears assassination, having made a powerful enemy concerning whom he tells Tedron little, he hires the panthan on the spot as a bodyguard. Tedron rightly feels it would be contrary to the role he is playing to decline employment, and reluctantly accepts.

A few days later, accompanying Ptol Kovus at a glittering social function, he is first lifted into the heights of bliss and then dashed into the depths of despair, when he encounters the lovely Xana of Kanatov face to face, only in the next instant to see Ptol Kovus step forward and embrace and kiss the girl. He later learns that she is the sister of his employer and is being wooed by Zed Tonus, the handsome son of the jeddak of Kanator, Lorquas Zed.

He soon learns that the Ptolian house is a rival for the dais of Kanator and that Zed Tomus desires to take Xana for his mate and destroy her father and brother—the assassins, therefore, conspire not only against Ptol Kovus, but the entire Ptolian family. One night he is awakened by a slight sound and peers from the window to see an unmarked flier, its running-lights muffled, hovering about the upper tiers of the Ptolian palace. As he watches, a wrapped, struggling figure is borne into the craft. At the last possible moment, a ray of moonlight illuminates the features of the captive and her captor— and discovers that Xana of Kanator is being carried off by Zed Tomus!

Jad Tedron mounts his own flier and hurtles in pursuit. His engine is pierced by a projectile from the radium rifles of Zed Tomus’ hirelings, however, and the craft floats idly above the dead seabottom, rendering further pursuit impossible. Eventually, with dawn, it drifts over one of the dead cities which litter the plains of Xanthus, and Tedron manages to secure the mooring line to the crest of a tower, descending thereby to the street. Searching for food and drink, he discovers one of the gigantic green Martian warriors chained helplessly to a stone pillar, perishing slowly from hunger and thirst. A cruel enemy has left covered dishes of food and drink, and also the weapons and trappings of the hordesman, in tempting view, but just out of reach.

This revolts the chivalry of Tedron’s earthborn soul and he cautiously gives food and drink to the chained warrior, a chieftain of the Zarkol horde named Zandus Zan, waylaid and bludgeoned into insensibility, then chained and left to suffer a cruel, slow death by his fiendish jeddak, Druj Morvath, who fears his prowess and his popularity among the warriors of the Zarkol horde as a potential rival for the dais.

The red and green Martians are implacable racial foes, but as each needs something from the other, they devise a temporary truce. Zandus Zan agrees to this unheard-of notion because, being coldly emotionless, the green Martians obey strict logic, and since to decline the truce means slow death, it is only the argument of pure reason that he accept the truce, since it is better to live than to die.

Zandus Zan informs Tedron of the whereabouts of his wrecked flier, wherefrom Tedron extracts the tools required to repair his motors. He then places the keys to the chains which bind the gigantic warrior within reach, after cautiously freeing one hand from its bonds and prudently hiding the hordeaman^,s weapons in one of the ruined buildings nearby.

He ascends to his flier and, works at repairing the engines, having warily severed the mooring-line so that the green warrior cannot attack him once his back is turned. He flies off, leaving Zandus Zan to his own devices.

Meanwhile Xana, having cut herself free with the small knife every red Martian woman wears concealed upon her person to protect her chastity, swings down the anchor-cable, dropping lightly to the sward. With relief, she watches as the flier of Zed Tomus soars on, dwindling from sight. She finds, with dawn, a forested region not uncommon in these northerly parts, and is seeking nourishment when attacked by a huge banth, or Barsoomian lion.

Zed Tomus eventually discovers that Xana is missing, and searches the dead seabottom for some trace of her. Hi finds an unknown city in the Omtolian mountains and is forced to land by two heavily armed patrol fliers. He finds himself a captive in the city of Horah, where a race of listless slaves are ruled by a despotic madman. The mad jeddak is called Nad Puvus and is—or claims to be—over one million years old. He exists in the form of a bodiless head which is attached to pumps and tanks by tubes which circulate fresh blood into his severed head. He controls this race of frightened, will-less slaves by terrific hypnotic powers, and a small cadre of hardened warriors by promises of eternal life in a mode similar to his own.

Xana is rescued from the banth by savage green warriors of the Zarkol horde, and is carried a captive into the dead city of Zarkol where Druj Morvath reigns. He is a huge, bloated, corpulent, and hideously disfigured ogre and Xana knows her life will be the nadir of misery under his mastery. But the warrior who rescued her from the banth is none other than Zandus Zan, who has returned to Zarkol saying nothing of the treachery of Druj Morvath, who dares not reveal before his own chieftains his crime against their champion. On pure whim, because in an unguarded moment Xana yearns aloud for the protection of Jad Tedron, Zandus Zan opposes his jeddak’s claim to the girl, claiming her as his own slave, since he took her captive in the first place. Druj Morvath dares not deny his right to the slave, although nursing in his cunning and sadistic brain yet another motive for the destruction of Zandus Zan.

In this and the successive novels of the trilogy we follow the wanderings and adventures of Jad Tedron as he searches for and then finds Xana of Kanator, slowly teaches the pitiless green chieftain, Zandus Zan, that the softer emotions such as gratitude and friendship (despised as weaknesses by the green men) are not totally devoid of worth or meaning.

In the second novel of this sequence, Mystery Men of Mars, our hero and heroine penetrate to a previously unknown underground ocean beneath the Martian surface, called the Forgotten Sea of Korus, where survive among fantastically lush prehistoric vegetation astounding survivals of early Martian life in the form of savage, undomesticated proto-thoats, enormous insectlike [creatures], a host of deadly reptiles almost extinct upon the surface, and a previously unknown race of blue Martians who rule the subterranean ocean in gigantic floating raft-cities.

The blue men sought refuge in the cavern-world a million years ago, as the surface began to die. Now they believe themselves the only living Martians and it is an article of their faith that the surface is not only devoid of life but permanently uninhabitable. They cannot account for the existence of the red Martians they have taken captive, and thus, with a paranoia long inbred, consider them phantoms and ignore their presence.

In the third novel, Goddess of Mars, flying in pursuit of Zad Tomus, who has again captured and carried off his beloved Xana of Kanator, Jad Tedron discovers a city inhabited by people called Azors, who consider themselves of divine lineage as the descendants of Azor Adz, a divinity they believe to inhabit the moon Cluros, and a female divinity, the spirit of the moon Thuria. They are ruled by a gorgeous woman as their jeddara and goddess, Azara, whom they call Daughter of the Two Moons. She conceives of a violent passion for Jad Tedron and would make him her consort, only to be coldly refused, which, of course, leads to his imprisonment in the pits and a succession of adventures.

The climax of the series, or at least of the trilogy, comes when having disposed of their foes, Jad Tedron and Xana are flying back to Zorad, only to discover that in their absence her father has overthrown the jealous jeddak, becoming jeddak in his place, while Jugundus Jad, Tedron's mighty sire, learning that his son has ventured alone into the stronghold of his hereditary enemies, and becoming alarmed at his prolonged absence, directs his war fleet against the neighboring city. The two hosts are drawn up for battle when Jad and Xana fly into their midst. From the debacle they are saved by the arrival of the Zarkol horde, and it is Zandus Zan who mediates their dispute peacefully—if only to prove that even a coldly emotionless, cruel and pitiless green warrior can be sensible of such weak emotions as gratitude and the repaying of friendship.

If a fourth novel is desired (or more), the next book will be The Wizard of Mars and will concern itself with a great, if deranged, Martian scientist named Ulthan Ptome whose genius has led him to the discovery of two unknown forms of energy, the tenth and the eleventh "rays" of light, even as his madness has goaded him into declaring himself the emperor of all Mars, which he intends to conquer by reducing every city which opposes his regime to powder before the ferocity of his energy weapons.

A fifth novel might concern itself with a race of warrior women who have sworn undying enmity to all males—Amazons of Mars.

As the territory is sufficiently vast and the active characters sufficiently numerous, the series could, if desired, be indefinitely extended by the continuous introduction of new settings and plot-elements.

But, as of now, I am interested in obtaining a three-book contract for A Swordsman of Mars, The Mystery Men of Mars, and Goddess of Mars.