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Tarrano the Conqueror

<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> <h3>First Retreat</h3> I must recount now what Elza later told me, going back to those moments when Elza sat upon the balcony watching Tarrano and the Red Woman. The significance of what had been transpiring at the Water Festival was not clear to Elza; she did not know what was impending, but as she sat there with Tarrano beside her, a sense of danger oppressed her. Danger which lay like a weight upon her heart. Yet several times she found herself laughing—hilarious; and from Maida's warning glance, and the steadying odor which Maida wafted to her, she knew that Tarrano was using the alcholite fumes to intoxicate her. The Red Woman and Tarrano were upon the dais. There came a flash; then darkness. Elza went cold with terror. She sat stiff and silent, while around her surged that turmoil of confusion. The smell of chemicals was in the air; her skin prickled as with a million tiny needles where sparks now began to snap against it. How long she crouched there, or what was happening, Elza did not know. But presently she heard Tarrano's voice in her ear. "Come, Lady Elza, I must get you out of this." In the darkness his face glowed wraith-like. Then she felt his hand upon her arm. "Come, we must leave here. I would not have you endangered." With a haste and roughness that belied the calm solicitude of his words, he pulled her to her feet. There was light in the pavilion now. Elza saw dimly the turmoil of struggling figures; and then she saw the scene duplicated—saw it shift and sway in crazy fashion. Though she did not know it, she was looking out along the curved rays which Tarrano was sending from them. Sparks were snapping everywhere. A second image of Tarrano appeared to the left of her—she saw it in a mirror nearby—yet he was at her right, gripping her arm. "Hurry, Lady Elza." She found herself being dragged along the balcony; stumbling over a body lying there; feeling a surge of heat and electric disturbance beat against her face. Then Tarrano had her in his arms, carrying her. She heard him curse as a sudden wave of fire seemed to strike them—hostile rays bringing a numbness to muscles and brain. Tarrano was fumbling at his belt; and through a shower of sparks he stumbled onward with his burden. Elza's senses were fading. Vaguely she was conscious that Tarrano was carrying her down an incline to the ground. Grateful, cool air. Stars overhead. Trees; foliage; shimmering water. The screams and confusion of the pavilion growing fainter.... When Elza regained consciousness, she was lying in the bottom of a little boat, Tarrano beside her. "So? You have awakened? We are quite safe, Lady Elza." She and Tarrano were alone in the boat. It was long and very narrow, with its sides no more than a foot above the water. Tarrano sat at its chemical mechanism. A boat familiar to us of Earth. A small chemical-electric generator. The explosion of water in a little tank, with the resultant gases ejected through a small pipe projecting under the surface at its stern. The boat swept forward smoothly, rapidly and almost silently, with a stream of the gas bubbles coming to the surface in its wake. "Quite safe, Lady Elza." She saw that Tarrano's face was blackened with grime. His garments were burned, and hers were also. He was disheveled, but his manner was as imperturbable as ever. He made her comfortable on the cushions in the boat; drew a robe closer around her against the rush of the night air. Elza was unhurt. She saw now, with clarifying senses, that they were plying along a narrow river. Banks of foliage on each side; the auroral lights in the sky; occasionally on the hillsides along the river, the dim outlines of a house. It was all a trifle unreal—like looking through a sunglass that was darkened—for around the boat hung always a vague pall of gloom. Tarrano spoke of it. "Our isolation barrage. It is very weak, but the best I can contrive. From these hills the naked eye, now at night could hardly penetrate it.... A precaution, for they will be searching for us perhaps.... Ah!..." A white search-ray sprang from a house at the top of a hill nearby. It leaped across the dark countryside, swept the water—which at that point had broadened into a lagoon—and landed upon the boat. It was a light strong enough to penetrate the barrage—the boat was disclosed to observers in the house. But Tarrano raised a small metal projector. A dull-red beam sprang from it and mingled with the other. A surge of sparks; then Tarrano's red beam conquered. It absorbed the white light. And Tarrano's beam was curved. It lay over the lake in a huge bow, bending far out to one side. Yet its other end fell upon the hostile house. The white search-ray from the house was submerged, bent outward with Tarrano's beam. From the house, the observer could only gaze along this curved light. He saw the image of the boat—not where the boat really was—but as though the ray were straight. Elza, staring with her heart in her throat, saw a ball of yellow fire mount from the house. It swung into the air in a slow, lazy parabola, came down and dropped into the lake. But it fell where the marksman saw the boat, a safe distance to one side. A ball of fire dropping into the water, exploding the water all around it for a distance of a dozen feet. Like a cascade, the water mounted. Tarrano chuckled. "A very bad marksman." Other bombs came. It turns me cold when I think how orders like this could have come from the Great City—these bombs which had they found their mark would have killed Tarrano, but at the expense of the life of Elza. They did not find their mark. Tarrano continually changed the curve of his beam. The image of the boat shifted. A few moments only; and riding the waves of the bomb-tossed water, they rounded a bend, back into the narrow river and were beyond range. Tarrano snapped off his ray. "Quite safe, Lady Elza. Do not be alarmed. I doubt if they will locate us again. They should be very busy now in the Great City. I'm surprised they could even think to notify this Station we have just passed." We were indeed very busy in the Great City during those hours, as you shall presently hear. Tarrano and Elza were not again disturbed. How far they went in the boat she does not know, but at last they landed in a sheltered cove. An air vehicle was there. Tarrano transferred Elza to it, and in a moment more they were aloft. The vehicle was little more than an oblong platform, with a low railing. A platform of a substance resembling glascite-transparent; and with a glascite shield V-shaped in front to break the rush of wind and yet give vision. A mechanism, not of radio-power, but of gravity like the space-flyers. Such platforms had been, but were no longer in use on Earth. Elza had never seen one. It was a new experience for her, this flying with nothing above one, nothing to the side, or underneath save that transparent substance. To her it was like floating, and at times falling headlong through the air. They rose no more than a thousand feet at first, and then swept parallel with the ground. At a tremendous speed; even at this height the forests seemed moving backward as the ground moves beneath a surface vehicle. Dark, somber forests of luxuriant tropical vegetation. It was now nearing dawn; the auroral lights were dropping low in the sky; the great Venus Cross of Dawn was rising, its first two stars already above the line of hills to one side. Then the sky out there flushed red; a limb of the glorious Sun of Venus came up. A new day. And even though the air was warm, within Elza was ashiver. "It is very wonderful to me, my Elza, this being alone with you." He sat beside her, gazing at her with his calm, impenetrable eyes. It was near noon of that day following their escape from the Water Festival. They had flown possibly two thousand miles. The Sun had risen, but after a time—since their enormous speed and change of latitude had affected the angle at which they viewed it—the Sun now was hanging almost level, not far above the horizon. Beneath the platform—a mile below now—lay a tumbled waste of naked crags. The borders of the Cold Country! Tarrano's stronghold! The birthplace of his dreams of universal conquest. Elza was staring downward. A barren waste. Rocks bare of verdure. Grey, with red ore staining them. A desolation of empty rock, with grey flat shadows. And far ahead, the broken, serrated ranks of mountains with rocky peaks, white-hooded with the snow upon their summits. The Cold Country. Bleak; forbidding. This brittle air was cold; yet Elza and Tarrano were warm. Before the platform, a ray darted—a low-powered ray of a type that was to be so great a factor in the warfare into which we were all so soon to be plunged. It heated the air, so that the platform rushed always through a wind that was balmy. "What did you say?" Elza looked up to meet Tarrano's steady gaze. "I said it is wonderful to be thus alone with you, my Elza." "Oh." She looked away. He persisted; but his voice was gentle and earnest. "Soon we will be at my home, Lady Elza. And now—there are some things I would like to say while I have the opportunity.... You will listen?" "Yes," she said; and tried to keep from him the trembling within her. "I'll listen, of course." He nodded. "Thank you.... My Elza, you have heard me talk of conquering the world. My dream—my destiny. It will come to pass, of course. Yet—" A smile pulled at his lips. "Do you know, my Elza, what you and I are doing now?" She stared, and he did not wait for her to answer. "We're making my first retreat. I wonder if you can realize how I feel, having to admit that? Tarrano in retreat!... Our escape from Venia? Pouf! That was a jest. I was there on Earth merely to get you, and the Brende model. I had no thought of conquering the Earth just then. I accomplished my two purposes—and left.... It was not a retreat, merely a planned departure. "But this, my Elza, is very different. I did not wish to do what I am doing now. I had planned—I had thought, had actually hoped, that I might maintain myself in the Great City. You see, I tell you this, little girl, because—well I am a lonely man. I walk alone—and because I am human—it does me good to have someone to talk to. I had hoped I might maintain myself in the Great City. Last night—at the start of the Water Festival—I began to realize it was impossible. I should have enlisted the Rhaals—the men of science, Elza. But I had no time, and they are very aloof. I could have won them to me had I tried." He shrugged. "I must confess I was over-confident of my strength—the strength of my position. The Rhaals stayed out of the affair—stayed in their own city, which has always been their policy. That was what I expected, but now I see I should have had their aid. I did—well what I did to guard against the unhappy outcome you witnessed—what I did was wrongly planned. You see, I take all the blame. I alone am responsible for my destiny. There are some who in defeat cry bitterly, 'Luck! That cursed luck was against me!' Not so! Leadership is not a matter of luck. Destiny is what you make it. You see? "And so now I am making my first retreat. A set-back, nothing more. I shall launch my forces from the City of Ice, instead of marshalling them from the Central State as I had planned. And Mars is still mine. I still control Mars, little Elza.... A set-back just now—and it bothers me. It hurts my pride—and as you know, my Elza, Tarrano is very proud." She had been listening to him, her fingers plucking idly at her robe. He bent closer to her; his voice turned tender. "I was thinking that perhaps—just perhaps you would scorn Tarrano in his triumphs, you might feel differently toward him now—in his first retreat. Do you?" She forced her eyes up to his again. "I'm—sorry—from your viewpoint, I mean—that things are going wrong." He smiled gently. "You are very conservative, Lady Elza. You want very much to avoid hypocrisy, don't you?" "Yes," she said frankly. "You could hardly expect me to be sorry at your defeat." "Defeat?" He rasped out the word, and his laugh was harsh. "You are too optimistic. Defeat? Things going wrong? That is not so. A slight set-back. A strategic retreat—and in a week I will have regained more than I have lost.... Oh, Lady Elza! I who would now—and always—be so gentle with you—why we are almost quarreling! That is not right. For the lives of a thousand of my servants, I would not have used that tone to you just now. Forgive me.... "I was saying, my Elza—could not you feel more kindly to me now. A little hope from those gentle eyes of yours—a little word from those red lips—a word of hope for what some day might be for us—you and me—" She dared to try and turn the subject. "You mentioned the Brende model—where is it? Have you it in the Cold Country?" He frowned. "Yes. And I will use it—for you and me alone. You've always known that, haven't you? Just for you and me, my Elza." He took her hand. "Won't you try and love me—just a trifle?" She did not move. "I—don't know." Then she faced him squarely. "I do not love you, Tarrano." Something in his eyes—a quality of pleading; a wistful smile upon his lips—suddenly struck her as pathetic. Strange and queerly pathetic that such a man as he should be reduced to wistfulness. Emotion swept her. Not love. A feeling of sympathy; a womanly desire to lighten his sorrow; to sympathize and yet to withhold from him the happiness he sought. "I do not love you, Tarrano. But I do respect you. And I am sorry—" "Respect! I have told you I can command that from everyone. But love—your love—" "I would give it if I could, Tarrano." "You mean—you're trying to love me—and cannot?" "I mean—Oh, I don't know what I mean, save that I do not love you yet." He smiled. "I think you speak the truth when you say you do not know what you mean. Your love! If I had it, I should know that I would have it always. But—having it not—" He was very sincere, but his smile broadened. "Having it not, my Elza, there is no power in all the heavens that can tell me how to get it. It may be born in a moment from now—or never. Who can tell?" She was silent; and after a moment, he added: "Enough of this. I would ask you just one thing. You are not afraid of me, are you?" "No," she said; and at that moment she meant it. "I would not have you ever be afraid, Lady Elza. Love is not conceived by fear. And you must know I could never force my love upon you. For if I did—I should withhold forever the birth of this love of yours which is all I seek—this love I am trying to breathe into life.... Enough!" He did not mention the subject again. For hours—eating what meager stock of tabloid food with which their vehicle was provisioned—they flew onward. Rising now to top the line of jagged mountains. Over them the platform swept. In the crisp air the snow down there gleamed blue-white; the ice with an age-old look filled the valleys between the peaks. The arctic! It was nothing like the Polar regions of Earth. Stark desolation. A naked land seemingly upheaved by some gigantic cataclysm of nature, lying tumbled and broken where it had fallen in convulsive agony; and then congealed forever in a grip of ice. The Sun hung level as the vehicle advanced. In these latitudes it would swing side-wise in a slow, low arc, to dip again below the horizon and vanish. Here in the Cold Country it was morning of the Long Day. Summer! On over the crags and glaciers Tarrano guided their frail flying platform. Houses occasionally showed now—huts of ice, congealed dwellings, blue-white in the flat sunlight. And then at last, over the horizon came the ramparts of a city. The City of Ice! The size of it—the evidences of civilization here in this brittle land of deadly cold—made Elza gasp with wonderment. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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