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"The Great Jed is coming," said Lan-O, "none other dares enter thus, with blaring
trumpets, the city of Manator. It is U-Thor, Jed of Manatos, second city of
Manator. They call him The Great Jed the length and breadth of Manator, and
because the people love him, O-Tar hates him. They say, who know, that it would
need but slight provocation to inflame the two to war. How such a war would end
no one could guess; for the people of Manator worship the great O-Tar, though
they do not love him. U-Thor they love, but he is not the jeddak," and Tara
understood, as only a Martian may, how much that simple statement
encompassed.
The loyalty of a Martian to his jeddak is almost an instinct, and second not even
to the instinct of self-preservation at that. Nor is this strange in a race whose
religion includes ancestor worship, and where families trace their origin back into
remote ages and a jeddak sits upon the same throne that his direct progenitors
have occupied for, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of years, and rules the
descendants of the same people that his forebears ruled. Wicked jeddaks have
been dethroned, but seldom are they replaced by other than members of the
imperial house, even though the law gives to the jeds the right to select whom
they please.
"U-Thor is a just man and good, then?" asked Tara of Helium.
"There be none nobler," replied Lan-O. "In Manatos none but wicked criminals
who deserve death are forced to play at jetan, and even then the play is fair and
they have their chance for freedom. Volunteers may play, but the moves are not
necessarily to the death--a wound, and even sometimes points in swordplay,
deciding the issue. There they look upon jetan as a martial sport--here it is but
butchery. And U-Thor is opposed to the ancient slave raids and to the policy that
keeps Manator forever isolated from the other nations of Barsoom; but U-Thor is
not jeddak and so there is no change."
The two girls watched the column moving up the broad avenue from The Gate of
Enemies toward the palace of O-Tar. A gorgeous, barbaric procession of painted
warriors in jewel-studded harness and waving feathers; vicious, squealing thoats
caparisoned in rich trappings; far above their heads the long lances of their riders
bore fluttering pennons; foot-soldiers swinging easily along the stone pavement,
their sandals of zitidar hide giving forth no sound; and at the rear of each utan a
train of painted chariots, drawn by mammoth zitidars, carrying the equipment of
the company to which they were attached. Utan after utan entered through the
great gate, and even when the head of the column reached the palace of O-Tar
they were not all within the city.
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