Warhoon Arena Escape

The Warhoon Arena Escape turns a public contest designed to end in death into an improvised route to freedom. Imprisoned together, John Carter and Kantos Kan face the Warhoons’ great games, where each day’s survivors are forced through further bouts until one person or animal wins release. They reach the final contest as allies rather than enemies: Kantos Kan defeats their last opponent, and Carter’s staged death lets his friend leave while he himself escapes after dark.

Captivity and the Games

During their incarceration, Carter and Kantos Kan become well acquainted and form a warm personal friendship. Their confinement ends when they are taken from the dungeon and brought to an enormous amphitheater excavated below ground. Debris has partly filled the structure, but in its present condition it holds the assembled twenty thousand Warhoons. The uneven arena is bordered by stone taken from ruined buildings, and cages at either end hold captives and animals until their turns come.

Carter and Kantos Kan share one cage with a varied collection of intended combatants: calots, thoats, mad zitidars, green warriors, women from other hordes, and other wild beasts of Barsoom. Kantos explains the rules. The winners of the day’s contests are matched against one another until only two remain alive; the victor of the final encounter is freed, whether human or animal. The next morning brings a new consignment of prisoners, and the sequence continues throughout the ten days of the games. Freedom is offered, but only as the single survivor’s prize.

Survival in the Arena

The crowd fills every available seat, while Dak Kova and his jeds and chieftains watch from a raised platform. The contests begin with a dozen green Martian females given daggers and set against a pack of calots. Carter turns away from the encounter; when he looks back, three dogs remain over their victims. A mad zitidar is then released among the surviving animals, and contests continue through the long day.

Carter is pitted first against men and then against beasts. Armed with a long sword, he has the advantage of agility and usually strength, and repeatedly wins the crowd’s applause. As the contests narrow, some spectators call for him to be removed from the arena and made a member of the Warhoon hordes. The public response marks a grim reversal: his ability to survive makes him an object of acclaim within a spectacle that still holds him captive.

At last three contestants remain: Carter, Kantos Kan, and a great green warrior from a far northern horde. The other two are to fight first, after which Carter will face the victor for the promised freedom. Kantos has already won several bouts, sometimes by a narrow margin, particularly against green warriors. His last opponent, nearly sixteen feet tall, has defeated everyone placed before him; Kantos Kan stands just under six feet. Against this disparity, Kantos relies on a Martian sword-throwing technique: from about twenty feet away, he draws his sword arm back over his shoulder and hurls the weapon point-first. The cast kills the giant warrior, leaving Kantos and Carter to face one another.

The Feigned Death and Escape

Carter whispers to Kantos Kan to prolong their fight until near dark, hoping the delay will create an opportunity to escape. The Warhoon crowd apparently understands that the friends do not intend to kill each other and howls when neither lands a fatal thrust. As darkness approaches, Carter gives Kantos a signal: thrust the sword between Carter’s left arm and his body. Carter clamps the weapon in place and falls, making it appear to protrude from his chest.

Kantos Kan completes the deception by stepping beside Carter, placing a foot on his neck, and withdrawing the sword. He then gives what appears to be the final blow, but the blade slips harmlessly into the sand. In the darkness, the spectators cannot tell that Carter is alive. Carter whispers that Kantos should claim his freedom and then look for him in the hills east of the city. Kantos leaves, and the two men part in order to exploit the contest’s rules rather than obey its demand that one kill the other.

When the amphitheater has cleared, Carter stealthily climbs to the top and makes his way toward the hills. The arena lies far from the plaza, in an uninhabited part of the dead city, so he has little difficulty reaching the country beyond. The escape thus ends with a divided success: Kantos Kan wins the freedom formally granted to the final victor, while Carter uses the cover of that apparent victory to leave the arena alive and alone.