Ptarth: A mighty red Martian nation in Barsoom’s northwest hemisphere that is allied with Kaol. Their Jeddak is the strong, honorable and courageous, Thuvan Dihn, father of Thuvia Maid of Mars. Although the nation of Ptarth has a formidable air fleet of about 5,000 warships as well as large quantity of ground forces of which about 1/3rd are elite cavalry units.
“It was a gorgeous train that accompanied the visiting
jeddak, and for miles it stretched along the wide, white road to Kaol. Mounted
troops, their trappings of jewel and metal-incrusted leather glistening in the
sunlight, formed the vanguard of the body, and then came a thousand gorgeous
chariots drawn by huge zitidars. These
low, commodious wagons moved two abreast, and on either side of them marched
solid ranks of mounted warriors, for in the chariots were the women and
children of the royal court. Upon the back of each monster zitidar rode a
Martian youth, and the whole scene carried me back to my first days upon
Barsoom, now twenty-two years in the past, when I had first beheld the gorgeous
spectacle of a caravan of the green horde of Tharks.
“Never before today
had I seen zitidars in the service of red men. These brutes are huge
mastodonian animals that tower to an immense height even beside the giant green
men and their giant thoats; but when compared to the relatively small red man
and his breed of thoats they assume Brobdingnagian proportions that are truly
appalling. The beasts were hung with
jeweled trappings and saddlepads of gay silk, embroidered in fanciful designs
with strings of diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds, and the countless unnamed
jewels of Mars, while from each chariot rose a dozen standards from which
streamers, flags, and pennons fluttered in thE breeze.
“Just in front of the chariots the visiting Jeddak
rode alone upon a pure white thoat—another unusual sight upon Barsoom—and after
them came interminable ranks of mounted spearmen, riflemen, and swordsmen. It
was indeed a most imposing sight.
Except for the clanking of accouterments and the occasional squeal of an
angry thoat or the low guttural of a zitidar, the passage of the cavalcade was
almost noiseless, for neither thoat nor zitidar is a hoofed animal, and the
broad tires of the chariots are of an elastic composition, which gives forth no
sound.” (WM VI)
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