Merseians And Plant Men

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER XVII.

In combat, a Merseian leaps toward Flandry and strikes him with his tail. That might ring a bell for ERB fans:

a plant man leaps over his victim, breaking the victim's skull with a blow from his tail, then sucks the blood from the corpse;

white apes eat some of the flesh;

third and last, therns (white Martian priests) take the rest of the flesh and the victim's belongings, leaving only bones. See here.

ERB imagined a horribly oppressive religious hierarchy, apparently without any empathetic understanding of religion.

Decades after first reading ERB and Anderson, I reread the latter but not the former.