CHAPTER V
WHERE THE ILLIA MEETS THE SEA
In the watches of the night arose a great clamor and outcry in the old palace of Bel-Tisam. So loud was the din that it aroused Rose Emer and the Lady Memene from their slumbers in the chamber off the ancient hall where they were quartered. In the outer corridors they heard the clang of feet of armored men and their hoarse shouts as they called to one another. This grew faint and passed away, and then swelled loud and near again, as of men who had penetrated into the lower dungeons of the prison and returned.
Sitting up in their bed and holding each other by the hand for comfort, the two women were afraid for what might have happened.
"Something untoward is on foot," said Memene. "Perhaps this is the night chosen by the red man from the sea" (for so she called Oleric) "to go forth as he did promise, although it is past the time he set for his going."
"Do you think that they have discovered the plan, and that he—Polaris—is taken again? I pray to God that is not so," whispered Rose.
"Something has greatly stirred the guards," Memene replied. "But I do not think that the mighty man of the wilderness and his red friend are taken. Those shouts we heard but now were those of disappointed men."
As the uproar continued through the rooms of the old prison, Rose and Memene arose and donned their garments. Sleep, for that night, had fled them.
Presently they heard, but faint and muffled through the intervening walls, the clatter of hoofs on the pavement of the black avenue as a horse passed by, ridden at furious speed.
A little later the door from the corridor outside the hall of audience was opened, and through it came that captain of the palace-guard who was named Brunar. From Oleric, the captain had learned a few words of the English tongue, and he now made shift with them to tell the two fair prisoners that Polaris and Oleric, and likewise the captain, Mordo, had gone. The escape of Zenas Wright and Everson had not been discovered as yet. Two dead guards in the rooms of Mordo, and the absence of the marizel from its moorings in the hidden canal near the Temple of the Sun, accounted for part of the story. A rider on the fleetest horse in the stables of Bel-Ar, said Brunar, had been sent to the harbor to warn the guards there, so they might trap the fugitives.
From the manner in which his news was received, the captain was able to guess that Rose and Memene knew something of what was on foot. But this Brunar was a very courteous man, and he forbore to question them closely, if indeed he had enough English to do so. In the morning he came again, and told them of the fight at the harbor and the sailing of the marizel; for Brunar now took up his abode in the palace of Bel-Tisam and looked after the duties of Mordo. His two wards found him a kindly jailer, and as indulgent as circumstances would permit him to be, who could not set them free. Brunar was angry indeed at the supposed treachery of Oleric and of Mordo, not knowing that the one was a spy of Ruthar and that the other had had no will in the manner of his going forth from Adlaz.
Report was made later in the day of the escape of Everson from the mines, and of Zenas Wright from the household of the king, and men marveled at the daring of the deed and the craft of it. But the two women in their prison, or Ensign Brooks in the mines, or Minos at the harbor, got no more news of the fugitives for many a long day.
With Urk, the sailor, squatting among the levers of his engine, the marizel of Oleric swam steadily and swiftly down the western coast of Maeronica. Under water she went, well off from the shore and showing no lights. Oleric showed his passengers the marvelous valves in the sides of the little vessel which were similar in construction to the mask with which they already were familiar, and by means of which the air in the marizel was replenished with oxygen drawn from the sea water.
Also, he told them somewhat of the land to which they were journeying, explaining why it was that Ruthar, though smaller and more sparsely populated by far than Maeronica, had never been conquered by the larger power. It was a land of forests and mountains, he said, and all the way around its ragged coastline were huge, precipitous cliffs, the overhanging crags of which were a natural barrier to invasion. Wherever had been a break in the cliff-line, the Rutharians, by dint of great labors, had filled the breaks with walls, closing the gaps so that the only places where one might land on Ruthar from the sea were certain spots where narrow stretches of beach lay at the foot of the towering cliffs.
At only one point could one come at the interior of the country from the sea, Oleric said, and that was at the mouth of a river named Illia. That place was closely guarded, and nature and the hand of man had united to make of it a way where one man might defy a thousand.
Years before, the red captain said, the Rutharians had had a few small ships. But they had little use for them, and with the perfection of the fademes by the Maeronicans, nearly a century before, the Rutharian vessels had been promptly sent to the bottom. Metals were easily mined, and in abundance, especially gold, in Maeronica. But the materials which produced the power for the fademes and for their terrible destroyers were scarce and precious. Therefore, the growth of the navy of Adlaz had been slow.
But with the fulfillment of the mighty destiny of the Children of Ad in mind, the scientists labored unceasingly, and it was in the mind of Bel-Ar that he was to be the man to see the accomplishment of that destiny. He waited but the equipment of a few more fademes to send his dreadful messengers forth to take and hold all the seas on earth, compelling the nations of the world to bow to the power of Adlaz, as tradition told him they once had bowed before.
"Now Ruthar, if her stars shine brightly, shall put a big stone before his chariot-wheels and break his power," Oleric said, "repaying evil with evil until good come of it, and the Goddess Glorian reigns from the capes at the north to the southern seas. And in that I pray that my part shall not be small." With a laugh he added, "This is a strange game for me to play—Oleric the Red, loose-mouthed soldier and slayer of men—who in Ruthar am known as Oleric the learned, a professor in the University of Nematzin, which is hard by the hill of Flomos, on the banks of the river Illia."
"And this Goddess Glorian—" asked Zenas Wright curiously. "Is she a statue in a temple, or the good star of Ruthar, or is she merely a name?"
For once the readiness in answer of the red captain deserted him, and he stared at the geologist with open mouth. Then he said soberly:
"No statue in a temple is the Goddess Glorian. Good star of Ruthar she is surely, and, in addition, she is the fairest woman on whom Shamar ever had looked down from the skies. And now her time comes on, for which she has waited many a hun—"
Oleric broke off suddenly and turned his eyes on Polaris with a strange look.
"Nay," he said; "for the rest you must learn from the goddess herself. My tongue does clack like a shepherd-wife's." Nor would he then or thereafter tell more of Ruthar and its goddess.
Zenas Wright mused to himself, and the train of his musings ran thus: "Oleric, you seem to keep your promises, and you are a good fighter, for I have seen you fight. But when it comes to your tales of living mammoths in this twentieth century, and of a goddess in the shape of a woman who has waited many a hundred years—for that was what you almost said, my friend—why, then, I can't follow you; and I think you like to draw the long bow."
Swiftly as the marizel traveled, that night wore into dawn, and day and darkness came, and still another dawning, ere Urk turned off his power and filled the air-chambers which raised the vessel to the surface of the sea. They had rounded the southern coast of Ruthar and beat up along the eastern shores, and here, as they arose from the depths, straight ahead of them lay the mouth of the river Illia. When the voyagers saw it, they did not wonder that Adlaz found little fortune in attacking Ruthar by sea.
An irregular fissure in the frowning face of the cliff discharged the river into the sea. That rift was nearly thirty yards wide at its bottom, and narrowed almost to nothingness far above, where the red granite of the headlands towered many hundreds of feet in height. Down the glen in the fissure the river Illia tripped to the sea like a lady down a stately stairway. For the rock of the river-bed was shelving, in strata which varied from less than a foot to nearly three feet in height, and some of the shelves were as much as ten yards in breadth; so that the water came down that great natural stair in a series of broad cascades.
"Up yonder stairway lies the path into Ruthar," Oleric said, pointing, as they stood on the deck of the marizel, and Urk laid the vessel as near to the shelving bank below the river-mouth as he could. "Here we must leave the marizel, and to the kindness of the waves; for there is no harbor in which to store her."
Oleric clambered from the deck and stood up to his knees on the lowermost step of the Illia's wide stairway. The others followed, Urk last of all, haling before him the captain, Mordo, with his hands bound.
For Mordo had proved an unruly passenger. When the fumes of the wine cleared from his brain, which was not for many hours, he had so cursed and raged at Oleric, forswearing all friendship that had been between them, that the Rutharian had lost his temper. He told Mordo roundly that he wished that he had left him to the mercy of Bel-Ar and the priests of Shamar.
"Better that than the company of a traitorous hound," growled Mordo out of a soul in which no gratitude dwelt. Oleric deemed that it was best to bind him, lest he do mischief.
Ascent of the river-stair was not difficult at first, for the steps were broad, and at that season of the year the volume of water coming down them was not so strong but that a man might keep his footing if he used care.
Hardly were the climbers well within the shadow of the glen when there arose from the foot of the stair a mighty shouting and splashing. Oleric spun round with a curse on his lips.
Quickly as they had come from Adlaz town, their destination had been guessed, and others had come almost as quickly. As the fugitives turned, they saw a Maeronican fademe swing alongside the lowermost step of the ascent, her fore and after decks crowded with men, who swarmed off her onto the rock and ran up the stairway. Foremost among them, gorgeous in his golden armor, was the Captain Daelo, and he matched the curse of Oleric with another as he shook his gauntleted fist at his enemy.
"Haste! Haste!" Oleric cried, then pursed his lips and sent a long whistle skirling up the glen. As he did so he lost his footing, clawed wildly at the air and the rocks, and went down.
Though the push of the down-rushing waters of the Illia was not strong enough to sweep a man from his feet if he were cautious, it was yet of sufficient power to keep him going once he fell. From shelf to shelf down the great stairway Oleric went, his armor clanging. More than that, he swept Mordo and the sturdy Urk from their footing, also; and all three of them slid straight into the hands of Daelo's men, outstretched to receive them.
As the soldiers seized Oleric and stood him upright, he wrenched free one arm and waved it at his companion.
"Tarry not for me!" he shouted. "Go on! There be friends waiting at the top—" A soldier smote him on the mouth and silenced him.
On the step where he stood Polaris halted. He bent, and with his strong fingers snapped the strings of his shoes and removed them—for he still wore his own clothing in which he had been dragged from the sea. With his feet bared, he had a better grip on the slippery rock. He snatched the sword of Everson from its sheath and went down the river-path, all unarmored as he was, to meet the swordsmen of Daelo. On they clambered, cursing and shouting; but the way was difficult for their mailed feet, and the son of the snows leaped down at them like an avalanche. With him, breast-deep in the current, went Rombar.
First man to meet the descending danger was Daelo, and he paid the penalty of his temerity with his life. Polaris, striking from above, smote him from his foothold, a blow that shore away half of his golden helm and split the skull within it, and the Captain Daelo pitched backward into the sea.
Another bound and a stroke so bitter that it hewed off the arm of a steel-clad soldier, severing it between wrist and elbow, and the son of the snows had freed Oleric from the hands that held him. Straightway the red captain drew sword and took up the tale. Daelo's men, of whom there were nearly a score, faltered, staggering and slipping on the rocky shelves. Almost their courage was broken, when Polaris caught his naked foot in a crevice in the rock and tripped. Before he could recover, a heavy sword-blade fell upon his unprotected head from behind. He let fall his own blade and sank to his knees and then to his face on the steps of Illia.
Short-lived was the triumph of the Maeronicans. The cry of exultation which greeted the fall of their dreaded enemy was turned into a howl of dismay as half a hundred fierce-eyed fighting men of Ruthar poured down the glen, waving their bared swords and shouting:
"For the Goddess Glorian! Slay the Maeronican dogs!"
That tide overwhelmed the company of Daelo to the last man, and with them died black Mordo. Less by one more fademe was the navy of King Bel-Ar.
When the warriors of the forests turned up the stair once more, they found Oleric kneeling in the water, supporting Polaris's head on his arm, while old Zenas and Everson bound with strips torn from their clothing the gaping wound which the sword-blade had left at the back of his head. Beside the group, Rombar, standing nearly to his neck in the wash of the river, lifted up his head and howled dolefully.
Six strong men took up the limp form of the fair-haired giant and bore it away up the river staircase.
So Polaris came at last to Ruthar.
Up the rocky shelves of Illia the Rutharians trudged and splashed, the chasm becoming ever narrower and more gloomy. With the narrowing of the rift, the water became deeper and its current stronger. Then one of the party uncoiled a long rope from his shoulder, and the party marched on in single file, each clinging to the rope like Alpine climbers.
Oleric urged haste and more haste.
Presently the water was too deep for Rombar, and the current set so strongly that the dog could not swim against it. At an order from Oleric, two Rutharian hunters seized the brute by the collar, and though one of them got a gashed hand for his pains, they bound Rombar's jaws and feet with ropes and carried him on their shoulders—a task which neither they nor Rombar found pleasant.
At a point in the ascent where further progress against the deepening stream was impossible, the party left the bed of the river and clambered to the right, where a flight of steep and narrow steps had been cut in the rock along a fissure which branched from the main gorge. Up nearly two hundred of those steps they toiled, until Zenas Wright and Everson, unused to such exertions, nearly fainted with exhaustion. At the top of the stairs they emerged into a forest of tall trees, oak and pine and chestnut, which grew almost to the edge of the cliffs.
No sooner had he stepped from the rock stairway than Oleric knelt and kissed the black earth.
"This, my friends, is Ruthar," he said as he arose and faced the two Americans.
From among the trees came a tall, white-bearded chieftain, who was armored from head to heel in a wonderful suit of chain mail, links of steel that shone like silver. At his back swung a two-handed sword which was nearly the length of a man.
He advanced to Oleric and laid his hands on the captain's shoulders.
"You are Oleric the Red, and no other," he said. "Well do I remember you. Once I was your pupil. But that was more than three times ten years ago." He shook his head wonderingly. "You serve Ruthar well," he added.
Now, had Zenas Wright been able to understand the speech of Ruthar, he certainly would have set this chieftain down as a hoary-headed liar. For how could he have been a pupil to Oleric the Red more than thirty years before, when it was plain for any one to see that the captain must at that time have been a babe in his mother's arms?
"Aye, Jastla, it is the old red fox come back to his hole again," Oleric answered, striking the old chief fondly across his broad shoulders.
"Which of these with you is the man—the hope of Ruthar?" questioned Jastla. His eyes passed the stubby form of Zenas Wright by and rested inquiringly on the square and soldierly Everson.
Oleric's ruddy face went sober. His voice choked as he answered:
"Nay, Jastla, neither of these. He comes yonder—and I fear that he is sorely smitten."
As he spoke the six Rutharians who bore Polaris Janess came over the brink of the stair and laid their burden down.
Jastla strode to the side of Polaris and looked down at him.
"A mighty man, with golden hair—and comely, as was written in the prophecy," he muttered into his beard. "What has befallen him?" he asked of Oleric.
While the captain told of the fight at the river-mouth, Zenas Wright knelt at Polaris's head and rearranged the bandages, which had become loosened in the rough journey through the gorge. Rombar, who had been that moment untrussed, pushed growling through the group of men and crouched and licked at his master's face.
"Will he live, Father Zenas? Will he live?" Oleric asked. "Tell us, you, who are skilled."
"God knows," groaned Zenas. The hand which he laid on the steel cheek of Polaris shook so that he snatched it away and hid it. "God only knows. There is a little life in him yet."
"He plucked me from the sea," said Oleric wildly. "That was fated of the gods. Twice has he fought at my side. This day perchance he has given his life for me; and that was of his own strong spirit. I tell you, Father Zenas, that if it would do my brother any good, here would Oleric fall upon his sword and render up his soul unto those that sent it forth." Then he controlled himself. "Can he be moved? Can you keep the vital spark within him for a little space, good father? We must haste and get him to the Goddess Glorian. If his soul be not sped when he reaches her, she can hold it back, if any on earth can. Say, Father Zenas, can you do it?"
"I will try," answered Zenas. "If I had a little wine, now—"
"Wine!" Oleric shouted. "Bring wine, some one of you, and haste, though your lungs burst. And slay a kid, so that we may have broth."
A fleet-footed Rutharian lad set off through the forest, running with the speed of a deer.
"Now, Jastla, see you to a horse-litter. Two gentle beasts, mind you, but speedy. For we must travel fast and far. I take my brother to the Hill of Flomos. And send on a swift messenger to the Goddess Glorian, to tell her that the hope of Ruthar lies wounded in the forests and is near to death. Haste, Jastla; haste!"
Wine was brought, and it was good wine; for the grapes that grow in the valleys of Ruthar are the finest in all the world. Zenas Wright forced apart the set jaws of the stricken man, using a sword-point to do it, and even as Dr. Marsey, who was dead, had done for Oleric, poured the purple wine and a little broth into Polaris's mouth. The kindly old geologist could only pray that some of it penetrated to the man's stomach, for most of it was spilled out again when they moved him.
Chief Jastla brought a horse-litter. In it, between two powerful beasts, Polaris was slung. The Rutharians wrapped him closely with blankets and furs. The sun had turned to his northward journey, and in the forests of Ruthar the air was keen with the tang of approaching winter—felt there in the uplands long before it reached to the plains and valleys of Maeronica.
Horses were fetched for Oleric, Wright and Everson, and they set off at once along the mountain trails skirting the mighty cañon of the Illia. An escort of half a score of Rutharian hunters rode with them.
All that day and night and until sunset of the next day they rode with only brief stops at small Rutharian hamlets, where they ate hurriedly and changed horses. Word had been sent on before of their coming, and fresh horses were always in waiting. Sleep they did not, save in their saddles, and the two Americans felt that they might die from sheer weariness.
Oleric did not sleep at all, though of all the party his vitality seemed the least impaired by that racking journey. His face grew haggard and gaunt, and his eyes red-rimmed, but a wonderful determination seemed to sustain his body. He spoke seldom, and then to urge his faltering companions to renewed efforts.
Rombar ran with the horses until he was utterly done up. Then Oleric left the dog at one of the mountain villages, to be brought on later.
In the morning of the second day the party swung to the right, away from the gorge of the Illia, to come to it again about noon and cross it on a bridge of steel and stone that spanned it three hundred feet up from the torrent's course.
Everson, looking at those piles and trusses, judged the building of that bridge to be the feat of no mean engineer. Though there had been a waste of material, the structure would have stood comparison with many a bridge in Europe or America.
Throughout the long ride, Polaris lay like a log in the litter. Occasionally, at the stopping places, the scientist redressed the wound, smearing it with a healing balsam which an old woman in one of the villages had given him. It was a fearsome gash, and Zenas shook his head over it whenever he saw it. The point of the sword had laid open the scalp at the back of Polaris's head for a matter of inches, then had glanced from the bone beneath and bitten deeply into the neck near the spinal column.
Wright sheared the hair away from the wound and stitched it as neatly as he could. Despite his care the edges of the cut turned blue, as is the way with such hurts if they have not expert attention. In the afternoon of that second day's ride he found that Polaris's hands and feet were becoming cold, and that the geologist deemed the worst sign of all.
Shortly after they had crossed the bridge the contour of the country became less wild. They emerged from among the crags and peaks of the mountains into the foot-hills, where the forests were not so dense as above, and from time to time they came upon large spaces of cleared lands with tilled fields and many vineyards.
In one of the forest glades the party passed a spot where a number of fair-sized trees had been uprooted and partly stripped of their branches and bark. Others, still standing, were mere distorted stubs of trees, their trunks scored and twisted and their foliage gone.
"I hope such storms as the one that did this damage are not frequent hereabouts," said Zenas, pointing out the wrecks to Everson.
Oleric heard the remark.
"'Storms,' say you, Father Zenas?" he said. "The storm that went through here walked on four feet. When we of Ruthar see such a sight in the forest, we know that an amaloc has breakfasted there. I forget the high-sounding name you call him by."
"That lad should have been a writer of fiction," said Zenas to himself when the captain had ridden on. "He almost makes me believe in him."
"Gorry-me," Zenas groaned, easing himself in his saddle, "I wish we were at the end of this ride, wherever it is. I do not think that I shall ever be able to walk again. You," he said to Everson, "you ride along there in your golden armor like—what is it?—a paladin of old, and never a word out of you. Well, I'd sooner stand it, at that, than to go back to that roasting-spit I was put to tend in the King's kitchen." Zenas grunted as recollection stung him.
"Why, do you know, one day I was figuring out a bit of calculus in my head, just for practise, and I let the meat scorch; and the head cook actually laid a dog-whip across my back. Yes, sir; me, a fellow in the National Geographic Society, whipped across a kitchen by a greasy-faced dough-slinger who doesn't know gneiss from rotten-stone!"
Wright grunted again at the memory of that indignity, and then rambled on:
"But we've got to stand it all for the boy here, and for the folks we left behind. God knows I'm willing to for their sakes, and worse yet, if it's to come. But I must grumble once in a while, and I can't help it. Say, Everson, do you believe any of that chaff of our red-headed friend about the mammoths?"
The lieutenant did not answer, and Wright, peering into his face, saw that he was asleep in the saddle.
Well down upon his course was the sun, and the shadows of the trees were lengthening eastward, when the travelers, who for some time had been following a smooth, straight road through rolling hills, came to an old Rutharian villa, which stood among its gardens a considerable distance back from the highway. A low wall bordered the grounds at the front along the roadway, a wall with a pillared gateway, where a drive led in from the road. At the foot of each of the pillars, sitting his horse like a statue, was a Rutharian gentleman.
As the weary cavalcade came down the road the two riders left their posts and advanced to meet it, parleying with Oleric. Scarcely half a dozen words passed back and forth when the red captain set up a joyful shout. When he reached the gateway he turned his horse in, bidding the others to follow.
"Here's hoping that some one will introduce me to a bed before I clean forget what one feels like," said Zenas.
At the side of the ancient house the riders dismounted, Everson reeling from his horse like a drunken man and throwing himself face downward on the grass.
Oleric superintended the removal of Polaris from the litter.
The geologist was bending over his charge as the hunters bore him along when he became aware of the tall figure of a woman that came down from the porch of the mansion and hastened along the walk. She had thrown a long, dark red cloak about her shoulders. In the dusk of the garden the scientist could not distinguish her features, but he saw that her hair was dark, or seemed to be, and that she was taller than most women and splendidly formed.
"The Goddess Glorian!" Oleric cried aloud. "Oh, by the stars of Ruthar, but you are welcome!"
Down on one knee sank the captain and kissed her hand.
"Oh, goddess, after all these years I have brought you the hope of Ruthar. But he is sorely wounded—dying—and you alone can save him. We were bringing him to Flomos with all the speed we might, and thought not to find you here."
"Where else should Glorian be, but on the way to meet this man?" she answered simply. "Jastla's messenger reached Flomos this morning. He rode four horses to their deaths upon his way. You have done well, Oleric the Learned."
When he heard the silvery cadences of that voice, though he understood not a word save the name of the captain, a thrill passed through Zenas Wright, old as he was, and through his aged veins he felt the blood course faster. The woman came nearer. He smelled the warm perfume of her hair as she bent and touched the cheek of Polaris with her hand.
"Bring him within, Oleric," she said, "and, oh, haste, for—" Her glorious voice broke. "For he is nearly gone."
Swinging the still form of Polaris shoulder high, the Rutharian hunters passed on and into the mansion, leaving Zenas behind.
"Now, what do you know about that?" gasped the scientist as he sank wearily to the ground beside Everson. "Goddess, indeed! What, I want to know, will Rose Emer say when she learns of this young person? Well, I hope she saves the lad; but she'll need to be a doctor of parts, or I'm a donkey. Poor boy! Poor boy!"
In a few moments came Oleric to show Wright and Everson to their quarters for the night in the rear of the house. And a rare time he had to arouse the lieutenant sufficiently to lead him to bed.
White and still, Polaris Janess lay on a bed in an upper chamber of the old house. By the light from a mitzl globe—trophy of some Rutharian chieftain in a foray over the Kimbrian Wall—the Goddess Glorian bent above him and studied his pale features.
"My friend, my poor friend," she said brokenly. "How often through the weary years I have seen you in my dreams—and now to find you—only to lose you."
Hot tears ran down her cheeks and fell on the stricken man's face.
"Oh! It shall not be!" she said fiercely. "You shall not die—not if Glorian must give her soul to hold you back from the gates of darkness."
Throwing aside her cloak, she drew a chair to the bedside. With her fingers she lifted Polaris's eyelids and held them open. She gazed deep into the tawny eyes, now, alas, so dull and lifeless. For hours she sat there, with no more apparent movement than the man she watched over. The whole strength of her being seemed concentrated in some inward, unyielding struggle.
And as the long hours passed a change came over the sick man. He did not stir. He scarcely seemed to breathe. But his face became less gray and haggard, and the icy chill of death was driven from his hands and feet.
Long after midnight it was when the Goddess Glorian stood up from that bedside and in her heart said wildly, "I have won!"
Summoning her women, who waited without the door, she bade them dress anew the now festering wound and pour a little wine and broth into his throat.
All night long the Goddess Glorian sat and watched him.
In the morning, when Oleric came to the door in answer to her summons, she looked up at him with a wan smile.
"Fear no longer," she said. "The man will live."
On the third day after his arrival at the old Rutharian mansion, Polaris left it. But he knew nothing of that going. He still lay in the heavy stupor which was to hold him thrall for many days. Zenas Wright doubted much the wisdom of moving a man so ill. The scientist himself, after two days' rest, felt scarcely equal to the journey, and the thought of again bestriding a horse made him shudder. Still, he reasoned that it was by a miracle that Janess lived at all, and if she who had wrought that miracle, the Goddess Glorian, said he might be moved in safety, why, doubtless she knew what she was about.
A low, four-wheeled car was brought. Across the box of it the hunters lashed light and springy poles and on them piled robes and blankets, making a soft and easy bed for the sick man. At the head of that couch rode the Goddess Glorian, cloaked and hooded, and at its foot crouched black Rombar, who had been brought in from the village where he had been left, and who seemed little the worse for his long jaunt. Wright and the lieutenant occupied another smaller car in the rear, and in a third vehicle rode a number of the women of Glorian's household. Oleric, mounted and aglitter in chain armor of steel—for he had discarded as soon as might be the hated golden livery of Bel-Ar—rode at the side of the first car. For escort the party had the company of nearly a score of young Rutharian zinds—zind was the only title of nobility in Ruthar.
So they set out for Flomos, traveling by easy stages and with many rests. The roads were smooth and the country more even than that they had left behind. All along the way, be the time of day what it might, they rode between two long lines of people—people silent for the most part, who stood with bowed heads as the cars and the riders passed by.
Far and wide throughout the land had gone the word that the man who had come to be known as the hope of Ruthar was journeying to Flomos, and the circumstances of that journey. These who lined the road were gathered there to do him silent homage. Satisfied were they if they only caught a fleeting glimpse of his still face on its pillow of furs. Over all of Ruthar went up a many-voiced and ceaseless prayer for his welfare.
"H'm, Everson, folks will never stand like that for us, living or dead," said Zenas Wright to the lieutenant, when Oleric had told them the meaning of the silent lines of people. Despite his banter, the old geologist was deeply touched.
Two days and part of a third they traveled—for they did not hurry—stopping for the nights at the homes of Rutharian gentlemen along the road. It was nearly afternoon of the third day when they followed the winding of the highway around the last low hills of the mountain range and came out upon a plateau-plain of wide extent, in the center of which was a wooded eminence, and on its crest the white pillars of a temple shone in the sunlight.
The road stretched straight across the plain through a broad expanse of tilled lands and gardens, which ringed a city that stood at the foot of the hill. It was scarcely a fifth the proportions of Adlaz, this ancient town of Ruthar, which was called Zele-omaz, or City by the River; but it was a pretty place of broad streets shaded by many trees, gardens and low-built, pleasant homes, with here and there the statelier dwellings of some zind or wealthy man.
Here, too, was the Illia, rock-bound no longer, but a fair and gentle stream, winding through the town and spanned by many bridges.
Skirting the city at the right, the travelers followed a sloping path that led up the hill to where the temple stood.
"Yonder," Oleric said, pointing down to where a group of low buildings of gray stone rambled at the waterside under spreading yew trees, "is the University of Nematzin, of which I am a professor. And there is the laboratory of which I spoke, where we shall make the thunder-dust to shake down the Kimbrian Wall."
"One more day's rest, and I will be fit for anything," answered Everson.
"What do you teach in this university, friend?" Zenas queried.
"A little of the science of the stars, Father Zenas—or I did, for it is many years since I have sat among my pupils—somewhat of history and of language," replied the red captain.
"Humph; you must have been a young teacher," said Zenas Wright, and he ran his fingers through the sprouting stubble of his beard, as he had a habit of doing when things vexed him. Suddenly he jumped in his seat, though the wrench to his sore flesh cost him a wry face.
"Hey! Everson! Look at that, and then tell me if I'm dreaming."
The "that" was a gateway through which the car was about to pass. Oleric followed with a glance the direction in which the geologist pointed and then rode on with a smile.
It was a very curious gate, so curious that, if it still stands, and it doubtless does, for it was built to endure, there is none other just like it in the world. At each side of the roadway was a section of black stone wall, extending along the path a matter of a dozen feet and some ten feet high. At intervals along the tops of the two walls were set round, squat pillars, also of stone. Those had been hollowed out and served as bases for enormous ivory tusks, which were embedded in cement in the hollowed pillars, and from them curved up to meet over the center of the roadway, where their tips were made fast with double sockets of bronze.
Ivory the tusks were; there was no doubting that; weather-checked and stained yellow by age and the elements, but still ivory. But the size of them! No elephant that ever walked the earth bore ivories of such proportions. For they were as large around at their bases as the chest of an average man; and from base to tapering tip there was none of them that did not measure eleven feet. Seven pair of them there were, and all splendidly matched.
Zenas stared back at that marvelous arch—for it was more an archway than a gate—as hard as he could stare. Not until a turn of the road hid it, did he relax into his seat.
"Maybe he isn't so great a liar, after all," he said, and he meant Oleric. "Everson, those are mammoth's tusks—sure's I'm a sinner."
"Strange land, strange things," answered Everson laconically.
The home or temple of the Goddess Glorian on the hill of Flomos was a small thing by comparison with the mighty Temple of Shamar, but in its way was quite as beautiful. Like the temple of the sun-god, the house of Glorian was built all of white marble. Fronting north toward the city of Zele-omaz was a façade of four-and-twenty sixty-foot pillars. A broad, paved porch, reached by half a hundred steps, lay at the foot of the façade. Back of the pillars were twelve double doors of bronze, leading into a lofty hall, the marble dome of which towered high above the pillars and could be seen from the countryside for miles about when the sun shone on it.
Back of the hall the structure was divided into three floors, or stories, each of many roomy chambers and corridors. The whole was well lighted by windows of clear glass, of which an abundance was used in both Maeronica and Ruthar. Behind the temple, southward down the hill, were the dwellings of Glorian's personal retainers and servants.
Well back from the center of the domed hall and near the foot of a grand staircase which led to the second floor, was a raised dais of marble, whereon Glorian was wont to sit and give judgment in matters of state which were too high for the administration of the zinds who ruled in the different cities and provinces. Once Ruthar had had its dynasty of kings, but that was many years before. The royal line died out, and because of certain circumstances at that time the people raised up no more kings. At the time of the coming of the strangers the Goddess Glorian was the absolute power in Ruthar.
On the dais in the throne-room was another wonder for Zenas Wright to see. It was a massive, double-seated chair, constructed, even to the pegs which held its parts together, of ivory like in the giant tusks of the arch. An artist of surpassing skill had wrought that chair and had carved it into the semblance of tall lily-stalks with heavy-headed, drooping blossoms and slender fronds. All around the larger stalks were cut the clinging tendrils of a creeping vine, a tracery as fine as lace.
Wright and Everson were given rooms on the second floor of the temple at its western side. Polaris was borne to a chamber on the upper story, where he was tended by Glorian herself and the servants of her household. Rombar took up his quarters in that chamber also, and only Oleric could lure the dog forth from his master's side, and then not for long at a time.
Soon after their arrival at the hill of Flomos, and when they had rested some of the stiffness from their joints, Everson and the scientist went down with Oleric to the laboratories of Nematzin to begin their work. Though the students of Ruthar were not unskilled in chemistry of a sort, they knew nothing of explosives. So Zenas prepared himself for a series of tests to discover the materials of which he was in need, or, if he could not find what he desired, some combination which would serve.
In that constructive analysis the naval lieutenant could be of little aid. Oleric then found a task for him which was more to his liking. It was the drilling of men.
From her center to her rock-bound coasts, Ruthar hummed with the preparation for war.
"If we are to fight, let us first know how many men we can raise, and how they will be disposed," said Everson. "What is the population of this country, and how will it match up, man for man, with Maeronica?"
All told, Ruthar's people numbered something like a million and a quarter, Oleric informed him; and in Maeronica the population was near to three and one-half millions, at least a half a million of which dwelt in the great city of Adlaz.
"As it is figured in the world, your army then will be made up of one fighting man to every ten persons," the lieutenant said. "If the spirit of the people is with us, we should be able to put at least one hundred and twenty-five thousand men in the field—and Bel-Ar, three hundred and fifty thousand. Those are heavy odds."
"Ruthar shall do better even than that," Oleric said with pride. "I promise you that two hundred thousand men shall march when they hear the war-drums—and more may be found if the need grows bitter."
"Can you equip and maintain them?" Everson asked.
"In Ruthar every man is a soldier. They will equip themselves. This day has been awaited for long. Ruthar is ready to give all for the uses of her warrior sons. Fear not. Besides, though I will not deny that the men of Ad are good fighters and their country is far the richer, yet many of them are fat city dwellers and traders, of whom two are not a match for one of the hardy men of the mountains who will march under the banners of the Goddess Glorian. Show them the ruins of the Kimbrian Wall, and were the armies of Ad twice their strength, yet they should not turn Ruthar from her purpose."
Everson nodded thoughtfully. "How will this force be divided?" he asked. "Have you many horsemen? In such a war as this promises to be, cavalry will be invaluable."
The red captain knit his brow in calculation.
"Forty thousand wild horsemen of the hills and mountains, who know not fear, can I promise," he said at length. "Five thousand chariots we can muster, each of two horses, and carrying each two fighting men and a driver to guide the horses; twenty thousand skilled archers; ninety thousand heavily armed men with swords and spears; ten thousand slingers; and twenty thousand men armed with javelins—these last to serve as skirmishers."
Everson's eyes kindled at the recital of that tale of men, and he smiled—one of the few smiles that had lightened his face since his ship had been lost.
"We must gather them into camps at once," he said. "The time is all too short in which to make an enemy out of raw levies. We must drill them all winter, and that will be a man's job."
Straightway he threw himself into the task with tireless energy. And he vowed to himself that the men who had dared to sink a United States cruiser should learn a lesson of tears and death, and that he would have a hand in the teaching of the lesson.
Oblivion, like a deep and dreamless sleep, was the portion of Polaris Janess. It seemed that his soul had withdrawn itself to some place of peace to wait until its racked and weary body should once more be fit for tenancy. The wound in his neck closed and healed. Somewhat of color crept back into his cheeks. His body began to thrive, but there was in it seemingly little more of sentient life than in a tree which draws its nourishment from the soil and knows not of days and nights and the cares thereof.
"It is a blood-clot that presses somewhere on the brain," Glorian told his friends, who stood often at his quiet bedside. "'Twill pass away ere long, and he will be whole again."
To the surprise of Zenas and Everson, Glorian and a number of the learned men of the college of Nematzin spoke English almost with the facility of Oleric, from whom, indeed, they had learned it. And this was a great source of delight to the old geologist, who liked to talk and grumble over his labors. And what use is there in grumbling, if there is no one to hear and understand?
Came a day when the curtain lifted from the brain of the sick man, and memory peopled the vacant stage, as once before it had done when he lay ill in the cabin on the ship Felix on his first journey from his home in the wilderness.
Wondering, he lay still with closed lids, as he had a trick of doing when he waked from slumber. He began to reconstruct. The wreck of the Minnetonka passed before him, and then, like a series of pictures, the events which had followed the sinking of the ship; the stranger people; the judgment of the king; the parting from his love; the coming of the red captain in the night and the flight from Adlaz; the fight at the wharves and the farewell of Minos; the great stairway of the Illia—
There the pictures ceased. He could not then, or ever afterward, recall the fight in the river, where he had gone down to aid Oleric and come by his wound.
Into his nostrils was wafted a breath of faint perfume. A cool hand was laid against his cheek. He opened his eyes. The details of a high, arched room he saw; windows of glass at the north, where the sun shone thinly and big flakes of snow were floating slowly down—for winter had come to Ruthar; at his cheek a long, wonderfully shaped, white hand, with tapering, ringless fingers; a slender wrist; beyond it a face. He closed his lids again, with a frown of disbelief. The beauty of that face was such as no mortal ever saw, save in a dream.
The hand stirred, and he looked again.
From the times of Helen of Troy on down through the pages of all recorded history, those pages have been made bright by the faces of fair women who were their nations' boast. Here, before the eyes of the sick man, was a face that was the peer of any that ever shone in fable or in fact. A broad, high forehead above two dark and well-defined arches; beneath them, delicately veined lids and long dark lashes, veiling red-brown eyes. Eyes so wonderfully alive with expression that their change was like the bewildering melting of colors in a sunset; between their marvelous valleys, a slenderly bridged nose with a hint of the Roman. A rich, full-lipped mouth that was the playground of smiles, but which showed also the quality of rare determination, a promise sustained by the firmly rounded chin beneath it, a skin so fine of texture that through it might be traced the ebb and flow of life, as flames show roseate through a marble vase.
Her head had the poise of an empress, and at its shapely crown, piled high, were lustrous coils of hair which at first glance seemed black; but when the light struck on it, glowed as an ember glows when a breath renews its dullness into fire.
Such was the beauty of the woman on whom Polaris looked—and as he gazed, acknowledgment was forced within him that here was one that surpassed in fairness even the Rose-maid whom he loved. And there was no disloyalty in that acknowledgment. Rose Emer was a beautiful woman; but she who sat before him, and who seemed of nearly the same age and whose figure much resembled that of his own dear lady, she had the beauty of unearthly things.
For a moment he stared in silence.
"Where am I, and who are you?" he asked, and smiled faintly in response to her little exclamation of delight that his senses had come back to him. Before she could speak, he muttered, "I had forgotten; she will not understand."
"But I do understand, my poor friend," she said, "and can make answer in your own tongue—if we keep to simple talk."
As the quality of that voice had thrilled old Zenas, so now it sent a tremor through the veins of the son of the snows.
"You are in the city of Zele-omaz, and I, who have watched while you lay wounded and ill, am a poor lady of wild Ruthar," she continued.
"'Poor' and 'wild' are words that ill beseem you, lady," replied Polaris in the quaint expression that in the long years when his father had been his sole companion, he had absorbed from the pages of Scott's romantic "Ivanhoe," and which contact with modern English had not worn away.
"I think that one Oleric has spoken oft of you, and that I can guess the name you bear—and I find it a most fitting name."
Rose-pink the Goddess Glorian flushed, in a most mortal fashion, and was glad that at that moment black Rombar thrust his head forward over the edge of the bed to claim a share in the attention of his master.
Polaris stirred his hands, and then looked up wonderingly.
"I am weak," he said. "How long have I lain ill, and what misfortune befell me to so lay me by the heels? I understand it not at all; for my memory has tricked me."
Toying with Rombar's collar, Glorian told him what she had learned from the others of the fight at the mouth of the Illia.
"And I do thank you for the life of my faithful captain," she said, "as he will presently. It was a brave deed, a very brave deed. Now you must talk no more, and no more must I weary you. You are worn with sickness, and it will be many days before your strength comes back. Rest and fret not. All things are going well."
She left him, and presently he slept.