Part 47 (1/2)

He wasted no argument on them, but his scorn made the two men fade away, and the wo men, and so could act none He ordered the spokesave another order, and the long lines stood at attention, spears straight up and down, and their round sheilds like great medallions on a wall He ordered them away, but they stood still

Then he did a truly Roreat bronze corselet, in which he lay dead in another cave He threw it down-tore open the white shi+rt underneath-and held his arms out He bade them come and kill him He bade them drive their spears into his unprotected breast

There was not a movement down the line of men They stood as a cliff looks at the tide He dared thes afraid of blood But they stood still He strode up and down the line, seeking a e a spear into him, and no ain and wept, because they loved hi this ti like a poem of the early days of Greece She picked up his corselet and buckled it on hi him hold up his arri spears up into the air and roared her an ovation, bringing down their right feet with a thunder all together

”Ave!”

But the ain It was Yas looked up into her eyes, and they made him shudder, for he had never seen eyes like the hot She was more terrible than Khinjan

”I never saw that before,” she said ”It is because you are here! We shall see it all now! We shall know it all! We shall knohether it was she who killed him, or whether his own ain!”

His eyes seeer They obeyed her voice He gazed again into the crystal, and it clouded over But although he obeyed her, the crystal obeyed hiination asked He was not conscious of asking anything, but being a soldier his curiosity followed a an to co sound Her hot hands pressed his own Thewhite road, across a plain, and theeast

Archers opposed them-archers on foot, and cavalry-Parthians The Parthians ild, but the drill of the hts of arrows came they knelt behind their shi+elds When the horseed they closed in solid phalanx, and the inner ranks hurled javelins at ten-yard range When the fury of the onslaught died they fors at a time while their enemy watched them and wondered

It was plain that the enemy expected them to retreat sooner or later, for the archers and cavalry were at great pains to get behind the the road ahead was less well defended than that behind It did not see toward the distant line of hills and did not seek to return at all

They had no baggage to iht a way back soon Theyparty, out to teach Parthians a lesson Yet they pressed ever forward, and the hills grew ever nearer; while he sat a great brown charger calave them not too many orders, but here and there a word of praise, and once or twice a trueht was fiercest His mere presence seemed better than a hundredcavalry

She rode a little white horse, beside him always and utterly scornful of the risk She wore no arh the sandal straps, and the outlines of her lissoh the ht have just co She had a flower in her hand, and a wreath of flowers in her hair She shouted e brown hand across her mouth, and she held it there and kissed it

They lost ht Perhaps they had been a thousand strong in the beginning Their own eons probably-cut the throats of the badly wounded, to save them from the enemy's attentions; and by this ti

But they went forward-ever forward-and the line of hills drew near Then he began to stir hie, and she echoed hi and sting the tired-out men-at-ar tide that swept forward to the foot of the hills and surged upithout a check In a little while they were hurling boulders down on an enemy that seemed inclined to parley

Then, like a shadow of the incense cloud above, theand Yasain above it

”I have seen that before,” she said, shaking her, head ”I ah! I must kno they failed, so that we make no such loith the fire that is not lit by ordinary passion She was being eaten by ambition-burned by her own fire-by a as she seemed to think this woman of the vision had not shepherded the ain! And oh, ye old Gods, shoherein she failed!”

They stared again, and once more the crystal clouded Out of the cloud caed It was not a very great city, but from the outside it looked rich, for domes and roofs and towers showed above the wall, all well built and well preserved He and she, sitting their horses out of arrow range froet it over with

They no longer had only six or seven hundred men, but men by the thousand Their veterans in Roman armor were in command of others now, and they had a human pack-train with theuard

The ave in under the blows of an i-rae Then, like a river breaking down a da Sreat tower near the gate, that was half wood, half stone, crackled and curled up in yellow and criether as ate to the covert side at a fox-hunt They chatted and laughed together, and their horses pranced, responding to the hu would have liked to tear his eyes away from the scenes that followed in the tree-lined streets, but the crystal ball held him as if in a trance-that and Yasmini's hands that clasped his own like hot torture cha to the death are not so vile, nor so inhuman as men can be in the hour of what they call victory Even the little children of that city paid the penalty for having closed the gate

Time was no measure to the crystal ball In minutes it showed the devil's work of hours The city went up in sreat breach in the wall the conquerors went out, with their plunder and such prisoners as had been saved to drag and carry it

Now there agons and camels and horses Now there were tents and furniture Now eachforce had as much as he himself could carry, as well as as loaded on the prisoners

Only he and she see for the loot and rode as if each was all the other needed Still he wore nothing but his ar dress and sandals But now she had eight prisoners to hold a panoply above her horse and keep the sun from her