Under them a vast stillness reigned.  It was as though the earth lay dead beneath their pall.

Kaloon, lit in a lurid light, grew nearer.  The pickets of the foe flew homeward before us, shaking their javelins, and their mocking laughter reached us in hollow echoes.  Now we saw the vast array, posted rank on rank with silken banners drooping in that stirless air, flanked and screened by glittering regiments of horse.

An embassy approached us, and at the signal of Ayesha’s uplifted arm we halted.  It was headed by a lord of the court whose face I knew.  He pulled rein and spoke boldly.

“Listen, Hes, to the words of Atene.  Ere now the stranger lord, thy darling, is prisoner in her palace.  Advance, and we destroy thee and thy little band; but if by any miracle thou shouldst conquer, then he dies.  Get thee gone to thy Mountain fastness and the Khania gives thee peace, and thy people their lives.  What answer to the words of the Khania?”

Ayesha whispered to Oros, who called aloud—­“There is no answer.  Go, if ye love life, for death draws near to you.”

So they went fast as their swift steeds would carry them, but for a little while Ayesha still sat lost in thought.

Presently she turned and through her thin veil I saw that her face was white and terrible and that the eyes in it glowed like those of a lioness at night.  She said to, me—­hissing the words between her clenched teeth—­“Holly, prepare thyself to look into the mouth of hell.  I desired to spare them if I could, I swear it, but my heart bids me be bold, to put off human pity, and use all my secret might if I would see Leo living.  Holly, I tell thee they are about to murder him!”

Then she cried aloud, “Fear nothing, Captains.  Ye are but few, yet with you goes the strength of ten thousand thousand.  Now follow the Hesea, and whate’er ye meet, be not dismayed.  Repeat it to the soldiers, that fearing nothing they follow the Hesea through yonder host and across the bridge and into the city of Kaloon.”

So the chiefs rode hither and thither, crying out her words, and the savage tribesmen answered—­“Aye, we who followed through the water, will follow across the plain.  Onward, Hes, for darkness swallows us.”

Now some orders were given, and the companies fell into a formation that resembled a great wedge, Ayesha herself being its very point and apex, for though Oros and I rode on either side of her, spur as we would, our horses’ heads never passed her saddle bow.  In front of that dark mass she shone a single spot of white—­one snowy feather on a black torrent’s breast.

A screaming bugle note—­and, like giant arms, from the shelter of some groves of poplar trees, curved horns of cavalry shot out to surround us, while the broad bosom of the opposing army, shimmering with spears, rolled forward as a wave rolls crowned with sunlit foam, and behind it, line upon line, uncountable, lay a surging sea of men.