ley is leading to nothing,
and though these common soldiers here will understand little enough of
our talk, they may be picking up a word here and there, and I do not
wish them to go on to their death (as you will see them do shortly)
and carry evil reports about me to whatever Gods they chance to come
before."

He saluted me with his sword and drew back, and once more the missiles
began to fly, and the doomed wretches, who had been halting beside
the steep rock walls of the pass began once more to press hopelessly
forward. They had scaling-ladders certainly, but they had no chance of
getting these planted. They could do naught but fill the narrow way with
their bodies, and to that end they had been sent, and to that end
they humbly died. Our Priests with crow and lever wrenched from their
lodging-places the great rocks which had been made ready, and sent them
crashing down, so that once more screams filled the pass, and the horrid
butchery was renewed.

But ever and again, some arrow or some sling-stone, or some fire-tube's
dart would find its way up from below and through the defences, and
there we would be with a man the less to carry on the fight. It was well
enough for Phorenice to be lavish with her troops; indeed, if she wished
for success, there were no two ways for it; and when those she had
levied were killed, she could readily press others into the service,
seeing that she had the whole broad face of the country under her rule.
But with us it was different. A man down on our side was a man whose
arm would bitterly be missed, and one which could in no possible way be
replaced.

I made calculation of the chances, and saw clearly that, if we continued
the fight on the present plan, they would storm the gates one after
another as they came to them, and that by the time the uppermost gate
was reached, there would be no Priest alive to defend it. And so, not
disdaining to fashion myself on Phorenice's newer plan, which held that
a general should at times in preference plot coldly from a place of some
safety, and not lead the thick of the fighting, I left those who stood
to the gate with some rough soldier's words of cheer, and withdrew again
up the narrow stair of the pass.

This one approach to the Sacred Mountain was, as I have said before,
vastly more difficult and dangerous in the olden days when it stood as
a mere bare cleft as the High Gods made it. But a chasm had been bridged
here, a shelf cut through