d would have concealed a numerous ambush, I apprehended an
attack which must have been fatal; but even so simple and decisive a
measure had never occurred to the Regent's military ignorance.

At this critical moment a flash from a thicket revealed the weapon of
some hidden enemy, who thus escaped facing the gaze that none could
encounter; and Esmo fell, struck dead at once by the lightning-shot.
The assassin sprang up, and I recognised the features of Endo Zampta.
Confounded and amazed, the Zveltau broke and fell backward, hurrying
Eveena away with them. Enabled by size and strength to extricate
myself at once, I stood at bay with my back against the rocks on our
left, a projection rising as high as my knee assisting to hinder the
enemy from entirely and closely surrounding me. I had thrown aside at
the moment of the attack the mantle that concealed my sash and star;
and I observed that another Chief had done the same. It was he who,
occupying at the trial the seat on Esmo's left, had shown the
strongest disposition to mercy, and now displayed the coolest courage
amid confusion and danger.

"Rally them," I cried to him, "and trust the crimson blade [cold
steel]. These hounds will never face that."

The enemy had rushed forward as our men fell back, and I was almost in
their midst, thus protected to a considerable extent from the
lightning projectile, against which alone I had no defence. Hand to
hand I was a match for more than one or two of my assailants, though
on this occasion I wore no defensive armour, and they were clad in
shirts of woven wire almost absolutely proof against the spear in
hands like theirs.

To die thus, to die for her under her eyes, leaving to her widowed
life a living token of our love--what more could Allah grant, what
better could a lover and a soldier desire? There was no honour, and
little to satisfy even the passion of vengeance, in the sword-strokes
that clove one enemy from the shoulder to the waist, smote half
through the neck of a second, and laid two or three more dead or dying
at my feet. If the weight of the sword were lighter here than on
Earth, the arm that wielded it had been trained in very different
warfare, and possessed a strength which made the combat so unequal
that, had no other life hung on my blows, I should have been ashamed
to strike. As I paused for a moment under this feeling, I noted that,
outside the space half cleared by slaughter and by terror, the bearers
of