rust the dreadful arms, poised
themselves to strike.

"It shall be so," he shouted. "I carry your command."

He leaped back, his red mail flashed toward a turret that held, I
supposed, a stairway. He was lost to sight. In silence we waited.

On the further side of the city I glimpsed movement. Little troops of
mounted men, pony drawn wains, knots of running figures were fleeing
from the city through the opposite gates.

Norhala saw them too. With that incomprehensible, instant obedience
to her unspoken thought a mass of the Metal Things separated from us;
whirled up into a dozen of those obelisked forms I had seen march from
the cat eyes of the City of the Pit.

In but a breath, it seemed, their columns were far off, herding back the
fugitives.

They did not touch them, did not offer to harm--only, grotesquely,
like dogs heading off and corraling frightened sheep, they circled and
darted. Rushing back came those they herded.

From the watching terraces and walls arose shrill cries of terror, a
wailing. Far away the obelisks met, pirouetted, melted into one thick
column. Towering, motionless as we, it stood, guarding the further
gates.

There was a stir upon the wall, a flashing of spears, of drawn blades.
Two litters closed with curtainings, surrounded by triple rows of
swordsmen fully armored, carrying small shields and led by Kulun were
being borne to the torn battlement.

Their bearers stopped well within the platform and gently lowered their
burdens. The leader of those around the second litter drew aside its
covering, spoke.

Out stepped Ruth and after her--Ventnor!

"Martin!" I could not keep back the cry; heard mingled with it Drake's
own cry to Ruth. Ventnor raised his hand in greeting; I thought he
smiled.

The cubes on which we stood shot forward; stopped within fifty feet of
them. Instantly the guard of swordsmen raised their blades, held them
over the pair as though waiting the signal to strike.

And now I saw that Ruth was not clad as she had been when we had left
her. She stood in scanty kirtle that came scarcely to her knees, her
shoulders were bare, her curly brown hair unbound and tangled. Her face
was set with wrath hardly less than that which beat from Norhala. On
Ventnor's forehead was a blood red scar, a line that ran from temple to
temple like a brand.

The curtains of the first litter quivered; behind them someone spoke.
That in which Ruth and Ventnor had ridden was drawn swiftl