He rode up slowly, wearily, at the head of a few hundred men, as worn and weary as himself; and as he came nearer, people whispered under their breath, "Héderváry the Palatine!" Héderváry, who was supposed to be defending the passes of the Carpathians! His armour was battered, his helmet crushed, and a sabre cut across the face had made him hardly recognisable. He rode straight up to the King's tent, before which the Diet was assembled, no one, not even his old friend Peter, daring to speak to him, though he gazed on him hardly able to believe his eyes, and with a sudden chill of alarm as he thought of Dora. For a few moments no one spoke, but after more than one attempt, the Palatine got out the broken words, "God and the Holy Virgin protect your Majesty!" Then, turning to the assembled Diet, he added, "Comrades! the enemy is in our land! Our small force held the pass seven days; on the eighth the flood burst through and flowed over dead bodies. You see before you all who escaped! God and the Holy Virgin protect our country!" Héderváry bowed his head upon his horse's neck to hide his face. The sensation was immense, the news flew quickly from mouth to mouth, and before long all Pest knew of the disaster, and knew, too, that in the Palatine's opinion the enemy might reach Pest itself within a day or two--a day or two! with such awful speed did the torrent rush forward. If Peter had been incredulous before, he was anxious enough now, when he heard of the lightning-like rapidity with which the Mongols were advancing, of the 40,000 pioneers who went before them, cutting a straight road through the thickest forests, of the catapults for throwing stones and masses of rock, against which nothing, not even the strongest walls, could stand. He could not leave his post, it was even questionable whether he could reach Dora now if he made the attempt; for, when the scouts came in they more than confirmed all that the Palatine had said, with the additional information that five counties had been already devastated, and that Batu's army was within half a day's journey of Pest itself. That same night the red glare in the sky told of burning towns and villages only a few miles off; and the day after Héderváry's return small bodies of Mongols actually appeared on the very confines of Pest, laying hands on all that they could find, and then vanishing again like the lightning, as suddenly as they had come.