With small scouting parties thrown out ahead of him, Polaris hastened on. It was his plan to meet and intercept any expedition which might be sent from Barme to the relief of Atlo at the wall, and so to prevent interference with Oleric's work at the breach. In this fortune favored. For the javelin men ambushed and cut down no less than three riders sent from the wall to rouse the garrison at Barme; so that the first news that reached the town and the Captain Broddok, who commanded there, was brought in by the peasantry of the hills who fled through the forests before the advance of Polaris. Mightily disturbed, and not knowing the strength of the force which was marching against him, Broddok held his men under arms in indecision until it was too late for him to go to the wall. In the evening of the day after the breaching of the wall a battered soldier who had escaped from one of the turrets and slipped through the Rutharian cordons brought word to Broddok of the end of the Kimbrian fighting and the fall of Atlo. Then the Maeronican commander dispatched a relay-rider to Adlaz and made ready to defend his own gates, around which the jaws of Ruthar were closing. From the lower end of the isthmus a number of passes led through the mountains into the forests, beyond which were the plains of Nor. Through only one of these defiles lay a direct road, broad and suitable to the speedy passage of an army with its impedimenta and provision trains. That path was bestridden by the town of Barme. Midway of the pass and near the foot of its western precipice was a low, bald hill, over which the road lay. Around the lower slopes of the hill straggled the town, and at its summit was the walled citadel. It was a strong place, made so both by nature and by man. So closely did it nestle to the towering face of the defile's acclivity, and so rounding was the bulge of the mountain wall, that if one climbed to the top and looked down the precipice, he would see only the houses of the lower town and the citadel would be entirely hidden from him by the rock. At each side of the hill was rocky, wooded land, cut through by many gullies and the ravines of mountain streams. A hard place to come at, Polaris thought, as he stood in the gorge and looked at the hill by the dim light of the stars--for he came to Barme in the night. Yet it must be taken, and that speedily. The swiftest road into Maeronica lay over the hill, and the citadel's gates were the gates of the road also.