An hour before the dawn he occupied the town, from which most of the people had fled, and attacked the fortress furiously, thereby losing many men. Though the walls of the place were not high, they were ably defended. Broddok was a skilled general, and his garrison was superior in numbers to the force which laid siege to his stronghold. Still Polaris, counting on the speedy arrival to his support of the van of his main army, kept up the assault until well into the day, trying in turn every point of the fortress--and failing at every turn. Finding that attempts against the wall availed them nothing, for they were without siege machinery, and Broddok's swordsmen clustered so thickly on the parapets that no footing could be gained thereon with ladders, the Rutharians boldly assailed the main gate to the citadel. Cutting a tree from the forest, threescore stout men bore it to the gate. While the archers and slingers from the tops of the nearest houses of the town swept the citadel walls with clouds of missiles, the men in the street swung their battering-ram until their arms were weary. But Broddok's doors were strongly built of oak, reinforced with bars of steel and set well within the arch of the gateway. Beyond the snapping of a few chains, the ram did them little damage. Maeronicans on the battlements mocked the men of Polaris with sharp words and sharper weapons, and through mortises in the vault of the arch poured down streams of boiling water. The Rutharians lost fifty men-at-arms before they desisted from the assault. "Smoke them out," was the counsel of Jastla. Fagots were fetched up from the town and drenched with oil, and men set fire to them and ran and cast them blazing into the archway. This means might have succeeded in burning away the stubborn oak. But the Maeronican captain, tiring of the din at his gates, mounted five hundred horsemen, opened his portals, and charged so fiercely through the fire that he cleared the street, and for a time his doors were unmolested. * * * * * Through the defile a chill wind swept from the north, carrying with it a light drift of snow, and Polaris's men found it cold work roosting without the walls. They had left their camp carrying food for only a two days' march. The country through which they had come was wild and sparsely settled, and offered little opportunity for foraging. When they began to feel the pinch of hunger, Polaris ordered his men to go among such of the townsmen of Barme as had not been frightened from their homes, and gather provisions, paying for all that they took with gold, for he would have no looting. And those orders were in part, at least, obeyed. Smoke was curling from the chimney of a small house in a side street near where they stood, and Jastla said to the king: