Janess sprang free from the falling horse. Above him, Bel-Ar shouted in triumph and hewed down with his bronze sword. But the zinds of Ruthar had torn through Bel-Ar's riders to the support of their king, upsetting both men and horses as they came. One of them, a slender youth in silver armor, leaped from his steed and flashed between Bel-Ar and his dismounted and helpless foeman, taking the king's sword-stroke on his head. Jastla closed his steel ring, then, and Bel-Ar was carried away in a swirling press of his own cavalry, which had charged fiercely in to save him. * * * * * Polaris knelt beside his fallen horse and lifted the still form of the man who had saved him. The red banner of Ruthar, held by Zind Albar, floated above them. Around the circle of riders which Jastla had drawn the battle whirled like a seething maelstrom around a rock in a sea of clashing steel. "Who is he?" Polaris asked of Albar, and pillowed the head in its silver helm on his knee. In vain he tried to lift the vizor. The sword-stroke of the Maeronican king had shattered the upper flare of the helmet and bent down its crest so that the vizor would not yield. "I know him not," said Albar, who was a hillsman. "Some zind of the lower cities, I judge, from the armor he wears. Whoever he is, he is a brave man. He has this day saved the life of the king of Ruthar, and I fear that he has lost his own in the deed. Bel-Ar strikes bitterly. See; he has cracked the helmet like an egg. Ah-h--!" Striking the steel-shod shaft of the standard into the earth, Albar leaped down from his horse and knelt beside Polaris. While the zind had been speaking, the fingers of the son of the snows had loosed the clasps of the helmet and lifted it. From under the cloven silver shell rippling coils of red-brown hair slipped down and flowed over his arm and his knee, where the sunlight caught and turned them into dancing flames. The pale face turned up to the sky, unmarred save by a small stain of blood at one of the temples, was that of the Goddess Glorian of Ruthar! Janess groaned. Albar stared like a man transfixed. But Glorian was not dead. As the air struck her face she moved her head faintly and her lips trembled. "Illia--roars--loudly to-day," she murmured. "It must be--the freshets--of spring." She opened her eyes, saw the faces bent above her, and smiled wanly at Polaris. "Then I was not too late?" she said, the halting gone out of her voice. "'Tis well." "Lady, why did you come hither--into the battle?" asked Polaris. "And why--" His voice broke; for the courage of this woman moved him almost to tears; the memory of that crushing stroke of bronze which she had taken in his stead made him shudder. Glorian smiled again.