Of the hundred zinds and fifty tall hillsmen who had formed in Jastla's ring, five and twenty were left. Not one was unwounded. Jastla's beard was red with blood, where a spear-point had penetrated through the bars of his vizor and torn his mouth. In addition to the bruised and stiffening shoulder caused by the blow of Bel-Ar that had broken his armor, Polaris had been gashed on the cheek by an arrow. Otherwise he was the least harmed of the party. It was midafternoon when Ixstus set foot in the circle. Presently Oleric arrived in his chariot. Behind him came the host of Ruthar--weary and with many of its battalions sadly thinned, but still a host, and ready to go on if need be. Another amaloc rolled up alongside of Ixstus. Over the edge of the wicker basket it bore, a white old head bobbed up with the suddenness of a jack-in-the-box. "Hey, son," said Zenas Wright to Polaris, "will you never quit your foolhardy ways? Look what you have made me do--come a-hunting you, riding on the back of one of these animated stacks of red hay, that should have been dead and fossilized six thousand years ago. Well, well; we've given his majesty Bel-Ar a bellyful, I'm thinking." Out of his basket and down the rope-ladder Zenas clambered to shake Polaris by the hand. "Oh, boy," the geologist said, "you're a better king than those heathen will see again, if they all live to be as old as Father Methuselah yonder says he is. But be careful, lad, be careful." On the head of Ixstus the Goddess Glorian stood and pointed toward the camp of Bel-Ar, and her beautiful face grew stern. "There are still three hours of daylight, Father Zoar," she said. "Let us go and finish what we have begun." "As well now as ever, daughter," Zoar replied. "I am minded to teach this Maeronican king a lesson that shall become a tradition in the land. What passes in the camp? My eyes are too dim to see." "Confusion, father, and the running to and fro of many men. They are adding to the height of their earthen walls. They are piling their gateways with timbers and the fragments of broken chariots." Zoar laughed. "Think they with walls of mud to stop my amalocs?" he muttered. He lifted his voice, and word was passed down the line that the beasts were to be advanced against the camp. Under the orders of Polaris, the dead zinds and men of his guard were borne off the field, and those who were still living, but wounded, were carried tenderly to the rear. When he learned that the amalocs were to attack the camp, he climbed with Zenas to the turret which the geologist had occupied. Jastla and the others he urged to seek rest. But they were men of great spirit, and only one or two of them went. The most of them sent for fresh horses, determined to see the fighting through to its end.