All were clad lightly in sleeveless tunics of cloth that reached the knees. They wore no head coverings, and their faces and bare arms were tanned from exposure to the sun. Their feet were covered with leather sandals, buckled at the ankle. Their limbs were bare from the sandals to the short, loose-legged trousers, which they wore beneath their tunic skirts. The texture of their garments was dyed in several different hues. Nearly all wore close-cropped beards like that of Kard, and their hair was trimmed at the neck. Armlets and rings and the buckles on their garments, all of the strange, iridescent metal, glittered in the sunlight as they ran. For a moment there was a babel of astonished queries leveled at Kard the Smith as the men pulled up and drank in the sight of the strangers and their yet stranger beasts, now roused to a frenzy which required all of the authority of Polaris to hold in bounds. "Who?" and "What?" and "Where?" came in breathless succession from the mouths of the Sardanians. "Now, be quiet, all of you, that I may tell you," commanded Kard with a disgusted wave of his hand. They were spoiling his peroration for him. "These," and he waved his hand again, "be Polaris of the Snows, and Rose Emer of America, come to visit Sardanes. The man with the sunlight hair and eyes of the sky hath lived in the outer snows all his life, he saith. The woman," and Kard bowed low, "is a great princess from the world far to the north, beyond all the snows, the world whereof the priests have sung." Truly, the imagination of Kard was equal to the effect he wished to produce on his fellows. Their tongues stilled by their wonder, they gazed at the man and the woman. Then, as by common impulse, they bowed low, with sweeping gestures of their right hands. A fresh chorus of questions would have broken out, but Kard quickly forstalled it. "The rest of my tale, also the wonders which the strangers may unfold, wait the ear of the Prince Helicon," he said curtly. "Now, haste ye and bring horses to transport the strangers' goods, for their beasts are aweary, and we will proceed to the Judgement House." Two of the younger men hurried to one of the nearer dwellings and returned shortly with two span of the small horses which grazed in the meadows. They were in harness, and it was not difficult to attach them to the sledge in place of the dogs, which Polaris took out of harness and held in leash. Fearing that Sardanian legs would suffer if he did not, he took the precaution to bind the muzzle of each dog with thongs. A lad mounted the sledge and cracked a long whip, and the stout ponies bent to the work of hauling the sledge. With Kard leading the way, Polaris and Rose Emer set off in the direction of the square of white buildings up the valley. Their dogs huddled closely around them, a formidable body-guard, and with them marched an escort of Sardanians, momentarily augmented by every new man who set eyes on them.