"What is it, Warrior?" he asked. "What enemy thus cruelly destroyed you? Of what would you warn us?" From some deep-hidden well the messenger drew new strength. Her eyes blazed as she answered, "I bid you flee to the secret spots of the mountains. An evil foe even now marches upon your camp. Stunted and vicious little yellow-skinned Men-things who linber[4] our Clans, destroy our fighters with tubes that maim and stun." [Footnote 4: Linber--to kidnap, (derived from Lindbergh?)--Ed.] The aged Mother was beside her now. "Who are you, daughter?" she begged. "Whence come you?" "I am Vivyun," labored the refugee, "of the Durm Clan. Short days ago came strange lightings in the heavens; mad thunders burst in the forests about our village--" Jain interrupted, startled, "Mother! The omens we heard night before last in the forest to our west!" and Meg looked swiftly at Daiv. She cried, "The forest through which we fled, Daiv! The wood of heavy twigs!" Daiv silenced her with a thoughtful nod. Vivyun's halting speech continued. "--then came the onslaught. Armored demons, the color of mustard seed, burst upon us. Our Warriors went to meet them but the dwarfs loosed lights from sticks and where the soldiers had stood, now were but inch-long, stony parodies of Women. One of the lights played for an instant upon my leg--" Meg looked and shuddered. The dying Warrior's leg was firm and round from hip to thigh; ten inches above the knee it ended abruptly in a scoriated stump from which depended an ugly, wartlike excrescence which--Meg saw with sickening horror--was the perfectly formed simulacrum of a human limb. Daiv was muttering savagely, "Speak on, Warrior!" "They come," persisted Vivyun, "to capture Women. Like the Wild Ones, they die out for lack of Mates. Out of the far southland they come, from a land called Mayco. They bear other strange weapons. A stick that shoots lights of insanity ... a wall they build of invisible bricks...." "More!" pleaded Daiv and the Mother in one breath as Vivyun faltered. "More!" But a strange, foolish look glazed the dying one's eyes. Her lips moved whitely and her breath was a whisper. "You are a strange ... creature," she said to Daiv. "Somehow you ... make it easy to die ... Man-thing...." Then she was still. * * * * * Lora, Chieftain of the Warriors, broke the spell that bound them all with a thunderous cry. "Invaders? No invaders can take the village of the Jinnia tribe! To arms, Warriors! To your posts. Let these yellow dwarfs attack _us_, and--" She laughed evilly. Daiv sprang to his feet; his voice a peremptory challenge. "Hold, Warrior! Did you not hear what Vivyun said? These invaders have magic weapons; sticks that spit insanity and crumpling death. It is best we should flee to the hills. Maybe there we can devise some way--" Meg's cheeks were hot with sorrow for Daiv as the Warrior Chieftain scorned him with her eyes.