The Roman nodded, silently, and Denham came back to the subject. "For some time," he went on, "we four have considered different plans for escaping, but none has been practical. There are so many obstacles. It will be necessary to get up the stair, avoiding the guards at bottom and top. Once up, it will be necessary to pass through the city of the cylinders, though that should not be too difficult. But once out of the city, what then? How cross the ice?" "We are talking at cross purposes," I said. "You must remember, Denham, that I know next to nothing about this place. Why have all these men been collected in this under-city? Does anyone know, except the Raider? What is the purpose of it all?" "You do not know?" asked Denham, in surprize. "I thought you would, by now. These men, these thousands of warriors in the city here around you, have been gathered here by the Raider to act as his armies, his mercenaries, to pour down in hordes upon the cities of the enemies of the Kanlars, and destroy those enemies utterly, which the Kanlars are too few in number to do." I gasped with astonishment. Denham went on. "You tell him, Fabrius," he said, addressing the Roman. "You have been here longer than any of us." The centurion spoke, in a slurred, accented English. "Some things I have heard," he said, "but whether true or not, I can not say. There was a man here I knew when first I was brought here, a Persian. Before he was killed (for he was killed in a drunken brawl) he told me that once, in the city above, one of the Kanlars had become drunk and had babbled to him the story of his race. "As you know, endless fields of ice lie around this land where is the Kanlar's city. Well, the Persian said that these fields of ice were not endless, that far to the south there were other green lands and in them a mighty people and a mighty city, named Kom. He said that long ago the Kanlars lived in this city, and were of its people, but that trouble had risen between them and the other people of Kom, _because of the Raider_. More than this he did not know, but said that because of this trouble, the Kanlars had fled from the city, with the Raider leading them, and coming north in their air-boats over the ice-fields, had found this green, uninhabited land, set in the ice. Its existence had never been suspected by those in Kom, who thought that the ice extended clear north to the very edge of earth.