Then all his soldiers made their swords sing and flash like waving grain of death; and they chanted together a song without joy. Suddenly the black dam of their war fury broke and, with the wild roar of an untamed cataract, they swept forward towards these still and smiling knights, with King Theophile on a high dark horse at their head.
In his rage of conquest he dug his golden spurs into his horse's side, and the beast with quivering nostrils, leaped through space, then suddenly paused, quivering; nor could cry, or whip, or spur move him. Then King Theophile leaped down and rushed forward to see what was frightening the animal; and all at once he crashed against something hard, and his broken right arm fell to his side. He grew gray, not with pain but with sheer terror, for he could see nothing, yet his arm had been broken upon a substance that felt like granite.
As he gazed wildly about him, he saw the first phalanx of his army pitch back with bleeding foreheads; and their eyes rolled in amazement, for they could see nothing, yet they had driven themselves against stones.
"On! On!" cried King Theophile, for he trusted again to his senses which revealed only a peaceful landscape and in the distance, haloed with the mists, a calm army waiting and smiling. That smile of the foe was like poison in the King's veins, and again he rushed forward, this time to bruise and cut his head, so that the blood poured over his white mantle.
Then he grew faint with fear as he beheld his soldiers clawing the empty airs and turning horror-stricken countenances to him. "Sire," they whispered, "something is holding us back. Something is here that we do not see!"
At that moment the air-spies dropped to the ground like tired birds. "The wind holds us back," cried one. "No!" exclaimed another, "we broke our machines against a wall miles in the air! This is a bewitched country."
"We will wait and try again," said King Theophile.
So they encamped on the spot, and far off in the haze they saw the other army pitch its tents, and they heard the soldiers singing. All night their banners waved in the wind and the faint music continued.
At dawn King Theophile's army was astir, and those air-spies whose vehicles were still unbroken, began their flight violently—and were as violently pitched back. The phalanxes were ordered to advance, but some fell dead with horror as they drove their limbs against an unseen barrier. For the limpid air revealed only the placid fields; and in the distance among the golden shadows, men smiling like the still saints in paradisal meadows. "These be happy warriors," sighed the King, and for once in his life he longed to call the foe "brother" and ask how the harvest went; and to pillow his head on the same knapsack with a soldier, and so sleep sweet and brotherly.
But the wall which shut out his hate, now shut out also his love, so that he could not walk across the fields and embrace those smiling warriors waiting in the sunshine for a battle that was never to take place.