Patrymion held the gray dogs by their collars. "Well would I like to see them worry him," he grumbled. "Perhaps it is best for the brutes," he added. "They would surely die of a stomach sickness, did they taste him."
"What wouldst thou of Minos, Analos of the Gateway?" demanded the king. "Thou hast turned the valley to madness. Here we have little need for thee. Were it not that I will slay no more except to save myself and those with me from death, I would send a spear through thee where thou standest, Analos. Say, what wouldst thou here?"
"Insult me thou hast, slay me thou canst not," answered the priest, glowering up at the king from where he stood with folded arms. "Hephaistos protecteth his servant. I came to say to thee that the great doom falleth apace. Mountain after mountain adown the valley giveth up its fires. All upper Sardanes wasteth. This shall go on until thou and those with thee are humbled and Sardanes is as one in submission to the ancient god.
"Beside thee standeth one who this day hath smitten a priest of the Gateway. Give him up. Come thou with him to the Gateway, thou and the girl. For the sake of thy people, Minos, for the sake of the very existence of the Sardanes, yield thee to the god."
"Analos," answered the king, "did Minos for one instant believe that by any act of his Sardanes might be saved, in that instant he would perform it, however bitter. But thou are a madman, thy god of thine own distorted fancy. The things that are happening are in obedience to some law of nature whereof we know not. They will pass, and all will be as before, or they will continue, and Sardanes will be no more. Let that fall out as it is fated. Minos waits the end here, and yieldeth to no man."
Zalos and several of the hunters had come from the cave. Analos turned from the king to them.
"What saith the Captain Zalos?" he demanded. "For this rash man, no longer king of thine, and for the woman he hath stolen, art thou prepared to die and to go cursed of Hephaistos to the torments he hath in store for those who rebel against him? Say, wilt not give him up, he and the maid, and save thyself and thy companions?"
"That will I not," answered the captain. "We have eaten the king's bread, and we are his faithful servants. Where he standeth, there stand we. Whither he leadeth, there we follow, be it to battle, to death, or to ghostland and its torments, if such there be. Forsake him? Not until my breath forsaketh my body!"
Zalos faced his men. "Is it not so?" he growled. "If there be a man among ye who thinketh otherwise, let him speak and stand forth." He fumbled with the dagger in his belt.
"Needst not fret with thy dagger, Captain," laughed one of the hunters. "We be all of one mind, and thou hast said it."