Minos of Sardanes

by Charles B. Stilson

Only man and his closest companions lingered. At the foot of the terraced hill of Hephaistos all of Sardanes that still lived were gathered—all, with the exception of Minos the king and his company on the hill of Latmos.

At the north end of the valley, with their backs to the last of the flaming hills and their faces towards the encroaching snows, the Sardanians pitched a great camp. Some few small houses that once had been those of the tillers of the fields, were occupied by the lords and their families. The people, nearly two thousand of them, camped on the ground with blankets and furs and some articles of their wooden household furniture, each little family in its own group.

Against the creeping white enemy that had invaded the valley, they set a barrier of flame. A hundred axmen, working in shifts, with as many ponies, cut and dragged trees from near-by hillsides. Hour after hour they piled the fires with wood from the hymanan forests, and kept a blazing ring around the camp. When one party was wearied, another took up the work.

So, with hope departing, they kept life in their bodies for a few days.

To that end of the valley were brought all of the small horses in the kingdom, to the number of several hundreds. There was not enough fodder to maintain the poor animals for long, and they died by the score. The slopes of the Gateway swarmed with wild goats, driven thither with all the rest by the sinister white invader that had crept to their loftiest haunts in the cliffs, and had cut them off from their food supplies. They and the horses were all that remained of animal life in Sardanes, except the dogs of Minos on Latmos.

Bitter as was the exigency, Analos the priest would not suffer the people to ascend to the terraces of the Gateway, where was still some warmth from within the hill. So strong was the grip of their superstitions and his threats, that, shivering, facing death and desperate, the people still heeded and obeyed him.

Analos, guardian of the portals of the Gateway, dwelt alone with the majesty of his god, save for the wild goats, which cared naught for orders, priest or god.

Watch was kept no longer at the mouth of the cavern where Minos and his party lay. Well it was for them that it was so, else they had perished of cold. No longer was the cave tenable without fire. Like the people below in the valley, the refugees were forced to work in shifts of axmen to keep the lives within them. In the cave a fire roared constantly, and another without on the plateau.

Analos had given up his battle against the king. It was by his orders that his spearsmen kept watch at the cave no longer. His fiery spirit was burning itself out within him, and he was turning cold, as the lifeless hills turned cold. It seemed to him that his will roamed through the chambers of his mind, and in them could find no more of anger against Minos; nor could it conjure up, as it had been want to do, more terrible behests of the god Hephaistos. Chaos had come to Analos, and let it come, said he, for no more might he read the mind of his mighty master and interpret his wishes.

On the Gateway he dwelt alone and in a daze, and waited, waited, for he knew not what. But he was to see one more vision—wild as any his madness ever brought to him.