Polaris and the Goddess Glorian

by Charles B. Stilson

All of the day on which Everson was stricken, and through the night and the forenoon following, the builders wrought at the road. Wherever was room for a pair of hands to labor, the hands were not lacking. Still the work was not completed, nor was the ditch filled in.

And the reason for the delay was—Atlo.

From the turrets along the wall to the east the captain had collected a force of nearly five hundred fighting men, and led them in person. Leaving their horses behind them, these warriors marched to the lip of the breach and harassed the workmen of Oleric. Nor could the Rutharian bowmen and slingers come at them with their weapons to do them much scathe. The edge of the wall had a coping which was nearly breast-high. Behind that the defenders were sheltered, and might creep, which they did, to the very brink of the gap, whence they showered the men in the trench with arrows and javelins.

Following the example of Atlo, the under captains of the towers on the western stretch of the wall gathered another half a thousand men and came to the end of the breach on their side. Between the activities of these two parties, the task of the besiegers was made heavy and perilous.

Time and again the red captain was forced to withdraw his laborers from the cross-fire of deadly missiles which the warriors on the wall rained into the ditch. His losses were appalling. Still his men did not falter. When the order was given, they swarmed into the gaping trench, and those who died there were content if they but cast one shovel of earth before the spirit fled.

Oleric groaned in spirit as he watched this havoc, which he had little power to hinder. The distance to the top of the wall was too great to allow of effective javelin-casting, and such weapons as did reach the summit were seized upon by the enemy and turned back on the attackers. Having the advantage of the sheltered height from which to cast and shoot, one of Atlo's soldiers was worth in efficiency a hundred of those on the ground.

"Swords and axes on the top of the wall, and that only, will clear out that nest," said Oleric to Zenas, when the geologist had come back from the camp, where for hours he had labored over Everson, and of whose condition he now had high hopes.

"Where are our ladder-men tarrying?" snarled Oleric, and the captain ground his teeth as he saw his workmen decimated and driven back again. "We have not the time to spare to starve these birds from their perch. Yet if I fill that hole now it will be with the bodies of brave men dead and not with earth and stone."

Bethinking himself of another plan, the captain ordered three companies of heavy-armed foot-soldiers up from the camp and sent them into the working to shelter the laborers under their shields. By that means a little progress was made; but the work was slow and cumbersome and the toll in lives was still heavy.

Long-delayed relief came in the shape of the fighting men whom Everson had sent out along the wall with ladders. These had lain in the forests until they saw the turrets depleted of their garrisons. Then they had crept up to the wall and erected their scaling ladders, choosing points a number of miles from the breach. That attack was not without its perils and losses. Scant in numbers, but desperate, the defenders sallied out on the wall to turn the storming parties. Many warriors died under the javelins and arrows from above. Comrades took their places as they fell, and at length, by dint of hard fighting, gained footing on the crest of the wall.