Summoning his captains, the king banished his court of fluttering butterflies and filled his audience-chamber with the clash of golden armor. No sluggard was Bel-Ar when his foe was on the march, but a wise and resourceful leader. When his mind was not clouded by the rages which at times came upon him, he could plan with the best of his generals.
Bel-Ar in his early youth had been a soldier, and he, too, had fought Ruthar at the Kimbrian Wall. Since coming to the throne of Maeronica he had put down two rebellions, leading his armies in person and waging with a strong and ruthless hand a warfare that had entailed the taking of cities.
First move of the king was to despatch his messengers south and north to raise all the levies of Maeronica and the garrisons of the cities which were tributary to Adlaz. These he directed should be assembled at the crook of the river Thebascu, as the birds fly, ninety miles to the south of Adlaz. He sent Fanaer, one of his most trusted captains, in hot haste into the south to gather what forces he might and stem the tide of invasion until the main host could be mustered and brought up. Before nightfall the war-drums were beating in every city and hamlet of Maeronica.
"If these rash forest wolves and their slave-king win through Barme and the mountain passes and overwhelm Fanaer, which I doubt, then we will meet them beyond the Thebascu, on the plains of Nor," said Bel-Ar to his councilors.
"How they have broken through the wall, I know not; but warrant that it is some trick of the strangers.
"As for the great beasts whereof the soldier spoke, I believe that they were all dead many years ago. Surely no man of Ad can say with truth that he ever has set eyes on one. They are but a myth wherewith Ruthar would affright us. And if they be alive, and as terrible as tradition tells, I am not afeared of them. We will drive them back with fire, as once before our ancestors drove them, in the days before the wall.
"Friends, I welcome this war that has come to seek me, for I was growing dull and rusty with inaction.
"If the wall be truly down, then will we drive Ruthar speedily to the other side of it—and having so done, we will follow on and bend the necks of these stubborn mountain boors to the yoke that has long awaited them."
So he dreamed; so he spoke and heartened his captains.
Two days later the trumpets blew at the southern gates, and with a rumbling of drums and a tossing of banners overhead, the first division of the garrison and the levies of the city of Adlaz, thirty thousand strong, marched out the Mazanion Road for the plains of Nor. At their head, under the rustling folds of his war-standard of gold and blue, rode Bel-Ar, the king.