Polaris and the Goddess Glorian

by Charles B. Stilson

Mightily disturbed, and not knowing the strength of the force which was marching against him, Broddok held his men under arms in indecision until it was too late for him to go to the wall. In the evening of the day after the breaching of the wall a battered soldier who had escaped from one of the turrets and slipped through the Rutharian cordons brought word to Broddok of the end of the Kimbrian fighting and the fall of Atlo. Then the Maeronican commander dispatched a relay-rider to Adlaz and made ready to defend his own gates, around which the jaws of Ruthar were closing.

From the lower end of the isthmus a number of passes led through the mountains into the forests, beyond which were the plains of Nor. Through only one of these defiles lay a direct road, broad and suitable to the speedy passage of an army with its impedimenta and provision trains. That path was bestridden by the town of Barme.

Midway of the pass and near the foot of its western precipice was a low, bald hill, over which the road lay. Around the lower slopes of the hill straggled the town, and at its summit was the walled citadel. It was a strong place, made so both by nature and by man. So closely did it nestle to the towering face of the defile's acclivity, and so rounding was the bulge of the mountain wall, that if one climbed to the top and looked down the precipice, he would see only the houses of the lower town and the citadel would be entirely hidden from him by the rock. At each side of the hill was rocky, wooded land, cut through by many gullies and the ravines of mountain streams.

A hard place to come at, Polaris thought, as he stood in the gorge and looked at the hill by the dim light of the stars—for he came to Barme in the night. Yet it must be taken, and that speedily. The swiftest road into Maeronica lay over the hill, and the citadel's gates were the gates of the road also.

An hour before the dawn he occupied the town, from which most of the people had fled, and attacked the fortress furiously, thereby losing many men. Though the walls of the place were not high, they were ably defended. Broddok was a skilled general, and his garrison was superior in numbers to the force which laid siege to his stronghold. Still Polaris, counting on the speedy arrival to his support of the van of his main army, kept up the assault until well into the day, trying in turn every point of the fortress—and failing at every turn.

Finding that attempts against the wall availed them nothing, for they were without siege machinery, and Broddok's swordsmen clustered so thickly on the parapets that no footing could be gained thereon with ladders, the Rutharians boldly assailed the main gate to the citadel. Cutting a tree from the forest, threescore stout men bore it to the gate. While the archers and slingers from the tops of the nearest houses of the town swept the citadel walls with clouds of missiles, the men in the street swung their battering-ram until their arms were weary. But Broddok's doors were strongly built of oak, reinforced with bars of steel and set well within the arch of the gateway. Beyond the snapping of a few chains, the ram did them little damage.

Maeronicans on the battlements mocked the men of Polaris with sharp words and sharper weapons, and through mortises in the vault of the arch poured down streams of boiling water. The Rutharians lost fifty men-at-arms before they desisted from the assault.

"Smoke them out," was the counsel of Jastla.

Fagots were fetched up from the town and drenched with oil, and men set fire to them and ran and cast them blazing into the archway.

This means might have succeeded in burning away the stubborn oak. But the Maeronican captain, tiring of the din at his gates, mounted five hundred horsemen, opened his portals, and charged so fiercely through the fire that he cleared the street, and for a time his doors were unmolested.