Followed by a thousand of his swordsmen, including the hundred men of Jastla, Polaris marched silently around rough devious streets to the side of the hill, and then into the rough ground where the boy directed. It was a dark night, for the stars were dimmed by storm-clouds, and the going was slow. Raula had said it would take at least an hour and the half of another to gain the crest of the hill, and Polaris had ordered his men in the town to hold their hands until they should hear his trumpets, and then to attack the gates of the citadel with trees and fire.
At the spring the clump of bush was found easily, and behind it in the face of the hill was a hole in the rock, so low that a man must bend nearly double to enter it. Here Polaris gave Telo into the arms of a young Rutharian soldier, bidding him bear the lad safely back to his sister.
Bending down, the son of the snows entered the hole. Jastla, who never let his charge beyond arm's reach, crowded in at his heels. For six feet or more they walked with their knees nearly to their chins, and then were able to stand upright. The girl had told them that a light in the passage could not be seen from above because of the trees, and one of the soldiers had nursed a smouldering torch under his cloak. That was brought in and whirled into flame, and they proceeded along a narrow gully, over the floor of which the water trickled.
"Oof! That maid must have been very love-sick, or she has the courage of a fighting man, to have climbed this place in the dark," muttered Jastla, as he surveyed the gloomy cavern.
For nearly three hundred yards the party followed the subterranean ravine, the floor of which sloped upward sharply. It ended in a shaft that was nearly perpendicular, which the men must climb by the aid of jagged rocks where the course of the stream had been worn for centuries.
The torchbearer was posted at the angle, so that the light might be shed both down the passage and through the shaft. Wrapping his sword and spear in his cloak to prevent them from clanging against the stones, Janess, insisting that he should be first, went silently up through the rock, and Jastla followed close behind. They came out at the top through thick bushes into a basin or pool, where the water was ankle-deep. They were inside the wall of the fortress on the western side of the hill-crest. Around the pool was a grove of stunted trees, to the east of which lay the low, wooden stable buildings. South of the stables were the stone barracks of the garrison.
Man by man, the Rutharians came up through the darksome hole and took cover among the trees, until the grove bristled with swords. Polaris and Jastla worked their way to the edge of the wood nearest the stables.
The chieftain pointed to the wooden buildings.
"We will fire them," he whispered, "and have a light to fight by."