Polaris and the Goddess Glorian

by Charles B. Stilson

While the army stood breathless to see what he would do, the driver struck with his ankus, and with a shout launched the amaloc straight at the center gate of the camp.

Deprived of its eyesight, the mammoth obeyed the superior will expressed by the voice that it knew and loved. Across the bridge, where ordinarily it would have paused and tested the timbers carefully before trusting its immense bulk upon them, it now charged blindly, trumpeting as it went.

Showers of missiles from the camp of Ad fell on the beast; ahead of it roared the blazing pile. It screamed out with pain and terror when the flames touched it, but it did not stop. Scattering the burning tangle like fiery chaff, it tore on, and its armored frontlet clanged on the bars of the gateway.

That shock tore the gates from their hinges and brought the amaloc to its knees. For an instant it knelt on the fallen gate, then, trumpeting with rage, rose up and danced on the ruin.

On the head of the beast the driver lay flat on his belly, his arms and legs thrust under the leather bands placed there to hold him. Ahead, scarcely fifty feet away, was the second gateway. With voice and steel the man urged the amaloc on, and it crashed through that gate as it had through the first, and plunged into the center of the Maeronican camp.

Began then a mad rout for safety. No one thought of fighting the terror that had come among them; but each man for himself ran for the river, casting away anything that might weight down his legs. Soon all three bridges of the Thebascu were black with a horrid, writhing mêlée—a tangle of fear-maddened men, cursing and striking at each other for way, and screaming, terrified horses. Many soldiers, unable to fight into the jams on the bridges, threw themselves into the swift stream with all their armor on, and some swam across and others were seen no more.

To and fro through the encampment raged the now thoroughly crazed amaloc, sundering and crushing all that it met. The long, red wool had caught fire from the blaze at the gateway and burned fiercely up over its shoulders. Wild with the pain of it, the beast ran hither and thither, seeking to escape from the flames. A two-horsed chariot was in its path at one moment. It scooped it up like a toy and carried it forward on its mighty tusks, the horses dangling in their harness. Then with a heave of its vast shoulders the monster cast the wreck in the air. Lying on his face, the driver closed his eyes and prayed wildly to his stars.

At length, smelling the water of the river, the amaloc turned thither, to quench its agonies in the rushing stream. On it drove, across the camp, upsetting everything in its way. It reached the river to the left of one of the bridges. In its path a horse bearing a steel-clad rider slipped and fell. The groping trunk that sought the water found the man, plucked him from the ground, whirled him aloft, and dashed him against an abutment of the bridge so that his armor cracked like a nutshell and his blood ran down the stones.

With a final shriek of fury, the amaloc plunged into the river. The waters closed over its upthrown trunk, and its mad career was ended. With it went the driver, well content to give his life for Ruthar.

This one beast in the outpouring of its majestic strength had done more to shatter the power of Adlaz than had the legions of Ruthar in a month's fighting.