It seemed likely that their promise would be required of them. Bel-Ar, stubborn and high of spirit, was resolved to fight on. He still mustered under his banners a force of nearly sixty thousand men, veterans of his former wars and the flower of the fighting men of the land. Besides, he held the advantage of position.
When Ruthar would have gone on against him in the morning, it was found that his engineers, working through the night, had piled the bridge-heads with barricades of stones, so thick and high that no amaloc charge would beat them down. Behind those barriers the Maeronican generals reorganized their broken forces and sent in the front fresh soldiers drawn from the reserves that were waiting along the Mazanion Road.
Not for many weary miles was there another crossing of the Thebascu—if, indeed, there were any on the course of the river where were bridges strong enough to support an army and the weight of the amalocs.
Taking counsel together, Polaris and Oleric and their generals decided that they must hammer their way through at the three bridges. They might have blown up the barriers with melinite; but they dared not, for fear of destroying the structures of the bridges also; and they had not the time to build new bridges. Only a sustained frontal attack, at the cost of many men, would clear the way.
For a score and ten days and nights the furious struggle was waged at the Thebascu. Then one of the bridges was taken. Polaris, his great frame grown gaunt from continual fighting, and his face sunken and haggard with anxiety and loss of sleep, saw through hollow and burning eyes his hosts swing across the river and into the Mazanion Road.
Fourteen days were left him, and then—the Feast of Years, and the end.
Summer was coming, and with it the feast of the return of Shamar, that could not be set forward or delayed. Though the foe were hammering at its gates, Oleric said, the feast would be held in the city. Such was the ancient law laid down in the early days of Adlaz.
On the Mazanion Road they found the captain Fanaer once more, tireless and vengeful. As he had harried them all the way from the isthmian passes to the plains of Nor, so he harried them now. Every foot of the hundred miles down the Mazanion Road he fought them, and with him fought Bel-Ar, his master. Wall after wall they built and lost.
It was not until afternoon of the last day that the Rutharian vanguard, so worn with battle that it staggered as it rode, broke through the final barrier and marched through the gorgeous suburban estates to the wall of Adlaz. Under the leadership of Fanaer, the remnant of Bel-Ar's army made a last desperate stand, but was swept away.
As night came on, the Maeronican king, broken-hearted, but still defiant, entered his city and closed his gates—there to sit down and wait for the coming of the Goddess Glorian.