Not much before midnight the bearers swung sharply at the brink of the cliff and plunged down the steep narrow road cut along its face. Brinnaria felt the dampness of the lake air on her cheek.
By the Lake the fog was, if possible, more impenetrable than elsewhere. The Grove, the lodging for the cripples and invalids who thronged the place to be cured, the vast halls about the temple, the temple itself, all were doubly whelmed in the darkness and the mist.
Brinnaria made out only the six channelled vermilion columns of the temple portico and the black boughs of the sacred oak. These, to right and left of the temple area, showed vaguely in the light of thousands of torches in the hands of the throng packed about it.
Respect for a closed litter with sixteen bearers accompanied by a gentleman in a Senator’s robes won them a way through the crowd, the torches surging in waves of flame as they ploughed through.
When they reached the margin of the open space, Brinnaria, choking with the realization that she had arrived too late, peered between the drawn curtains of her litter and saw the pavement of the temple-area bright under the splendor of the torch-rays; saw a dozen young women, dressed in gowns of a startling deep orange, standing in a row clear of the torch-bearing crowd; saw the five aldermen of Aricia in their official robes, grouped about the square marble altar; saw before the altar a circular space of clipped turf midway of the area pavement, saw standing on it to the right of the altar the King of the Grove, clad in his barbaric smock of dingy undyed black wool, his three-stranded necklace of raw turquoises broad on his bosom, the fox-tails of his fox-skin cap trailing by his ears; saw facing him Almo, bare-kneed, his hunting-boots of soft leather like chamois-skin coming half way up to his calves, his leek-green tunic covering him only to mid-thigh, his head bare, his right hand waving an oak bough.
After she recognized Almo and glimpsed the bough in his hand she hardly looked at him. She stared, fascinated, at the white marble altar on which, as an offering to Diana of the Underworld, the victor of the fight would lay the corpse of his victim.
The Dictator of Aricia, chief of the Aldermen, raised his hand. From somewhere in the darkness behind the dozen simpering wenches appeared two slaves, each carrying a small round shield and a double-headed battle-axe. The shields had painted on each a horse, the battle-axes were of the pattern always seen in pictures of the legendary Amazons. The blade of each axe-head was shaped like a crescent moon. From the inner side projected a flat, thick shank, by which the blade was fastened to the helve. The curve of each blade made almost a half circle, the tips of the crescents almost touched the haft between them, so that their outer cutting-edges made a nearly complete circle of razor-sharp steel, from which protruded the keen spear-head tipping the shaft.
Two of the aldermen received these accoutrements from the slaves. Brinnaria noticed that one of the other aldermen held the broad, gold-mounted, jeweled scabbard containing the great scimitar with which the King of the Grove kept girt, waking or sleeping. She even noted how its belt trailed from his hands and the shine of its gloss-leather in the torch-rays.
The two aldermen handed a shield and an axe to each contestant. One took from Almo the oak-bough and passed it to the Dictator.
The two champions fitted the shields on their arms, balanced them, and hefted their battle-axes. Each assumed the posture that suited him best, his feet well under him. So they stood facing each other, waiting for the signal.