Agno himself had gone. I noted, through the open bars of my foul den, that the walls of the storehouses about were hung with gay carpets, and that the business of buying and selling had ceased in favor of the still more urgent and exciting business of seeing an enemy put to scorn, mayhap to death.
The multitude were wreathed with flowers as for a festal day. They jostled one another, it is true, to get a nearer look at the man about to suffer the extremest wrath of the mighty gods; they pushed one another aside, but with merry words and no anger. Their anger was all for him who had defiled the sanctuary. The very women held up their children and taught them words of infamy for me, the captive.
A man loves not to be called a coward. It was not for this that with patience I had learned from Astolba’s lips the language of this people.
The time was long. The sun beat down upon my unprotected head. I shook the bars of my cage with savage strength, and the people shrank back, only to return with new-born laughter at my impotence.
And Lah came not.
Thus dragged the weary hours. At last, a few of them that tormented me, bolder or more cruel than the rest, began to fling not only taunts, but stones. Yet some unknown power restrained even these, for the stones they chose were small, and did but sting and bruise the flesh, nor did one of all draw blood. But it was merry sport for them, my enemies. As they warmed to it, ’twas like enough that the unknown bond that held them would have snapped, and I been given over, then and there, to an easy death thus at their hands, when once more an ever-watchful fate stepped between me and vengeance.
The sound of chanting and of bells rose faint from the distance, and, as at a command, the throng fell back, while I, with straining ears and beating heart, waited for what this might portend.
Was it the Queen bent on rescue?
The thought thrilled me with new hope, but the strange chant came nearer yet, and hope died. For I heard it now for the third time. The song of wrath, the song of the Temple of Edba, of the High Priest’s Council—the song of death to the stranger, to him within the gates.
The dull beating of drums and the clash of weapons mingled with the hymn. Then the first of a band of warrior priests came into sight, and the people herded together, near to the walls, that the holy ones might have room to pass.