“Ten minutes later we were in the saddle and away down the track. It was too dark to canter; there was only just the last bit of the moon.
“The dawn was breaking when we got close to the village, and Stephnos checked a minute while his scouts nosed round. Then one of them came galloping back and said something to him, and we pushed on again.
“He told me the enemy had gone, and the scouts were out on the far side of the village. It was just light enough to see as we rode in, but the glare of the burning ricks, and the light from such of the thatched roofs as had not fallen in, gave us enough to see without the daylight.
“Stephnos’s horse shied at a dead man lying across the path, and then we pulled up in the middle of the village.
“Quite a small place—a few houses, most of ’em of mud bricks with thatched roofs, the usual crowd of cattle-shelter and some wooden barns, now well alight.
“The enemy had wrecked it pretty usefully. About everything that could burn was burning. The men were looking around for some one alive, but it was a long time before they found anything but stiff ’uns. The Shaman seem to be pretty fair devils. I counted a dozen dead bodies lying near me, including three women, and I expect there were more in the houses. One of them had a kid, too—quite dead.
“Then two of the men came up leading an old dame with white hair, whom they’d found hiding somewhere. The poor old soul was in a frightful state, of course. But she recovered a bit after Stephnos spoke to her, and told him that the raiders had not been gone long. I noticed one of the fellows with her was pretty agitated, and I discovered afterwards that he was one of the men from the fort and his girl was in the village—poor devil. He was pretty near off his head when we’d done searching the place and found no more people alive.
“Then Stephnos started us off again. The lad was breathing hard through his teeth. I don’t think he’d seen much of this sort of thing, and he was white hot to catch up with the swine.
“We pushed on over the border, and just after the sun rose ran into a little group of Green Sakae, rather harried-looking, hiding in some undergrowth. They told us that a party of Shaman raiders, about a hundred, with some women, had passed some time before—going toward the Shaman country, they thought.
“We went on, and before we’d gone another mile we saw one of the scouts off his horse standing by the roadside. When we reached him the fellow I’d noticed before with the old woman, who was riding just behind Stephnos and me, gave a great cry, leapt off his pony, and went down on his knees by the scout, who I then saw was standing by a woman’s body under a little bank. As we pulled up I saw she’d had a spear or a knife driven in under her ribs.