Ahead of the column moved a body of mail-clad mounted men, their long yellow bows swaying as they rode. Mounted fighting is uncommon among the Sakae, whose horses are but a means of extra mobility. Mounted or on foot, the equipment is ever the same, all designed for dismounted combat: the long bow, carried slung from the shoulder, the point supported in a stirrup bucket for mounted men; the well-filled leather quivers with the long gay-coloured shafts; the short straight Sakae sword designed for point-work, more deadly than any cut; and sometimes the small round shield with its bosses of brass. One man in three carried the short spear.
At the head of the main body was Kyrlos, with Andros on one hand and Wrexham on the other, all alike in mail shirt and under-jerkin of leather, steel caps winking in the sun, the gay-coloured saddles forming the only splash of colour that relieved the sombre background of fawn and leather and dull steel, save where a few paces in front of Kyrlos rose his blue standard with his family device, the big chenar leaf in autumn tint that Forsyth always said made him homesick for the maple of Canada. Behind them the long column of men three abreast: first mounted men, and then, as far as the eye could reach, company after company of footmen, with glint of steel spear-point and nodding bow-tip topping the low dust haze.
I was riding in silence, with mixed feelings of relief at being on the move once more with definite work in front, a great longing for the open desert and the silent plodding camels, and a very bitter impression that Fate had played the most deliberate of scurvy tricks in ever bringing me to Sakaeland.
For as Andros turned sometimes in his saddle to cast an eye down the ranks, I could see the little tuft of eagle feathers bound into his steel cap, the eagle feathers that marked the officer of high rank, and—which was the cause of all my ill-humour—note the mauve binding that spread them cunningly into a little fan. The day before I had seen Aryenis with a handful of eagle feathers, and later, looking out from my window, noticed her sitting in the sun with her embroidery-basket by her—she has clever fingers. My field-glasses were near me, and such an opportunity of watching my lady unobserved was not to be missed. I love watching Aryenis when she thinks there is no one looking at her, for her under-self seems to come so much more to the surface then. But unfortunately my glasses had merely served to show me that those eagle feathers were being formed with mauve ribbon and green silk into some kind of ornament; and then in the morning, lo, Andros with the little fanlike plume gay against the dark coldness of his steel cap.
And all I got from Aryenis was a long cool hand-clasp with a kind wish for my safety and much honour. Annais and Ziné gave me as much.
Just in front of me rode a yellow-haired giant on a white pony, who carried a green banner with an embroidered device, a bear, Paulos’s own mark. As I looked back—despite my ill-humour—I could have smiled at the idea of me, Harry Lake, with many years of soldiering and six years of war, as the modern world knows it, behind me, war of machine-gun and rifle, of heavy howitzer and aeroplane bomb, of tank and armoured car, riding with a following that might have come straight out of the pages of an old history book. Steel-capped, mail-shirted men on rough ponies, tall, bobbed-haired, hawk-faced bowmen in leather jerkins, nodding spear-points and dancing gleam of mail-ringed caps; and behind me, with my trumpeter, Payindah in mail with his anachronistic magazine-rifle slung over his shoulder, his straight Greek features and his wheat-coloured face alive with the joy of coming battle.
For here was I riding at the head of what was for the moment my own following, and the banner ahead bore almost my own crest, save that the bear on my signet ring carries a chain.
And the reason of my position was a note which Paulos had sent me the day after I had listened to him thought-reading, bidding me come again and see him quickly, for he desired me to help him in a small matter. I told Aryenis, but my lady had found important matters which prevented her coming, despite her insistence the previous day.
The upshot of my visit was his wish that I should lead the men from his lands to the war, since he had no son to lead them and no man of sufficient standing among his following to whom he could entrust the command. I pleaded my ignorance of Sakae, my lack of knowledge of their customs and their methods of war, and the fact that I was a stranger in the country. He would take no refusal.
“Regarding the matter of the language,” he had said, “the officers and some of the N.C.O.’s speak Greek. For the matter of our methods of war, there is to my mind but one kind of war—no matter what the weapons be. At the last it is the man who is ready to close and anxious to kill who wins. From a leader all we seek is bravery and the knowledge of men. The first you have, or Aryenis would not be here now. The second you have also, unless I have lost my gift of character-reading. And for the fact of your being a stranger—that you are not. Your name is known in all my villages. Such things do not depend upon time, but upon deeds; and my people—who love Aryenis—speak of you as one of ourselves. My folk will follow you for her sake as well as for your own.”