“Well, that’s too weak to do much by yourselves, but, if you get off in an hour, Stephnos will be through you half an hour later—say, two miles out—and then following him you will be something for him to come back on if he’s driven in. Do you know that little hill by the eighth mile that commands the road?—the one we looked at yesterday.”
“Yes,” said I. We had ridden out there the previous day, and remarked on its possibilities for defence.
“Well, make for that as fast as you can go. If you can get there before the enemy, you will be able to hold them awhile—perhaps until we can get up to you. In any case you will delay them. I know all Paulos’s men are good bowmen, for he is always making his people practise. We come as fast as we can.”
“Right. I shall be away in little over half an hour.”
Kyrlos was listening to it all, nodding gravely from time to time. As I turned to go, he called to me, and walked across the hall to the door.
“Andros has given you a post of honour, my friend. You will meet the Shamans’ main onslaught, and you will have to fight as hard as you have ever fought in your life, I think. But it is the only place they can pass just there, and if you hold them till we come, it will be so many the more of our villages and our people saved. It seems unfair to put a guest in the post of danger, but, since you ride at the head of Paulos’s men and by so doing become one of us, I am glad that Andros has suggested you for such a very honourable task. If you come through, you will have even more honour among our people than you have already. God guard you, Harilek.”
He smiled very gravely at me as I touched my cap to him and went down the steps.
Payindah was already mounted alongside of my other two men, and a quarter of an hour later we were riding hard up to our camp. Paulos had had his men well trained for all that they were mostly only levies. The mounted troop were standing by their horses, and the infantry falling in as we reached them. A small party had been detailed to clear up camp and come on with our pack-animals behind the main body.
I explained our mission to Philos and the other officers, and they said a few words to the men. Fifteen minutes later, with our mounted men ahead and on either flank, we marched down the road to the southwest.
“Where go we?” asked Payindah, pushing his horse up beside me. “Is it another raid?”