The attackers sat down and ate and drank and rested from labour in the light of the burning huts, under the shadow of the purple mountain. They rejoiced when they looked at the heap of spoil, and at the sheep and the cattle and the human dead and the captives.
The leader of the hundred was a strong man, tall and ruddy, with the seeming of one who would march in front. In other lives, before war between human beings had well developed, he would have been a leader of the chase, a mighty hunter of the four-footed, a chief in expeditions, explorations. Now he was war-head.
He and all the other men from the valley rested through a smoky, a fire-filled night. When the day came they prepared their leave-taking. Yet another distance away dwelled another group, that, seeing a glow in the night, might send their war-men in strength. War was an endless chain, though these minds were not advanced enough to find that out.
Back among the huts in the valley the night passed, the day following passed, another night passed. The cloud-roof sank to the horizon, the sky above sprang high and clear. Dawn arose with purple figures in the east that looked like girdles and necklaces of tinted shells and pebbles. Dawn in the north and west showed a cool pallor, a blank wall behind the long hills.
The women came singly or in clusters from the huts, the herdsmen from where they had slept apart in a structure built against the sheep-fold, the older children with the women. All looked to the north and west, as they had done many times since the hundred went out. Now they were rewarded—now they saw the war-men coming back!
They saw them upon the top of a bare hill, drawn against the pale wall, and following them captives, and sheep and goats and cattle and asses, and these last heaped and burdened with the lighter spoil. The people of the huts shouted, leaped in the air, clapped their hands together.
“Marzumat! They are coming!”
“Bina! They are coming!”
“Ito! They are coming!”
The war-men had with them horns, a rude drum and cymbals. Faint clangour and blaring fell from the hill-top to the huts by the stream. The frieze showed black against the pale wall, then the east brightened and gave it colour. The line bent, came down over the shoulder of the hill. The horns blew, the cymbals clanged, the drum beat louder and louder. In the huts were yet a drum, cymbals fashioned of copper, ox-horns. The women snatched these—all who could run and hasten poured from the huts by the stream, hurried with cries and music of welcome over the valley floor. They went with a dancing step, and Marzumat at the head lifted the cymbals and clanged them together. The two bands met by the stream, where the mist was slowly lifting.