I led my army out of Rax. The details of its organization I had left to Atar and Caan, while Nona and I were on our expedition to Gahna. They had done their work well; and within an hour after our return we were ready to leave—to face the advancing Maagog forces.
We left from the roof of Rax. The broad, open space there was ample for mobilization, and in the center of it my forces were gathered. You of a greater civilization, might call this army of mine meager. Yet to us Marinoids it was huge—the largest group of fighting men these people had ever conceived of organizing.
Some two thousand men, girls and dolphins—the product of all the Marinoid cities and the rural population. We had many more who wanted, and were able, to join us. But these I left at home—some in Rax, some in the other, smaller cities. So that at home—in the event of disaster to our fighters in the open water—we would not be quite defenseless.
An army of two thousand! It was not very much, of course; but it was equipped and organized—with a plan of action which I shall tell you in a moment. That it would be ample for victory, I did not doubt. Og and his Maagogs might outnumber us—of that I could not say. But we had fighting qualities which the slow lumbering Maagogs could not possibly equal. We would be easily victorious, I thought; but Nona was not so sanguine.
In spite of my commands the people of Rax, many of them, had gathered on the city roof to see us leave; a circular fringe of them jammed the edge of the roof, waiting to cheer our departure.
But they did not cheer. With solemn faces they stared upward at our columns as we rose into the water—women staring after their husbands and sons, even their daughters—women and old men staring, and wondering which of their loved ones would return alive to them.
In command of the entire Marinoid forces, I rode alone on a dolphin—with hands free and with only a lance fastened flat against the dolphin’s back and a dagger in my belt. I was first off the roof of Rax. As I rose, gliding smoothly upward and outward, I looked down to see the city dropping away.
A column of young men, swimming five abreast, came up next—like birds rising in orderly array to follow their lone leader. It was an inspiring sight—this sinuous curving line of swimmers. It swung into the water, bent like a huge rainbow over the city, straightened, and followed me diagonally upward.
Soon Rax had dwindled small and dim in the water below. But I could see Nona’s forces—the girls mounted on dolphins—as they too were starting. Then Rax, now so far beneath me, blurred and was lost in the gray-green haze of water; and I turned my attention ahead.
The backbone of my army was the line of young men swimming five abreast behind me. Five hundred of them there were—young, powerful swimmers—youths at the height of their physical strength. Each was by nature capable of shocking into insensibility with an electric discharge, any opponent he could touch by head and heels simultaneously.