Through one of these openings we turned into a large chamber, and there I saw again the Or-tis whom I had seen the night before. He was standing before one of the openings overlooking the trail below, talking with several of his nobles. One of the latter glanced up and saw me as I entered, calling the Jemadar’s attention to me. Or-tis faced me. He spoke to one near him who stepped to another opening in the chamber and motioned to someone without. Immediately a Kalkar guard entered bringing a youth of one of my desert clans. At sight of me the young warrior raised his hand to his forehead in salute.
“I give you another opportunity to consider my offer of last night,” said the Or-tis, addressing me. “Here is one of your own men who can bear your message to your people if you still choose to condemn them to a futile and bloody struggle and with it he will bear a message from me—that you go to The Butcher in the morning if your warriors do not retire and your chiefs engage to maintain peace hereafter. In that event you will be restored to your people. If you give me this promise yourself, you may carry your own message to the tribes of Julian.”
“My answer,” I replied, “is the same as it was last night, as it will be tomorrow.” Then I turned to the Yank warrior. “If you are permitted to depart, go at once to The Vulture and tell him that my last command is that he carry The Flag onward to the sea. That is all.”
The Or-tis was trembling with disappointment and rage. He laid a hand upon the hilt of his sword and took a step toward me; but whatever he intended, he thought better of it and stopped. “Take him above,” he snapped to my guard; “and to The Butcher in the morning. I will be present,” he said to me, “to see your head roll into the dust and your carcass fed to the pigs.”
They took me from the chamber then and led me up and up along an endless stairway, or at least it seemed endless before we finally reached the highest floor of the great tent. There they pushed me into a chamber the doorway to which was guarded by two giant warriors.
Squatted upon the floor of the chamber, his back leaning against the wall, was a Kalkar. He glanced up at me as I entered, but said nothing. I looked about the bare chamber, its floor littered with the dust and debris of ages, its walls stained by the dirt and grease from the bodies that had leaned against it, to the height of a man. I approached one of the apertures in the front wall. Far below me, like a narrow buckskin thong, lay the trail filled with tiny people and horses no bigger than rabbits. I could see the pigs rooting in the filth—they and the dogs are the scavengers of the camp.
For a long time I stood looking out over what was to me a strange landscape. The tent in which I was confined was among the highest of the nearer structures of the ancients, and from its upper floor I could see a vast expanse of tent roofs, some of the structures apparently in an excellent state of preservation, while here and there a grass-grown mound marked the site of others that had fallen. Evidences of fire and smoke were numerous and it was apparent that whatever the ancients had built of other materials than their enduring stone had long since disappeared, while many of the remaining buildings had been gutted by flame and left mere shells, as was attested by hundreds of smoke-blackened apertures within the range of my vision.
As I stood gazing out over distant hills beyond the limits of the camp I became aware of a presence at my elbow. Turning I saw that it was the Kalkar whom I had seen sitting against the wall as I entered the chamber.
“Look well, Yank,” he said, in a not unpleasant voice, “for you have not long to look.” He was smiling grimly. “We have a wonderful view from here,” he continued; “on a clear day you can see the ocean and the island.”
“I should like to see the ocean,” I said.
He shook his head. “You are very near,” he said, “but you will never see it. I should like to see it again, myself; but I shall not.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I go with you to The Butcher in the morning,” he replied, simply.
“You?”
“Yes, I.”
“And why?”
“Because I am a true Or-tis,” he replied.
“Why should they send an Or-tis to The Butcher?” I demanded. “It is not strange that an Or-tis should send me, the Julian; but why should an Or-tis send an Or-tis?”
“He is not a true Or-tis who sends me,” replied the man, and then he laughed.
“Why do you laugh?”
“Is it not a strange joke of Fate,” he cried, “that sees the Julian and the Or-tis going to The Butcher together? By the blood of my sires! I think our feud be over, Julian, at least so far as you and I are concerned.”
“It can never be over, Kalkar,” I replied.
He shook his head. “Had my father lived and carried out his plans, I think it might have ended,” he insisted.
“While an Or-tis and a Julian lived? Never!”
“You are young, and the hate that has been suckled into you and yours from your mothers’ breasts for ages runs hot in your veins; but my father was old
