Ayesha, the Return of She, H. Rider Haggard [books to read now .TXT] 📗

When I came to myself again, it was daylight. I saw the calm, gentle face of Oros bending over me as he poured some strong fluid down my throat that seemed to shoot through all my body, and melt a curtain in my mind. I saw also that beside him stood Ayesha.

“Speak, man, speak,” she said in a terrible voice. “What hast chanced here? Thou livest, then where is my lord? Where hast thou hid my lord? Tell me—or die.”

It was the vision that I saw when my senses left me in the snow of the avalanche, fulfilled to the last detail!

“Atene has taken him,” I answered.

“Atene has taken him and thou art left alive?”

“Do not be wrath with me,” I answered, “it is no fault of mine. Little wonder we were deceived after thou hadst said that thou mightest summon us ere dawn.”

Then as briefly as I could I told the story.

She listened, went to where our murdered guards lay with unstained spears, and looked at them.

“Well for these that they are dead,” she exclaimed. “Now, Holly, thou seest what is the fruit of mercy. The men whose lives I gave my lord have failed him at his need.”

Then she passed forward to the spot where Leo was captured. Here lay a broken sword—Leo’s—that had been the Khan Rassen’s, and two dead men. Both of these were clothed in some tight-fitting black garments, having their heads and faces whitened with chalk and upon their vests a rude imitation of a human skeleton, also daubed in chalk.

“A trick fit to frighten fools with,” she said contemptuously. “But oh! that Atene should have dared to play the part of Ayesha, that she should have dared!” and she clenched her little hand. “See, surprised and overwhelmed, yet he fought well. Say! was he hurt, Holly? It comes upon me—no, tell me that I see amiss.”

“Not much, I think,” I answered doubtfully, “a little blood was running from his mouth, no more. Look, there go the stains of it upon that rock.”

“For every drop I’ll take a hundred lives. By myself I swear it,” Ayesha muttered with a groan. Then she cried in a ringing voice,

“Back and to horse, for I have deeds to do this day. Nay, bide thou here, Holly; we go a shorter path while the army skirts the gorge. Oros, give him food and drink and bathe that hurt upon his head. It is but a bruise, for his hood and hair are thick.”

So while Oros rubbed some stinging lotion on my scalp, I ate and drank as best I could till my brain ceased to swim, for the blow, though heavy, had not fractured the bone. When I was ready they brought the horses to us, and mounting them, slowly we scrambled up the steep bed of the water-course.

“See,” Ayesha said, pointing to tracks and hoof-prints on the plain at its head, “there was a chariot awaiting him, and harnessed to it were four swift horses. Atene’s scheme was clever and well laid, and I, grown oversure and careless, slept through it all!”

On this plain the army of the Tribes that had broken camp before the dawn was already gathering fast; indeed, the cavalry, if I may call them so, were assembled there to the number of about five thousand men, each of whom had a led horse. Ayesha summoned the chiefs and captains, and addressed them. “Servants of Hes,” she said, “the stranger lord, my betrothed and guest, has been tricked by a false priest and, falling into a cunning snare, captured as a hostage. It is necessary that I follow him fast, before harm comes—to him. We move down to attack the army of the Khania beyond the river. When its passage is forced I pass on with the horsemen, for I must sleep in the city of Kaloon to-night. What sayest thou, Oros? That a second and greater army defends its walls? Man, I know it, and if there is need, that army I will destroy. Nay, stare not at me. Already they are as dead. Horsemen, you accompany me.

“Captains of the Tribes, you follow, and woe be to that man who hangs back in the hour of battle, for death and eternal shame shall be his portion, but wealth and honour to those who bear them bravely. Yes, I tell you, theirs shall be the fair land of Kaloon. You have your orders for the passing of yonder river. I, with the horsemen, take the central ford. Let the wings advance.”

The chiefs answered with a cheer, for they were fierce men whose ancestors had loved war for generations. Moreover, mad as seemed the enterprise, they trusted in their Oracle, the Hesea, and, like all hill peoples, were easily fired by the promise of rich plunder.

An hour’s steady march down the slopes brought the army to the edge of the marsh lands. These, as it chanced, proved no obstacle to our progress, for in that season of great drought they were quite dry, and for the same reason the shrunken river was not so impassable a defence as I feared that it would be. Still, because of its rocky bottom and steep, opposing banks, it looked formidable enough, while on the crests of those banks, in squadrons and companies of horse and foot, were gathered the regiments of Atene.

While the wings of footmen deployed to right and left, the cavalry halted in the marshes and let their horses fill themselves with the long grass, now a little browned by frost, that grew on this boggy soil, and afterwards drink some water.

All this time Ayesha stood silent, for she also had dismounted, that the mare she rode and her two led horses might graze with the others. Indeed, she spoke but once, saying—“Thou thinkest this adventure mad, my Holly? Say, art afraid?”

“Not with thee for captain,” I answered. “Still, that second army——”

“Shall melt before me like mist before the gale,” she replied in a low and thrilling voice. “Holly, I tell thee thou shalt see things such as no man upon the earth has ever seen. Remember my words when I loose the Powers and thou followest the rent veil of Ayesha through the smitten squadrons of Kaloon. Only—what if Atene should dare to murder him? Oh, if she should dare!”