mine solid objects from the unsubstantial silver. The two halted to gaze at the apparent desolation of empty pits and jagged peaks, then at each other and, finally, at the plain behind them, over which they had so recently painfully struggled.
"If this be refuge," said Rald, "then hell at least would be brighter!"
"Refuge, like gold, is where you find it," replied the weary Thwaine, shifting his wiry frame to rest a blood-stained thigh on a convenient boulder. "Perhaps the valley is a trifle forbidding, but when I recall the thirsty steel of those devils back there on the battlefield I welcome these concealing cliffs with a thankful heart."
"Always the orator!" grunted Rald. "Make a propitiating address to the demons, who no doubt await us below, before we descend to them–will you?" With the aid of his teeth and a begrimed right hand Rald succeeded in replacing a blood-stained bandage about his left wrist.
Although wounded and bleeding, the two comrades realized they had been extraordinarily lucky; for all but a few scattered fragments of the Livian army lay stark in death, food for the buzzards and the crawling things of the desert. The fugitives had fought desperately, but Hagar's hosts had pierced and smashed their last crimson line; the banners had fallen, and Rald saw his king transfixed with the same spear that had just emerged from the vitals of his prince. The Livians were crushed beyond hope of recovery. Thwaine, ever alert, read the decision in his companion's eyes and joined him in flight over the bloody sands where buzzards already hovered above torn and mangled forms that had been men; they both knew that unless they placed a comfortable distance between themselves and would wipe out their lives. These same lives they had dedicated for a paltry sum (only a portion of which had been received) to Livia in her war against Hagar.
"So ends Livia!" commented Thwaine. "Why do we always pick the losing side to fight on? Once in a while we should be victors!"
"Mercenary's fortune! I am inclined to return to thievery!" exclaimed Rald.
"What difference? Stealing for a king or for yourself? At least, when you claim the spoils of war you can boast of them without fearing a rope or the executioner's blade! Or," asked Thwaine, slyly, "are your inclinations leading you back to Forthe and a certain lady?"
"Faith!" swore the ex-chief. "What spoils have we beyond our sores?" He ignored the last remark completely. "Let's get below somewhere; the night-winds are beginning to chill."
Both men were in rags. The generals bought hired mercenaries a breechclout, sword, plenty of weak wine–and little else. These necessities were about all expected or demanded. Weary bones and blood-caked wounds were habitual to them, a state to be accepted as natural; so except for an occasionally deeper breath or muttered imprecation they disregarded their condition and proceeded to descend the twisting trail of the mountain pass.
Rald led the way, his huge form, so well sheathed in its envelope of sinewy muscles, completely shadowing the smaller and wiry body of his boon companion. In spite, however, of the difference in their sizes and the contrast of Rald's gray eyes, long limbs and light skin to his fellow mercenary's dark, ferret-like, suspicious eyes, small stature and swarthy complexion, the twain were a
