The city men were on the dungeon roof, not five yards away, politely waiting for us. Near seventy of them.

The body of the silver-mask who had renamed me was missing—he must have lived long enough to crawl into their camp and warn them. Informed of everything, they had negligently formed their cordon and let us leap into it, like moths into the candle.

The warriors behind me faltered. They had never fought any but their tribal kin. What confronted them had an appearance of sorcery.

I was first onto level ground. The fires were burning behind the city men, making of them black dream figures, with bronze and silver beast-heads, white slanting swords, and green and purple rays spitting from their jewels as if their bodies had been pierced with eyes.

Suddenly one of them shouted. I tried to grasp the meaning, but, like a dream itself, my knowledge of their tongue was leaving me—then I caught once more the name the other had spoken: Vazkor.

And speech came in my mouth. I did not know what I said.

“So Vazkor enorr. Beheth Vazkor. Vazkor karnatis.”

It was like a portent, some god’s jest.

They retreated wordlessly, some slowly drawing off their masks, making men of themselves again. The faces they revealed were disbelieving, transfixed, white. Three knelt on the roof as if to worship, and ten more knelt after them, and another ten. These were all older men, forty or fifty years old. Among the rest there was an altercation, cries of anger and doubt. In the midst of this, understanding nothing but hungry for any chance, we sprang on them and cut them down.

In their obscure confusion, they scattered before us. I hacked the kneeling men away to get at the standing angry men behind. I felt no battle lust; it was a grim task that must be done. Presently, I had a city sword, red to its hilt, and I was bathed with blood. It was like a killing of pigs. Though more than twice our number, they scarcely resisted us, as if some destiny had found them out and we were its instrument.

In the end they were silent, and no others came to challenge us.

During the fight, such as the fight was, the guiding principle left me. I was glad to lose it, once it was gone. I wiped off my new sword on the furs of a corpse, and grinned with no laughter, telling myself, Well, now, Tuvek, you have been possessed by a demon, in which kind you do not believe. I congratulate you. I spit on the ground, as if I could spit out the ancient language I had mastered and forgotten, both so quickly.

The warriors were stripping jewelry from the dead. A few had ventured to the tents and were inventing doors in them with their blades, and pulling out threadbare cushions of velvet sewn with pearl and similar mildewed wonders. Now and again they would happen on a rack of swords or a metal dainty worth keeping, and a ferocious yell of acquisition echoed through the broken fort.