After a while we took the map out on to the balcony. It was as if we felt something was imminent—as, indeed, something was!

A short time later Darnad pointed.

"Telem leaves," he said to his sister.

Although there had been talk of aircraft I had not expected the sight which greeted me.

The aircraft was of metal, but it rose and navigated like an old fashioned airship—gracefully, slowly. It was oval in shape and had portholes dotted along its length. It gleamed like richly burnished gold and was heavily ornamented with pictures of strange beasts and symbols.

It swung in the air as if defying the very laws of gravity and then began to move towards tie south, travelling rapidly by my standards, but with a stately dignity which could not be matched by any aircraft ever known to Earth.

It was not out of sight before Darnad pointed again—this time to our north-east.

"Look!"

"The Argzoon!" gasped Shizala.

The horde was coming. We could see the first wave clearly, looking like an army of marching ants from where we stood, yet the menace implicit in its steady progress could not be ignored. We all felt it.

"You did not exaggerate, Michael Kane," Darnad said softly. I could see his knuckles whiten on his sword-hilt.

The air was still and very faintly we could hear their shouts. Thin shouts now—but, having already had some experience of the sounds that the Argzoon warriors could make, I imagined what the noise must be like at source!

Darnad stepped back into the room and came out on to the balcony again, clutching what was obviously a megaphone.

He leaned over the balcony, peering down into a courtyard where a group of guards stood ready.

He put the megaphone to his mouth and shouted to them.

"Commanders of the wall—to your posts. The Argzoon come." He then relayed specific orders based on what we had discussed a short time before.

As the commanders marched away to take charge of their men and position them, we watched in awful fascination as the horde approached.

Rapidly—too rapidly for us—they began to near the walls. We saw movement from within the city, saw warriors taking up their posts. They stood still, awaiting the first attack.

There were too few of them, I thought—far too few!

Chapter Five

A DESPERATE PLAN

AT LEAST we held the wall against the first wave.

The whole city seemed to shake at their onslaught. The air was ripped by their great, roaring shouts, polluted by the stink of their incendiary bombs launched from catapults, and by the odor of their very bodies. Flame licked here, crackled there—and the women and children of Varnal struggled valiantly to extinguish it. The sounds of clashing steel, of dying or victorious war-cries, the swish of missiles—blazing balls of some pitch-like substance—as they hurtled overhead and dropped in streets and on roofs.