Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard

This was the first blood spilt in the war.

‘Shut the gates,’ I shouted, thinking that we might perhaps catch Sorais so, and not being troubled with the idea of committing sacrilege. But the order came too late, her guards were already passing through them, and in another minute the streets echoed with the furious galloping of horses and the rolling of her chariots.

So, drawing half the people after her, Sorais was soon passing like a whirlwind through the Frowning City on her road to her headquarters at M’Arstuna, a fortress situated a hundred and thirty miles to the north of Milosis.

And after that the city was alive with the endless tramp of regiments and preparations for the gathering war, and old Umslopogaas once more began to sit in the sunshine and go through a show of sharpening Inkosi-kaas’s razor edge.

CHAPTER XIX

A STRANGE WEDDING

One person, however, did not succeed in getting out in time before the gates were shut, and that was the High Priest Agon, who, as we had every reason to believe, was Sorais’ great ally, and the heart and soul of her party. This cunning and ferocious old man had not forgiven us for those hippopotami, or rather that was what he said. What he meant was that he would never brook the introduction of our wider ways of thought and foreign learning and influence while there was a possibility of stamping us out. Also he knew that we possessed a different system of religion, and no doubt was in daily terror of our attempting to introduce it into Zu-Vendis. One day he asked me if we had any religion in our country, and I told him that so far as I could remember we had ninety-five different ones. You might have knocked him down with a feather, and really it is difficult not to pity a high priest of a well-established cult who is haunted by the possible approach of one or all of ninety-five new religions.

When we knew that Agon was caught, Nyleptha, Sir Henry, and I discussed what was to be done with him. I was for closely incarcerating him, but Nyleptha shook her head, saying that it would produce a disastrous effect throughout the country. ‘Ah!’ she added, with a stamp of her foot, ‘if I win and am once really Queen, I will break the power of those priests, with their rites and revels and dark secret ways.’ I only wished that old Agon could have heard her, it would have frightened him.

‘Well,’ said Sir Henry, ‘if we are not to imprison him, I suppose that we may as well let him go. He is of no use here.’

Nyleptha looked at him in a curious sort of way, and said in a dry little voice, ‘Thinkest thou so, my lord?’

‘Eh?’ said Curtis. ‘No, I do not see what is the use of keeping him.’

She said nothing, but continued looking at him in a way that was as shy as it was sweet.

Then at last he understood.

‘Forgive me, Nyleptha,’ he said, rather tremulously. ‘Dost thou mean that thou wilt marry me, even now?’

‘Nay, I know not; let my lord say,’ was her rapid answer; ‘but if my lord wills, the priest is there and the altar is there’ — pointing to the entrance to a private chapel — ‘and am I not ready to do the will of my lord? Listen, oh my lord! In eight days or less thou must leave me and go down to war, for thou shalt lead my armies, and in war — men sometimes fall, and so I would for a little space have had thee all my own, if only for memory’s sake;’ and the tears overflowed her lovely eyes and rolled down her face like heavy drops of dew down the red heart of a rose.

‘Mayhap, too,’ she went on, ‘I shall lose my crown, and with my crown my life and thine also. Sorais is very strong and very bitter, and if she prevails she will not spare. Who can read the future? Happiness is the world’s White Bird, that alights seldom, and flies fast and far till one day he is lost in the clouds. Therefore should we hold him fast if by any chance he rests for a little space upon our hand. It is not wise to neglect the present for the future, for who knows what the future will be, Incubu? Let us pluck our flowers while the dew is on them, for when the sun is up they wither and on the morrow will others bloom that we shall never see.’ And she lifted her sweet face to him and smiled into his eyes, and once more I felt a curious pang of jealousy and turned and went away. They never took much notice of whether I was there or not, thinking, I suppose, that I was an old fool, and that it did not matter one way or the other, and really I believe that they were right.

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