The captain then went to the sides of the back room and suddenly, angrily, kicked and struck goods about, shattering countless articles.

"Stop!" cried the merchant.

The captain swept kraters from a shelf.

In futility did the merchant wring his hands.

"I suspect," said the captain, overturning a stack of bowls, treading upon several of them, "you are in league with the brigands, that your shop served as a trap!"

"No!" cried the shopkeeper, anguished. "Would I have myself ruined. Stop! I beg you, stop!"

"Impalement would be too good for you, traitor of Ar!" said the officer. "No!" wailed the merchant.

"If your story is true," said the officer, thrusting over a rack of ceramics, and a cabinet, "why were these goods, not destroyed, as well?" He hurled a kylix to the wall. In his anger, his destructive fury, doubtless the belated eruption of precedent frustrations, he kicked articles about, and trod even on bowls. Even his ankles and legs were bloodied.

"They did not come so far," said the merchant. "But you, it seems, are determined to complete their work."

"Do you have rope, or hammers and nails?" asked the officer.

"Of course, Captain," said the man.

"Strip her," said the captain to one of the men.

"No!" cried the merchant. He was restrained by two guardsmen.

The girl, crying out, shrieking, pulled half from the chest, had her veil and clothing torn from her.

She was then thrust down again, now naked, trembling, in the chest.

"No!" wept the shopkeeper, throwing himself to his knees before the officer. "This will teach you to put her on the registries," said the officer.

"She is on the registries!" wept the merchant.

"I have found hammers, and nails," said the other of the guardsmen.

"Please, no!" cried the merchant.

"Is this where free men of Ar belong, asked the captain, "at the feet of Cos?"

"Get off your knees!" said one of the guardsmen.

The merchant could not move, but sobbed helplessly.

"Nail shut the chest," said the officer.

"I will say anything you want," said the shopkeeper, looking up piteously at the officer, "anything! I will render whatever testimony you desire. I will sign anything, anything!"

The room rang with the blow of the hammers.

"It will not be necessary," said the officer. The merchant collapsed.

The lid was no hammered shut on the chest.

The officer left the fellow on the floor of the rear room, and signaled for two of his men to pick up the chest and follow him.

He then, followed by the rest of us, including the two fellows with the chest, threaded his way through the front of the shop and to the street outside.

"Captain!" said one of the men outside, pointing to the exterior wall of the building.

There, on the wall, scratched on the stone, was a delka.

The captain cried out with rage.

"I am sure that was not there when we entered, Captain," said one of the guardsmen.

"No, it was not," said the captain.

That was true. As it might be recalled, Marcus and I had entered the shop after the captain and his men, having been on our rounds in the neighborhood.

Some men were about, but seeing the captain and his men, and Marcus and myself, hurried away, perhaps fearing that the delka might be blamed on them.

I did not doubt but what some of these folks had peeped within the shop and seen the bodies about. That would have been easy enough to do when we were in the back of the shop.

The two fellows carrying the chest put it down.

"I fear they are everywhere," said the captain.

"Who?" I asked.

"The Delta Brigade," he said.

I myself, in a paga tavern or two, some days ago, had dropped this expression, mentioning it as though it were one I had heard somewhere, and was curious to understand. I was pleased to note that it was no common currency in Ar. Such are the wings of rumors.

"You think the afternoon's attack was the work of this Delta Brigade?" I asked. "Surely," he said.

"Who are they?" I asked.

"Dissidents, or renegades, doubtless," said the captain, "traitors to both Cos and Ar."

"I see," I said.

"I suspect veterans of the delta campaign," he said, "or scions of disaffected cities, such as Ar's Station."

"I am from Ar's Station," said Marcus.

"But you are an auxiliary," said the captain.

"True," said Marcus.

"Perhaps Marlenus of Ar has returned," I said. I thought that an excellent rumor to start.

"No," said the captain. "I do not think so. Marlenus was not, as far as we know, in the delta. I think it is more likely to be veterans of the delta, of which there are many in the city, or fellows from the north, from Ar's Station or somewhere."

"Perhaps you are right," I said. The captain was a shrewd fellow, and thusly an unlikely candidate to enlist in my efforts to initiate rumors, or at least this particular one. To be sure, even a fellow of genuine probity, one who is unlikely to nourish, reproduce, transmit, or credit a rumor in its infancy, may find himself uncritically accepting it later on, when it becomes "common knowledge," so to speak. Are we not all the victims of hearsay, even with respect to many of our most profound «truths»? Of our thousands and hundreds of thousands, of such "truths," how many have we personally earned? How many of us can determine the distance of a planet or the structure of a molecule?

"I will have a wagon sent for the bodies," said the captain.

"Yes, Captain," I said.

The captain regarded the delka, scrawled on the wall, with anger.

"It is only a scratching, a mark," I said. "No," he said. "It is more. It is a defiance of Cos, and of Ar!"

"Of Ar?" I asked.

"As she is today," he said.

"But perhaps not of the old Ar," I said.

"Perhaps not," he said.

"You have met men of Ar in battle?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "And it is a mark of the old Ar, the Ar I knew in war, the Ar of spears and standards, of rides and marches, of dust and trumpets, of tarns and tharlarion, the Ar of imperialism, of glory, of valor, and pride. That is why it is so dangerous. It is a recollection of the old Ar."

"The true Ar?"

"If you wish," he said. Then he exclaimed, angrily. "They have been defeated! She is dead! She is gone! How dare they remember her?"

He looked up and down the street. It now seemed deserted. I did not doubt but what word of what had occurred had spread.

"How dare they resist?" he asked.

"There seem few here now," I said.

"They are there, somewhere," he said.

"Perhaps," I said.

"Guard yourselves," he said.

"Thank you, Captain," I said.

"They may be anywhere," he said.

"Surely there are only a few," I said, "perhaps a few madmen who cannot understand the barest essentials of the most obvious realities, political and prudential."

"They are verr," he said. "But not all of them. Some pretend to be verr. Some are sleen, disguised in the skins of verr."

"Or larls," I said, "patient, unreconciled, dangerous, capable of action."

"Cos, too, has her larls," said the captain.

"I do not doubt it," I said.

"Had I my way," he said, "we would have finished Ar. She would have been done with then, forever. There would be nothing here now but ashes and salt. Even her name would be excised from the monuments, from the documents, from the histories. It would be as though she had not been."

"It is hard for a man to be great who does not have great enemies," I said. "And so Cos and Ar require one another, that each may be greater than they could otherwise be?" he asked.

"Perhaps," I said.

"There was no glory here," he said. "We did not win this victory in storm and fire, surmounting walls, breaching gates, winning Ar street by street, house by house. It was not we who defeated Ar. It was her putative own who betrayed her, in jealousy and intrigue, in ambition and greed. Ideas and lies defeated Ar. It was done through the sowing of confusion, the propagation of self-doubt and guilt, all suitably bedizened in the meretricious rhetorics of morality. We taught them that evil was good, and good evil, that strength was weakness, and weakness strength, that health was sickness, and sickness health. We made them distrust themselves, and taught them to believe that their most basic instincts and elemental insights, the most essential and primitive promptings of their blood, were to be repudiated in favor of self-denial and frustration, in favor of vacuous principles, used by us as weapons against them, in favor stultifying verbalisms, to cripple and bleed them, and entrap them in our tolls. And thus, betrayed by those who sought advancement in the destruction and dissolution of their own community, abetted by the well-intentioned, the simpleminded, the idealists, the fools, they put themselves at our mercy, at that of another community, one not so foolish, or not so sickened, as theirs. I saw strong men gladly setting aside their weapons. I saw citizens of Ar singing as their gates burned, as they tore down their walls with their own hands. That is no honest victory for Cos, won at the walls, at the gates, in the streets. That is not a victory of which we can be proud. That is a victory not of steel but by poison."