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Updated: June 13, 2025
This night, while yet there was an hour before the body of the dead Dakoon should go to the Tomb with the Blue Dome, the daughter of Cushnan Di lay watching for her door to open; for she knew what had happened in the city, and there was one whom her spirit longed for. An old woman sat beside her with hands clasped about her knees. "Dost thou hear nothing?" said a voice from the bed.
Hovering near were gloomy, wistful crowds of people, who drew close to the mystery of the House of Death, as though the soul of a Dakoon were of more moment than those of the thousand men who had fallen that day.
A hillsman bound up the wound, and he rode on to the Tomb. The Dakoon was placed in his gorgeous house of death, and every man cried: "Sleep, lord of the earth!" Then Cumner stood up in his saddle, and cried aloud: "To-morrow, when the sun stands over the gold dome of the Palace, ye shall come to hear your Dakoon speak in the hall of the Heavenly Hours."
He was about to send his men upon the stubborn horseman when the fellow said: "If you be a man you will give me a man to fight. We were two hundred. If it chance that one of a company shall do as the Dakoon hath said, then is all the company absolved; and beyond the mists we can meet the Dakoon with open eyes and unafraid when he saith, 'Did ye keep your faith?"
By the Bar of Balmud they gathered another fifty hillsmen, and again half-way beyond the Old Well of Jahar they met two score more, who had hunted Boonda Broke's men, and these moved into column. So that when they came to Koongat Bridge, in the country infested by the men of the Dakoon, seven hundred stalwart and fearless men rode behind Pango Dooni.
For long they rode silently, and in that time Cumner's Son found new thoughts; and these thoughts made him love the brown hillsman as he had never loved any save his own father. "When there is peace in Mandakan," said he at last, "when Boonda Broke is snapped in two like a pencil, when Pango Dooni sits as Dakoon in the Palace of Mandakan "
Three years' labour had given him these followers and many others. His dreams were coming true. "Fighting, fighting, naught but fighting for honour and glory and homes and kine, but naught for love, and naught that there may be peace." This was no longer true; for the sword of the young Dakoon was ever lifted for love and for peace.
He turned to his father, but saw no help in his eyes for refusal. The lad read the whole story of his father's face, and he turned again to the people. "If ye will have it so, then, by the grace of God, I will do right by this our land," said he. A half-hour later he stood before them, wearing the costly robe of yellow feathers and gold and perfect silk of the Dakoon of Mandakan.
"I come to hold the road against Pango Dooni, as the Dakoon bade me." Pango Dooni laughed. "Your words are large," said he. "What could you, one man, do against Pango Dooni and his hillsman?" "I could answer the Dakoon here or elsewhere, that I kept the road till the hill-wolves dragged me down." "We be the wolves from the hills," answered Pango Dooni.
"But day by day the Dakoon drew me to him, and the thing seemed hard to do, even now before I had the men. Then his sickness came, and I could not strike an ailing man. When I saw how he was beset by traitors, in my heart I swore that he should not suffer by my hands. I heard of your riding to the Neck of Baroob the men of Boonda Broke brought word.
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