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else could feel, an unearthly breeze from a land beyond the senses of normal men.
    “Zena Iztar!” I screamed it out, shaken, dazed, wondering.
“Zena Iztar!”
    This was the supernatural woman who had visited me on Earth when I had been banished there for twenty-one miserable years. Then she had used the fashionable name of Madam Ivanovna. She had appeared to me before, using supernatural means, and I believed she had helped me. She was not, as far as I then knew, aligned either with the Savanti or with the Star Lords. I gaped and the zorca eased up, and slowed down. Zena Iztar lifted the great banner so that all could see the device coruscating upon the crimson surface.
    Outlined in white upon the glowing crimson banner the deep royal blue of her cogwheel device forced itself upon my own senses, yet I had never grasped the significance of that emblem. Always before Zena Iztar had appeared to me alone, with those around us frozen in a timeless sleep. Yet now — now from the shouts and excited and shocked exclamations that broke from the brothers of the Order, she could be seen by us all.
    Her voice reached us. Golden, ringing, full-bodied, her voice floated above all the sounds of coming battle, over the shouts and yells of the men, over the clicking scraping advance of the sleeths and the hissing malevolence of the Fish-Heads, over the mingled jingling of war harness.
    “Men of Paz! Brothers of the Order! Comrades in blood! Those you call Fish-Heads must be shown the error of their ways. The Order demands sacrifice, loyalty, utter devotion, unswerving purpose, obedience.” She lifted the banner in her left hand and golden coruscating sparks shot from her armor. In her right hand a sword — a sword! A sword like unto a Savanti sword — lifted high and pointed. The brand pointed at the Shanks. “Death is a small price to pay for honor! Brothers of the Order! Your duty in honor is to be true to yourselves and to Paz and to the Order.”
    The light began to fade.
    I shook my head. There was much she had said with which I would not, could not, agree. But a great deal summed up something of what I struggled for.
    But, in the name of Zair! How did she know the Order existed at all?
    But, then, she was no mortal woman. She understood many secrets I longed to know, could see into the hearts of men, must surely comprehend the doings of Kregen and attempt to mold them to her own ends.
    The Shanks pressed nearer. They were confident now. They had withstood all we could throw at them. They had suffered and had lost a goodly number from their ranks. But they could see how we had suffered. They shrilled their hideous screeching war cries and they came on, fishy, stinking, scaly, repulsive, deadly.
    They had not seen the golden glowing apparition of Zena Iztar.
    Her chiming voice rang out for one last time before the vision disappeared.
    “Fight for what you believe to be true, Men of Paz. And, remember, never speak to anyone not of the Order of my presence, for I am sacrosanct. This is a stricture laid on you as members of the Order — and a privilege. Follow Dray Prescot.
Jikai!”
    The first man to move was Dredd Pyvorr.
    With a high lifting shriek he set his zorca in a straight dead run at the oncoming Shanks.
    We saw him galloping madly into the thickest of them. We saw his sword swirling and smiting left and right, saw him engulfed as a stone is engulfed in a pool. In the same instant we were all once more in motion, roaring down, headlong belting down into the repulsively stinking mass of Fish-Heads.
    Dredd Pyvorr had shouted as he charged for the last time.
    Over and over he had shouted as he roared to his death.
    “For the Brotherhood of Iztar! For the Order! For Dray Prescot! Iztar! Iztar!”
    I felt the coldness running through me.
    There were manipulations here, superhuman twistings of normal human men to supernatural ends.
    Then we hit.
    The red roaring madness of battle descended on us. I am contemptuous of that