And some more the Famine slew, but others raised their hands saying:
"These be the hands of gods," and drave the Famine back till he went
from the houses of men and out among the cattle, and still the men of
Yarnith pursued him, till above the heat of the fight came the million
whispers of rain heard faintly far off towards evening. Then the Famine
fled away howling back to the mountains and over the mountains' crests,
and became no more than a thing that is told in Yarnith's legends.

A thousand years have passed across the graves of those that fell in
Yarnith by the Famine. But the men of Yarnith still pray to Yarni Zai,
carved by men's hands in the likeness of a man, for they say--"It may
be that the prayers we offer to Yarni Zai may roll upwards from his
image as do the mists at dawn, and somewhere find at last the other
gods or that God who sits behind the others of whom our prophets know
not."




FOR THE HONOUR OF THE GODS


Of the great wars of the Three Islands are many histories writ and of
how the heroes of the olden time one by one were slain, but nought is
told of the days before the olden time, or ever the people of the isles
went forth to war, when each in his own land tended cattle or sheep,
and listless peace obscured those isles in the days before the olden
time. For then the people of the Islands played like children about the
feet of Chance and had no gods and went not forth to war. But sailors,
cast by strange winds upon those shores which they named the Prosperous