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 the shattered, blood-smeared bodies of his comrades and foes, not yet entirely cold. How fortunate those corpses seemed to him! They rested so peacefully on their bloody beds, without anger, without suffering or animosity. They only seemed to mock at chains and the power of the great Jinghis Khan, while a bit of iron became in the hands of the self-willed and insolent barbarians an instrument of torture for their bloody revenge upon him. How lucky were those dead! Although they were crippled, still they resembled men, while these chains had in one moment turned him into something less than even a beast, a slave!

“Oh, just Sun-God!” cried Maxim in a rising of despair, “It cannot be your will that I should die in chains? You could not have so often greeted my more joyous days in the past with your bright smiles, just so you could mock my boundless woe today?”

“Oh, Sun, surely you could not have stopped being a benevolent God to our Tukhlia and become the protector of those savage barbarians?”

But the sun laughed! With brilliant hot rays it sparkled in the glistening puddles of blood, kissing the bluish lips, crushed skulls and wounds of the dead from which oozed the shattered brains and protruded the warm human guts. And with the same violet hot rays it poured itself into the green forests, upon the pagan-hued flowers and unto upland downs which bathed themselves in the clear, azure ether.

The sun laughed and with its god-like smiles wounded even more deeply Maxim’s torn heart.