THE DOGS OF WAR
War! War between Zollaria and Tamarizia! War planned for fifty years and now set into motion! It had come as Croft had predicted, as Jadgor of Aphur had feared. As though malignly determined to be avenged even in death, the bullet-pierced body of Bzad had washed ashore, and been discovered. No other pretext was needed by the Empire to the north.
All other plans they threw by the board. Bzad of Mazzer—a guest of their nation had been slain on the Central Sea. They made demands for redress, and they asked Cathur as the price of what had just occurred.
Tamhys of Zitra with a pained, almost puzzled expression in his aged eyes, heard the demands of the envoys and answered them finally not as a man of peace but as a patriot of his country, unwilling to see his land dismembered to appease an enemy's greed.
The Na was alive with motor-driven vessels, gathering at Himyra, filling its yellow flood with a ready fleet. Aboard them marched men or rolled armored motors, soon to have their test on a bloody field. Into them were loaded those things Croft had fashioned against this time, rifles and ammunition and grenades.
Ladhra and Himyra swarmed with marching men. Milidhur's two armored cars were rushing overland to join her assembling forces. Robur in his glory was loading his expedition for the relief of Bithur, where Mazzer was to strike. The gentle Gaya wept, while her war lord girded on his armor and boasted of the fate he would carry among the blue men with his death-dealing tools.
Naia of Aphur was with the Vestals of Zitra, where Croft had left her a month before. He had taken her to Zud, and explained what he desired. Zud had listened and given assent. Their parting had been brief since Croft knew he must hasten back to Himyra and begin the final preparations for what was soon to come, Zud knowing her pledged by Lakkon to Croft, had left them alone at the last, before he took her to the apartments of the Virgins, close to the top of the monster pyramid, where a white flame leaped from oils never allowed to diminish in front of a figure of Ga—the Eternal Woman—brooding over the sacred fire of life.
Croft stretched forth his arms.
Naia of Aphur gave him the look of the woman, and laid herself on his breast.
"Mine," said the man.
"Yours," said the maid, in a voice like the sighing of a harp. "Promise me you shall come again to claim me, Jasor, my lord, whom I love."
"I shall come to claim you, my Naia, and make you my own," he said.
"And should you not, no other shall claim me ever," she whispered and raised her lips.
"Naught save death shall keep me," Croft vowed with his lips on hers.
"I know. If you come not, I stay here forever," she told him, clinging to him.
"Nay." He held her from him to look down into her face. "You shall tend the fire for me, rather than Ga."
"Azil permitting, beloved." And because of the meaning of her own words to her soul she colored beneath his eyes.
Then came Zud and led her to the Vestals, and Croft, full of the divine fire of that parting, went back to Himyra to prepare for those things which must come to pass ere he might return to her.
He plunged into the task with the full cooperation of Jadgor, Lakkon, and Robur. A swift boat was sent to Zitra to wait any news at that point. Word was sent to Milidhur and Ladhra to mobilize their forces and be ready to move on the word. At Himyra activities of every nature were pushed. Never had the Red City seen such ceaseless preparation as now went on to meet and check Zollaria's plans.
Of those plans Croft kept track, leaving his body at times in the night and hovering over Cathur and the northern nation. He knew when the envoys left for Zitra to demand Cathur, of Tamhys, as the price of peace. He witnessed the massing of her army along Cathur's north frontier. He saw Kyphallos at the head of the hastily gathered levies of Cathur, men untrained, unready, herded into hasty companies, poorly equipped—beings to be led to the slaughter in a sham of resistance as he knew, before Kyphallos did his part and surrendered to what would seem overwhelming forces equipped and trained for this moment through a span of fifty years.
Yet Croft smiled. In all that vast army set aside for this one task by the empire which had raised it, there was nothing to compare with the weapons he possessed, naught to resemble them in the least. Spears there were and bows, crossbows even, and swords. Chariots there were, and men in glistening armor, who drove them. Scythelike blades armed their wheels to cut and rend asunder all who stood in their course. But what were they to his chariots which would move themselves across the field of carnage and vomit the fire of death into Zollaria's ranks?
Then came the swift boat from Zitra, reporting Tamhys's answer and the return of the envoys north. Tamhys had refused. Croft laughed into Jadgor's eyes. Tamhys had asked—asked that Aphur and Nodhur and Milidhur use their full power and their new weapons to make Tamarizia strong.
"Think you he would have been so bold had he not known of them?" Jadgor growled, with a teeth-baring grin. "Nay by Zitu! If so I do not agree. 'Twas because he knew these things were in our hands, and Tamarizia in our hearts he refused."
"Go!" he cried to the messenger who had but returned. "Say to Tamhys that we stand ready—that we say at once—that ere Zollaria's men shall return with his word, we shall be nearing the northern coast! How say you, Jasor, my lord?"
"Even as Jadgor has said, O King," Croft replied, since this was what he had planned.
That night all Himyra flared with fire. That night the sound of marching feet, the rumble of motors filled the Red City's streets. The firelight struck on the motors' metal bodies, glinted on the slanting barrels of the rifles carried by Aphur's sons. A swift car had flown to Ladhra carrying the word. In Ladhra, too, the night was filled with embarkation of the forces which were to join with Aphur in the north.
At break of day Croft, Jadgor and Lakkon sailed. That afternoon Ladhra's first contingent arrived. Then Robur sent part on the heels of the former fleet, and took part in his own party, to Bithur's aid. Belzor himself led the section which hurried after Croft. He reported the motor transports as already whirling the bulk of the troops for Milidhur's aid toward the east.
In three days Croft made landfall on the coast of Mazhur not far from Niera and coasted toward the town, after landing a party under Lakkon some miles above it with instructions to advance down the coast, and entrench themselves on the landward side of the city, at once. He appeared before the city with his fleet about mid-morning and demanded its surrender at once.
His answer was defiance, of course.
Croft set to work. His own galley ran close in toward the gates of the harbor. The enemy manned the walls. They began a rain of arrows and spears and the casting down of fireballs, hoping to set the galley on fire.
Croft had expected this. He had prepared some metal shields which could be used to cover the decks against arrows and spears from above. They were impregnable save for some square-cut holes. Through these he began a bombardment of the gates themselves with grenades. Heavy as they were, they had not been built to resist the assault of powder. Inside twenty minutes, while the air filled with shouts and missiles of the defenders, one was blown from its hinges and fell with a mighty splash. The other followed shortly after. Croft's galley sailed in, followed by that of Jadgor and several others of the fleet.
And now he had the defenders of the walls in the rear. His galley paused. The others followed suit. Their decks swarmed with men who knelt and opened fire from the rifles Croft had made. A smell of powder filled the air. Smoke clouds floated in the air. The shouts of the defenders changed to cries of alarm as they found themselves stricken by this new and unknown force. Other galleys forced passage and speeding beyond the engaged vessels opened a galling fire along the waterfront. Under cover of this landing parties were flung ashore. They marched into the town, engaging the Zollarian guards wherever found, yet always at an advantage of weapons and range. In an hour it was done.
The Zollarian commander surrendered. Croft shut his men in their barracks and posted a guard. Bulletins printed in advance, promising freedom from harm to all non-combatants who kept their houses and caused no trouble, were affixed at the houses at the corners of the streets. The remainder of the fleet entered the harbor and debarked their men and the armored motors. Inside two hours more Croft marched out of the landward gate and joined Lakkon and his men where they had labored on their trenches. That night Jadgor's tent stood in the midst of an armed camp on Mazhurian soil. Tamarizia had struck swiftly and with an overwhelming force, for which Zollaria had been unprepared.
The next day the men of Ladhra arrived. Croft left them to garrison Niera until a later body from the interior parts of Aphur should arrive, then follow on. In fact he left orders that as each new contingent appeared they should take over Niera, releasing the garrison they found to advance through the state in support of his main force. Himself he broke camp and moved inland along the splendid roads which Tamarizia had built generations unnumbered before, when Mazhur was one of her states.
For Palos, the sight was odd as the well-drilled ranks moved ahead in steady cadence, with here and there a huge ungainly battle motor rumbling along, its monster body filled with men. Here and there in some minor town some slight resistance was met. The motors took care of that. Rolling irresistibly forward into a slithering flight of arrows and spears, they spat fire at the defenders until they fell or fled.
On and on crept the column with scarcely a pause save for rest or food. That word of it went before it Croft did not doubt. He even smiled grimly as he suggested to Jadgor what that word would be—a garbled version of monsters which breathed fire and slew with their breath, of troops which shot not arrows but more of the monsters' fire.
And Jadgor smiled in return as he gazed down the sturdily swinging ranks that crept along the road the lumbering motors had cleared.
Luckily there were few streams, for the Zollarians seemed to understand dimly by what they were attacked. They destroyed what bridges lay in the line of their retreat. Some of them had to be repaired, thereby losing time. Thus, as he advanced, Croft found the countryside cleared and sensed that the retreating forces were trusting to the main body, when they reached it, to check his victorious course.
He had some swift motors in which he himself and Jadgor and Lakkon rode. Taking one of these, he sent it far ahead to feel out the road. In it he placed a picked squad of his very best marksmen and ordered them to return at all costs should they contact the enemy in force.
But the enemy in force was attacking the frontier of Cathur. That was as Croft had planned it. That was Zollaria's second mistake, even as her first was in not knowing the full weight of the power she faced.
Thus days passed and the Tamarizian army had actually reached the northern bounds of Mazhur itself, as Jadgor declared, before any news of the main enemy body was received.
Then the scout motor came back and reported heavy forces hurrying to intercept their present line of march.
Croft ordered a halt and took stock of the situation. Before him was a defile in the hills, through which ran the road to reach a farther plain. And that was enough. He ordered an advance. Deploying his army right and left, he set them to digging trenches along the hillside so as to enfilade the plain from both sides of the central pass. In these he posted the riflemen and one of his trained grenade corps every fifty feet.
Across the road he built a barricade, some way back on the frontline trench. High on each side of the pass he posted other riflemen behind shelters of stone in such a position that they could fire into the road or cast down grenades. In front of the barricade itself he parked his battle-motors, unseen from the plain, but ready to emerge upon it when the time should come.
He was hard at it in the midst of these arrangements when a band of Zollarians mounted on gnuppas appeared above a gentle swell in the road, perhaps a mile away, sat watching the work along the hillside for some moments, turned and disappeared in the direction from whence they had come.