WHEN HELMOR'S SUN SET
"They come, O Jadgor of Aphur!" Lakkon said.
"Let them," Croft flung out from a wonderful confidence. "You shall see their slaughter, O king."
The hosts of Zollaria appeared. From the top of the hill above the road Croft and the other two watched. Foot and chariots, the men of the northern nation began to top the rolling hill before them. It was mid-afternoon. The sunlight sparkled upon spear point and chariot, on cuirass and plume-tufted helm.
It was a wonderful sight as the soldiers of the empire prepared to hurl themselves against the smaller force which held the pass and the hills to either side. They deployed right and left, spearmen, bowmen, with a chariot filled with some noble and his driver here and there along the far-flung front. And, having deployed, they began a slow advance, moving like a mighty living ocean toward the shoreline of the hills. Prisoners were to tell Croft later they were sorely puzzled by the scant sight of the enemy they obtained.
The trenches, wherein lurked the waiting death they faced, baffled their understanding, were new in their knowledge of war. Their captains knew not exactly what they led them against. Yet they were proud in their might and the training of fifty years for this moment.
Men had lived and been trained and had died and handed down the tradition of this day to their sons who were being trained to take their father's places in the ranks when the day should come. Now they advanced without hesitation to write the history of the day itself upon their nation's page.
Croft turned to Jadgor and Lakkon. "You command the wings," he said. "I shall lead the motors. The next hour shall make us freemen or slaves. Say as much to your men." He began the descent of the hill, reached the motors, each with its load of tensely waiting soldiers, and entered his own—the first and leading car.
He gave the command. The motors roared. A faint cheer broke from the lips of the men behind the barricade. The armored cars gained speed. They left the defile of the pass. Suddenly they broke upon the sight of the Zollarian host.
For a moment it seemed to falter all along the line as the motors left the road and deployed now in their turn to right and left. Then, with a shout, a flashing chariot dashed from their ranks and headed with plunging gnuppas at Croft's own machine. Crash! Crash! Two of the gnuppas were down. The chariot was overturned in a smother of dust and flying hoofs as the stricken creatures dragged their teammates with them in their fall. Croft's motor advanced. The whole line of unwieldy shapes rolled forward. They began to spit acrid smoke and flame.
Crash, crash! The trenches opened fire, shooting above the moving motors toward the Zollarians' ranks.
Men went down in a swift dissolution. Some one sounded the charge. Zollaria's manhood answered the summon to their manhood. They surged ahead in a roaring human flood. The motors were engulfed, but still they spat fire. Men gathered about them and sought to overturn them. They died. The press of the charge passed toward the hill. The motors lumbered about and fired into the rear of the storming forces. They squatted on the plain and sent a stream of death into the backs of their foes.
And in the faces of those foes a stream of death was pouring. Rifles blazed and grenades began exploding along the sides of the hills. Still they stormed up. This was Zollaria's day—the day—the thing they dreamed of, planned for, through fifty years.
Only by degrees could the thought of certain success begin to waver in the minds of the men in that charge. Some of them died on the hillside. Some of them reached to the lip of the trenches themselves and died. Some of them entered the defile and found the barricade and died before it under the blast of its rifles and the grenades hurled down upon them from its edge. And all the while the glistening motors squatted on the plain or ambled slowly toward the hillsides, spitting flame, while other men died.
So in the end Zollaria's men began at first to doubt and then to fear. In front was death, and death was at their backs. Turn where they would that fiery, unknown, roaring death spat at them. The air was full of it. The very ground seemed to leap into flame at their feet and carry death. They wavered. They turned. They fled. Bowmen, spearmen, chariot, and plume-tossing gnuppa, they streamed down the hillside and out on the plain. And after them came death—and death met them again from the metal-covered motors, which fired and fired into their mass as they retreated in fear.
Croft saw them vanish over the rolling hill which had veiled their recent advance. He opened the door of his motor and called through a trumpet to two of the cars by number. They were under command of trusted men. He ordered them to take each two others and follow the beaten army, giving it neither respite nor ease while daylight should last. Himself he returned to the defile. It was a great hour, the greatest hour he had ever known in his life—the hour in which all he had promised was proven, all he had worked for was won. He climbed down and mounted the hill to where Jadgor stood.
"O king," he said. "To you for Tamarizia, I give back Mazhur, the lost state. Another meeting such as this and, I think, Zollaria will surely sue for peace."
Jadgor reached out and embraced him—to Croft's surprise. "Jasor of Nodhur—man of wonder!" he exclaimed. "Did I ever doubt Zitu had sent you to Tamarizia's salvation I do not doubt it now."
That night Croft camped where he was. The next day Belzor, with his Nodhurians, having made a forced march from Niera, came up. Gazing on the body-strewn hillside and plain he wept with disappointment not to have been present to witness what took place.
Croft grinned. "Patience. The emperor himself leads the army against Cathur, some of the captives tell me. Today we advance."
Toward midnight his motors had come back to report the enemy still in flight and the road a mass of wounded who had fallen from exhaustion on the way. Croft's heart wept out to the poor devils, who were, after all, but the victims of their ruler's lust for power. Yet he could do little for them because of the lack of time and the fact that he passed through openly hostile territory now.
It had been somewhat different in Mazhur, where many of the inhabitants were Tamarizian still at heart. But here, should he leave men behind to attend the wounded, he knew, that if discovered, they would perish without any doubt. Hence beyond collecting them in one place, supplying them with provisions, and leaving the lesser wounded to wait upon the others, he could do nothing before he advanced on the main body of the enemy.
That advance lasted for a week. Twice, during it, Croft left his body, satisfied himself the state of things was safe, returned to earth, and chatted with Mrs. Goss and went back. At the end of the week he found himself once more facing a foe.
His first victory had produced a wonderful effect. Zollaria, driving Cathur before her like chaff, under Kyphallos's treacherous leadership, had made progress already when word of Croft's landing and advance from Niera had caused the Emperor Helmor to detach a portion of his army under his son to crush the flank attack. Instead, his son's command was crushed and recoiled in a sorry rout. Helmor faced about. Raging at this check to his plans, he rushed north and east to finish the Tamarizian army himself.
And now Croft found the positions reversed. Helmor chose his own ground. He set himself to withstand the shock of battle along a line of gently rolling hills, up which his foe must advance to the attack. Thus his bowmen had a tremendous advantage, according to all his knowledge of war, and his spearmen, at close quarters, could give a most magnificent account of themselves, while the chariots, in the rear of the line, could take care of any small bands of the enemy which might chance to break through.
In this case Croft put his motors in the front. Deploying his men, he instructed them to advance by rushes, keeping well in the rear of the sixteen machines, yet close enough to take advantage of any breaks they made in Helmor's line.
"This day will be the last," he said to Jadgor as he prepared to lead in his own machine.
"Zitu grant it, and victory with it!" Jadgor replied. "Should you carry defeat to Helmor, Tamarizia is yours, to do with as you please. Once before I would remind you, Jasor, I said well-nigh as much."
"There is but one thing in Tamarizia I desire." Croft looked at Lakkon as he spoke and smiled.
"It is yours, my son," said Aphur's prince, and spoke softly to Jadgor. "What think you, O king? Our Jasor desires a maid."
And Jadgor nodded. "Aye, Lakkon, I am not a fool! You are willing she should go to him?"
"I have pledged her to him," said Lakkon as he bowed his head.
"And I go to win her now," said Croft as he entered his car.
Naia of Aphur. That was the cry of his heart he carried into the fight. Naia of Aphur. This fight should make her his. He gave the signal for the advance with a smile upon his lips.
Like huge metal turtles the motors began crawling toward the hill where Helmor waited. Slowly, steadily, as implacable as fate, they rumbled ahead. And, after a time, their breath rose on the air of the cloudless morning in acrid whiffs of smoke. Flights of arrows and crossbow bolts rattled on their sides and fell harmless. They reached the foot of the hill and began to climb—up and up. They were half lost now in the smoke of their own fierce discharges and the clouds of flying shafts.
Back of them the infantry advanced as Croft directed, dashing forward a hundred yards, and dropping down to fire in crashing volleys which covered their comrades' sprinting rush, rising again and swarming ahead while the other end of their companies covered them in turn. On the hill confusion began to develop after a time. Men fell in heaps with a chance to strike back.
Nearer and nearer, without pause, the odd metal turtles crept up the hill. Nothing stopped them. Nothing, neither valor nor marksmanship, silenced the deadly spitting of their fire. Arrows broke upon them, cross-bolts slithered off their invulnerable hides. Nearer and nearer crept the menace of their ugly snouts.
On the right flank two reached the Zollarian line and crashed against it. Men fell and were ground into bloody pulp beneath metal wheels. The Zollarians tried. They flung themselves in waves upon the monsters. They sought to climb upon them. They gripped at the spitting rifle-barrels. But still the motors plowed on in a bloody foam. They turned and began crawling through the sea of men. Flesh and bone could stand no more. The right flank wavered and fled just before the infantry swarming up the slope in a final rush drove its own charge home. They fell back in a disorganized mob, flinging bows and spears from them as they ran.
They left the center unsupported, attacked from both front and side. It wavered, bent, sought to turn itself to meet the double-attack, broke in the process, and split asunder. Behind it, in his gorgeous chariot, Helmor raged to no avail. Through the mêlée a monster thing of metal bore down upon him. From it there came a brazen voice as of one speaking through a trumpet:
"Yield, Helmor of Zollaria, and put a stop to slaughter! Yield, Helmor, or perish with your men!"
This was the end. This was the fruition in blood and despair of that day prepared against through the span of fifty years. Thus was Zollaria's ambition sinking to destruction, smothered beneath the swirling dust of a panic-stricken ruck. Helmor swept the lost field with his eyes and knew the truth.
He gave the sign of surrender, spoke to his frightened aids, and sent them galloping on gnuppas right and left to carry the word of defeat. A standard shot up from the top of Croft's car. The sounds of battle ceased by degrees and died as car after car raised a similar signal across the battle-front.
Croft opened the door of his car and stepped down. "You will enter, Helmor of Zollaria," he said shortly, and gestured to the door.
The Emperor Helmor bowed. He bent his haughty crest and disappeared from sight. The door closed behind him, shutting him safe beyond all dreams of conquest for all time to come. The great car turned and lumbered back down the hill toward the camp where Jadgor of Aphur had waited and watched. The sun was at its zenith above a field of dead and wounded. But Helmor's sun of ambition had set.