Palos of the Dog Star Pack

by J. U. Giesy

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.