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.