Louisville became a hell of battle.
All he did realize was that the attack achieved its purpose in taking the Daans completely by surprise. Years of rulership had made them contemptuous of their human enemies; they paid now, dearly, for this contempt. Before an alarm was sounded, the advancing allies had swept into the heart of the city; before sleep-befogged soldiers could man the ramparts of the central fortress, those ramparts were aswarm with clambering human warriors.
The weapon of the Daans was deadly. Its flaming ray withered whole ranks of the attackers, mowing them down with the grim, mathematical precision of a husbandman's scythe—but this slaughter seemed only to increase the fury of those who remained. Where a Wild One dropped, stricken lifeless before ever he hit the ground, there was a warrior Woman to seize the sword from his falling hand ... and fill his place in the ranks. Where Women tumbled in grotesque heaps, there were Workers to hurdle their bodies and plunge on ... ever on!
And when a Daan fell, there was a Daan's ray-weapon for his nearest foe. Thus the battle, which was one of science against sheer brute power in its early stages, shifted to one of science against science. It did not matter that the earthlings could not understand the weapons with which they fought. They could sight, and aim, and press a grip—and after each such deed there was one less foeman to overcome.
By what miracle Steve Duane came through that battle unscathed, he could never afterward say. Comrades fell before and behind him, on either side of him; their places were taken by still others who joyously fought and happily died with the battlecry frozen on their lips. But somehow he won through, and it was he who, at the end, accepted the capitulation of a dwindling handful of Daans hopelessly trapped, violently defeated, in the innermost chambers of their citadel.
This stricken remainder Jain would have ordered put to the sword but for Steve's refusal.