Men. But where a combat raged, there the Ragged Men
swarmed howling. Their hatred impelled them to suicidal courage and to
unspeakable atrocities. From his tower, Tommy saw a man of Yugna,
evidently a prisoner. Four Ragged Men surrounded him, literally
tearing him to pieces like the maniacs they were. Then he saw dust
spurting up in a swift-advancing line, and all four Ragged Men
twitched and collapsed on top of their victim. A steam gun had done
that. A fighting patrol of the men of Yugna swept fiercely down a
paved way in one of the Golden City's vehicles. There was the glint of
gold from it. A solid, choked mass of invaders rushed upon it. Without
slackening speed, without a pause, the vehicle raced ahead.
Intolerable flashes of light appeared. A thermit-thrower was mounted
on the machine. It drove forward like a flaming meteor, and as
electric-charge weapons flashed upon it men screamed and died. It tore
into a vast cloud of the Death Mist and the unbearable flames of its
weapon could only be seen as illuminations of that deadly vapor.

A part of the city was free of defenders, save the isolated steam
gunners left behind upon the walls. Ragged Men, drunk with success,
ran through its ways, slashing at the walls, battering at the
light-panels, pounding upon the doorways of the towers. Tommy saw them
hacking at the great doorway of a tower. It gave. They rushed within.
Almost instantly thereafter the opening spouted them forth again and
after them, leaping upon them, snapping and biting and striking out
with monstrous paws and teeth, were green lizard-things like the one
that had been killed--years back, it seemed--on Earth. A deadly combat
began instantly. But when the last of the fighting creatures was down,
no more than a dozen were left of the three score who had begun the
fight.

* * * * *

But this was not the main battle. The main battle was hidden under the
Death-Mist cloud, concentrated in a vast thick mass in the very center
of the city. Tommy watched that grimly. Perhaps eight thousand men had
assailed the city. Certainly two thousand of them were represented by
the still or twitching forms in queer attitudes here and there, in
single dots or groups. There were seven hundred corpses before the
city gate alone, where the steam guns had mowed down a reinforcing
column. And there were others scattered all about. The defenders had
lost heavily enough, but Tommy's defense behind