At the hour of the Dog ten companies of hard-eyed fighting men came out of the shadows of the ten cobblestoned streets that led by twisting tiers to the Citadel. They went up the curving stone stairs to the smooth Citadel streets and started forward.... And then the Diktor struck. The sonicbeams came first, cutting the front ranks to bloody pulp. Disintegrator rayed into action. Men went down silently under the lightning-swift impact of purplish lances. It was a rout. Here, a naked mercenary from Fayalat would flesh his blade in a few necks as he drove in behind a wall of dead flesh. There, a warrior from Kor might take three of Stal Tay's soldiers with him before he touched hands with his ancestors. But the beams and the rays slew in the darkness and the rabble was driven back. Where Red Angus fought with an electroray cart, sweeping the ringed nozzle of his weapon in and out of the shadows, the men of the Lower City stood a while. They fought with the ferocity of trapped thots, for the pits of Stal Tay yawned for them. "Hold firm!" roared Tandor, his sword a sweeping line of gray death where it circled and darted. "Fall back," cried Angus. "Back to reform! They've trapped us well, the tricky dogs." A man with a bandaged face stood out a moment from the shadows, pointing. He cried, "Half a hundred _oblis_ to the man who brings down Red Angus!" "Thordad!" shouted Angus, and he knew now the manner of his betrayal. Thordad had seen a chance for reinstatement and had taken it. He had seen the rabble that served Red Angus and knew the disciplined power of the Diktor's guards. He had gone with news of Angus' plans. This trap was the result. Red Angus forgot the others. He sighted the electroray carefully. A thin beam of brilliance lanced out. It touched Thordad on face and neck. A headless corpse rolled at the guards' feet as they came forward. Their rush caught Angus and the men with him. It swept them backward through the streets, rolled up their flanks. It clubbed the center with sonicbeams until men screamed in the agony of mashed legs and caved-in chests. Angus fought like a maddened griff. He used the electroray like a broom, sweeping it before him. He kicked the two-wheeled cart ahead for without the dynamo in the cart the electroray was useless. A sudden rush of guards caught Angus in a maelstrom of cursing, howling men. They hit him and drove him back against the glittering metal collar of one of the black pools, yawning grim and silent in the cobblestoned square. They hammered him with swordblades and pounded the cart with metal-headed axes. Angus stumbled, fell. He came up slowly, his back to the cold metal collar of the pool, the ringed barrel of the useless electroray still in his hands. _It's all over_, he told himself, staring at the swords coming for him. _I've failed, and I'll die, and so will Moana, and Tandor, and all the rest of this motley crew who tried to pull themselves up by their bootstraps._