Part 19 (1/2)

The first two to reach Gunnar and Odin died at the end of Gunnar's and Odin's swords.

”Your immortality does not last very long, Grim Hagen,” Gunnar shouted as he wiped his blade.

Then another man came up the stairway. Odin killed him and flung him back upon the men who followed.

But reinforcements were pouring in from other lanes. Grim Hagen and his men now numbered over a thousand.

Seeing Odin and Gunnar, Ato swung his men over against the subway entrance.

They rallied there. Grim Hagen's soldiers came at them. Ato, Gunnar, and Odin stood side by side and led the counter-attack that forced them back upon Grim Hagen's strange machine.

But Hagen's men rallied and drove them back again--almost to the stairway.

”The next drive will get us,” Ato groaned. ”Brace yourselves, men.”

But the next drive did not come. Suddenly a dozen screaming wretches--they could no longer be called soldiers--came running up the street. They joined Grim Hagen's men and gibbered in fear as they pointed back.

From down there came a sudden burst of music. Odin's heart leaped when he heard it. It was the old song of the Brons. But the lights were burning low back there and as yet he could see nothing.

Then they came. Nea and Maya, walking side by side. Behind them were half a dozen women, playing fifes and horns. One was carrying a tattered flag. Behind the musicians came a motley crowd. Old women, young women, half-grown children, and dozens of old men. All were armed. And they came forward like the wrack of a surviving army at judgement day.

Oh, there was something n.o.ble about them, and pitiful too. And something terrible. For before them, floating upon the air like bobbing heads were Nea's four fantoms, the Kalis, whining hungrily as they came, their copper hair trailing about them.

One caught a fugitive as he lagged behind--and he died screaming.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Grim Hagen's men writhed helplessly in the grip of the Kalis' deadly copper hairs!]

The Kalis darted this way and that and Grim Hagen's men writhed. Their muscles clenched. Their jaws set as though teta.n.u.s had struck them. They slid to the marble street and died.

And the Kalis laughed and whined and screamed as they fed. Even above their feeding-song and the screams of their victims came the shrill, triumphant cry of Nea urging them on.

Nor was the rest of Maya's army still. One old Bron who had been a slave of Grim Hagen for too long had found a shotgun among Hagen's treasures and was blasting away. They were armed with everything from staves, blunderbusses, old forty-fours and Sharps rifles to machine guns. They fired and fired.

Grim Hagen's men went down. But though dozens of ill-aimed shots were fired at him, Grim Hagen still lived, dodging here and there, rallying his men, and urging his gun-crew to finish setting up that odd weapon.

Few were left of the thousand that had rallied to Grim Hagen. But another thousand were coming through the hedges from other lanes and streets.

Although it was a gallant, ragged little army that Nea and Maya led, it would have lasted no longer than a straw in a whirlwind had it not been for the Kalis. They appeared to be enjoying themselves, even as Grim Hagen's men were not. They zig-zagged this way and that. They purred. They fed.

They were stronger now and their movements were quicker. Their victims died faster.

And as they forged forward, Nea was growing in strength. She leaped after them, leaving Maya to command the small army. She screamed. She urged them on with a ”Kill, kill, kill!” that froze the back of Odin's neck. Here was no girl trained to work in a laboratory. This was a high-priestess, long derided and forgotten, come back from the stars to wreak her vengeance.

”Good G.o.d,” Odin was thinking. ”What unexplored labyrinths are left in the human brain?”

Then there was no time for thinking. The Lorens who were trying to gain the stairway had finally dislodged the two bodies that Odin and Gunnar had flung down upon them. They came up like a surging tide, and for the next few minutes Odin and Gunnar were busy.

Gunnar had never been any happier in his life. He talked to his sword and he growled at those that he killed. He yelled at Ato's and Maya's wearying armies, urging them to go on and account themselves well. He stood by Odin's side, and the two hacked and thrust until the stairway was chocked with bodies and no one was left to a.s.sail them.

He and Odin were splashed with blood. The tumult was deafening. The tiger-screams of the Kalis, the agonized torment of their prey. The gun-blasts from Maya's army, the cry of Ato who had hacked his way almost to Gunnar and Odin, the victory-scream of Nea, the broken music! And even above this, the mad curses and commands of Grim Hagen!