“Not all of Maya’s people are,” Odin said. “I don’t like the idea of the children and old men fighting.”
“Children and old men have fought before,” Ato answered simply. “If this should be the last time, then the battle would be worth the blood. Anyway, I have set them to fashioning lances and staves from wood that we saved from the fires.”
They waited. All the troops and all the weapons were moved behind the barricade.
Some of the best throwers were mounted upon the improvised balcony. They had rigged up a rude catapult from some lumber and ropes. They had barrels of nails and spikes for ammunition. Odin wished for some good bowmen, but the bow was as foreign to the Lorens as it was to the Brons. There was nothing left to do except move all the workshop’s water-pails and sand-buckets behind the barricade in case of fire.
Soon they heard the sound of war-cries and the splashing of water from the tunnels. Smoke poured into the room from the quenched and dying fires. It disappeared almost as fast as it came. Evidently the Lorens were masters of air-conditioning. Odin was thankful. Knowing Grim Hagen, he had been fearful of gas. Now that seemed unlikely. Even as Gunnar had predicted, this last fight would be with knife and sword and spear. Or, if it lasted long, with clubs and bare hands.
They had spanned space and had mocked at time. Now time was triumphant as always. Would they end up as pre-stone-age men throwing sticks at one another? And was this a sample of the end of all the thinking men who would follow after into space? If so, what a hollow, foolish end to such high endeavor. Odin remembered an old professor who had said that all races carry their own seeds of destruction with them wherever they go. The bees who steal the honey soon die, the old man had said, but the flowers are pollinated anew and life goes on forever.
But such bleak thoughts were short-lasting. For as soon as the tunnels and the stairway were cleared of smoke, Grim Hagen’s army came pouring into the room. Grim Hagen had mustered at least two-thousand men. He had divided these into five groups, and they came through the five entrances at the same time. Yelling and brandishing swords and flares, they rushed the barricade.
Jack Odin had underestimated the catapult. The crew released it. And a shower of spikes tore the invading ranks apart. Odin saw a white-skinned warrior go to his knees and scream as he tried to pull a six-inch spike from his eye.
Ato had ordered his men to try for Grim Hagen’s trained soldiers first. Odin saw an old Bron cast a home-made spear with as much ease as a trained javelin-thrower back home. A soldier tried to pull it out of his chest until his legs buckled beneath him and he tumbled over backwards.