CHAPTER 16
GUNNAR and Odin followed the hedge for a long way, until they came out against the far side of the dome. The noise of fighting still continued. It was back of them, but drawing nearer. Odin guessed—or hoped—that Ato and Val were driving the defenders before them.
They came out upon a lane that was flanked by the beautiful colonnades. Near them was one of the entrances to the tunnels below, and beside it was one of the stone cressets with a high-flaring flame. At the end of the lane was a dais. Upon this dais stood Grim Hagen, shouting instructions to a crew of white-skinned, soldiers below him who were trying to set up a strange machine. It looked like a model of Saturn balanced upon a tripod. Except that it had three concentric rings about it.
Grim Hagen’s shirt was scorched and tattered. It was falling from his lean shoulders. His face was seamed and lined. The muscles upon his neck stood out in cords. His hair was gray now. His left arm was gashed from elbow to wrist, and blood was dripping down his fingers. He dashed the drops aside as he screamed orders. His black eyes still blazed with that old feral hate, and though the years had wasted him, his hips were still as thin as an Apache’s and he looked iron-hard.
Odin and Gunnar knelt beside the railing that marked the entrance to the tunnels below. Neither Hagen nor his men saw them.
Gunnar grasped Odin’s shoulders and pulled him down. “Listen,” he whispered in Odin’s ear. “Do you hear anything strange?”
Odin listened. Above the tumult behind them came that same sound which he had heard out on the plain. A whining, purring sound. The purring of a tiger feeding contentedly.
Then screams drowned out the whining sound, and Odin wondered if he had not imagined it.
Nearly a hundred of the defenders came running toward Grim Hagen. They were in mad flight now. Most of them were weaponless. Grim Hagen cursed them, rallied them about him, and urged them to pick up new weapons and fight.