Some of Grim Hagen’s Lorens were in flight. Most of them were dead. But his white-skinned warriors held firm. Not over a dozen were left at Grim Hagen’s side. Two were still working with the odd-shaped weapon.
There were other Lorens coming out of the hedges, but they held back. They had seen enough.
Had fortune favored Ato then, his army would have won.
But at the precise moment when the balance was swinging toward the Brons, Grim Hagen’s gun-crew got the strange weapon unlimbered. The globe started turning. Unseen motors roared within it. As though spun out like gleaming strands of cobwebs, coils of light came flickering toward the attacking Brons. Like blue-white ripples they went across the fore-running Kalis. The ripples of light went on expanding. The shotgun in the hands of the old Bron suddenly burst to pieces. The old rifles fell apart. The newer machine-guns talked briefly, and then disappeared in a burst of flame that took their masters with them.
The first coil of light struck Odin. There was a tingling sensation, neither painful nor pleasant. But it went through his body like a mild opiate. He did not want to sleep. He merely wanted to relax and forget this slaughter. He fought against it. Gunnar leaned against him, suddenly weak and shaken.
More widening circles of light swept out upon them. Ato’s and Maya’s troops fell back. Those who had been armed with explosive weapons had died. Odin was almost too weak to lift his sword. From the stairway below came a scrabbling sound, as men pulled the corpses away from the stairs.
Nea’s Kalis reeled back. She urged them on and they advanced like corks bobbing on ripples of light. Three moved slowly toward Grim Hagen’s machine. A fourth faltered and fell back.
The Kalis were no longer screaming their frightful song. The purr of victory was gone. Instead they yowled a savage, tormented scream as though they had been cornered by an enemy they could not understand.
But the three moved forward, while the fourth hesitated behind them. As though struggling against a heavy flood they came on. The gun-crew died defending their whirling weapon. The three Kalis swarmed over it—like bees smothering the enemy, Odin thought. The pulsing coiling light died. There was a burst of flame. The weapon and the three Kalis suddenly became one immense sardonyx that blazed huge and grand for a brief moment. Then the jewel-blaze burned out, and a handful of ashes sifted to the ground.