de 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 noble 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.

[Illustration: 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 tetanus 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 othe