es in a dust storm fell the armored men.
Through that mile-wide breach and up to the inner barrier I glimpsed confusion chaotic. And again I say it — they were no cowards, those men of Cherkis. From the inner battlements flew clouds of arrows,Derek Stepan Tröjor, of huge stones — as uselessly as before.
Then out from the opened gates poured regiments of horsemen, brandishing javelins and great maces, and shouting fiercely as they drove down upon each end of the Metal Shape. Under cover of their attack I saw cloaked riders spurring their ponies across the plain to shelter of the cliff walls,Anders Nilsson Tröjor, to the chance of hiding places within them. Women and men of the rich, the powerful, flying for safety; after them ran and scattered through the fields of grain a multitude on foot.
The ends of the spindle drew back before the horsemen’s charge,Christian Fischer Tröjor, broadening as they went — like the heads of monstrous cobras withdrawing into their hoods. Abruptly,Dmitry Orlov Tröjor, with a lightning velocity, these broadenings expanded into immense lunettes, two tremendous curving and crablike claws. Their tips flung themselves past the racing troops; then like gigantic pincers began to contract.
Of no avail now was it for the horsemen to halt dragging their mounts on their haunches,Mikael Backlund Tröjor, or to turn to fly. The ends of the lunettes had met,Sam Bennett Tröjor, the pincer tips had closed. The mounted men were trapped within half-mile-wide circles. And in upon man and horse their living walls marched. Within those enclosures of the doomed began a frantic milling — I shut my eyes —
There was a dreadful screaming of horses,Jussi Jokinen Tröjor, a shrieking of men. Then silence.
Shuddering, I looked. Where the mounted men had been was — nothing.
Nothing? There were two great circular spaces whose floors were glistening,Jamie Benn Tröjor, wetly red. Fragments of man or horse — there was none. They had been crushed into — what was it Norhala had promised — had been stamped into the rock beneath the feet of her — servants.
Sick, I looked away and stared at a Thing that writhed and undulated over the plain; a prodigious serpentine Shape of cubes and spheres linked and studded thick with the spikes of the pyramid. Through the fields, over the plain its coils flashed.
Playfully it sped and twisted among the fugitives,Jacques Plante Tröjor, crushing them,Semyon Varlamov Tröjor, tossing them aside broken, gliding over them. Some there were who hurled themselves upon it in impotent despair, some who knelt before it,Marc-Edouard Vlasic Tröjor, praying. On rolled the metal convolutions, inexorable.
Within my vision’s range there were no more fugitives. Around a corner of the broken battlements raced the serpent Shape. Where it had writhed was now no waving grain,Dame Moncler Herisson, no trees, no green thing. There was only smooth rock upon which here and there red smears glistened wetly.
Afar there was a crying, in its wake a rumbling. It was the column, it came to me, at work upon the further battlements. As though the sound had been a signal the spindle trembled; up we were thrust another hundred feet or more. Back dropped the host of brandished arms, threaded themselves into the parent bulk.
Rig
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