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The families of Brons that survived were now building their houses above ground although the Lorens had generously offered them quarters below the city. The Brons wanted no more of caves or tunnels. They preferred to live up there on this world's surface and take their chances with frost and flood. Opal had been beautiful and wonderful.
He had less than a score of the white-skinned soldiers left. These he sent at Gunnar in a body, and came following after with the remaining Lorens. Gunnar cut them down, but a leaping soldier died as he buried his knife in Gunnar's side. The Lorens were throwing sticks and stones when they could. They closed in like dogs upon a wolf.
It must have been the last salvage from the explosion that Odin had witnessed back there in space. The cloud trailed out in one great streamer and slowly circled the ancient sun. Slowly the spirals came nearer to the fires. The sun fed. Its old warmth returning, it smiled at its lone child. The air of the planet of the Lorens grew warmer and fresher.
These long moral treatises on the seven deadly sins and the even deadlier virtues were very popular in the Middle Ages. The best known to English readers occurs in the Parson's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and is taken from the Somme de Vices et de Vertus of Frère Lorens, a thirteenth-century author.
Grim Hagen's power over the Lorens might be questioned after the havoc that had been wreaked in the city above. But Hagen and his white-skinned soldiers could still fight. And Grim Hagen's hate was hotter than the fires that were now dying out in the tunnels. Ato joined them. He had proven himself a general.
None of Hagen's Brons or Aldebaranians were left. The Lorens threw down their arms and swore loyalty to Val. A cot was improvised for Ato. The lights hovered around him, whispering cheerfully and ignoring all others. Val, Odin and Maya tried to count the survivors. Of the fifty who had lived through the fighting, only eighteen were Brons. The rest were Val's men.
And with his huge short legs spread wide apart, Gunnar swung his broadsword. The first wave of attackers went down like ripe wheat. Gunnar and Odin cut their way through them, and came out against a smoking hedge. Behind them, Ato and his Lorens strewed the streets with dead. Gunnar and Odin went through a hole in the hedge.
Its fuel spilled down and caught fire as it fell. Flames leaped up and lashed out at the Lorens. The fierce flames drove the attackers farther back. But in falling, the great lamp careened and half of its liquid had splashed across the entrance to the tunnel. It caught fire. Gunnar gasped as it struck him. Then he strode forward, like a dwarf-king advancing from Hell.
"I will try to explain that later," Ato answered. "Well, there were those of us who could not agree with the general idea. There are even some of the Lorens in the Violet Dome who think he is a god. We think he is an evil man. We have no desire to plunder the stars. If he is so great, why doesn't he give new life to our feeble sun? That is what we really need.
Outnumbered all the way, he had broken Grim Hagen's lines time and again during that awful night. "I think we had better wait behind the barricades and make our last stand upon the balcony," he said. "We can't defend five entrances at the same time." Odin agreed. "Some of Maya's people are unarmed. We still have a few of the Lorens who joined us. They are good fighters.
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