Soon the far-off rumble of artillery became a nearby thunder, and continuous flashes of fire could be seen to the south, clearly on the western bank of the Roul; in addition, an incredible crackle of massed machine-gun fire was audible as counterpoint to the artillery duel. Waffing's forces were fighting the Warriors of Zind in western Lumb; the only question now was how much of the horde remained on the eastern side of the river. On this might very well depend the history of the world and the survival of the true human genotype.
As the column neared the outskirts of Lumb, the tide of refugees trickled away to nothing and everything in sight had been trampled utterly flat; sure sign that the horde of Zind had passed this way, and not long ago by the look of things, either.
Feric therefore whipped his forces into final battle array. He and Best of course formed the point of the formation, backed up by the hundred-man elite motorcycle SS
bodyguard enclosed in a square of four tanks. Behind this spearhead was a wide solid line of tanks serving as a shield for the main formation of motorcycle SS shock troops.
More tanks guarded either flank of this tightly packed formation of iron men and steel machines. No Zind filth would be able to violate the integrity of such an impenetrable force!
Feric unsheathed his submachine gun and rested it in its firing rack. Glancing at Best, who had also put his weapon in position, he shouted: "Now you'll have all the action anyone could want. Best!" As Feric opened his throttle all the way, Best replied with a boyish grin and a mighty
"Hail Jaggar!" which triggered off a spontaneous mass salutation from the ranks as the great SS force surged forward in a final dash into battle at nearly sixty miles an hour.
Feric led his troops over fields and hills strewn with bits and pieces of dead Wolacks who had been partially de-voured by the nauseating scavengers of Zind. The mighty motorized shock force crested a final rise and Feric beheld 154
the long valley that led to Lumb, choked with the hosts of Zind.
Ludolf Best cried out in horror at his first sight of the Warriors of Zind. The entire valley floor was covered with vast formations of these monstrosities and the creatures themselves were enough to daunt even the staunchest hero. Each of these specially bred protoplasmic killing machines was a hideous caricature of the human form: fully ten feet tall with incredibly massive chests, arms, and thighs, and tiny heads barely large enough to serve as mounts for their tiny red eyes, button ears, and lipless drooling mouths. These pinheaded creatures were entirely naked save for rude leather belts from which hung truncheons of immense size and weight and were liberally caked with dung, ordure, and all manner of filth. Most horrifying of all, each formation of perhaps five hundred of the creatures marched along in perfect synchronization with each other, down to the swing of their tree-trunk arms and the rifles in their hands as if they were interchangeable cogs in some vast fleshly machine.
Seeing Best's dismay, Feric called out to him. "Mindless robots, all of them! All muscle and literally no brain!"
For his part, Peric was far from daunted by this sight, for it meant that perhaps half the horde was still on this side of the Roul—his desperate plan was working! Moreover, he knew that this vast horde of Warriors was entirely dependent on the Dominators who controlled the formations; each synchronized formation was in fact the dominance group of a single Dom. In combat, the Warriors possessed but rudimentary wills of their own. Spaced throughout the horde at more or less regular intervals were huge war-wagons, flatbed carts pulled by teams of gigantic mutants that were all enormous thighs and buttocks, with withered upper torsos and virtually no arms or heads. The beds of these war-wagons were packed with ordinary mutants who served as mortar-crews and machine gunners, but it was a good bet that the controlling Doms were hidden m the rabble atop these carts. Further, it was quite probable that the eight heavy lumbering steam dreadnoughts near the rear of the horde housed the master Dominators of the entire horde—trust a Dom to secrete his cowardly carcass in the most secure place possible! If these master Dominators could be slain, the 155
entire horde might be thrown into leaderless uncontrolled confusion.
Uttering a fierce battle cry, Feric led the SS battle formation straight down the slope at the nearest formation of Warriors at better than forty miles an hour. Feric held down the trigger of his submachine gun, sending a long burst of leaden death into the ranks of the enemy, and at this signal, every tank cannon let fly with high explosive shells, so that the first warning given to the horde was when a thousand Warriors were suddenly blown to steaming bloody fragments by a rapid series of explosions.
