fought for imperial Nero.

For an instant it stood here, preening, testing itself like
an athlete--a chimera, amorphous yet weirdly symmetric
--under the darkening sky, in the green of the hollow,
the armored hosts frozen before it--

And then--it struck!

Out flashed two of the arms, with a glancing motion,
with appalling force. They sliced into the close-packed
forward ranks of the armored men; cut out of them two great
gaps.

Sickened, I saw fragments of man and horse fly. Another
arm javelined from its place like a flying snake, clicked at
the end of another, became a hundred-foot chain which
swirled like a flail through the huddling mass. Down upon
a knot of the soldiers with a straight-forward blow drove
a third arm, driving through them like a giant punch.

All that host which had driven us from the ruins threw
down sword, spear, and pike; fled shrieking. The horsemen
spurred their mounts, riding heedless over the footmen who
fled with them.

The Smiting Thing seemed to watch them go with--
AMUSEMENT!

Before they could cover a hundred yards it had disintegrated.