So far Blade had done more in less time and with less risk to the Menel themselves than he had dreamed possible. But he knew he couldn't stop yet; the situation would have to be pushed to a pitched battle and the Menel themselves more seriously endangered than they had been so far. Crouching low, he moved out onto the floor to the body of the first guard killed, picked up the man's truncheon, then sprang forward, covering the space to the foot of the stairs in a single tiger-like bound.
The Menel saw him first; whatever they used in place of eyes could apparently see better in this dim light than the guards could. Two arms snaked toward him past the two rear guards; he raised the truncheon and smashed it down hard on the left pincer, then ducked back as the two guards whirled around and sent their swords whistling toward his head. There was not room enough for both of them to make a full swing; the two blades crashed into each other with 'an ear-splitting clang and one flew clear out of its owner's hand. Blade thrust the disarmed man through the chest before he could recover, parried a cut from the other, and slashed him in the leg. The Menel now lunged out with three arms together, emitting a staccato banging noise from the disk at its throat that sounded like somebody pounding on an iron pipe, and tried to move down a step for a better reach. It hit a blood-covered patch of stone, lost suction, lost its balance, and fell head toward Blade with a squashy thump. For a moment it was completely at Blade's mercy, half-stunned, two of its arms caught beneath its body, its comrade unable to reach across it to get at Blade and the other guards blocked by the other Menel.
Blade let that moment pass. As he saw the Menel approach, as he saw it totter and overbalance, he reached a fixed and final decision. Insofar as possible, he would never kill one of the Menel, And he would certainly not kill this one. He would not even injure it if he could avoid it.
And he could avoid it. Flourishing the sword back and forth in an air-tearing blur, he lashed out with it at one of the claws, felt the blade rasp across a bony substance as hard as steel and no more vulnerable. With his left hand he brought the truncheon up over his head, whipped it down straight at the creature's «neck»-just above the silver disk-with all the strength in his body-and then with muscle-wrenching precision brought it to a dead stop in mid-air an inch from the Menel's skin.
That «I could have killed you but I won't» gesture nearly cost Blade his own life during the extra seconds it required. The other Menel lunged at Blade, nearly losing its own balance but almost closing one pincer on his left arm. He sprang back from the fallen Menel, slipping as he did so on the blood-smeared stones and landing full-length on his back. The other Menel could not reach him, but the remaining guards could; he saw spears raised and rolled desperately to one side as two of them smacked into the stone where he had been lying and went skittering off into a corner. Two of the guards charged down, swords swinging, but by now he was up on his knees and parried one slash with the truncheon, then jabbed the man in the stomach with the tip, while at the same time his sword whistled out and chopped the second man's left leg off at the knee. He screamed and went down, while Blade sprang up in time to meet the remaining guard in a clanging flurry of blows.
This man was much the best swordsman Blade had met all night, a maddening thing to encounter just when delay might be particularly fatal. He found himself taking risks he would never have thought of at other times, and once had the other's point whistle past his throat by a hairsbreadth, so close he could feel the whuff of disturbed air on his skin. The second Menel made no effort to intervene, concentrating instead on helping its comrade up. The two seemed to be conversing earnestly, the conversation sounding like a whole conclave of plumbers hard at work.
If the other man had not been functioning under a conditioning that slowed him just a fraction, he might have fatally delayed Blade. As it was, Blade got in a slash that beat the other's guard down and sank deep into his neck just as an uproar of shouting and pounding feet from above drowned out the pipe-banging sound of the Menel as a dozen more guards from the Heart detachment swarmed down the stairs.
Blade was sprinting down the corridor before his latest victim had hit the floor. A dozen guards, even a dozen slowed by their Menel conditioning, would be disastrously too many to fight. It was time to get away from the shaft head and try adding to the chaos by action somewhere else.
He did not stop running until he had gone well out of sight and almost out of sound of the guards. He was heading for the secondary elevator, to take it up to the floor of the Girls. There was a separate room there, where the regular guards took the Girls for Pleasure. If there were any guards there now, he could kill them and expect that it would be blamed on the Heart guards, the only ones not conditioned to go into a trance during the passage of the Menel. The Girls would not be in any danger, since they would also be in a trance and would not recognize him.
He reached the elevator shaft, punched the call button, waited for the indicator light to gleam on. It did so, the door opened-and two guards and a Girl tumbled out, falling rigidly to the floor and lying there motionless. Blade pulled the Girl gently aside before neatly slicing the throats of the two frozen men. Killing helpless victims was a stomach-turning business for him, but he found the guards sufficiently revolting for it to be just possible now.
The elevator shot upward and let him out on the floor of the Girls. He sprinted through the halls, heading for the Pleasure room, slapped its door-opener, and darted inside.
The room was as depressing as the rest of the living quarters of the Ice Master's underlings, with the stone-hard floor on which the Guards were conditioned to take their pleasure. There were two Girls on the floor, one of them Lora herself, and four Guards, three standing (one frozen in the act of unbuckling his trunks) and one lying flat on the floor, where the conditioning had dropped him just as he rolled off Lora. Blade stepped into the room, hauled the two Girls out into the corridor by their feet (no time to be chivalrous or elegant now), then went back into the room, sword ready. As he did so, the lights began flashing in the same pattern that had frozen the guards down below and the same undulating whine filled the air. Blade pulled himself to a stop, spun around, and plunged out the door, just as the main elevator opened its door to disgorge four of the Heart guards, with swords drawn.
The Girls were already staggering to their feet and tottering away down the corridor. Blade yelled at the top of his lungs, «In there!» and the Heart guards stopped in their tracks, looked at him, then at one another. and followed his pointing finger-straight into the Pleasure room. They charged the four newly un-frozen guards and hacked one of them to the floor before he could raise his weapons. Two others jumped back into a corner and drew sword and truncheon, while the one on the floor rolled aside from under the stamping feet of the newcomers, caught one of them by the belt, and slammed him down on the floor. The man was struggling to rise when Blade sprang back into the room and drove his sword point-first through both men at once. They jerked wildly, gurgled, and lay still.