Then darkness. A rush of cold air swept in and the rain came back with redoubled fury. The searchlights had gone out; the last of the fireworks burst and their sparks fell and faded. And then, raggedly at first, but steadily growing, gunfire started along the fronts of the opposing armies.
Menas screamed in fury, turning to one officer after another, shouting that they must kill the traitor. He meant Prefect Corin, who held something like a polished pebble in his upturned hand. It was an energy pistoclass="underline" a real one, an old one, a hundred times more powerful than the hot light pistols made in the Age of Insurrection.
The Prefect put the pistol away, said softly, “I have ended it,” and made an abrupt gesture.
The machines around Menas and his officers dropped from the air.
“Go now,” Prefect Corin said. “You are done here.” The officers walked away without a word. Menas chased after them, the wings of his black-leather overcoat flapping around him, then ran back and started hurling handfuls of mud at Prefect Corin, screaming incoherently.
Prefect Corin ignored him. He bent over Pandaras and said, “Follow me,” and walked off down the hill toward the burning machines.
Pandaras looked at Menas, who had fallen to his knees and turned his face up to the rain. “I’m sorry, master,” he said, and ran after Prefect Corin. He did not want to find a way through the battlefield on his own.
Prefect Corin walked steadily down the middle of what had been a wide avenue. Pandaras scampered along close behind him, as if his shadow was some kind of protection. White threads flicked out from the heretics’ lines and fire blossomed wherever they touched. Things moved to and fro behind flaring sources of light—things like giant insects, all jointed legs and tiny bodies. A lucky shell hit one; its body blew in a flare of greasy yellow light and then threw out a second explosion that for a moment lit the entire battlefield and turned every falling raindrop into a diamond.
Chains of little bomblets walked back and forth across the ruins; Pandaras threw himself flat when one whistled down close by and blew a fountain of earth and land-coral slivers into the air, but Prefect Corin merely kneeled, with his hand holding the brim of his hat, then got up and walked on.
Pandaras said, “Where are we going?”
“Through their lines.”
“You meant this to happen!”
“The confusion will help us.”
“Menas will lose the city.”
“We seek a greater prize, boy.” Prefect Corin stared into Pandaras’s face for a moment and said, “Yes, you know it,” and abruptly cut to the left and climbed a slope of rubble where in its dying throes a mass of coral had thrown up a glade of smooth white spikes twice Pandaras’s height, like a parade of soldiers frozen forever, or the pieces of a game of chess abandoned halfway through.
Lights flickered and flared all around, from the pinpoint flashes of rifles and carbines to the glare of energy weapons and the brief burning flowers of mortar and bomblet explosions. Soldiers were advancing through the ruins toward the heretic positions. Phalanxes of myrmidons marched in perfect formation, not even hesitating when mortar fire blew holes in their ranks. The officers who controlled them swooped overhead on floating discs. Toward the rear, armored vehicles rumbled forward in a line a league long. Amidst the thunder of explosions came the sound of trumpets, a slow drumbeat, and the screams of men and beasts. Pandaras’s fear grew as he watched Prefect Corin scanning the battlefield with what appeared to be perfect self-control, satisfied by the carnage and confusion he had caused by a single shot. And then Pandaras saw something which gave him a small measure of hope. High above, in the distance, a small golden spark hung beneath the racing rain clouds.
“Come to me, master,” Pandaras whispered. “Save me.” But the spark did not move. Perhaps it was afraid that Prefect Corin would knock it out of the air if it came too close.
Prefect Corin pointed with his staff at some weakness in the heretics’ line, then saw that Pandaras was not looking at him. He came over and squatted down and said, almost kindly, “We will walk straight through this. We count for nothing in the battle, and so we will be safe. Do you understand me?”
“I know that you are mad.”
“No. All this around us is madness, certainly. And Menas is mad, too—he has to be mad to be able to function at all—but I am quite sane. If you wish to survive, you must follow me.”
“If we wait here, then the heretics will come to us.”
“It is not the heretics we are seeking.” Prefect Corin’s hand suddenly shot out and gripped the side of Pandaras’s neck. “He was here. Do not deny it. I know that he was here because he has taken away the ward.”
Pandaras shook his head a fraction. He wanted to look up, to appeal to that golden spark, but to do so would be to betray his master. Instead he stared straight into Prefect Corin’s black eyes as the man’s grip tightened on his neck.
“You will tell me,” Prefect Corin said. “By the Preservers you will tell me or I will squeeze out your miserable life…” He had lifted his other hand above his head. Now he lowered it, and let go of Pandaras’s neck. He said, “I know that he was here. You could not have removed the ward by yourself. Think hard about whether you want to survive this, boy. If you tell me how Yamamanama removed the ward it might be possible. We both want the same thing. We both want to rescue him.”
Pandaras rubbed his bruised neck. He said, “I believe that we have different ideas about my master’s fate.”
Prefect Corin drew a length of cord from his tunic and tied one loop around Pandaras’s wrist and another around his own. “We are joined,” he said. “For better or worse we are joined hand to hand, fate to fate. Let nothing put us asunder.” He stood up, jerking hard on the cord so that Pandaras was forced to rise too. “There are threads of plastic through the cord,” Prefect Corin said. “They can dull the keenest blade, and they have a certain low intelligence. Try to tamper with the knot and it will tighten its grip, and by and by cut off your hand.”
The cord which hung between them was no longer than the Prefect’s arm. It would have to be enough. Pandaras turned right when the Prefect turned left, threw himself around a smooth spike of land coral so that the cord was stretched across it, and shouted into the rainy dark. “Now, Yama! If you have ever loved me! Now!”
The spike shuddered and Pandaras fell backward. He picked himself up at once. The cord hung from his wrist. It had been cut in half. Something with a dying golden glow was buried in a splintered crater in the land coral. Prefect Corin was bent over, his right hand pressed to his left eye. Blood ran down his cheek and dripped from the point of his jaw.
Pandaras took to his heels. He heard Prefect Corin shouting behind him, but did not look back. He turned right and left at random through the maze of land-coral spikes, always choosing the narrowest path. The land coral had spread through the rubble downslope, forming a maze of arches and tunnels and caves. Pandaras scrambled down a narrowing funnel of rough stone, splashed through a bubble half full of stinking water, slid down a chute of stone slick as soap, and landed breathlessly at the edge of a road.
All around was the sound of giants walking the land. Flashes lit the underbellies of the sagging clouds. A big machine covered in spines skittered by in the distance. Whips of light flicked from its tiny head and raised pillars of fire and smoke wherever they touched. Pandaras picked himself up and ran on. He did not doubt that Prefect Corin would do everything in his power to find him.
There was a slow and steady drumbeat ahead, the crack and whir and whistle of rifle pellets and arbalest bolts all around. Suddenly soldiers were running down the road toward Pandaras. He raised his hands above his head, feeling as broad and wide as a house. But the soldiers were running full-tilt in retreat and went straight past him. One, his dirty yellow face narrow as a knife blade, turned and yelled, “The dead! The dead!” and then they were gone.