Wild musket fire shot upward and every which way, missing the too-swift Hormagaunt, but drawing down retaliation from overhead fire. One musket fusillade, striking the ceiling, ignited and severed the supports, bringing one of the stalactite-shaped chandeliers crashing to the floor, where its arsenal and powder magazine exploded, killing ten dogs. Preceptor Naar, glancing over his shoulder at the distraction with a bored sneer, pointed his pistol and electrocuted Crile in midleap.

A Mastiff charged Gload with a bayonet; Gload opened wide his monstrous belly-mouth and caught the musket between his teeth and bit it in twain. Plucking up the poor Mastiff by the leg, Gload began striking left and right, using the screaming dog thing as a living bludgeon to batter down its squad mates. Preceptor Orovoy, with a pistol in either hand, shot Gload, who merely laughed, for his shell turned mirror-bright and deflected the laserlight; Orovoy adjusted his pistols for other outputs, only to discover that Gload was grounded against electric shock, proof against microwave burns, and resistant to gamma radiation; whereupon Gload picked up a nearby automaton hugely in both hands, and tossed it onto the wizened old dwarf.

The gems on his coat lit up heroically, applying a magnetic force against the huge mass. It slowed slightly, or almost did, but the overloaded gems flared and went dark, and Preceptor Orovoy was flattened, and burst in every direction like a wine grape beneath a shoe.

Soorm pulled a dog thing, one in each claw, into the fountain with him, making them jump and yowl with staggers of electricity, and impaled the bodies on the central water jet in the middle. In a moment the whole pool was red and opaque. It must have been much deeper than it seemed, like a cistern, for Soorm sank into it and vanished from sight. When a trio of unwary dog things leaned over, bayonets ready, a scorpion tail impaled the first through the ribs before it could scream, and webbed claws grabbed the others to the right and left, and yanked all three down into the water with remarkable swiftness. There was some splashing and agitation in the pool, and then the waters turned redder.

4. Clades

One of the older Blue Men, Invigilator Saaev, left off firing his pistols, and had one of the automata nearby hoist him up to its operator cage (which looked to Menelaus remarkably like haversack a squaw might use for carrying a papoose: an ugly metal squaw shaped like a praying mantis, with a very ugly blue-skinned, prune-wrinkled papoose with wizened eyes). Saaev shouted verbal orders to nearby automata: “Employ the Gas of Peace!”

And the insect-shaped mechanism drew out canisters and threw them left, right, and within the central fountain, where they hissed and emitted growing clouds of filmy gray gas that darkened to an inky black as it thickened.

Zouave Zhigansk was near the statue of Michael the Archangel. He was not as heavily modified as a true Hormagaunt, but his nostrils could pinch shut like those of a sea lion, and he had some immunity to the soporific. He stayed within the gas cloud, daring the dog things to shoot at him, and whenever a bold bulldog or thin-faced whippet ventured too close, Zouave either sprayed something from hidden scent glands that made the dog recoil, yowling, or Zouave flung a porcupine quill into a muzzle with surprising accuracy.

Zouave had, one in either hand, antiques recovered from the broken weapon cases. The first one he now fired, but the shot went high, and the payload exploded into lesser payloads in midair, riddling the stalactite-shaped chandeliers without effect.

The second weapon was a silver club that shot a hypodermic needle, which failed to affect the dog thing physiology. The dog, a Saint Bernard badly in need of a trim, merely yowled at the sting. In frustration Zouave threw the silver club with great force toward the Saint Bernard, who was struck in the nose and was blinded when the propellant liquid chamber broke and splashed chemical in its eyes.

The blinded beast dropped its musket. Growing bolder, as well as growing low on breath, Zouave emerged from the black cloud, and snatched up that musket. Finding it empty, he ran at the nearest Blue Man, the handyman named Unwing.

Bedel Unwing, unfortunately, was paying no attention. He was carefully directing pistol-fire at the balcony at the far side of the great chamber, the tip of his tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth in concentration. This was the first opportunity Unwing had been given to join the higher-status members of his order in a significant venture, and his hope had been to better himself in their eyes, so he was obeying all instructions carefully. No one had instructed him to watch his back.

Zouave ran him through, and the little man screamed in shock, outrage, and surprise; his scream became a gargle of blood, and then a death rattle.

Even as he did the deed, Zouave was struck from behind by the blind and maddened Saint Bernard, who did not need eyes to find and tear out Zouave’s throat. The dog died at that same time, overcome by the number and toxicity of the spines Zouave left in its muzzle, skull, paws, and neck. The three corpses lay piled atop each other.

The three Donors, Toil, Drudge, and Drench, succumbed to the vapor, and lay in a heap near him, trembling and holding their heads.

Prissy Pskov was on the other side of the chamber near the stand of powered armor, beneath the statue of Hades. Her weapon was a handheld flamer, and she sprayed fire right and left, while dog things screamed and fled out of range, perhaps due to their instinctive fear of fire, perhaps due to the smoke and the overpowering odor of petrol and magnesium. She did not really want to hurt the dogs, recognizing the craftsmanship which had gone into creating them, so she tended to aim too low, striking the golden floor before her feet, and driving the dogs back rather than lighting them afire.

Prissy was astonished at her easy victory up until the moment when a gas canister landed at her feet. Not a thing from her era, she did not recognize it, and did not realize it was a threat, until she leaned over it, and was overcome by the first gush as it erupted. She sniffed curiously at the odd scent. Down she fell, but the barbs in her hair continued to move and sway, and puddles of fire burned to her left and right, and no one approached her.

Even though the dog things stayed well away from the black cloud, which was visible, an influence continued to spread from the fallen Prissy Pskov, which was not visible. The dogs in a moment had broken out in rashes and scabs, had fur falling in patches, and soon were running in circles, biting themselves and each other, howling madly. More than a score of dogs were affected by this in under a minute, and all fled away from that quarter of the chamber.

5. Warlock

At about this time, one of the dog things with a sharp nose, scenting something, poked with a pike between the wheels of the smaller sky-blue coffin, probing the undercarriage, and was rewarded with an exclamation of rage. Out from beneath the blue coffin came Mickey of Williamsburg, hands held high.

The triplets, Preceptors Ydmoy, Yndelf, and Yndech, left off firing their pistols at the balcony, and overcome with curiosity, turned to examine the rotund Witch-man. Their coat gems flickered briefly as they probed and communed.

Yndelf said, “Tune your pistols to the radio frequency of our mites; despite the radioactivity, we shall drive the signal through the interference and activate the paralytic mites in his nervous system.”

Three thin rays of laser energy, blindingly white, with invisible beams of radio frequencies heterodyned on them, flickered across the imposing form of the rotund Witch. He laughed, kicking his knees high in a jig, thumbs in the earpieces of his hat, then turned his back toward the Blue Men, bowing and slapping his wobbling buttocks cheeks with either palm.