Yet, for all this, neither was Daae the most excellent of his race, being past his prime and from what, by Chimera standards, counted as a peaceful era.

It was Yuen, the young pantherish Chimera, who shined with battle fury beyond description in that hour. He was as an acrobat, his every move and block and thrust a work of art. He threw himself bodily into the air, sailing over the head of the nearest dog thing as it stooped to thrust, landing at its back to grapple its neck, and then Yuen turned, pulling the beast into the line of the stroke of the dog thing behind it, who had also lunged with its bayonet. The one dog thing impaled its packmate while Yuen, in the same split second of time, caved in the canine skull with a blow from Arroglint, the metal whip being stiffened at that moment into a quarterstaff.

The next moment, Arroglint was as a spear of fire: with it, Yuen began killing dogs and Blue Men, one after another, with dainty mechanical precision. He would wait for his opponent to lunge with bayonet, parry the barrel of the musket with his weapon, and down the foe with a quick thrust to the neck, or head; for the smartmetal tip had formed a blade, and the smartmetal neck would telescope outward like a bright finger, swift as the stinger of a wasp, and the blade-metal emitted infrared hot enough to cook whatever it touched.

Dogs with ax and fang, dagger and claw, and snickersnee came pelting in, howling in rage, lunging for Yuen. The dogs cried out, “Him! He is but one man! Us! We are many! Kill, kill and slay!” But Arroglint was suddenly the tentacle of an octopus of steel, writhing and binding any limbs that ventured too close. An electric charge in the whip-metal stiffened the muscles of the trapped dogs, who trembled in agony without motion for an artistic moment while Yuen paused as if to admire the effect of the sinuous cursive curls; then the whip loops snapped closed, and amputated limbs jumped in the air like festive hats tossed at a celebration, if the hats trailed long red wet scarves.

Yuen danced over the still-living bodies of the armless and legless foes, crushing necks and groins beneath his feet, hearing their screams and cries and whimpers, and he closed with the next line of dogs, spinning his weapon like a circle of fire.

When he parried blades of steel, electricity jumped from his staff, shocking them motionless; and in that motionless moment, Arroglint became a flail or truncheon or lasso or bill or mattock or poleax or lance, and crushed or bludgeoned or strangled or stabbed or hewed or cleaved or pierced.

There were some he neither electrocuted nor lit their fur afire, and these he more mercifully dispatched with a blow from his elbow or knee or the side of whichever hand was not whirling his weapon at that moment. And one, a dog in the act of fleeing, he killed with an elegant aerial kick which he executed by using Arroglint as a pole-vaulter’s pole: at that point, the inequality of prowess had become clear, so he was merely showing off.

The automata gave him less trouble than the dog things, since he could drive his telescoping lance neatly through the open gridwork of their bodies, and impale their brainboxes and blow out all their circuits with electric jolts.

Yndelf had the misfortune of riding one of these mechanisms, and Yuen broke Yndelf’s neck with one hand, and held the little man before him like a shield when Naar sent two machine gun–bearing automata stalking toward him. Naar was evidently willing to let the ceiling guns blast one automaton or two in return for stopping the deadly young Chimera from the most warlike period of Chimera history.

The safety circuits in the automata would not allow it to shoot at the dead Yndelf, whose coat gems were still active. So Yuen and the gun-bearing automata began an odd dancing race of cycles and epicycles, as the automata attempted to take Yuen in the flank or rear to find a shot not blocked by the dead man’s coat, and Yuen, laughing in anger, turned and turned again, making his way across the floor back to the damaged atomic pile.

As it turned out, some other safety circuit, or perhaps interference to their electronics caused by the high radiation count, prevented the automata from firing at the broken sphere of gold, and Yuen struck again and again with the telescoping length of his electrified weapon, poking out cameras and controls, electronic eyes and mechanical brains, until the automata stood still and blind and useless, emitting the plaintive horn-hoots that called in vain for maintenance crews.

Yuen strode forth, kicked an automaton in the arm so that its machine guns pointed back toward the largest cluster of Blue Men, inserted his whip-head into the control socket, danced back into the alcove, and triggered the automaton. A hail of bullets killed a number of Blue Men before the ceiling weapons blasted the automaton into parts, but ignored Yuen. Then Yuen sauntered out, tilted the next armed automaton to point its cannons at the puzzled and woebegone Blues, plugged in his whip, skipped backward, and fired again.

Meanwhile, from halfway across the chamber, Invigilator Saaev, riding an automaton that was throwing canisters of black gas among the Witches, looked upward warily, but the ceiling guns had not been commanded to react to his form of attack. Various heavy guns in the upper walls twitched, but none of them fired at the automata distributing nonlethal gas.

Saaev turned and had his automaton pelt Yuen with one gas canister after another. The western alcove filled with opaque black clouds.

7

Darwin’s Circus

1. Linderlings

At the same time these events were beginning to unfold elsewhere in the great golden chamber, Keir and Keirthlin were being held at bayonet point in the corner near the statue of the Grim Reaper. With them were Alalloel, Ctesibius, and Rada Lwa.

When Bashan the Giant started his charge, the twenty dog things on guard duty there broke into three packs, with six dogs remaining there and fourteen rushing toward the oncoming Giant, breaking into two wings of seven, going left and right in hopes of taking Bashan from the side or rear.

The six guard dogs, of course, all turned at the grotesque and horrific noise of breaking bones and squishing meat when the Giant kicked aside and trampled their packmates. Bashan’s legs up to the knees were splattered with the blood of his victims, and the great long staff in his hand was stained and dripping, for he used it to crush or knock aside any of the dogs before him who raised a musket in his direction. Such was the inhumanly supreme intelligence that glittered in those vast and yellow eyes—and the orb of either eye was the size of a basketball, able to gather immensities of light, unconfused by smoke or gloom—that even with the slowness the size of his huge arms forced on his motions, he was able to extrapolate, anticipate, and predict which dog was next ready to aim, and he lashed out with the great long beam of his walking stick before a trigger could be pulled. Bashan waded as if through a crowd of children no taller than his thighs, running as if on a carpet of crimson. But it was a wrinkled carpet, for many of the corpses were burst and scattered, and entrails and organs lay strewn underfoot, like the floor of an unclean butcher’s shop.

The noise of the screams and roars and cries, the smell of the carnage, was almost worse than the hellish vision of it. Keir the Linderling shouted in alarm, seeing such shocking violence before him, and brought up his hands to hide his eyes.

His shout startled the guard dog who stood staring in awe at the Giant. The dog’s musket was leveled at Keir’s throat, and the sudden motion of the man’s hands jarred the musket barrel. The weapon went off, and the shot shattered Keir’s jaw into two pieces and passed through the roof of his mouth. The musketball ignited inside his head, and then passed upward and took off the top of his skull. The fiery ball lodged in the wall behind, and hung like a star of sulfur, blazing.