“Not all my weapons, you murdering bastard!”

And Montrose flung the pistol in his right hand spinning into the air almost to the ceiling so high above, reached into his cloak, brought out his rock, and let it fly with all the strength in his body at Ull, so that Montrose was bent double from the force of the throw, one hand at his knee, spine parallel with the floor, back leg in the air. “Magnetize this!”

Ull was standing only ten or twelve feet from him, and the noise of the stone breaking his skull, the sound of his neck snapping as the blunt object hit him, was audible even above the noise, shouts, and confusion in the chamber. His forehead caved in, and his eyes faced each other. He fell, and a pool of blood and brain matter spilled across the floor panels.

Montrose grinned like a gargoyle. “The oldest and simplest weapon of man is named Rock. Sometimes the simplest solutions are best.”

The dog things howled in grief and anger. Menelaus coolly squeezed off shots with the pistol in his left hand. The other pistol, glittering and spinning like some boomerang, fell out of the shadows of the roof overhead. He put out his right hand, caught it neatly, and used it to drill a snarling dog in midleap through the chest without bothering to turn his head to look.

Trey Azurine, giggling, danced toward the squad of dogs nearest her, flinging her trailing streamers toward their heads. A coal-black Border Collie shot her; the musketball did not explode, but she fell and crawled for comfort to the bulk of the dead Giant, and hid herself in the space between his huge upper arm and huge body. There in the warmth of his armpit, she lay curled in a ball, screaming and crying for her Azurine to make the pain go away.

5. Fire at Will

At that same moment of time a vast concussion shook the air. There was a burning and smoldering like a many-armed squid of flame writhing among the stalactite-shaped chandeliers. One chandelier fell with a colossal crash, looking like an aircraft that landed nose-first, and toppled like a felled tree. Another stalactite was hanging at an angle like a loose tooth in the mouth of a Cyclops.

Yndech was standing on the balcony, with two digging machines to either side of him balanced very precariously on the marble railing, their yellow metal limbs telescoped out to full length and jammed up into a pit in the ceiling where they had pulled the ceiling panels away, exposing belt-feed mechanisms and the ammunition magazines.

The balcony pillars were cracked, and that whole section of the balcony was tilting and was dripping dust and pebbles of marble. One of the automata was missing an arm, an arm that had been tipped with an oxyacetylene torch. It had merely used the flame to ignite a trigger charge of mercury fulminate, which had followed the belt feeds to every gun in the ceiling. But the damage to the automata did not look like the acetylene had been ignited. The severed end of an orange tube was dangling from its metal armpit. The large canister of propane was propped like an internal organ in a ribcage inside the tooling slots along the front hull.

The voice of Yndech rang through the half-darkened chamber, amplified: “Weapons free! Fire at will!”

There came whoops and barks of glee, and then, like stars here and there across the bloodstained chamber, incendiary musketballs flew. A great cry of panic and pain answered.

“Thanks a lot, Yndech,” Menelaus muttered. He aimed carefully and squeezed off a shot at Yndech, but either it did not land or else the Blue Man’s magnetics deflected the shot. Squinting narrowly, he sent a shot first into the propane tank of the damaged automaton, and then into a similar tank in the undamaged one. Then, just for good luck, he sent a shot or two into the open arsenal space, hoping to ignite any spare ordnance that had survived the first blast.

The resulting explosion was only partly satisfactory; but the damaged section of balcony, where Yndech was strutting and looking very satisfied with himself, leaned forward like an old man nodding his head, slid like an old man slipping as if on ice, and while Yndech screamed and clutched at nothing, gems blazing in a panic of colored light, the whole section surfboarded out into midair, and turned neatly over, so that Yndech was slammed into the golden floor with the marble slab atop him. And then, like an exclamation point ending a sentence, the two-ton automaton, arms windmilling, fell down atop the wreckage, followed, more slowly, by the second. Power couplings were yanked out of the wall behind the balcony, and more lights went dark in that quarter of the chamber.

Ctesibius was standing by himself near where the Giant had fallen. No one was attacking or even watching him. How he knew that Yndech had been the one to copy his mind and corrupt it, creating a mental twin brother who lived in agony for less than an hour before being killed, could not be guessed. But somehow he knew; for he clapped his hands together (lost in the noise of the fighting, it seemed strangely silent) and threw back his head and opened his mouth as if in silent laughter, the only smile Menelaus had ever seen on the grim face of Ctesibius; and Menelaus thought it was such a smile as empty-eyed devils might wear, bending over a well-oiled torture mechanism, and proud of their work in hell. And yet somehow Menelaus could not blame Ctesibius.

Menelaus looked out across the chamber. It was hard to see. Twilight hung over half the vault, and clouds of black smoke from peace-gas and white smoke from the gunpowder hung over everything, trapped beneath the roof.

The vast bulk of the corpse of Bashan was still warm and still giving forth a sea of blood, its huge back torn and pitted and smoldering as a barbecue smell rose above it. The sobs of Trey Azurine the Sylph rose up from there.

Beyond were scores and dozens of heaped dog things. Half the Blue Men were already dead. Wreckages of automata were here and there. And the column of water from the fountain blocked the far end of the room.

The waters from the fountain were interrupted at that moment by Sir Guiden, his strength-amplified powered gauntlets wrapped around an automaton, rolling and tumbling blindly through the middle of the fountainworks. The column of water fell, sprayed sideways, and then rose again as the armored body of Sir Guiden passed across the nozzles. During that moment, Menelaus had a dim view of the far end of the chamber. The throne was hidden by black smog and yellowish-green spore-haze, but he caught a gleam of four ghostly lines of vertical light reflecting through the intervening fog. He resolved the image in his mind and brought it into sharp focus: he saw the four pale wands holding up the canopy of the throne.

There they were. Right out in the open. All he had to do was cross the chamber and get to one.

“Sir Guy, can you hear me? There are four fully charged wands sitting out in the open next to the throne…” But the static drowned the signal.

Menelaus wrapped his limbs in his cloak, noting with dismay that where it had been melted and torn, the circuits were nonresponsive, the material in patches awkward and inflexible. But he had nothing else wherewith to protect himself, so he drew the cloak around him and made his way across the battlefield. Some of the dogs had reloaded by now, and the crack and smoke of musket fire filled his ears and nose.

6. Naar’s Reward

An automaton with clashing feet came suddenly out of a cloud bank to block his way. This one was taller and heavier than the others, and built more like an ape than a praying mantis: it was the one used for heavy demolition. A drillshaft like a lance was carried on the automaton’s shoulder, along with a bandolier of test charges. A heavy blast shield protected the operator cage.