The other dog, who already had paws half wrapped around its beloved master, boldly swept up Naar off the stool and leaped headlong from the cage of the mechanism, twisting as it fell so that its body would strike the floor first, and cushion, if possible, Naar falling atop.

Naar was atop the dog on the floor now, his face set in an expression as one who endures annoying tedium. It was impossible to see if the blood on him was new or was from his previous wounds. He snapped his fingers, and the burning automaton flourished its drillshaft like a mighty spear and drove it forward.

The drill spun up to speed, a needle-pointed blur of spiral steel that screamed with the scream of a small girl; and down came the massive thrust as if to skewer Menelaus through the middle.

The tent material, at least in patches, stiffened into armor; the drillhead fortuitously struck one of these, and danced and skittered, whining and throwing up sparks. Menelaus put the muzzle of his pistol to the elbow joint of the digging machine and blew the drillshaft off, sending the broken drillhead spinning toward the ceiling.

A shocking pain cut into his leg. It was the remaining Dalmatian, crawling, rear legs broken, on its forepaws. It had reached beneath the hem of the armored cloak to the unprotected and shoeless feet of Menelaus, and driven the blade of a dirk deep into the man’s Achilles tendon, rendering the foot as useless as an oblong lump of meat. Blood was gushing rapidly enough to indicate a major vein was cut.

At the same time, several of the gems on Naar’s coat grew blindingly bright, and Montrose screamed, stumbling and hopping and slipping in the puddle of his own blood, because the fabric of his metallic robes began to emit heat, glowing red-hot around the seams. He was wrapped in a cast-iron stove. The pistols grew warm in his hands, and the glow of the dowels of ammo could be seen clearly through the white glass barrels, like seeing the incandescent filament in an old-fashioned lightbulb. The glow from the guns was so bright that it shined through his fists, and he could see red shadows of the bones of his hands.

Menelaus raised both pistols and sent the entire dowel of remaining metal in a continuous stream of gunfire down at point blank range toward Naar, whose coat contemptuously brushed it all aside. The Dalmatian stabbed at his other foot, neatly cutting off his big toe, and Menelaus fell in a heap, fold upon fold of red-hot metal pressing into his flesh, sizzling.

He ordered through his implants for the smartmetal to expand, but the heat was melting the control fibers, and even where the undamaged material could pull away from his skin, the air trapped between was superheated.

It was Mickey who saved him.

The sky-blue coffin came roaring out of a nearby cloud of black gas, bucking and swerving to dislodge two ambitious dog things, a Mastiff and a Pit Bull, clinging ferociously to the lid. The coffin accelerated and smashed into Naar’s automaton at full speed, empty machine guns clattering, spitting a few hiccoughs of napalm left and right. The burning automaton staggered, hopped, and fell toward Naar. The result was a toppled and magnificent crash of dogs and men and machines. But somehow Mickey got out of the toppled coffin before Naar or any dogs rose to feet or hindpaws. And then Mickey was peeling the hot metal robe off the peeling skin of Menelaus. Menelaus thanked his luck that he was wearing Rada Lwa’s undersuit beneath, or otherwise the metal would have seared and stuck to his flesh in more than just one or two places. As it was, patches of his skin were burnt so badly the nerves were dead. Menelaus clung dizzily to the thought that it was a type of damage his biosuspension nanotechnology was programmed to repair, if only he survived the battle and made it safely to his coffin.

Menelaus found the thought so funny, safely to his coffin, he giggled like a drunk.

Mickey said in Virginian, “How you feeling, little godling?”

“Which godling is in charge of the latrines in hell? Excremento the Stinknificent? I feel like him. You gotta get me to the throne yonder. I can stop the madness. Stop the room from swaying. Or is that just me?”

“Just you, godling.”

“Stop calling me that! Get me across the room.”

The automaton recovered first, jerking itself to its legs one awkward thrust of motion at a time. It swung its cameras around, clicking angrily.

Menelaus said, “Get behind me. It can’t see me.”

Naar was still on the ground, groaning. One of the dogs climbed from under the coffin, dragging its rear leg awkwardly behind, and, seeing Menelaus and Mickey, crawled forward on three paws, growling.

Mickey said, “No, you get behind me. I can deal with the dog,” and merely squatted down, put out an empty hand toward the maimed beast, and said in its own barking language, “Your master who loves you needs your help. See to his wounds. The door is locked and we cannot escape. See to him first.”

And the dog hesitated, drew its pistol, gritted its teeth, but then turned and crawled toward Naar, whimpering, and began to lick his face.

Menelaus was impressed. “You are a magician.”

While Mickey still knelt, the automaton focused a camera on him, swung a metal limb down, and Menelaus touched it with his finger as it swept past. The whole mechanism froze at that touch.

Mickey looked up at the mantis-armed two-ton digging mechanism, whirring and whining but unable to move. “Whereas everything you do is perfectly explainable, right?”

And Menelaus said, “I just jinxed it, that’s all. Help me up. We can ride across the battlefield.”

Mickey said, “Oh, no. There is an easier way.” And without waiting to debate it, he picked up the wounded Menelaus and flung him lightly over his shoulder—it seemed there was considerable muscle beneath the Warlock’s flabby exterior layers—and he jogged away from the throne.

“Wrong way,” grunted Menelaus. But then Mickey passed beneath the shadow of the Grim Reaper and was pounding up the curving stairs.

Not only was there no one and nothing on the balcony to block the path, there were both water ewers and medical unguents sealed in the cabinets all along this level, and five very pretty Nymphs, who cooed in alarm at seeing Menelaus hurt.

Mickey wanted to stop and balm the burns and bleeding slashes on the back and legs of Menelaus. “Godling, you are going to go into shock.”

Menelaus said only, “No time! Grab the stuff but get me the hell downstairs. There are gas masks behind that green emergency panel marked with the cave-in sign. There is still a cloud of sleepy-bye smog down there, not to mention whatever bugs and pests the Clades shed. Don’t stop walking!”

These gas masks were not the type Menelaus recalled from his horse soldier days, which were goggle-eyed and proboscis-dangling like the faces of fantastical bugs from a nightmare. Instead a clear bag of film merely fit over the head and tightened at the neck. It looked so exactly like the sort of plastic bag panic-haunted mothers warn their suicidal children not to play with that Menelaus flinched when it was thrust over his face.

But the substance was not plastic: it was a latticework of transparent molecular filters that absorbed oxygen and nitrogen on its outer surface, grabbing each atom with a nanotechnological lock-and-key system, rotating it to the inner surface, and releasing it.

The fabric turned red when agitated. Snatching a fold of the film between one’s teeth and chewing it gave the filter lines more Brownian energy, and increased the action speed, so that a tight bite brought a gush of cool air to his face. Cool, because the filter process slowed air molecule action. The bag Menelaus wore was also pine-scented, which Menelaus thought was the nanotech artist just showing off.

“Don’t touch the red spots!” Menelaus cautioned Mickey, who could not read the language in which the warning labels were printed. “They will strip the oxygen atoms out of the flesh of your hands and give you a nasty burn.”