Soorm said, “You show no fear to walk so nigh a Hormagaunt? I have both virulent pus and stench-cloud I can emit from several orifices, and beneath my hairs are needles I could stiffen into barbs.”

“It’s not that I am all that brave, it’s just that I figure we are all going to be killed by the Blue Men soon enough anyhow, so why worry? Besides, there aren’t that many people in the camp you can talk with. Who speaks Leech, but me?”

“Come, then. Let us walk up farther, and find a private place for private deeds. Your feet do not freeze, or bleed?”

Menelaus said, “My boots were stolen from my coffin while I slept. Made from the hide of a gator I shot myself, and I was damn proud of those boots! One of the Hospitaliers drew tattoos for me under the skin of my foot, with heating elements inside. Don’t tell my superiors, please. Chimerae have rules about bodily modifications.”

Soorm with his huge stride set a quick pace, and he dragged or drove an uncomplaining Menelaus to where a cliff clove the mountainside. Far underfoot between two converging rock walls, a rushing stream emerged, bubbling, from a doorway in the mountainside. The leaves of the door hung open at an odd angle, half torn from their hinges.

To either side of the doorway, a coffin stood upright, and glints of energy played through their metal surfaces. The waters in the stream swirled around the wreckage of several of the digging automata of the Blue Men. These formed a tangle of metal spiders and metal lobsters, and one treaded vehicle like a tortoise on its back. All were motionless in the white water, icicle streaked, pockmarked, broken, and burnt.

Soorm said. “Look down! I call this spot the Dying Place. The only approach is so narrow that the mechanisms have to come one or two at a time; even a small display of power from the Tomb defenses can hold them off. The Blue Men did not bother to scavenge their fallen.”

Menelaus said, “I know you can breathe water. Can you pass these defenses?”

Soorm tightened his arm, pulling the head of Menelaus closer into his musk-scenting armpit, and he caught the smaller man’s neck in the crook of his elbow. “No, I meant to show you a place where I can commit a murder, and no one would find your body.”

The man stirred uneasily, and this made the Hormagaunt snarl.

“Boo! You are pretending to be scared. Don’t bother! I can smell you are not afraid.” Soorm peered at the other carefully, first with one eye, then with the other, nostrils twitching. His muzzle whiskers close enough to tickle. “Altruism and Agape! Why are you fearless? What in the world is wrong with you!”

“It is a Chimera technique for controlling fear,” said Menelaus in little gasps. “All schoolboys learn it in boot camp.”

“I can also smell lies. That’s my technique! Quite useful.”

“Interesting … that so … useful … a technique … can fail.” His voice was little more than a squeak.

Soorm released the neck of Menelaus, but kept his arm around the other man, perhaps for warmth.

Menelaus massaged his throat. “You have odd swearwords.”

“Everyone swears by what he fears most.”

“You said you came to appreciate the benefit of altruism. When Asvid adopted you as a father. You still fear cooperative action?”

“Bah! We never overcome what is imprinted into us as eggs, or so Hormagaunt Moord taught me.”

“A dismal philosophy, but I suppose he learned it when he was young. In any case, I wanted to speak with you,” said Menelaus. “I think the Blue Men plan to kill us all, in order to hide the evidence of this dig. If they were legitimate, they would have their own translators and diggers, rather than have us do their work.”

“You are not going to ask me why I just threatened to spit flesh-eating acid in your face, twist off your head like a chicken, and throw your twitching body into the freezing rapids below?”

“Um. I assume you thought the Blue Men would not dare enter the West Crevasse to recover my body and determine the cause of death? As a stratagem, I see no obvious flaw.”

“No, I don’t mean the mechanics of the murder. I mean the motive.”

“I was not going to ask, no.”

“No?”

“I am Chimera. We kill each other all the time, and with reckless glee. I regard it as unexceptional behavior, no doubt caused by high spirits.”

“You are no Chimera. I suspect you are an agent of the Blue Men, a mole, a Judas goat.”

“Good! Then you will not take me seriously when I ask you to join an uprising against them. If we can get enough Thaws to join us, we can rush the gate and overbear the dog things before the cylinders kill too many of us.”

“Rush the gate for what purpose?”

“To win our liberty, and live no more as slaves.”

2. Counting Revenants

Soorm rocked back on his heels and turned his mismatched eyes up to the snowy sky. “Personally, I dismiss liberty as an abstract concept of only limited applicability. For who is free of history, or his own biological fate? No, I am much more eager to kill Blue Men, who have inflicted indignity on me, than I am to achieve liberty or sustain my life. Therefore I am eager to join with you, should your plans prove feasible. From the dead-line to the gate is at least forty yards, with no cover and no concealment. How many of us do you think the dog things could kill with distance weapons as we rushed them?”

“The Chimerae have time-tested formulae for deducing such casualty estimates, based on factors such as rates of fire, targets available per strike, targets hit per strike, wound severity, effective range, muzzle velocity, reliability, mobility, radius of action, and vulnerability.”

“How quaint and ghastly of you. We Hormagaunts are a horrid race, I freely confess it, but we killed one at a time, and never marched to war.”

“And we did not raise lobotomized children in crèches, and harvest glands and organs and living tissue from them for longevity treatments,” Menelaus said dryly.

“We indulged in the darkest of sciences, and won the greatest of rewards. And yet you seem nonchalant. You do not recoil?”

“Each period of history has its own peculiarities.”

“As you say. What does your quaint science of death estimation estimate?”

“The cylinders hold a single operator behind thick armor, a gun crew of three in the trench beyond. Each cylinder both can emit a defensive fan of radiant heat covering a forty-five-degree angle, and can shoot mixed slugs and grapeshot from a steam-powered machine gun muzzle. The technology was selected for its simplicity to assemble and maintain rather than its lethality: all you need is water and power and a machine shop. Each steamgun holds four hundred rounds of musketballs and has two minutes of effective fire. The heating elements can fire as long as cables leading to the powerhouse on the other side of the gate remain uncut. I estimate a firing pressure of four thousand pounds per square inch and a muzzle velocity four hundred and eighty cubits per second. Assuming the charge can cross the lethal zone in four and a half seconds—”

“I remind you I can drive my acid-coated tongue spike into your eyeball from up to three yards away.”

“You just want the sum number?”

“That would be nice, yes.”

“Charging the two cylinders across forty yards of open ground should result in forty to sixty effective casualties.”

“And how many men do we have so far in our uprising?”

“Including you?”

“Include me, yes.”

“Four.”

“So you are expecting a casualty rate … ah … somewhat approximately one thousand percent over and above our available troop strength.”

“I cannot fault your calculation.”

“Hm.”

“I hope to recruit more men, and also to find a way to arm ourselves. Can you speak to the men of your era?”

“I cannot merely speak but command,” Soorm said with a flick of his two tongues. “The other Hormagaunts, Crile scion Wept and Gload scion Ghollipog, are from later periods than mine, so I should be able to domineer them through our ancestor laws.”