Kurt ran him through, ignoring the man who was thrusting a pike at his own side. The hot edge of metal raked his back and he fell, rolled for protection. The Sufaki above him was aiming the next thrust for his heart. Desperately he parried with his blade crosswise and deflected the point up—the iron head raked his shoulder and grated on the stone floor.
In the next instant the Sufaki went down with Isthain through his ribs, and Kta paused amid the rush to give Kurt his hand and help him up.
“Get back to safety,” Kta advised him.
“I am all right,—
No!
” he cried as he saw the Indras preparing to topple the live gun to the flooring. He staggered to the weapon that still hummed with readiness and swung it to where the Indras were pressing forward against the next barred doorway, trying vainly to batter it with shoulders and blades. Behind him the shattered wall and dust and chips of stone sifting down from the ceiling warned how close the area was to collapse. There was need of caution. He controlled the mishandled weapon to a tighter, less powerful beam.
“Have a care,” Kta said. “I do not trust that thing.”
“Clear your men back,” said Kurt, and Kta shouted at them. When they realized what he was about, they scrambled to obey.
The doorway dissolved, the edges of the blasted wood charred and blackened, and Kurt powered down while the Indras surged forward again and opened the ruined doors.
The inner Afen stood open to them now, the lower halls vacant of defenders. For a moment there was silence. There were the stairs leading up to the Methi’s apartments, to the human section, which other weapons would guard.
“She has given her weapons to the Sufaki,” Kurt said. “There is no knowing what the situation is up there. We have to take the upper level. Help me. We need this weapon.”
“Here,” said Ben t’Irain, a heavyset man who was housefriend to Elas. He took the thing on his broad shoulder and gestured for one of his cousins to take its base as Kurt kicked the tripod and collapsed it.
“If we meet trouble,” Kurt told him, “drop to your knee and hold this end straight toward the target. Leave the rest to me.”
“I understand,” said the man calmly, which was bravery for a nemet, much as they hated machines. Kurt gave the man a nod of respect and motioned the men to try the stairway.
They went quickly and carefully now, ready for ambush at any turn. Kurt privately feared a mine, but that was something he did not tell them: they had no other way.
The door at the top of the stairs was closed, as Kurt had known it must be; and with Ben to steady the gun, he blasted the wood to cinders, etching the outline of the stone arch on the wall across the hall. The weapon started to gather power again, beginning that sinister whine, and Kurt let it, dangerous as it was to move it when charged: it had to be ready.
They entered the hall leading to the human section of the Afen. There remained only the door of Djan’s apartments.
Kurt held up a hand signaling caution, for there must be opposition here as nowhere else.
He waited. Kta caught his eye and looked impatient, out of breath as he was.
With Djan to reckon with, underestimation could be fatal to all of them. “Ben,” he said, “this may be worth your life and mine.”
“What will you?” Ben t’Irain asked him calmly enough, though he was panting from the exertion of the climb. Kurt nodded toward the door.
T’Irain went with him and took up position, kneeling. Kurt threw the beam dead center, fired.
The door ceased to exist, and in the reeking opening was framed a heap of twisted metal, the shapes of two men in pale silhouette against the cindered wall beyond, where their bodies and the gun they had manned had absorbed the energy.
A movement to the right drew Kurt’s attention. There was a burst of light as he turned and Ben t’Irain gasped in pain and collapsed beneath the gun.
T’Tefur. The Sufaki swung the pistol left at Kurt and Kurt dropped, the beam raking the wall where he had been. In that instant two of the Indras rushed the Sufaki leader, one shot down, and Kta, the other one, grazed by the bolt.
Kta vaulted the table between them and Isthain swept in an invisible downstroke that cleaved the Sufaki’s skull. The pistol discharged undirected and Kta staggered, raked across the leg as t’Tefur’s dying hands caught at him and missed. Then Kta pulled himself erect and leaned on Isthain as he turned and looked back at the others.
Kurt edged over to the whining gun and shut it down, then touched t’Irain’s neck to find that there was no heartbeat. T’Tefur’s first shot had been true.
He gathered his shaking limbs under him and rose, leaning on the charred doorframe; the heat made him jerk back, and he staggered over to join Kta, past Ian t’Ilev’s sprawled body, for he was the other man t’Tefur had shot down before dying.
Kta had not moved. He still stood by t’Tefur, both his hands on Isthain’s pommel. Then Kurt bent down and took the gun from Shan t’Tefur’s dead fingers, with no sense of triumph in the action, no satisfaction in the name of Mim or the other dead the man had sent before him.
It was a way of life they had killed, the last of a great house. He had died well. The Indras themselves were silent, Kta most of all.
A small silken form burst from cover behind the couch and fled for the open door. T’Ranek stopped her, swept her struggling off her feet and set her down again.
“It is the
chan
of the Methi,” said Kta, for it was indeed the girl Pai t’Erefe, Sufaki, Djan’s companion. Released, she fell sobbing to her knees, a small, and shaken figure in that gathering of warlike men: but she was also of the Afen, so when she had made the necessary obeisance to her conquerors, she sat back with her little back stiff and her head erect.
“Where is the Methi?” Kta asked her, and Pai set her lips and would not answer. One of the men reached down and gripped her arm cruelly.
“No,” Kurt asked of him, and dropped to one knee, fronting Pai. “Pai, Pai, speak quickly. There is a chance she may live if you tell me.”
Pai’s large eyes reckoned him, inside and out. “Do not harm her,” she pleaded.
“Where is she?”
“The temple—” When he rose she sprang to her feet, holding him, compelling his attention. “My lord, t’Tefur wanted her greater weapons. She would not give them. She refused him. My lord Kurt, my lord, do not kill her.”
“The
chan
is probably lying,” said t’Ranek, “to gain time for the Methi to prepare worse than this welcome.”
“I am not lying,” Pai sobbed, gripping Kurt’s arm shamelessly rather than be ignored. “Lord Kurt, you know her. I am not lying.”
“Come on.” Kurt took her by the arm and looked at the rest of them, at Kta most particularly, whose face was pale and drawn with the shock of his wound. “Hold here,” he told Kta. “I am going to the temple.”
“It is suicide,” said Kta. “Kurt, you cannot enter there. Even we dare not come after her there, no Indras—”
“Pai is Sufaki and I am human,” said Kurt, “and no worse pollution there than Djan herself. Hold the Afen. You have won, if only you do not throw it away now.”
“Then take men with you,” Kta pleaded with him, and when he ignored the plea: “Kurt, Elas wants you back.”
“I will remember it.”
He hurried Pai with him, past t’Irain’s corpse at the door and down the hall to the inner stairs. He kept one hand on her arm and held the pistol in the other, forcing the
chan
along at a breathless pace.
Pai sobbed, pattering along with small resisting steps, tripping in her skirts on the stairs, though she tried to hold them with her free hand. He shook her as they came to the landing, not caring that he hurt.
“If they reach her first,” he said, “they will kill her, Pai. As you love her, move.”
And after that, Pai’s slippered feet hurried with more sureness, and she had swallowed down her tears, for the brave little
chan
had not needed to trip so often. She hurried now under her own power.
They came into the main hall, through the rest of the Indras, and men stared, but they did not challenge him; everyone knew Elas’ human. Pai stared about her with fear-mad eyes, but he hastened her through, beneath the threatening ceiling at the main gate and to the outside, past the carnage that littered the entrance. Pai gave a startled gasp and stopped. He drew her past quickly, not much blaming the girl.
The night wind touched them, cold and clean after the stench of burning flesh in the Afen. Across the floodlit courtyard rose the dark side of Haichema-tleke, and beneath it the wall and the small gate that led out into the temple courtyard.
They raced across the lighted area, fearful of some last archer, and reached the gate out of breath.
“You,” Kurt told Pai, “had better be telling the truth.”
“I am,” said Pai, and her large eyes widened, fixed over his shoulder. “Lord! Someone comes!”
“Come,” he said, and, blasting the lock, shouldered the heavy gate open. “Hurry.”
The temple doors stood ajar, far up the steps past the three triangular pylons. The golden light of Nephane’s hearthfire threw light over all the square and hazed the sky above the roof-opening.
Kurt drew a deep breath and raced upward, dragging Pai with him, she stumbling now from exhaustion. He put his arm about her and half-carried her, for he would not leave her alone to face whatever pursued them. Behind them he could hear shouting rise anew from the main gate, renewed resistance—cheers for victory—he did not pause to know.
Within, the great hearthfire came in view, roaring up from its circular pit to the
gelos,
the aperture in the ceiling, the smoke boiling darkly up toward the black stones.
Kurt kept his grip on Pai and entered cautiously, keeping near the wall, edging his way around it, surveying all the shadowed recesses. The fire’s burning drowned his own footsteps and its glare hid whatever might lie directly across it. The first he might know of Djan’s presence could be a darting bolt of fire deadlier than the fire that burned for Phan.
“Human.”
Pai shrieked even as he whirled, throwing her aside, and he held his finger still on the trigger. The aged priest, the one who had so nearly consigned him to die, stood in a side hall, staff in hand, and behind him appeared other priests.
Kurt backed away uneasily, darted a nervous glance further left, right again toward the fire.
“Kurt,” said Djan’s voice from the shadows at his far right.
He turned slowly, knowing she would be armed.
She waited, her coppery hair bright in the shadows, bright as the bronze of the helmeted men who waited behind her; and the weapon he had expected was in her hand. She wore her own uniform now, that he had never seen her wear, green that shimmered with synthetic unreality in this time and place.
“I knew,” she said, “when you ran, that you would be back.”
He cast the gun to the ground, demonstrating both hands empty. “I’ll get you out. It’s too late to save anything, Djan. Give up. Come with me.”
“What, have you forgiven, and has Elas? They sent you here because they won’t come here. They fear this place. And Pai, for shame, Pai,—”
“Methi,” wailed Pai, who had fallen on her face in misery, “Methi, I am sorry.”
“I do not blame you. I have expected him for days.” She spoke now in Nechai. “And Shan t’Tefur?”
“He is dead,” said Kurt.
There was no grief, only a slight flicker of the eyes. “I could no longer reason with him. He saw things that could not exist, that never had existed. So others found their own solutions, they tell me. They say the Families have gone over to Ylith of Indresul.”
“To save their city.”
“And will it?”
“I think it has a chance at least.”
“I thought,” she said, “of making them listen. I had the firepower to do it—to show them where we came from.”
“I am thankful,” he said, “that you didn’t.”
“You made this attack calculating that I wouldn’t.”
“You know the object lesson would be pointless. And you have too keen a sense of responsibility to get these men killed defending you. I’ll help you get out, into the hills. There are people in the villages who would help you. You can make your peace with Ylith-methi later.”
She smiled sadly. “With a world between us, how did we manage to do it? Ylith will not let it rest. And neither will Kta t’Elas.”
“Let me help you.”
Djan moved the gun she had held steadily on him, killed the power with a pressure of her thumb. “Go,” she told her two companions. “Take Pai to safety.”
“Methi,” one protested. It was t’Senife. “We will not leave you with him.”
“Go,” she said, but when they would not, she simply held out her hand to Kurt and started with him to the door, the white-robed priests melting back before them to clear the way.
Then a shadow rose up before them.
T’Nethim.
A blade flashed. Kurt froze, foreseeing the move of Djan’s hand, whipping up the pistol. “Don’t!” he cried out to them both.
The
ypan
arced down.
A cry of outrage roared in his ears. He seized t’Nethim’s arm, thrown sprawling as the Sufaki guards went for the man. Blades lifted, fell almost simultaneously. T’Nethim sprawled down the steps, over the edge, leaving a dark trail behind him.
Kurt struggled to his knees, saw the awful ruin of Djan’s shoulder and knew, though she still breathed, that she was finished. His stomach knotted in panic. He thought that her eyes pitied him.
Then they lost the look of life, the firelight from the doorway flickering across their surface. When he gathered her up against him she was loose, lifeless.
“Let her go,” someone ordered.
He ignored the command, though it was in his mind that in the next moment a Sufak dagger could be through his back. He cradled Djan against him, aware of Pai sobbing nearby. He did not shed tears. They were stopped up in him, one with the terror that rested in his belly. He wished they would end it.