Company were clambering up it, almost at the top, about seven meters above. Horza saw a flying figure weaving through
the air and
disappearing over the parapet. He started climbing. The clumsily large suit made it more difficult than it should
have been, but he got to the top
without falling and jumped down from the parapet onto a broad wall-walk. A similar moss-covered
wall sloped up to the next story. To Horza’s
right the wall turned a corner beneath a stubby tower; to his left the wall-walk
seemingly disappeared into a blank cross-wall. According to
Kraiklyn’s plan Horza was supposed to head along that way. There
ought to be a door there. Horza jogged along toward the blank wall.
A helmet bobbed up from the side of the sloped wall. Horza started to duck and swerve, just in case, but first an arm waved
from the same
place, then both helmet and arm appeared, and he recognized the woman Gow.
Horza threw back the visor on his helmet as he ran, getting a faceful of jungle-scented Marjoin air. He could hear some rattling
projectile fire
from inside the temple, and the distant thud of an exploding Microhowitzer round. He ran up to a narrow entrance
cut in the sloped wall, half
covered by streamers of mossy growth. Gow was kneeling, gun ready, on the splintered remains
of a heavy wooden door which had blocked
the passageway beyond. Horza knelt beside her and pointed at his helmet.
“My communicator’s out. What’s been happening."
Gow touched a button on her wrist, and her suit PA said, “OK so far. No hurts. They on towers." She pointed up. “Them no fly
go in. They
enemy got projectile guns only, them fall back." She nodded and kept glancing round through the doorway and into
the dark passageway
beyond. Horza nodded too. Gow tapped his arm. “I tell Kraiklyn you go in, yes."
“Yeah, tell him my communicator’s out, OK."
“Yeah, sure. Zallin same trouble had. You be safe, OK."
“Yeah, you be safe, too," Horza said. He stood up and entered the temple, scuffing over splinters of wood and fragments of
sandstone
scattered over the moss by the door’s demolition. The dark corridor branched three ways. He turned back to Gow and
pointed. “Center
corridor, correct."
The crouched figure, silhouetted against the light of the dawn, nodded and said, “Yeah, sure. Go middle."
Horza set off. The corridor was covered in moss. Every few meters dim yellow electric lights burned from the walls, casting
murky pools of
light which the dark moss seemed to absorb. Soft-walled, sponge-floored, the narrow passage made Horza shiver,
though it wasn’t cold. He
checked that his gun was ready to fire. He could hear no other sound apart from his own breathing.
He came to a T-junction in the corridor and took the right-hand branch. Some steps appeared and he ran up them, stumbling
once as his
feet tried to run out of his oversized boots; he put his hand out and jarred his arm on the step. Some moss came
off the step and he caught a
glimpse of something glinting underneath, in the dull yellow light cast by the wall lights. He
recovered his balance, shaking his jarred arm as he
continued up the steps and wondering why the temple’s builders had made
the steps out of what looked like glass. At the top of the steps he
went down a short corridor, then up another flight of
stairs, curving to the right and unlit. Considering its name, Horza thought, the temple was
remarkably dark. He came out onto
a small balcony.
The monk’s cloak was dark, the same color as the moss, and Horza didn’t see him until the pale face turned toward him, along
with the gun.
Horza threw himself to one side, against the wall to his left, and fired his gun from the hip at the same time. The monk’s
gun jerked upward
and let loose a fusillade of rapid fire at the ceiling as he collapsed. The shots echoed round the dark,
empty space beyond the small balcony.
Horza squatted by the wall, gun pointed at the dark, crumpled figure only a couple of
meters away. He raised his head and in the gloom saw
what was left of the monk’s face, then relaxed slightly. The man was
dead. Horza levered himself away from the wall and knelt by the balcony
balustrade. Now he could see a large hall in the dim
light of the few small globes which protruded from its roof. The balcony was about halfway
up and along one of the longer
walls, and, from what he could see, there was some sort of stage or altar at one end of the hall. The light was so
dim he
couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw shadowy figures on the floor of the hall, moving. He wondered if it was the Company
and tried to
recall seeing other doors or corridors on his way to the balcony; he was supposed to be down there, on that level,
on the floor of the hall. He
cursed his useless communicator and decided he would have to risk shouting down to the people
in the hall.
He leaned forward. Some shards of glass had fallen from the roof, where it had been hit by the monk’s gun, and his suited
knee crunched
on the debris. Before he could open his mouth to shout down into the hall, he heard noises from beneath—a high-pitched
voice speaking a
language of squeaks and clicks. He went still, said nothing. It might just have been Dorolow’s voice, he
supposed, but why would she talk in
anything other than Marain. The voice called again. He thought he heard another, but then
laser and projectile fire erupted briefly from the
opposite end of the hall from the altar. He ducked and in the lull heard
something click behind him.
He spun round, tightening his finger on the trigger, but there was nobody there. Instead, a small round thing, about the size
of a child’s
clenched fist, wobbled on the top of the balustrade and plonked down onto the moss about a meter away. He kicked
at it with his foot and dived
across the body of the dead monk.
The grenade detonated in midair, just under the balcony.
Horza jumped up while the echoes were still cracking back from the altar. He leapt into the doorway at the far end of the
balcony, putting out
one hand and grabbing the soft corner of the wall as he went past, spinning himself round as he fell
to his knees. He reached out and grabbed
the dead monk’s gun from the corpse’s slack grip, just as the balcony started to
come away from the wall with a glassy, grinding noise. Horza
shoved himself back into the corridor behind him. The balcony
tipped bodily away into the empty space of the hall in a dully glittering cloud of
fragments and fell with a great, shattering
crash onto the floor below, taking the shadowy form of the dead monk fluttering with it.
Horza saw more of the shapes scatter in the darkness beneath him, and fired down with the gun he had just acquired. Then he
turned and
looked down the corridor he was now in, wondering if there was some way down to the hall floor, or even back outside.
He checked the gun he
had taken; it looked better than his own. He crouched and ran away from the doorway looking over the
hall, putting his old rifle over his shoulder.
The dimly lit corridor curved right. Horza straightened gradually as he left
the doorway behind, and stopped worrying about grenades. Then it all
started to happen in the hall behind him.
The first thing he knew was that his shadow was being thrown in front of him, flickering and dancing on the curving wall of
the passage. Then
a cacophony of noise and a stuttering burst of blast waves rocked him on his feet and assaulted his ears.
He brought the helmet visor down
quickly and crouched again as he turned back toward the hall and the bright flashes of light.
Even through the helmet, he thought he could hear
screams mixed in with the gunfire and explosions. He ran back and threw
himself down where he had been before, lying looking out into the
hall.
He put his head down as fast as he could and used his elbows to lever himself back the instant he realized what was happening.
He wanted
to run, but he lay where he was, stuck the dead monk’s rifle round the corner of the doorway and sprayed fire in
the general direction of the altar
until the weapon stopped firing, keeping his helmet as far back from the doorway as possible,
visor turned away. When that gun stopped he
threw it away and used his own, until it jammed. He slid himself away after that,
and ran off down the corridor, away from the opening of the hall.
He didn’t doubt that the rest of the Company would be doing
the same thing, those that could.
What he had seen ought to have been incredible, but although he had looked only long enough for a single, hardly moving image
to form on
his retinas, he knew what he was seeing and what was happening. As he ran he tried to work out why the hell the
Temple of Light had been
laserproofed. When he came to a T-junction in the corridor he stopped.
He swung his rifle butt at the corner of the wall, through the moss; the metal connected, doubtless denting, but he felt something
else give
too. Using the weak light from the suit torch cells on either side of the visor, he looked at what lay underneath
the moss.