War in Heaven (39 page)

But his tinker's mindless little robots did their work well; they touched nothing except this outer wall of the chapter house. And even this expanse of foot-thick stone blocks they did not tear down altogether, but left standing in the semblance of a wall. Any godling who chanced to look towards Danlo's cell would have been unaware that the stonework there was as porous as a sponge and as soft as chalk. Danlo himself was unaware of this — until he felt the bomb explode outside and the air ring with the sound of it. Men in facemasks and furs came for him then. They used steel shovels to tear apart the wall of his cell as if bashing their way into a snowhut. One moment Danlo stood before his bed, holding the flint spearpoint in his hand and staring at the wall; and the next moment the wall caved inwards in a shower of rotten stone, dust and wind-driven snow. A blast of bitterly cold air stung Danlo's face and rattled the white feather that he wore in his hair. Through the hole where the wall had been came the sudden brilliance of white snow and the shimmering, blue sky. One of the men with shovels quickly regarded Danlo through a pair of dark snow goggles; he might have been looking at a child who didn't realize that his old world had just been shattered for ever and a new life lay before him.

"Danlo wi Soli Ringess, you know me, don't you?" With a crunch of crumbling stone beneath his boots, the man stepped into the cell. He ripped the mask from his face then, and Danlo saw that it was Tobias Urit, with his red beard and his red, robust demeanour. Once, they had drunk the sacred kalla together in dreams of the future and in innocent fellowship. Once, Tobias had been a gentle man. But now he was the first and fiercest of Benjamin's ringkeepers. "Benjamin Hur has sent us, so you must please hurry."

Four other men dressed like Tobias crowded around the opening in the wall. They had all dropped their shovels, brandishing instead other weapons in their place. Two held bullet-guns in their gloved hands, and two more aimed lasers towards the street. The two with the bullet-guns rushed through the cell and positioned themselves by the door should Danlo's guard be foolish enough to open it.

"Please hurry — we won't have long before they come," Tobias repeated. He held up Danlo's sable fur so that Danlo could thrust his arms into it.

Although Danlo had need of great speed, he paused a moment to gather up a few of his things. He stowed his bamboo flute in one of the leg pockets of his kamelaika; the diamond sphere, carving tools, spear point and broken chess piece he dropped into his other pocket. He moved to sweep up the devotionary computer, but Tobias quickly told him to leave it behind, that the boxlike machine would impede his escape. And so reluctantly, Danlo left it where it sat, on the chess table.

"I will return for you," Danlo told the Ede imago. "As soon as I can, I will return and help you recover your body."

"It's all right," Ede said. "I can wait a hundred years — or a thousand. Goodbye for now, Danlo wi Soli Ringess."

Danlo quickly bowed his head to him, and then paused another moment to tell Tobias something.

"You know me, Tobias," he said. He looked at the two masked ringkeepers waiting by the door for the warrior-poet to enter. "You mustn't harm or kill anyone for my sake. I ... will not allow it. I will die instead."

Tobias' eyes hooded over with a dark anger, but he reluctantly made a grunting noise that sounded as if he had given his assent. Then he led Danlo outside into the brilliant sun. Too many days spent in the semi-darkness of his cell had weakened Danlo's eyes; the fierce white light almost blinded him. The fiery pain of it would have been bad enough on its own, but with the ekkana still tormenting his nerves, he wanted to scream like a sleekit suddenly flayed and dropped on to a hot grill. Fortunately, Tobias had thought to bring a spare pair of goggles (and a face-mask), and these Danlo pulled over his head as quickly as he could. After a few moments of their rush through the newly fallen snow, halfway across the cathedral's grounds, Danlo found that he could see again — but he almost wished that he couldn't. Towards the end of the block where the cathedral rose up like a lovely granite mountain, the street and part of the grounds had been blown open in the bomb's blast. Neither sleds nor godlings could easily pass by this steaming crater. A few who had tried lay dead in the snow, the victim of four more of Tobias Urit's ringkeepers. Obviously they had used their bullet-guns to kill them: Danlo had never before seen the effects of these terrible weapons, and he marvelled at the great gouts of flesh that the lead bullets had torn from their bodies. The beautiful snow with its billions of sparkling crystals was spattered with blood and in many places had been reduced to a red slush. Danlo almost abandoned his escape, then; he almost walked back towards the cathedral to await the certain attack of Jaroslav Bulba and the cadres of godlings with lasers and bullet-guns of their own. But Tobias Urit and his ringkeepers would surely try to defend him, and many more men and women might die.

"Quickly now," Tobias said, pulling the sleeve of Danlo's furs and leading him towards the street. He glanced at the bodies sprawled about the bomb crater and said, "I'm sorry about them, but if we're to avoid killing anyone else, we must hurry."

For a moment, Danlo hesitated. He dug his feet into the snow like an embattled shagshay bull and looked at Tobias. And then he looked up at the houses and apartments opposite the cathedral. Although the street itself was nearly deserted, foolish men stood by open windows to see how Danlo's escape might unfold. A random bullet or beam of laser fire might easily find their too-curious faces. A few children looked out of these windows as well; as Danlo's gaze fell upon the bright, black eyes of a young boy standing on a balcony, he finally decided to flee this street of death as quickly as he could.

"No one else," Danlo told Tobias. "You must promise me this, yes?"

At that moment, golden-robed men armed with bullet-guns began to pour from the cathedral's western portal.

"I promise this, then," Tobias spat out. "Now please hurry."

And so Danlo followed Tobias to a big, red sled waiting on the street. Another of Tobias' ringkeepers piloted the sled; a third got in by Danlo's left side, and Tobias on his right. With the smells of sweat and blood and fear thick in the air, the pilot ignited the sled's rockets and it thundered into motion down the icy red street.

They almost broke free from the district around the cathedral without incident. The sled roared down the wide glidderies almost heedless of the skaters who were quick to jump out of their way. The bitter wind ripped at Danlo's facemask and sent particles of spindrift shattering against his goggles. Within seconds they neared the great green glissade that divided the Old City in two. Only a few of the district's glidderies debouched on to this thoroughfare. Tobias had obviously arranged which one they must take, for near the Cemetery, the sled's pilot made a sharp, slicing turn across the red ice and steered his way on to a little street lined with three-storey apartments. Danlo remembered this street well from his nightly forays as a journeyman: it crossed the Old City Glissade and led into a maze of lesser streets surrounding the Fravashi Green. In one place, half a block before the intersection, the street narrowed to scarcely more than an icy ramp ten feet wide.

"Get out of the way!" the sled's pilot yelled at the skaters in front of him. He waved his hand in front of his face as if shooing away a cloud of furflies. "Get out of the way!"

But he had to let the sled slow almost to a crawl lest he smash into an astrier woman dressed in rich brown furs and a pair of young godlings perhaps on their way to the afternoon remembrance at the cathedral. These three women — and others — reluctantly edged to the side of the street to allow the sled to pass. But there were those who weren't so quick to move. Three other godlings, sporting their eye-catching golden furs, stood on the ice down the street blocking their way. They sported bullet-guns, as well. They pointed these guns straight ahead as they waited for the sled to approach.

"Run them down!" the ringkeeper sitting on Danlo's left shouted to the pilot. "Run the murderers down!"

One of the godlings fired his gun, then, and a bullet exploded through the air and smashed into the sled's windscreen. A spiderweb fracture spread across the curving clary pane, but the plastic was too tough to shatter altogether.

"No!" Danlo shouted back. "We can just leave the sled and skate away."

But at this naive suggestion, Tobias sat shaking his head "They'd shoot us in the back. Or we'd be trapped on another street — Hanuman must have already emptied the cathedral of his guards. No, we'll have to keep to our plan."

"No, I will not allow it."

"Run them down," Tobias called out to the pilot.

"No, no ... "

"Run them down he yelled as he pulled out a gleaming laser from inside his furs.
now
!"

"No!" Danlo screamed as the sled suddenly rocketed forwards.

Many things happened almost all at once. One of the godlings fired his gun again, and a bullet blew out a piece of the windscreen. This plastic shard flew back through the sled and cut through the facemask of the ringkeeper sitting on Danlo's left. He cried out like child, immediately clasping his hand to the ragged, bloody wound. And Tobias leaned his heavy body over the side of the sled to get a better angle of fire. As he did this, Danlo lunged against him. In truth, he fairly flew out of the sled in his rage to get at the laser. He almost caught this murderous shining thing with his hand even as Tobias fired upon the three godlings. The laser beam instantly burned through Danlo's glove across the back of his hand. The smells of charred leather and cauterized skin flew out into the air. Danlo cried out in agony then, even as the ringkeeper on his left — Kantu Mamod — recovered his will, grabbed Danlo by his furs and wrestled him back to his seat in the sled. And all the while the sled shot forwards, a great red bullet of plastic streaking down the red ice of the street. Other smaller bullets flew in the opposite direction. They finally blew out the windscreen of the sled. One of the bullets nipped off a piece of Tobias Urit's left ear, but he seemed not to notice this slight wound. After somehow managing to get his laser targeted again, he almost instantly killed two of the godlings blocking their way. The third one, a young woman dressed only in a sleek gold kamelaika, stood dumbly holding her wounded breast as if she couldn't quite believe that the effects of a laser on human flesh were as terrible and real as she had been told. "Get out of the way!" the sled's driver shouted yet again. But it seemed that she couldn't move, and so the rocketing sled slammed into her belly, throwing her into the air like a child's doll. Danlo, still struggling, would always remember the sickening thud and crunch of breaking bones. Just as her face froze with shock and terror, he touched eyes with this woman, touched the last light of her soul. And then her body hit the hard ice with a slap and a crack, and the sled broke free of the cathedral district. In moments, they crossed the Old City Glissade and lost themselves in the snakes' nest of streets that lay beyond.

To any skater who passed by them, they must have posed a frightful sight: two large men with their bloody white facemasks and the frantic pilot trying to steer his windowless sled. And Danlo, held as prisoner in the rear seat, his mask hanging loose and his face dark and full of wrath. If Danlo hadn't vowed never to harm another human being, he might have ripped the laser from Tobias Urit's hand and used it to club his head. He sensed that he had the strength to do this. As his heart beat like a pulsing star and his blood swelled his limbs with liquid fire, he felt that he could break free from the ringkeeper's grasping hands and rise up to destroy both men. He could wait for the pilot to slow the sled around a corner of some narrow street before jumping out on to the ice and skating away. So badly did he want to do this murderous thing that his eyes blazed with a bright and terrible will. His vow of ahimsa
required
him to escape from these men who had killed on his behalf. And yet it also required him not to harm them, even in escaping. As he tasted blood in his mouth from where an elbow had split open his lip, he remembered that it would be better for him to die than ever to harm another.

"Damn you, Danlo wi Soli Ringess!" As the sled turned along the purple gliddery at the northern edge of the Fravashi Green, Tobias Urit pressed his palm to his bleeding ear and cursed. "Damn you — you almost made me dead!"

"You ... promised," Danlo whispered into the wind. But he enunciated these words with so great a fire that Tobias heard him clearly.

"Well, I had to break my promise — otherwise we'd all be dead."

Never killing, never harming another
, Danlo remembered.
It is better to die oneself than to kill.

He closed his eyes against the glare of the icy street, and he recalled the face of the young woman run down by their sled. He recalled other faces, too, lovely women and men and children who had died during this short life of his that seemed suddenly much too long. He wanted to die then, too. Ahimsa required him to die — or else others might be run down or burnt by laser fire just so he might live. And yet he couldn't simply kill himself, couldn't wrest the laser from Tobias Urit's hand and burn out his own anguished, beautiful brain. The essence of ahimsa was that all beings must honour the life of every other being, even their own.

How can I die without dishonouring my life? How can I live without causing more death?

"Turn left at the next street," Tobias said to the sled's pilot. "And then an immediate right."

For a few moments, they slid down an almost-deserted street, and the pretty, old stone buildings flew by on either side of them. Tobias had pulled on a knitted wool cap which covered his mutilated ear while Kantu Mamod used his facemask to staunch the blood flowing from his wounded jaw. Danlo saw that Kantu's nose was bleeding, too. He remembered then knocking his head into Kantu's face by bad chance during their struggle.

"Damn you, Danlo wi Soli Ringess," Kantu Mamod said as he daubed the blood from his swollen nose. "I think you broke it."