J.B. drove the chariot out of the plaza and along a boulevard by the bestial statues Ryan had glimpsed earlier. They were sphinxes, anthropomorphic creatures with the bodies of lions and the heads of noble-looking men. A great, rambling, multiterraced building loomed at the far end of the boulevard. It looked as if its walls were faced with marble and the fluted columns inlaid with gold. Ryan studied the broad steps leading up to a massive door of beaten bronze. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that Hell Eyes waited and watched from behind that heavy portal.
Aten was beautiful and exceptionally clean. All of the companions had difficulty believing that it was nothing more than a huge play set, constructed for predark entertainment purposes. Regardless of its origin, Aten possessed a heart and a soul, beating with a pulse of life, very strong and sensual.
J.B. found a side lane that paralleled the boulevard of sphinxes and he turned the chariot down it. Braking to a slow halt, he said, “This is too weird. We don’t belong here, certainly not in one of their wags. Nobody’s paying any attention to us. Like we’re invisible…or ghosts.”
“I’m not going to complain,” Mildred said.
“They’re playing some kind of game with us,” Ryan stated. “Pretending we’re not here.”
Doc quirked an eyebrow. “What would be its point?”
“To disorient us,” the one-eyed man answered. “Confuse us, throw us off balance. Make us doubt.”
Doc pursed his lips contemplatively. “If that is so, the cooperation on the part of Aten’s citizens is truly extraordinary—and an unsettling example of Pharaoh’s hold over them.”
Ryan looked toward the top of the terraced building, pondering the tactical wisdom of simply banging on the bronze door and demanding an audience. He quickly dismissed the idea. Without an ace-on-the-line to play, such a brazen confrontation had too many possible outcomes—all of them gloomy.
Krysty suddenly stiffened, her long tresses lifting as if riding a wind. She raised her fists to her temples, and her lips worked. “J.B.!” she shrilled. “Get us out of here!”
The Armorer’s reflexes were lightning swift. The chariot lunged forward with a whine. He steered it down another side lane that ran at right angles along one wall. He followed it until they emerged back at the marketplace, at its inner end. Only now it was a marketplace without merchants and shoppers. It was completely deserted.
“Now what?” J.B. growled, looking this way and that. He saw the gate, and the heavy barricade of painted wood spanning its length.
“Now they’re paying attention to us,” Doc said grimly.
From behind them came the quick scuff and scutter of many running feet. Men wearing the heads of animals efficiently fanned out in a ring around the chariot, sunlight glinting from the pronged shafts gripped in their dusky hands. The companions saw duplicates of the helmets worn by the Incarnates in Fort Fubar, but new ones, as well—a hippopotamus, a crocodile, a donkey, even an insect.
Between clenched teeth, J.B. warned, “Hang on.”
He manipulated the chariot’s controls, and it spun on one wheel in a complete circle, revolving as if on an axis. As it rotated, the Uzi fairly leaped into his hand, and flame and noise lipped from the short barrel. He played the stream of 9 mm rounds over the encircling Incarnates like water from a high-pressure hose.
The first half-dozen bullets sewed bloody little dots across the broad chests of three Incarnates, smashing them backward into screaming, tangle-footed sprawls.
In the same instant as the Uzi began its deadly stutter, Ryan and Jak leaped from the pirouetting chariot, rolling with the momentum, hitting the flag-stoned ground with their blasters out and working.
Light flared from the tip of a metauh rod just as Ryan went into a sideways lunge. He felt a pins-and-needles tingle on the top of his left shoulder. He didn’t know from which Incarnate the energy bolt had come, so he shot the nearest, a triburst that drilled Anubis’s twin in the midsection. The triple impacts swatted him double, slapping him off his feet.
Jak’s Colt Python boomed, and the heavy .357-caliber slug broke a crocodile head and the human skull supporting it. Blood gushed down the Incarnate’s face as he flailed over backward, arms windmilling.