“Jim. Yess.”
‘Warrior, the wall’s cracking over there. Pol Hald thinks there could be digging.”
The great head rotated, body shifted, directed toward the wall. “Human eyess . . . certain, Jim?”
“I can see it, Warrior. A crack in the shape of a tree, spreading and branching. It gets wider.”
Chelae brushed him; palps flicked over his cheek. “Good, good,” Warrior approved, and scuttled off. It sought and locked jaws with the next, and that one moved off into the house, while Warrior continued, touching jaws with each of the Warriors nearest, who spread in turn to pass the message further.
Jim slid back into position next Max and Pol. “It’s disturbed about it,” he panted. He shivered despite the warmth, suddenly realising that he was terrified. They had fought in the night; he had never fired his gun. Now at the prospect of their shelter breached by daylight he sat trembling.
“Easy,” Pol said, put out a thin hand and closed it on his leg until it hurt. The pain focused things. He looked at the Kontrin, suddenly aware of a vast silence, that the shrilling which had surrounded them had fallen away.
“You’re always with Morn,” Jim said hoarsely, for it did not make sense, the tapes with the behaviour of Pol Hald. “You’re out of his house. You wouldn’t go against him.”
“A long partnership.” The hand did not move, though it was gentler. “In the Family, such are rare.”
Treachery, what he had learned warned him. He stared at the Kontrin, paralysed by the touch he should never have allowed.
“Strange,” Pol said, “that at times you have even her look about you.”
The shrilling erupted again; and a portion of the garden sank away, gaping darkness aboil with earth and majat bodies. Blues sprang, engaged; shots streaked from azi weapons.
The wall went down, collapsed in a cloud of dust: through it came a horde of majat, azi among them.
Jim braced the gun and sighted, tried to pull the trigger. Beside him a body collapsed, limp.
It was Max. A shot had gone through his brain. Jim stared down at him, numb with horror.
The azi on the other side cried warning, sprawled back unconscious. Pol had Max’s rifle and whipped it from a backward blow at his guard to aim it up, putting shots into the majat horde, dropping azi and majat with no distinction.
Jim sighted amid them and pulled the trigger, firing into the oncoming mass, unsure what damage he did, his eyes blurred so that it was impossible to see anything clearly.
The sound swelled in his ears, a horrid chirring that ascended out of range. Majat poured from the house behind them, more Warriors than he had known were there. Majat swarmed from the pit before them and through the breached wall; and came on them like a living wave. Pol fired indiscriminately; he did; more came to replace the fallen, as a wider portion of the wall collapsed, exposing their flank.
“Move back!” Pol shouted at him. “Get your men back!” The Kontrin sprang up low and took a new position.
Jim shouted a half-coherent order and scrambled after, slid in at Pol’s side and started firing again.
Then eerie figures appeared among the majat, like majat in the mold of men, bearing each an insignia on the shoulder.
And one was among them that was clearly a man, in Hald Colour.
“Morn,” Pol said, and stopped firing.
Jim sighted for that target, missed; and fire came back, grazed his arm. Pol seized him, pulled him over as a lacery of fire cut overhead.
Majat voices boomed, and stone cracked. One of the portico pillars came down in the sudden rush of majat from the house, a sea of bodies; and among them ran naked majat-azi and azi in sunsuits brown with mud and blood.
Fire cut both ways. Majat and azi fell dying and were trampled by those behind. And one there was slighter than most, with black hair flying and a gun in a chitined fist. The azi by her died, rolled sprawling.
Jim fought to loose himself, flung himself over and saw Morn in the centre of the yard. Raen was blind to him. “Look out!” he screamed.