T’ang had thought occasionally about the Moving Mountains. Were they intelligent? It seemed not. They moved about too much, with a great deal of wasted motion and energy. The city-builders were as active, but there was visible purpose behind everything they did. Not here.
Their great, mooning eyes were simple. None possessed a thousandth of the power of concentration T’ang could muster. He had seen them several times before, but they had not seen him. He feared only their clumsiness.
But today, with the sun dying near the horizon, it was to be different. Perhaps he still could have avoided them. Perhaps not. Each massed many million times his body weight. And although they could not move nearly as fast as T’ang, they had great reach. Still, it was their bulk that was most impressive.
T’ang never doubted the force of his mind. He would not run and scramble to avoid them! He’d picked his platform and he was going to stay there. If they wished a confrontation, so be it. He would not be the one to run and hide! He was T’ang Lang, the killer, emperor.
They saw him together, it seemed. In their ponder-
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ous, clumsy way they turned (so slow, thought T’ang, so slow!) and stared across at him. From his high platform, T’ang could return their stare eye to eye.
Those faces—monstrous, distorted, bloated things! Obscenities beyond imagining! T’ang did not flinch at the nightmare visions. Soft and flabby, surely for all their size they could not be much in the way of warriors.