I looked back at the rows of bodies and shook my head. "We knew there could be danger, but..."
"These guys caught it in spades." Crowley stepped over two bodies and knelt down by a third. He peeled the gray blanket back from the face. "Mickey's father. Broken neck, it was fast."
Ice cascaded through my guts. "Does Mickey know yet?"
"How are we going to explain death to a 5-year-old?"
"Rajani has a rapport with him, perhaps..."
Crowley looked at me with hollow eyes. "But I haven't even had the time to tell her that her father is dead yet."
My jaw dropped open. "I thought you said we won."
"We did. C'mon."
I followed Crowley into the dimensional gateway. Built into the base of a fountain, it replaced the water with an opalescent shimmer when in operation. Stepping over the fountain's edge and stepping down did not feel all that much different from wading into water. The gateway gave me a cold shock as I first started to sink, then it wrapped me in a scratchy blanket and twisted me around, utterly disorienting me.
Finally, I emerged amid a circle of tall, termite mounds. I saw a puff of dust from where Crowley had headed out, and I chose that route because it took me out of the way of medtechs with stretchers. Scrambling down the other side. "Crowley, wait up."
I got no response from the shadow man, so I jogged forward and grabbed his wrist. He tried to pull away, but I held on and spun him around. "What the hell's going on here?"
He opened his mouth to shout something at me, then stopped abruptly as his temper lost its battle for control. "Sorry, I..." He exhaled explosively, then pointed out the panoramic view we had from the top of the hill. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
I nodded. The proto-dimension looked to me like an African savannah that bordered on a rain forest. Had the vegetation been green instead of blue, I would have had a hard time believing we had left Earth at all. "It's gorgeous."
"Most of the men who died here thought this was Borneo, for crying out loud!" Crowley shook his head and his fist knotted up. "You and I, people like Bat and Hal and the Yidam, we know what’s going on. We accept the risks. The men who were here, they were just out for a job. We made them part of a battle with Dark Lords."
"They were already part of that battle, Crowley." My eyes narrowed. "They could die here, or they could die in their homes. Dammit, most of these men should have been like Tadd Farber. For all intents and purposes, they were dead already."
Crowley's head came up. "But they were not dead."
"Agreed, but their deaths here mean that others may not have to die." A breeze blew from the valley below, and I caught the swampy scent of decaying plants. "How bad was it? Can we salvage anything?"
"Not a question to ask me, I'm afraid. Take a look for yourself."
We set off down the slope toward what appeared to have once been an encampment. The jungle between the hilltop and the clearing below had a wide swath of destruction cut through it. Underbrush had been trampled, and trees had been taken down more efficiently than in a clear-cutting operation. On the trunks I could see evidence of bullet hits and a disturbing number of long claw scars that sent a shiver down my spine.
Throughout the area I saw sodden masses of greenish slime that looked like a slimy fungus or an open gangrenous wound, it took no intelligence to determine these lumps were the source of the decaying plant scent. I paused near one and saw a flatted bullet pop out like a piece of gravel melting out of ice. "I take it these things were worth shooting?"
Crowley nodded impatiently as two men carrying a stretcher worked their way up the narrow path we had been coming down. "Prince Ryuhito created these things. He had given them, among other things, chlorophyll in their skin so they could produce energy when basking in his glory. In fact, we noticed that out of his presence they were sluggish and not terribly hearty. They were a nasty army."
I stood and wiped my hands off on my gold-trimmed kilt. "You're still pulling wounded men out of here, but they're in an advanced state of decay. Does this proto-dimension have alternating time zones that run fast and slow?"
"No." Crowley started down the hill again as he explained. "This dimension has a bacteria that breaks down chlorophyll. Ryuhito did not realize that when he brought his creatures in here. The bacteria was not enough to kill the creatures outright, but it did weaken them. That's probably why we survived as long as we did — they were not in top form."
We crossed from stone to stone across a stream and worked out way back up toward the compound. On the way up I saw an area where all the undergrowth had been uprooted. A twisting trench with shallow rootlets running off in all directions cut across the swath of destruction. At the lower lip, the green slime covered the ground like a foot-and-a-half coat of green-yellow wax.
"Bat and his people made a stand here." Crowley shook his head. "When I found Bat, he was wandering through the jungle looking for more of the enemy. After he ran out of bullets and his bayonet broke, he went after them with his bare hands. He showed me the sites of three kills and said he forgot where the others are."
Three fallen trees had been used to bridge the plant-rot foam. I crossed it and started up the steepest part of the hill. In the dark loam, I could see impressions of enormous hooves. Superimposed over them, I saw smallish clawed footprints and then a few larger and more slender footprints. Judging by size and relative depth, whatever the creatures that lay rotting had been, formidable would have been an understatement when applied to them.
Coming up over the lip of the hill, I saw a scene that explained to me Crowley's anger. Warfare is death and destruction, but too often gets remembered in terms of a person's heroism in the face of brutal chaos. Memorials are raised to the innocent dead, and heroes are remembered with ceremonies, but the sheer cost in life that results from a war is difficult to quantify and so incomprehensible that memorializing it defies even the most talented artisan.
Rotting plant-stuff the color of peppers long gone bad covered the compound like a lake of pea-soup vomit. Big and little chunks of things floated in it like islands fighting off its destructive tide. Men waded through it, dragging yet other men from the clinging gelatin with great sucking sounds. A quick check determined whether the rescued man was alive or dead, and his status determined if he was placed on a stretcher for immediate evacuation or left lying in a line with the other dead men.
The swampy miasma choked me and made my eyes water. Just looking at the battlefield, I could tell how things had gone. Ryuhito's troops had advanced, been stopped and slowly driven back, but not before inflicting incredible casualties among the defenders. Sharpened stakes stuck up out of the slime and toppled piles of sandbags marked where defenses had once stood. And, between the stakes and the fortifications, at the thickest part of the slime sea, four huge islands lay dead.
I recognized the Plutonians from the one visit I had made to their home dimension. At that time, they had seemed incredibly big and powerful, but lying on their sides, their blood mixed with streaks of green foam, they were pitiable. I had no doubt that their strength had won the day. I knew, from some of the preliminary plans we had knocked about, that a half-dozen Plutonians were the minimum number we had thought about using, which meant, at worst, we had suffered 66% fatalities.
Looking at the pile of human bodies, I knew that estimate might be light for creatures as fragile as me. "Do you have numbers?"
Crowley nodded curtly. "Plutonians: 100% casualties, 66% dead. Myrangeikki: 100% casualties, but it is only a minor wound. Vetha is off in Plutonia tending the two injured Plutonians and expects them to recover. Humans: 99.5% casualties, 70% fatalities. The remaining 30% require medical attention. The Internal Defense Cadre troops came through the best; the fatalities are mostly our workers." The shadow man opened his arms wide. "I'm the only person who did not get hurt."
"You know better than buying into survivor's guilt."
"Yes, dammit, I do know better than that." The shadow man folded his arms i
nto the silhouette of his chest. "I know I survived because I have training and experience. I also know that I survived because the Yidam and Will Raven both dealt with things that could have killed me. I owe them my life, and they're dead. And now, with all this, there is no way to make their sacrifices count for anything."
I frowned. "We can get more people, can't we? We have no need to abandon the plan, do we?"
"If you want to bring more people in here, you can count me out." Hal Garrett, his right arm in a sling, limped over toward us. Rotfoam splatter streaked his pants and left sleeve. Some had even been smeared across his forehead. He looked at Crowley. "Have you told him yet?"
"Told me what?"
The man of shadows shook his head. "Seeing as how you were not around at the moment, I headed out to try to kill Pygmalion. I know assassination is your bailiwick, but I’ve been known to shoot straight. I tried to enter Pygmalion's dimension, but I could not. I've not surveyed the whole thing, but as nearly as I can tell he's managed to armor his dimension so I can't get in."
I nodded. "I am given to understand that Dark Lords can manage that trick in dimensions with sympathetic resonances to their aspect."
Crowley looked me over from toes to head and back again. "That's an interesting piece of information."
He waited for me to volunteer the source of my comment, but I shook my head. "There's something wrong here."
Hal burst out with a disgusted laugh. "Clearly nothing wrong with your reasoning capabilities."
"That's enough, gentlemen!" I looked from Crowley to Hal and back again. "What I'm catching from both of you is that somehow what happened here is my fault. You're both exhausted — I can see it and you know it. That's the only reason I'm trying to ignore your comments."
I paused for a second and let the pain and death in the proto-dimension fill me. Despair, frustration and just plain anger wove through the atmosphere. I could sense the lost friends and the sharp sense of terror that had been the last thing most of the dying thought about. From Hal, I got the strong impression that everything had been a waste and that some other option should have been made to work.
"I wasn't here, that's true. Do you think, had I been able, I wouldn't have been here? Do you think I don't mourn for these people? No, I didn't know them, I didn't interview them and didn't have them place their confidence in me. By the same token, given a choice between that and kissing a hand grenade, what do you think I'd choose?"
Hal nodded. "I'm sorry, Coyote, I just...one of the guys who died shouldn't have been here at all. I let him talk me into it."
Crowley nodded. "Will Raven. Damned good thing he was here. If he hadn't been, we never would have gotten Ryuhito."
"He's still dead, Crowley." The tall African-American looked down at the ground. "Will had a son. His grandfather is caring for the boy."
"Hal, you made the best decision you could. You shouldn't have been here, either." I glanced at the shadow man. "What did you mean by 'gotten' in reference to Ryuhito?"
"Will cracked Ryuhito's skull while the Yidam kept him busy and I...I should have killed Ryuhito, but I wanted a nonlethal solution. Will found it, then got killed. Before he died, though, he made it impossible for Pygmalion to track me when I took Ryuhito away."
"The emperor's grandson is still alive? Where?"
Crowley hesitated for a moment. "He's in a very safe place, a little dimension I know about. I think he has a fractured skull, but he's not dead."
"Good. That should deny him to Pygmalion." I let Crowley's evasion of my question pass. Being told the name he had for the dimension where he stashed Ryuhito would do me absolutely no good. I had no skill at telepathy, so getting the information out his brain would have been impossible for me. Given that I never got any emotion from Crowley either, I knew that even a gifted telepath would be blocked from his mind.
More importantly, I realized, Crowley had very effectively relieved me of some responsibility and prevented the possibility of my betraying our cause. I was a creature of a Dark Lord. Trusting me had to be difficult for him, and I accepted that fact. Not telling him that I had spoken with the Empress of Diamonds likewise meant he could not be forced to give that information over. I trusted Crowley to look out for himself and, as a consequence, the whole of Earth.
"Was evading Pygmalion difficult?"
Crowley shook his head. "As nearly as I could tell, there was no pursuit."
"Hal, did you see any of Pygmalion's constructs here? Anyone who looked like Mickey?"
The big man shook his head. "I didn't see anything like that. Having seen Mickey go at Bat, I can't imagine my still being alive if Pygmalion had sent troops to avenge Ryuhito's defeat."
Crowley started to pace. "I think I see what you're driving at, Coyote. I assumed Pygmalion didn't come after Ryuhito because the trail was too difficult to follow. I also assumed that Pygmalion armored his proto-dimension because, without Ryuhito, he could not oppose Fiddleback.''
"Exactly. Because we saw Pygmalion and Fiddleback in conflict over Ryuhito, we have overlooked some obvious things. We assumed that Fiddleback was correct in stating Pygmalion wants to destroy him. That's certainly the truth from Fiddleback's point of view, but his is not the only point of view, is it?"
As we talked, the three of us began to drift deeper into the compound. The campsite returned, more or less, to normal the farther north we went. Like the Mary Celeste, the compound looked utterly proper except for the lack of people in it. If the stink of decaying plants hadn't been so prevalent, I could have forgotten that anything was amiss.
The African-American scratched at the stubble on his chin. "We need to rethink everything. Pygmalion had been Fiddleback's disciple, but he rebelled. In rebelling, he gained the status of a Dark Lord."
I nodded. "Right, he became Fiddleback's equal, more or less, right then and there. The major difference between them is that, because of Pygmalion's much smaller power base, he can move into some dimensions where Fiddleback cannot. Pygmalion's headquarters is one of those. I assume Earth is, as well."
Crowley confirmed my speculation. "Earth is tricky, but there are a number of Dark Lords who have limited access and who meddle in the affairs of humanity. Fiddleback, for example, can project a considerable amount of psychic energy into Earth, but he cannot journey there physically because he cannot break through the entropy barrier around Earth. The only way to do that is with a dimensional gateway."
I looked over at Crowley. "What about that tunnel thing that Pygmalion used?"
He shrugged. "That operated already inside the entropy barrier around the Earth." He stopped dead. "That means Pygmalion staged his raid on Galbro from a proto-dimension very close to Earth, within the entropy barrier..."
"Or from one point on the Earth to another." Hal nodded. "Pygmalion can come to the Earth whenever he wants, which makes sense, since he was born there."
At the other end of the camp, we plunged into the rain forest. With the sun nearly at its zenith, the dappled blues and violets almost made me imagine that I was walking through some undersea wonderland. "If Earth is such a big plum and Pygmalion has access to it at will, why would he use another proto-dimension as his workshop?"
Crowley laughed harshly. "You saw what he did with Mickey. That boy aged physically at a very quick rate. The other warriors Pygmalion has that are based on the Mickey prototype were fully developed when I met some in diverting the tunnel device. By keeping another dimension under his control, he can incubate an army that will make conquering yet other dimensions easy."
I stepped over a sky-blue birch trunk. "How many soldiers would it take to conquer the Earth?"
The shadow man shrugged. "A billion?"
Hal half-closed his brown eyes. "But bringing a billion warriors in would be blocked by the entropy barriers, right?"
"If he tried it all in one lump, yes." I slowly smiled. "If he has a dimensional gate, he can bring them in regardless."
"But warriors like Mickey are not like
ly to go without notice, which means he would have to bring them in to a place where their isolation is guaranteed until he has a sufficient force to prevent disruption." Crowley nodded his head. "That means he'd have to have a secure site that is in very good supply."
"Right." I winked at Crowley, knowing we were on the same wavelength.
Hal shook his head. "You two obviously know the game plan, but I'm missing something."
"Hal, it's easy." We broke through the brush and looked up at the terraced hillside dotted with dolmen. Over half of them had windmill propellers affixed at the top. In the proto-dimension's light breeze, the props spun away lazily. "There's your key."
The African-American squinted for a second, then nodded sheepishly. "Energy."
"Exactly. This casts a new light on the battle over Ryuhito, doesn't it?"
"Ryuhito's sun-god displays were enough to power his army here. With training..." Hal slapped his forehead with his left hand. "And Fiddleback wanted Ryuhito because he could provide more power than the whole of the Frozen Shade, which means he could have powered the dimensional gate that's built into the Phoenix maglev train circuit."