So… what to do?
"Syregorn," he asked calmly, "have you been under orders to kill me, all along?"
"Yes," the warcaptain replied gravely, stepping into view through what looked like the solid descending ceiling of the passage, sloping down with the stairs as they went down to the door. Obviously the passage-or some part of it-ran straight on, along the level Rod was standing on. "You or the wizard whose tower we now stand in. Whichever of you survived your spell-battle, after we got the two of you together."
"So why have you disobeyed those orders?"
"I've done no such thing, Lord Archwizard." Syregorn made a sneering mockery of that title.
"Oh? So where," Rod asked, "is Malraun? If there was a spell-battle between us, I seem to have missed it."
"The wizard is obviously elsewhere. Probably with his army. The wizard, I said; it's clear to me now that you're no mage. You can't spell-battle anyone. So there's no longer any need to wait to see who survives a battle that will never happen, before I strike you down."
"Does Lord Hammerhand know you're disobeying his orders?"
Syregorn smiled, hefted his sword, and started to walk toward Rod. Slowly, almost strolling, his eyes alert and ruthless.
"I've not told you all the orders he gave me, and won't. You are, after all, an outlander, not a sworn man of Hammerhold. Yet take whatever comfort you can from knowing that killing you fulfills my orders, not breaks them. You cringing, good-for-naught coward."
It was Rod's turn to smile. "Was that meant to be an insult? It seems to me, I'm afraid, to be a fairly accurate description more than anything else."
"So you admit it? Or is this just a ploy to delay me? Desperate words from a man who has no way of defending himself but to hope he can somehow talk someone to death?"
"Er, pretty much," Rod admitted. "You don't think disposing of me will throw away a weapon Lord Hammerhand could use to finally rule all Ironthorn?"
Syregorn's smile was very thin. "No, I do not."
He was closing in on Rod, slowly and carefully, long sharp sword raised to slay. "Whatever paltry magics you may be able to work are tricks. Little ploys such as I or any man could work, if we ended up with a few treasures enchanted by others in our hands. It will take a lot more than little ploys to defeat Lyrose or Tesmer-just as it will take more than a little ploy to fool me. Outlander, you are a dead man."
"Now who's trying to talk someone to death?" Rod replied, backing slowly away, keeping the quarrel up in front of him like a spear, and making his right elbow slide along the wall to keep himself close to it. He had to stay right against the wall, retracing the way he'd safely come already, in case walking down the middle of the passage landed him in any traps. After all, Malraun had to live in this place, and be able to stroll around it without facing death every few seconds; there must be some fairly simple "safe paths" through rooms and along passages. He hoped.
Syregorn stalked patiently after Rod, smiling a ruthless smile. Rod kept backing away, trying to recall how long this run of passage was.
"So you kill me," he asked the warcaptain, sounding calmer than he felt, "and then what? How are you going to get out of here alive?"
Syregorn shrugged. "Carry you, and use you as a shield. Let the traps savage your body. You won't be that heavy a burden, with some of the unnecessary limbs lopped off."
Rod tried not to shudder. "And if you find yourself facing Malraun?"
"Bargain for my life with all I can tell him-all you told me-of this world you come from, Lord Archwizard; this 'Earth.' A place he can rule. A place he'll need strong arms who know how to swing swords to guard and patrol for him."
"Strong arms like yours?" Rod let his amused disbelief rule his voice, to try to make his question a taunt.
"If men of Earth are like you," the warcaptain observed calmly, "my arm alone might be all that's necessary. It takes little skill to butcher-or cow-bumbling, unthinking children."
The heel of Rod's rearmost foot struck the smooth hardness of a wall, and Syregorn's contemptuous smile widened. Rod had reached the end of the passage; the stair that had led down into it had been narrower. He sidestepped to the left, kicked gently back, and felt the bottom step instead of wall. Waving his foot from side to side until he felt the side-wall of the stair, he backed into the stair.
Syregorn shook his head. "Enough of this," he remarked pleasantly-and charged.
All the screaming was God-damned deafening.
Rusty Carroll winced more than once as he dodged frantically-fleeing secretaries, who slammed into him and clawed their way past him almost blindly, not even seeing the gun in his hand as they sought to get away.
He caught glimpses, as he struggled through the flood of terrified Holdoncorp staffers, of what they were fleeing. The men in black armor were striding everywhere through the maze of cubicles, smoked glass dividers, potted palms, and brightly-glowing flat-panel monitors-and they were hacking at things indiscriminately as they went.
Glass tinkled and shattered, earth spilled across the floor as hewn plants toppled, and sparks spat here and there as cables were severed. Somewhere a fire alarm went off. Not the incessant ringing it was supposed to emit, but a hiccuping brring-off-brring-off-brring annoyance that made Rusty heartily wish he'd insisted on headphone-style earplugs as part of full-crisis company security uniforms, not just infrared goggles and gas masks.
Neither of which he'd bothered to scoop up before running down here, he remembered, which meant using tear gas on these Dark Helm clowns was out-until he could get back to the security closet where the gas canisters and a dozen masks were stored.
That closet that was clear across the far end of this floor, of course. Put in entirely the wrong place so an architect could give the Senior Brand Overmanager of Strategic Marketing Initiatives who'd engaged his services for the Corporate Headquarters Ground Floor Front makeover a nicer view of the nearest green hillside, a neatly manicured slope across the encircling drive that only a very wildly-hit golf ball might ever roll down…
Snarling under his breath, Rusty ran toward that distant closet. He'd have preferred to keep right along the marble wall, but at least a dozen executives had wangled permission to extend their offices across the back fire route corridor to meet that wall. Of course.
So in three places he had to dodge out from the wall, following the winding passage that left the black marble temporarily behind to run out and along the curved glass fronts of their offices, separating them from mere peons in the company hierarchy. Right now, though, they and said peons were all crammed together in this same passage, shrieking in terror and punching, kicking, and clawing at each other to try to get past. Co-workers as inconvenient obstacles…
Rusty wasn't sure where they all thought they were hurrying to, being as the only ways out that didn't involve going up or down in the building (using the stairs he'd just come down, or the far more palatial adjacent bank of elevators) were straight at the Dark Helms and out the front glass doors, or through one of the locked doors in the marble wall into the luxurious offices of upper management, the Inner Sanctum with its floating-glass-steps rear stair. Unless you were bold enough to make your own exit through a glass wall somewhere-an escape route quite likely to sever heads, arms, or otherwise prove fatal to an unprotected and terrified secretary trying it. Just thinking about that made him wince.