“You can arrest the girl,” Alper said calmly. “The Goddess wants her for the sacrifice. This man here and the old man come with us. The rest you can exterminate.” He turned to Sawyer, his eyes gleaming in cold triumph through the smirking mask.
“Now,” he said. “This is your last chance, my boy. I want the Firebird!”
XI
Sawyer’s mind was clicking rapidly, alertly, and so far perfectly futilely. A dozen useless ideas flickered through it as Alper’s demand still hung upon the breathless silence of the stable. From outside the deep booming of a Sselli charge made the walls shake. Humans shouted and there was the heavy, shuddering trample and thump of struggling bodies perilously close outside.
“Quick!” Alper said, slipping his hand toward his pocket. “I hold every card, Sawyer! Don’t be a fool. I can kill you. I can knock you senseless. The Isier can tear you apart. Give me the Firebird and you have everything to win. Refuse, and—”
One of the Isier let out a deep, resonant sigh of impatience and moved forward like a marble angel walking, lifting his great robed arm. He said something in his own language, serene contempt on his face. He stepped around Sawyer, seized Klai by the arm with one tremendous hand and sent her spinning across the stable toward the two gods in the door. They opened to let her pass, and the farther Isier swept her up under his arm and turned away into the darkness.
Sawyer’s futile, unthinking leap after her was halted sharply by the grip of marble the nearer Isier locked about his shoulder. His teeth rattled as the tall god shook him.
“Wait!” Alper shouted. “Isier, wait! Let me handle this. The Goddess bargained with me, remember!”
The Isier sighed again, but let Sawyer regain his footing.
“Sawyer, let’s be sensible,” Alper said impatiently. “Look, now. I did bargain—”
He stopped abruptly, with a glance at the nearest Isier, and then raised his hands to tilt the mask up and away from his face. “I don’t want them to understand what I’m saying—because I told the Goddess I’d get the Firebird for her. She’s got to have it back, and she’s got to keep its theft a secret. I think Nethe took it, not the Goddess. But the main thing is that it’s gone and the Goddess would promise anything to get it back. If I don’t bring it, she’ll kill me. And my life’s important to you, remember. I die—you die. What do you say, Sawyer?”
Sawyer listened to the noise of the fight, so near outside now they had to pitch their voices loud to sound above it. He knew he would have to act fast. The next step would almost certainly be an order from Alper to have him searched, on the off-chance that the Firebird had found its way back into his pocket since Nethe’s search, some hours ago. He had to forestall that, and there was no time to waste. He shot one glance at the alert Zatri, still wearing his mask.
“All right,” Sawyer said. “You win.” He moved his shoulder a little, feeling the warm spot that was the hidden Firebird shift against his side. He said, “It isn’t on me, but I’ll get it. I’ll need a light. Hold everything.”
“Don’t show it,” Alper said quickly. “The Isier mustn’t see—”
At Sawyer’s nod Alper sighed and let go of the tilted mask, so that it dropped back and covered his face again. Sawyer took three steps forward and reached up for the swinging lantern. Every eye was riveted on him, every face tense with expectation. Zatri’s blue eyes blazed through the mask. No one knew what to expect next, but the Khom looked ready for anything.
Sawyer laughed aloud in one reckless burst of grim amusement. With a single strong pitch he sent the lantern straight into the haymow at his shoulder. The Khom who crowded it leaped both ways to give it room, and from a corner of his eye Sawyer was gratified to see someone kick hay helpfully over the flame as he jumped. They could have no idea what he planned, but this much was evident—he wanted a fire.
In the same motion that sent the lantern flying, Sawyer hurtled forward upon Alper, the hand that released the lantern clamping instantly on Alper’s wrist. He snapped the man toward him, locked his other wrist in a bone-breaking grip, and shouted, “Zatri!”
There was no need to shout. Zatri was off the bale and yelling crisp orders before the lantern had more than struck the hay. There was a moment of wildest confusion, in which the two tall Isier, roaring together on a single note of outrage and surprise, surged forward toward the struggling pair. But in a low, dark wave between them the Khom rose up from the floor in one simultaneous surge, hurling themselves doggedly upon the towering gods.
The Isier staggered at the unexpected impact. Then they planted their feet wide and struck angrily at the swarming pack. Every blow that landed snapped bone. And there was no way in which a Khom could hurt a god. But they could hamper them. And desperation made them reckless.
Sawyer needed every ounce of strength in him to control the great bulk and the ponderous weight of the man he held. For the first few moments he thought he was going to fail, and then, quite suddenly, Alper gave imdbimup.
Sawyer thought it was a trick, and held his grip desperately. Then he realized the truth. Alper’s first try had been the only try he could afford. He had strength—but limited strength. After he exhausted the Firebird power he would relapse into senile helplessness. He dared not struggle. He would conserve his little store of energy, and wait. Sawyer twisted the old man’s arms behind him and paused, panting, to survey the scene of conflict.
Smoke already veiled it. The fire had caught and was crackling up in the oil-soaked hay with a roar that grew to a deafening burst of sound in a matter of seconds. The stable filled with blinding light and scorching heat, driving Isier and Khom alike toward the broken door.
The ponies, whinnying in shrill terror, were plunging over the low barrier of their stalls. There was total confusion as the whole swaying, kicking, roaring melee surged outward through the door and into the alley, Sawyer and Alper borne willy-nilly with them out of the burning stable.
From the street at the alley’s end sounded the deep-toned booming of a savage, very near and drawing nearer. The fire had served its purpose. Sawyer had never hoped the Khom could control two Isier, no matter how they outnumbered them, but he thought the savages could, if the fire flared up in time.
He set his teeth and without warning chopped Alper across the temple. Alper grunted and went down.
“Zatri!” Sawyer shouted at the top of his voice, looking wildly around. The old man was hanging stubbornly on an Isier wrist, his arras wrapping the long, ice-robed arm. Above him the serene face bent, sweat beading it but no emotion showing on the cold, smiling features. The Isier shook his other arm free of the crowd that pressed him in and lifted a great white fist over Zatri’s head. Sawyer yelled a futile warning. The fist was already sweeping down, and Zatri’s moments seemed numbered.
Then, without the slightest warning, the Isier vanished.
Blinding light and bursting heat marked the space in empty air where he had stood. For an instant a cloud of dispersing molecules seemed to hang upon the air. Energy had failed him, and he had whirled helplessly away upon whatever mysterious, vanishing cycle the Isier traveled when the soundless summons called them.
Zatri staggered back, shaking his scorched head with the mask still miraculously clinging to it, so that a dwarfed Isier with white ruffled hair seemed to be still ludicrously clasping a vanished arm.
Sawyer reached down and pulled the mask from Alper’s face. It came unwillingly, clasping the head with a firmness that showed why even the exertion of fighting had not unseated it. Sawyer pressed it over his own face with one hand, seeing the world come suddenly back to technicolor vividness.