"Hot damn!" Danny said, looking up at Stigi. "Firepower!"
"You might say that," Gilligan said, thinking of the pile of charred bodies by the gate.
"Come on then, and keep your eyes peeled. We’ve run into all sorts of things."
A couple of hundred more yards and two more uninteresting rooms and they came to a broad cross corridor that was carpeted in a different color and more richly finished than any they had seen so far.
"I recognize this!" Wiz said. "This is the way to the computer room."
"Great!" said Danny as he stepped in front of Wiz and out into the center of the corridor. "Let’s go…"
A bolt of green radiance lashed down the corridor and caught Danny square in the back. He pitched forward and dropped like a sack of sand. June screamed and rushed toward him, heedless of the bolts of energy crackling around her.
Down the corridor came a packed mass of goblin troops, the ones in front firing ray guns.
Gilligan stepped forward, dropped to one knee and braced the pistol in both hands, elbow resting on knee. Three well-placed shots dropped the leaders and the rest hesitated for a moment.
Then Wiz started throwing fireballs.
"Stigi," Karin’s voice rose over the noise. "Forward."
Stepping past June kneeling over Danny, the dragon shouldered Gilligan and Wiz out of the way and advanced down the corridor. The guards reformed and came on, energy bolts scoring the walls ahead. If any of them hit Stigi he didn’t show it. Instead he breathed deeply and sent a gout of flame washing down the corridor.
That was the final straw. The attacking guards broke and ran.
Wiz bent over Danny, but June bared her teeth and hissed at him. The young programmer’s shirt was burned away and the flesh beneath was charred and smoking. Wiz could see the white of bone from his ribs and spine. He was still breathing, but his breath was coming in great harsh gasps.
"He’s dying," Jerry said quietly. His eyes were big and his face pale.
"Lord, unless you have powerful healing spells I am afraid this one is done for," Karin said quietly to Wiz.
"No," Wiz said without taking his eyes off Danny. "Nothing like that."
"Then I am truly sorry, my Lord."
"Goddamn!" Wiz breathed. If skilled healers could reach him in the next few minutes he still had a chance. But there were no healers among them and no way to get Danny to a healer in time. They could not walk the Wizard’s Way from inside the castle. The opposing magic was too strong. There just wasn’t time.
Time!
Quickly Wiz knelt again and reached for his friend’s arm. June bared her teeth again and fumbled in her skirt for her knife.
"I’m trying to save him, dammit!" June looked hard at him, but she relaxed slightly.
Wiz reached out and touched the ring of protection Danny still wore on his right hand. Before June could object he twisted the stone and Danny froze in stasis as the protection spell took hold.
"He’s all right," Wiz said to June. "Don’t you see? The spell will keep him safe until we can get him back to a healer." June looked down at her husband and bit her lip, but she made no move to touch the ring.
"Help me carry him further down the corridor." He turned to Karin. "I don’t think there are any more branches off this corridor until we get to the computer room. Once we move Danny, can you back your dragon up past the intersection and hold them off here?"
Karin nodded.
"Great. Jerry, help me move him. We don’t have to be too gentle. Stasis is better than a backboard."
"Then what?" asked Gilligan, looking down the corridor in the direction their attackers had fled.
"Then," Wiz said in a hard cold voice, "we’re gonna find that goddamn computer and stomp a couple of people flat."
Craig sat glued to his workstation and played as he had never played in his life. Slowly it dawned on him that this wasn’t just a couple of early setbacks. He was losing.
It wasn’t all one-sided. He was hurting them plenty, but it wasn’t enough. His carefully constructed defenses were washing away like sand. His warbots were powerful but the attackers were hitting him in ways they weren’t programmed to handle. If he took direct command of a unit he could do pretty well, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once and besides, his damn communications kept failing.
A motion at the corner of his screen caught his eye. There, superimposed on the glowing battle display, was a little manlike being perhaps six inches high. Unlike the rest of the screen image it was in full color and high resolution.
The thing turned toward him and pressed its face and palms against the inside of the tube, as if it was looking out. It wasn’t an image, Craig realized, there really was something inside his monitor!
The tiny being turned and gestured across the screen. Another manlike little thing stuck its head around the edge of the screen and peered at the world outside. Behind and around it the battle display scrolled on, unnoticed by the gremlins or by Craig.
The first creature tossed a glowing ball into the air and batted it with his free hand. The ball flew across the screen leaving a glowing trail behind it. The second thing leaped up and deflected it before it could touch the far side of the screen. The ball bounced off the bottom and ricocheted toward the upper right corner, smearing a goodly portion of the display. The first creature made a mighty jump and deflected it back toward the bottom left. His opponent dived for it, but the ball bounced over his head and off the side of the screen. The first gremlin chortled and held up a single finger.
Craig watched helplessly as his screen filled up with the lines of the ball tracks.
"Maintenance!" he yelled.
"He’s off this way," Glandurg called back to his companions. "Down this side shaft, now."
No more climbing for a bit, Glandurg thought. That’s a piece of good news. Although he never would have admitted it, he was just about done for. His arms and shoulders ached from clinging to fingerholds in the ventilation shaft and his calves and thighs were cramping from pressing his body flat against the wall. It would be a relief to just walk for a while.
He didn’t know how far they had climbed; a league or more, perhaps. But at last the arrow in the talisman had stopped pointing upward and was pointing off to the side.
As he started down the horizontal shaft, Glandurg reached back to touch the hilt of Blind Fury. Soon enough they’d be done with this climbing and sneaking into honest battle.
He wondered if battle was as exciting as the skald’s tales made it out to be.
It took nearly fifteen precious minutes for the maintenance robots to fix the display on Craig’s workstation. By the time he was back in control the situation had deteriorated even more. The last of his air force had been swept from the skies, and with it all of his recon drones. Now he was reduced to viewing the battle through the cameras and sensors mounted on the castle itself. Two critical outposts had fallen and even as he attempted to assert control a third one went.
In the southern quadrant the attackers were almost up to the last line of defenses at the base of the castle walls. Craig turned his attention there. Quickly he switched to one of the cameras on a forward emplacement to try to find a weak spot. He still had a couple of squadrons of warbots he could throw into the battle here, but he would have to command them directly if they were going to be any good.