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“Get them back,” I heard. That was Lance for sure; and an oath: that was Lynette.
I had the awful sights in my eyes even while I was feeling my overweighted way over the debris in the corridors; and then my own breath was sobbing so loud and my heart pounding so with my struggle to run that the sounds dimmed in my ears. I reached the open corridor; I ran in shuffling steps; I made the lift and I punched the buttons with thick gloved fingers, knees buckling under the thrust of the car as it rose, one level, another. Up here too I could hear a sound ... a steady sound through the walls, that was another attack at us, another breaching of the Maid’s defense.
Get Modred.There was no one else who might defend the i
I pushed the button, opening it. Modred had heard me coming—how could he not? He was standing there, a black figure, just waiting for me, and when I gestured toward the bridge he cut me off with a shove that thrust me out of the way ... ran, the direction of the bridge, free to do what he liked.
“Go,” his voice reached me over com, in short order, but I was already doing that, knowing where I belonged. “Elaine ... get everyone out of the corridors.”
“Modred,” Dela said, far away and faint. “We’re holding here ... at the lock. We’ve lost Griffin—”
“Get out of the corridors,” he said. “Quickly.”
I made the lift. I rode it down, into the depths and the glare of lights beyond the ruined corridor. They might have taken it by now, I was thinking ... I might meet the serpent shapes the instant the door should open; but that would mean all my friends were gone, and I rushed out the door with all the force I could muster, seeing then a cluster of human shapes beyond the debris, three standing, two kneeling, and I heard nothing over com.
“My lady,” I breathed, coming as quickly as I could.
“Elaine,” I heard ... her voice. And one of the figures by her was very tall, who turned beside my lady as I reached them.
Lance and my lady and Vivien; and Gawain and Lynette kneeling over Percivale, who had one arm clamped tight to his chest, his right. But of Griffin there was no sign; and in the distance the ranks of the enemy heaved and surged, shadows beyond the floods they had set up in the tube.
“Modred’s at controls,” I said, asking no questions. “He’ll do what he can.” And because I had to: “I think they’re about to break through up there.”
My lady said nothing. No one had anything to say.
Modred would do what was reasonable. Of that I had no least doubt. If there was anything left to do. We were defeated. We knew that, when we had lost Griffin. And so Dela let Modred loose, the other force among us.
“Lady Dela,” Modred’s voice came then. “I suggest you come inside and seal yourselves into a compartment.”
“I suggest you do something,” Dela said shortly. “That’s what you’re there for.”
“Yes, my lady,” Modred said after a moment, and there was a squealing in the background. “But we’re losing pressure in the topside lab. I think they’re venting our lifesupport. I’d really suggest you take what precautions you can, immediately.”
“We hold the airlock,” Dela said.
“No,” Modred said. “You can’t.” A second squealing, whether of metal or some other sound was uncertain.
And then the com went out.
“Modred?” Dela said. “Modred, answer me.”
“We’ve lost the ship,” Lynette said.
“Lady Dela—” Lance said quietly. “They’re moving again.”
They were. Toward us. A wall of serpents and taller shapes like giants, lumpish, in what might be suits or the strangeness of their own bodies.
Dela stopped and gathered up a spear, leaned on it, cumbersome in her suit. “Get me up,” Percy was saying. “Get me on my feet.”
“If they want the ship,” Dela said then in a voice that came close to trembling, “well, so they have it. We fall aside and if we can we go right past their backs. We go the direction they took Griffin, hear?”
“Yes,” Lance said. Gawain got Percy on his feet. He managed to stay there. Lynette stood up with me and Vivien. Out of Vivien, not a word, but she still held her spear, and it struck me then that she had not blanked: for once in a crisis Vivien was still around, still functioning. Born-man tapes had done that much for her.
The lines advanced, more and more rapidly, a surge of serpent bodies, a waddle of those behind, beyond the hulking shape of the machinery they had used to breach us, past the glare of the floods.
XVI
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With those thou seest—if indeed I go—
For all my mind is clouded with a doubt—
To the island-valley of Avilion.
So we stood. In front of us was that machine like a ram, and that was a formidable thing in itself; but it was frozen dead. And about it was a fog, a mist that made it hard to see—I thought it must be of their devising, to mask how many they were, or what they did, or prepared to do. Within the mist we could see red serpent shapes shifting position, weaving their bodies together like restless braiding, like grass in a sideways wind, like coursers held at a starting mark, eager and restrained. It was peculiarly horrible, that constant action; and broadbodied giants stood behind, purplish shadows less distinct, an immobile hedge like a fortification.
“You understand,” said my lady Dela, “that when they come, we only seem to hold; and fall aside and lie low until we can get behind their lines. Don’t try more than that. Does everyone understand?”
We avowed that we did, each answering.
And then a clearer, different voice, that was from the Maid’s powerful system. “My lady Dela.” Modred. And a sound behind his voice like groaning metal, like—when the lock had given way. “I’ve sealed upper decks. They’re breaking through the seal. I suggest you withdraw inside. Now.”
“My orders stand,” Dela said.
“There’s danger of explosion, lady Dela. Come inside now. I am in contact with the alien. It instructs we give access.”
“Protect the ship.”
“I’m doing that.”
“You take your orders from me, Modred.”
A silence. A squeal of metal.
“Modred?”
“They’re in. We’ve lost all upper deck. Withdraw into the ship.”
And now it began. In front of us. The serpents were loosed, and they came, looping and heaving forward like the breaking of a reddish wave. The giants behind them moved like a living wall.
“Stand still,” Dela said, paying no more heed to Modred. Lance and Lynette put themselves in front of her, and Percy and Gawain stood to either side. Myself, I gripped my spear in thick gloved hands and left Viv behind us, moved up to Percy’s side, because his one arm was useless now.
Oh, there was not enough time, no time at all to get used to this idea. I had never hit anything. I had a sudden queasiness in my stomach like psych-sets amiss, but it was raw fear, a doubt of what I was doing, to fall under that alien mass—but that was what our lady had said we must do.
“They’re hard to cut,” I heard Lance tell us; very calm, Lance, my lady’s sometime lover and never meant for more. “But hit them. They do feel it.”
They. I could see them clearly now. The serpents had legs and used them, poured forward overru