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Then our Beast retreated, a flowing away from us toward the giants, a nodding, slow withdrawal, and rumbling and ticking all the while. A loping serpent, murky red, came out of the lock and ran along beside it as it went.
And Modred stirred, alive and making small motions toward getting up. “Oh, help him,” I asked my friends, but I was closest besides Lance, and I bent and went down to one knee as best I could, so that Modred found my other knee and levered himself up. He touched his chest, got his com working, but his head was turned toward the Beast in its slow retreat toward the giants, who had stopped in their advance. I only heard Modred’s breathing, that came in gasps. And somehow the hinder view of the Beast looked more humanlike in shadow, like a slump-shouldered giant shuffling away, its monster serpent looping along beside it like some fawning pet, ignored in its master’s melancholy.
“It’s the oldest,” Modred said. “The captain of the core object ... first here. Unique.”
“You called it here,” my lady said, accusing him. “You brought this on, all of it.”
“No,” Modred said. “It had to come. There were the tubes.”
Sometimes Modred failed to make sense. And sometimes I feared I understood him after all.
“They took Griffin,” Dela cried, with a sweep of her hand in the direction of the retreating Beast. “They took him away with them.”
A lift of Modred’s head. “I think I know where.”
That struck my lady silent. I looked up, past her, past Lance, where this creature, this shuffling monster passed behind the giant ranks and disappeared. Theystayed, beside the giant ram, indistinct in the fog they had made. But they came no nearer.
“The tubes,” Modred said indistinctly. “They had to get us out of the way ... the Maid’s filled with methane now, where they can carry the fight into the tubes themselves; but we’re to follow the passage to the next sector. That’s where they’ll have taken him, most probably.”
“Did they tell you that?” My lady’s voice was still and careful, edged and hard. “Do you carry on dialogues, you and that thing?”
“It was in the map,” Modred said.
A silence then. My heart hurt, from fear. From—I had no notion what. I was shivering. Maybe Modred was mad. Or maybe we had all lost ourselves in a dream, and we had forgotten what he was.
“He did the best he knew,” I said for him. “He tried not to be Modred, lady Dela. He really tried. He did.”
“Down the passage,” Dela said then. “So we hand ourselves over to them?”
We thought about that.
“I’ll go,” Lance said quietly. “And come back again if I can.”
“No,” Dela said. “We’ll all go.—Modred, can you walk?”
He pressed hard on my knee trying to get up. Gawain helped him, steadying him with an arm; and then Lynette had to help me, because I just hadn’t the strength left to straighten my leg and lift the weight of my suit. She held me on my feet a moment until I had my breath and got my feet braced. What held Percy on his feet—he was not large or so strong as Lance—I had no idea. And Lynette helped Vivien up next.
“We can’t go through that,” Vivien protested, meaning the giants, who stood like a murky wall in front of us. Her voice shook. I took her hand that still held the spear and pressed her gloved fingers about the shaft, set the butt of it firmly on the decking.
I said nothing. With Viv that was usually safest. “Come on,” Dela said, and so we went, all of us, with what strength we had.
XVII
Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.
There was no sudde
“Stay together,” Dela said, because for that moment we couldn’t see at all, except the white mist about us, with the glare of lights, and sometimes a shadow that might be one of us or the movement of some creature in ambush there.
A shape came clear to me, like a pillar in the murk and going up and up; and this was the leg of one of the giants, armored by nature or wearing some kind of suit different than ours. I shied from it and shied the other way at once, about to collide with another. I had lost my comrades. In the helmet I had no sense of direction. I plunged ahead the way that I thought I had been going, blind, among these monstrous shapes.
And they ignored us as we passed, never stirred, unless those vast heads looked down with slight curiosity and wondered what we were. We passed through the mist and I saw my lady and Lance and Lynette; looked back and I saw Gawain and Modred coming out from the mist; then another that was Vivien, by the size.
“Percy,” I called.
“I’m here,” he answered me, hoarse and faint. I saw one more of us clear the mist and follow, and I let Viv pass me, delayed to walk with Percy, not to lose him again.
“I’ll make it,” he said, but that was only to keep me happy: none of us knew where we were going or how far ... except maybe Modred, who limped along in our midst.
And ahead of us stretched more and more of the passage, which bent gently rightward, and the way was dim, violet shadowed, once we were past the floods and the mist. “My lady,” Lynette said from up ahead, “we could use the suit lights, but I don’t think we should.”
“No,” Dela agreed, hard-breathing. “We don’t need more attention than we have.”
“They don’t care,” Modred said faintly. “They could have stopped us if they had.”
No one answered. No one had Modred’s confidence. And even his sounded shaken.
The shadows deepened. The way branched left, toward a vast sealed hatch; and right, toward more passageway. We walked toward that choice, saying nothing, only breathing in one breath, a unison of exhaustion, mine, my lady’s, everyone’s. Lance and Lynette stopped there, stood and looked back until we had come closer.
“Bear right,” Modred said, between his breaths, and gestured toward the open passage.
“Go right,” my lady said after a moment, and herself began to walk again. So we all did, getting our weighted bodies into reluctant motion. I saw Vivien falter; she used her spear like a staff now, to keep herself steady, and leaned on it and kept moving. We walked slower and slower through the murk.
Until the second door, that closed off the way ahead, another hatch vast as the first, everything on giant scale.
We caught up to one another, and Ly
Lance struck it a blow with his sword, frustration if nothing else.
And it shot apart, two sideways jaws gaping with a rumble that shook the deck under us, showing murky dark inside, a second steel door. My heart stopped and started again, faltering; my lady called on God; and someone had cried out. Then:
“Come on,” my lady said, and the first of us went in. Vivien delayed, in front of Percivale and me. “Move, Viv,” I said, and Percivale just took Viv’s arm in his good hand, and I took the other, so we kept up.
I knew that those doors would close again with us inside. They must. It was a lock. And they did, when we were barely across the threshold, a thunder at our heels, a shock that swayed us on our feet, and a machine-sound after, like pumps working. I flinched, and Viv jerked, but kept her feet.