The Wordsmiths and the Warguild by Hugh Cook Page A

billowed, forcing itself ever-upward.
            Forced upward till he
was level with the guttering, Togura hauled himself onto the roof and crawled
upward to the roof-ridge. There, exhausted, he slumped down, collapsing under a
sky now elbow to elbow with giggling ilpses. Eventually, he roused himself and
looked downward.
            The night was fading. It
was growing light. The cheeses were no longer piling themselves up to the sky;
the courtyard full of cheese began to empty rapidly thanks to a bucket brigade
of citizens. It seemed that everyone in Keep who was not crippled or
bed-ridden, and several who were, had gathered in the stronghold or on its roof
or in the surrounding streets or on the surrounding roofs. As the cheese-level
fell, survivors were hauled out of the wreckage, choking and gasping or shocked
and silent.
            Suddenly cries of rage,
fear and horror rose to Togura's ears. He saw that a tide of red was rising
fiercely, swamping cheeses and people. The hot reek of blood rose to his
nostrils.
            Soon torrents of blood
were pouring out of the courtyard, which was a swirling red maelstrom. The
blood swept out into the streets, drowning down into the mine shafts, flooding
the cellars, racketing knee-deep through the alleyways, piling up at the
squeezes and pinches, then shooting away into the gulf of air beyond the brink
of Dead Man's Drop. The slow, the lame and the unwary were carried away down
the streets, swept into mineshafts or, thrashing and screaming, tossed over
Dead Man's Drop.
            The blood-letting
subsided, until finally the odex itself could be seen, standing in the
courtyard. It was still pumping blood at a steady rate; a stream ankle-deep ran
from the courtyard.
            From the odex there then
emerged a steady stream of clanking cantankerous machines and cute little stag
fawns with ear tags of blue or green or gold. The stag fawns wandered out into
the streets, picking their way through the blood and rubble and the litter of
corpses with their delicate bloodstained feet. The machines, some taking to the
air, others lumbering along the ground, began to fight each other.
            As the machines fought,
the air filled with the sullen cough of projectile weapons, the shubilant hiss
of energy beams, the hollow, booming thud of contact explosions, the thud of
collisions and the high-pitched intolerable scream of despairing steel.
            A light wind got up,
sending the ilpses drifting away. The battle between the machines continued.
Many of them sought refuge underground. The others followed, and the
continuation of a very ancient war proceeded underfoot. The ground shook with
muffled explosions.
            The flow of blood
diminished to a trickle. The last few stag fawns jumped out of the odex. The
last thing to come forth was a female human dressed in silk. She slithered out
of the odex and landed on her backside in the mud and muck.
            "Day!"
screamed Togura, with the very last of his voice.
            Heedless of the danger,
he raced down the roof and leapt into the courtyard. He landed, fell, and went
sprawling into the soft, reeking squilg of blood and mud and water and bird
droppings. As he hauled himself out of the ooze, the human female regarded him
with distaste. She was, he saw, most definitely not Day Suet; she was taller,
older and wore diamonds. Despite her muck-stained backside, she carried herself
with all the hauteur of an empress.
            "Help me,"
said Togura, shambling through the mud toward her.
             She took a tiny oddment
from about her person and pointed it at him. The air sizzled. His limbs
discoordinated and dropped him down in the filth. Slowly, cautiously, he raised
his head, blinked, and peered at the woman. She asked him a question in a very foreign
language.
            "I don't
understand," said Togura, in a voice made of dry straw, sand, wood
shavings