The Ruins Of Kaldac Part 1

The Ruins of Kaldac.

by Jeffrey Lord.

Chapter 1.

The sky was gray, and a chilly wind blew rain through empty windows, turning the dust on the floor into mud. The tall man standing by the doorway looked out briefly at the foul weather, then shrugged and walked back into the room.

The man was not only tall. He was also heavily built, with a broad chest and muscle-corded arms and legs to match. He still moved with a light step which hinted at speed and coordination as well as sheer muscle. His hair was black, and his skin was deeply tanned under the dirt. His skin also showed marks and ridges which could only be the scars of painful wounds. He was naked except for a loinguard which gleamed in the dim light with a silvery metallic sheen, but in spite of the breeze he was not s.h.i.+vering.

The man's name was Richard Blade. He was probably the only man in any world who'd traveled into more than thirty different Dimensions, fought deadly battles in all of them, and always returned alive.

Richard Blade didn't worry anymore about whether each Dimension he visited could really be called a complete "world." One Dimension certainly reached out many light-years to the stars, but that didn't mean they all did. In some Dimensions he'd never seen more than an area smaller than his native England. Neither made much difference to his chances of coming back alive. After a while he left the question of the Dimension's size more and more to Lord Leighton, the scientist who'd opened the road to new Dimensions. As long as he came back in one piece, Richard Blade, who was essentially a practical man, was content. Before he started traveling among the Dimensions, he was a field operative for the secret British intelligence agency MI6A.

Lord Leighton was quite a different proposition. Before he discovered the road to new Dimensions, he'd already had a long career as one of Britain's most brilliant scientists. He was born a hunchback, and polio twisted his legs when he was a child, but there was nothing wrong with his mind. Even his best friends would admit that there was a great deal wrong with his manners, which were abominable, but even his worst enemies would admit that his mind was a precision instrument of extraordinary brilliance.

Leighton had developed a theory that if the mind of a physically robust and highly intelligent man was linked to a powerful computer, a new form of intelligence would emerge. He chose Richard Blade, linked him to a computer of his own invention, and wound up sending Richard Blade off into an unknown world.

The discovery of what they called "Dimension X" was a complete accident, but that didn't make it any less important. There had to be untapped natural resources and new scientific discoveries waiting out there in Dimension X. If they could just be brought home to Britain, then put to use....

Several years and several million pounds later, Project Dimension X was only a little ahead of where it started. Richard Blade was still the only man who could travel into Dimension X and return alive. He still couldn't return to a particular Dimension except by accident. He still couldn't take much equipment with him or bring back anything except by chance. Some of what he brought back was no more than exotic junk. Some of it was jewels or precious metals which could at least be sold to raise money for the Project. Some of it was knowledge or technology which would be priceless when and if it could be put to practical use.

However, things seemed to be looking up a trifle. Blade paced around the gloomy room and listened to the rain, fingering the belt of his silvery loinguard. That was something based on Dimension X technology, and he'd worn it safely through the transition into this Dimension!

Blade thought of the first time he'd seen the loinguard, just this morning. He'd arrived at the Tower of London a few minutes early, then waited under the hard eyes of the Special Branch men who guarded the entrance to the Project. Eventually J arrived, as erect and ageless as ever, looking like a retired civil servant rather than one of the great spymasters of modern times. He'd chosen Blade straight out of Oxford for MI6A. He still headed the agency, but now he was also chief of security for Project Dimension X. He was about the best qualified man for the job, and it also let him keep a watchful eye out for Blade, who was the closest thing to a son he'd ever known.

The two men rode down in the elevator to the Project's complex buried two hundred feet underground. Then they took the walk down the long gleaming corridor to the computer rooms. By now Blade could have walked the corridor blindfolded. As they pa.s.sed the last of the electronic sentinels which monitored the corridor for intruders, J turned to Blade. "Leighton called me last night, Blade. Said he's got a surprise for us."

Blade managed to restrain his enthusiasm. A "surprise" from Lord Leighton could be almost anything. It was likely to be a new development the scientist thought he or J would oppose if they knew about it too far in advance. Lord Leighton's creativity and enthusiasm sometimes ran ahead of his good judgment.

"Did he say anything else?"

J nodded. "He said it had to do with the Englor Alloy #2."

That was somewhat more encouraging. In one Dimension Blade found a country called Englor, strangely like Home Dimension England in many ways, locked in a deadly struggle with an opponent just as strangely like the Soviet Union. Englor's airplanes were built of alloys far beyond anything in Home Dimension, and Blade brought back formulas and samples for several of them.

It turned out that the most powerful electrical field imaginable would flow through an object made of Alloy #2 from Englor as if it weren't there. When Blade traveled into Dimension X, he was surrounded by a strong electrical field and couldn't wear anything which might disrupt its flow. With equipment made of Alloy #2, he might hope to reach Dimension X in something more than his bare skin, armed with something more than his bare hands!

Unfortunately there were problems in producing Englor Alloy #2 (EA 2 for short) with Home Dimension technology. The problems had been solved only to the point where a few ounces could be produced each day, at a cost of more than five pounds an ounce. On his last trip into Dimension X, Blade carried a length of wire made of EA 2. It made the round trip with him, so at least the theory about traveling with the alloy was sound enough. Now it seemed that Lord Leighton might have some practical applications of the theory to show Blade and J.

Leighton met them at the entrance to the computer rooms and scuttled ahead of them to his private workshop. He looked rather like a gnome hurrying to show his treasure. The surprise lay on the wooden table in the workshop. Blade picked it up and turned it over several times in his hands. It was a loinguard shaped exactly like a standard athletic supporter but made entirely of EA 2. Blade would have recognized the silvery sheen, the flexibility, and the light weight even if J hadn't informed him.

Blade put the loinguard back on the table and looked at the scientist. "Thank you for the thought, sir. But I'm not one of those people who keep their brains between their legs."

A choking sound made Blade turn around. He saw J trying to stifle laughter. To give the older man time to recover, Blade turned back to Leighton. "Joking aside, sir, why this particular piece of equipment?"

"Two reasons," said Leighton. "One, it was the biggest thing we could make with the amount of EA 2 we had and still have enough left over for further experiments. We could have made you a small helmet, but we'd have had nothing left except your wire and some sc.r.a.ps and powder."

"I see."

"Two, you've often carped about arriving in other dimensions stark naked. Well, now you have something to wear-an immodest garment, to be sure-nevertheless, it does cover you somewhat, and it does protect a vulnerable part of your body. You wouldn't deny that, would you?"

Blade laughed. "Hardly." An injury there could easily cripple a man from pain or loss of blood, even if it didn't castrate him, so maybe the silver loinguard did have some practical use. It was rea.s.suring for Blade to realize that even if Lord Leighton sometimes acted like a mad scientist, he still had Blade's best interests in mind. Blade remembered the splitting headaches he used to have when he woke up in Dimension X, before Leighton invented the KALI capsule. Sometimes those headaches were so bad he wouldn't have found it easy to either fight or run. The KALI capsule got rid of them, which improved his chances for survival.

But now Blade's mouth tightened as he remembered all the people the KALI capsule hadn't helped to survive. Leighton had the seven-foot capsule controlled by a new, self-programming computer. The computer opened a path between the Dimensions to a monstrosity called the Ngaa. It killed more than thirty people, put the whole world in danger, and nearly destroyed Project Dimension X before Blade fought and destroyed it in one of his grimmest battles.

One of the Ngaa's victims was Zoe Cornwall, once Blade's fiancee. He now knew that he was never likely to love another woman the same way, yet he would never be able to marry a woman he didn't love as he'd loved Zoe. Considering how he made his living, that was probably just as well, at least for the woman.

Still, Zoe should not have been dead! Blade had not allowed himself to grow bitter and no longer held her death against Lord Leighton. He also did not let himself forget her. He had to remember that Lord Leighton's scientific genius was something like a two-edged sword, which could slash both friends and enemies.

Blade picked up the loinguard again. "Can I get this off in a hurry if I have to?"

"Yes." Leighton pointed. "See-there's a quick-release hook on the side."

Blade saw the hook but tested it several times before he put the loinguard back on the table. He still wasn't entirely sure this wasn't a bawdy joke by Lord Leighton, but it was also a step on the way to arriving better-equipped-and better "dressed"-in Dimension X. That meant survival.

"I'll take a chance," he said. "What do you think, sir?" he asked J.

J frowned. "Well, Richard, it's your-ah, anatomy."

"And I might add, Richard," Leighton now said, "your traveling to and from Dimension X with this garment brings us one step closer to making an alloy-wire weapon or even an alloy-wire suit that will increase not only your survival chances but also those of another traveler to Dimension X. a.s.suming you and the alloy return intact, and once we produce enough of the alloy in our laboratories, we can attempt to send someone else with you to Dimension X. You'd like a companion, wouldn't you, Richard?"

Blade shrugged, but he well knew that the Project's success would be greatly enhanced if someone else could be sent to Dimension X. That other person, lacking Blade's genius for survival, would need a special weapon or the alloy-wire suit for protection. And, yes, Blade thought, he would enjoy having a companion from home in Dimension X.

When Blade climbed into the seven-foot KALI capsule an hour later, he was wearing the silver loinguard. He also wore the usual coat of black grease to guard against electrical burns. He wasn't exactly nervous, but anyone watching him would have noticed how carefully and thickly he greased his p.e.n.i.s and groin.

He lay down in the capsule, and the lid closed over him, to leave him in the familiar coffinlike darkness with the lining of the capsule pressing against him everywhere. He felt the loinguard staying snugly in place. Good. It wouldn't make any difference at this end if it slipped out of position, but at the other end it might snag on something. That could be embarra.s.sing.

Then the world around Blade dissolved in light and the KALI capsule seemed to vanish. The computer room with the looming crackle-finished consoles was all around him, with Leighton at the master control panel and J in the folding observer seat. He could see everything clearly, but it had all turned a hundred shades of blue. Leighton's white hair was an electric blue, the gray consoles were midnight blue, the red master switch was the color of a robin's egg For a moment uncertainty caught Blade by the throat. The KALI capsule had never put him through one of these psychedelic displays before. Was the loinguard affecting the electrical field around him after all?

Then the blue laboratory exploded into a hundred shapeless pieces, each a different shade of blue. A high-pitched whine like an enormous mosquito tore at Blade's ears. Then there was only blackness for a moment, and after that damp gra.s.s under his back and a chilly wind blowing across his skin....

Now Blade continued to pace around the desolate room listening to the relentless sound of the rain. He felt as if he was the only man in all of Dimension X.

Chapter 2.

Blade had found the room after a short search. When he first arrived in Dimension X he had discovered that he was sitting halfway up a steep hill covered with long gra.s.s. He felt no trace of a headache. He stood up, stretched his arms and legs, then unhooked his loinguard and examined it. Both the loinguard and what it was intended to protect seemed to be intact. As he put the loinguard back on, a stronger gust of wind made the gra.s.s around him dance wildly. Then thunder rumbled across the hillside and the gray skies overhead let loose with a downpour of cold rain.

Blade had looked hastily around for shelter. Visibility was shrinking rapidly, so it was hard to make out details.

As far as he could tell, there were ruins at the bottom of the hill. He saw what looked like walls with gaping windows, a tower reduced to a jagged fang, a rubble-choked street lined with trees tossing their branches in the storm, but nothing which promised protection from the weather. He turned and looked uphill.

On the crest of the hill stood a grayish block which looked like an unruined building. He watched for a moment, looking for any signs of life, saw none, then started cautiously up the hill. He would have liked to run up to the nearest door and get out of the rain, but the building was the most conspicuous object and probably the best shelter for miles around. Others in the area might also have their eyes on it, and he didn't plan to walk into an ambush, so he proceeded slowly.

Blade stopped every few yards, noticing new details about the building each time. He saw that one side of it was dark except for some blurred white shapes on the wall near the ground. He saw that one wing had nearly collapsed. Moss grew on some of the leaning slabs, while creepers grew up the cracked walls and over the tiles of the roof.

At last he reached the hilltop and walked completely around the building. He suddenly realized that the blurred white shapes on the darkened wall were the silhouettes of human beings, distorted by many years of weathering. Blade had seen something similar-in photographs taken at Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. When the atomic bomb had exploded there, the flash darkened the walls of buildings everywhere except where people had been standing close by. The victims' bodies left white shadows on the walls, just like these shadows Blade saw now. So there had been an atomic bomb explosion in this Dimension, Blade realized.

For a moment Blade considered moving on, to avoid any possible danger from lingering radiation. Then he realized that the darkened wall still showed traces of the bomb only because it was on the side of the building away from the prevailing winds. On the other side the walls were undarkened, and gra.s.s and plants were growing. Certainly enough time had pa.s.sed for the building to be free of any dangerous radioactivity. Blade tore a branch from a bush growing by the door and made an improvised club, then strode into the building.

It was as deserted inside as it was outside, except for a few small skittering shapes which immediately vanished into the walls. They were about the size of mice but didn't move like them. Blade thought of radiation-induced mutations.

In one room he had found blurred footprints, but they were in ankle-deep dust. Whoever made the footprints had come and gone years ago. Blade found he had the choice of four rooms which were reasonably dry except for the rain blowing in through the windows. He'd picked the one with the least dust, and now he finally stopped pacing and thinking about all the incidents leading up to his arrival in Dimension X. He decided he needed to get some sleep, and he curled up in the corner farthest from the door but closest to the window. After a moment he sat up, unhooked his loinguard, and wrapped it around his left hand. The club and the loinguard were the best weapons he could hope for tonight, and the metal wire was getting cold against his bare skin.

Blade curled up again and started willing himself to go to sleep, in spite of the damp chill. He hoped Lord Leighton's plans to provide him with more survival equipment succeeded, and quickly. Right now he would have given a good deal for a down sleeping bag or even a blanket and thick pile of dry leaves!

By morning the wind had died and the rain was only a drizzle, although the sky was still a depressing gray. A few minutes of vigorous exercises got Blade's blood flowing again. By the time he'd finished exercising, the clouds were beginning to break up. Visibility rapidly increased to several miles. That was enough to tell Blade that there were probably no friends or enemies anywhere close enough to matter.

At the foot of the hill Blade saw a ruined city, hundreds of crumbling buildings along rubble-choked streets radiating out from a central tower. Beyond the city lay a solid wall of dark green forest. Beyond that Blade saw a line of what could have been either oddly-shaped hills or truly gigantic buildings. At this distance and with clouds still lying low on the horizon, he couldn't be sure.

Everything seemed weirdly lifeless. The city was half-overgrown with bushes and trees, and the forest beyond looked as dense as a jungle. Blade saw no tracks on the ground, no birds in the air. He couldn't hear any birds or insects even when he held his breath to listen, nothing but the sigh and moan of the wind. After a while this eerie silence drove him into action. He hurried around to the other side of the building and looked west.

On this side the hill sloped away more gently, leveling out in an immense gra.s.sy plain. The plain began less than half a mile away and continued all the way to the horizon, as flat and featureless as a billiard table. Far off to the north Blade saw what looked like one end of an enormous bridge, with more ruined buildings cl.u.s.tered around it. He couldn't see what the bridge crossed, or any more signs of life than he'd seen elsewhere.

Blade tore off another branch and started tying it with lengths of vine to the first branch, to make a heavier club. By the time he'd finished, his hands were red and sore from the acid sap of the creepers. He'd also decided to go east, exploring the ruined city at the foot of the hill, then cutting through the forest. What lay on the far side of the forest certainly looked more interesting than the plain to the west. The forest would also give him better shelter from the weather and probably more food. He took a last look around the ruined building, then started down the hill.

It didn't take Blade long to see all of the ruined city he needed to see. One rubble-clogged street or one house with its windows and doors gaping like the eye sockets of a skull looked very much like another. Like the building on the hill, the city had been abandoned for generations, possibly centuries. Unlike the building, it had been visited a number of times after its people abandoned it. Blade saw ragged holes in a dozen walls, where fixtures had been pulled or chopped free. He saw rooms swept almost clean of dust. Under an overhanging piece of roof he found the remains of a campfire and a pile of animal droppings no more than a few weeks old. Blade looked briefly for the animals' tracks, then realized the night's rain would have completely wiped them out.

The visitors seldom went above the third floor and apparently never went into the cellars. Blade struggled down some of the crumbling, treacherous flights of stairs and found whole untouched piles of metal waiting for him. Much of it was so rusted or corroded he couldn't tell what it had been, but he found a piece with a sharp point just the right size to be used one-handed. He also found strips of a plasticlike material which he wrapped around one end of the piece of metal to give him a better grip on this improvised knife. A longer strip of the plastic tied around his waist made a belt.

Blade came up from the last cellar faster than he'd gone down. It was definitely inhabited-by ordinary-looking mice and by something considerably larger which never left the shadows in a corner. Blade could only hear its chittering and the scrabbling of claws, on stone, and smell an unbelievably rank odor.

By the time Blade left the city the clouds were almost gone, and it was a bright, if somewhat chilly, day. He could now see clearly that the tall shapes beyond the forest to the east were colossal buildings. They stood so close together that some of them were linked by aerial bridges, and most of them looked nearly intact. Blade was sure that their appearance was deceptive, but the towers would provide better shelter than the ruins. They should also tell him more about the fate of this Dimension and its people.

The moment Blade plunged into the forest, he was back in twilight. The trees grew in such regular order that it was clear they'd been planted that way. No doubt the s.p.a.ces between the trees were wide enough when the park was laid out. Now, after long years of neglect, the ground between the trees was overgrown with bushes, ferns, and vines. Blade lost a good deal of skin pus.h.i.+ng through some particularly thick patches. He kept going, since he didn't want to spend the night in the forest or reach the city after dark if he could help it.

Around mid-afternoon he came out onto the bank of a sluggish, weed-choked stream, with an unmistakable path on the far bank. He probed the stream with a fallen branch and learned he'd be swimming rather than wading across it. He was about to slip into the water when a patch of the weeds started swirling back and forth. Then a long row of black bony spines broke the surface briefly, heading toward Blade. He pulled his foot out of the water just as the creature swam close enough to give him a good look at it.

It looked like a cross between a giant catfish, a piranha, and a stingray. It had spines on either side of its jaws as well as along its back, a large mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, and a long thin tail with a barb on the end. It was at least nine feet long and coal-black except for sickly green eyes.

Blade decided that swimming across the stream might not be such a good idea after all. He started working his way upstream, looking for bridges or fallen trees. He found neither, but eventually he came to the ruins of a small dam. Beyond the dam the stream spread out in a small lake, but over the top of the dam the water was no more than ankle-deep. Blade crossed the top of the dam as fast as he dared go on the crumbling, slimy stones, keeping a watchful eye on the lake. Two sets of black spines rose near the dam only moments after he reached dry land and the path.

Once on the path he moved more easily but also more cautiously. The existence of a path implied the existence of someone to make it, and Blade didn't want to surprise or be surprised by that someone.

So he moved from one patch of cover to the next, looking and listening around him before each move. The path was obviously in fairly regular use, but there'd been too much rain last night even here under the trees to leave any footprints.

Roughly a mile down the path from the stream, Blade stopped abruptly. On either side of the path, ferns, vines, bushes, and even small trees were crushed into the ground. A trail of more of the same damage led off into the woods to the left. A large tree at the head of the trail showed a black scar. Blade looked more closely at the tree. Something had gouged out bark and wood to a depth of at least six inches, and also burned the edges of the wound to charcoal.

Blade followed the trail. It came to an end within fifty yards, and the smell stopped Blade even sooner. Decay and insects hadn't left enough of the animal to make it worth going closer. It must have been about the size of a large bear, and its skull and ribs showed the same sort of blackening as the tree.

Blade began to wonder just how primitive the people of this Dimension were. They'd obviously wrecked much of their civilization. Just as obviously, they had enough technology left to produce a weapon very much like a laser. That didn't make them any less dangerous, of course. Civilized people can be as unfriendly to strangers as primitive ones. With machine guns, lasers, and artillery they can also be unfriendly at a much greater range and in a much more destructive way.

It was also more important than before to get out of the woods before nightfall. Blade was sure he could outtalk, outfight, or if necessary outrun most human opponents. He wasn't nearly so confident he could do the same with a creature ten times his weight and probably carnivorous.

Blade returned to the path and started off again, moving a good deal more briskly than before.

Chapter 3.

Blade covered at least two miles at a trot, then saw the path was sloping downhill. At the same time the trees began to thin out. Soon Blade could make out the tumbled, overgrown stone blocks of a wall ahead. He climbed over the wall and picked his way across another stream on the half-submerged ruins of a bridge. After a few hundred yards more through young trees, Blade found himself on an open hillside. The sun was still well above the horizon. At the foot of the hill the city of towers loomed against a pale sky. In the clear air Blade felt he could reach out and touch it. Even from this distance it showed remarkably little damage. Most of the windows and doors were black and gaping, and here and there stone had crumbled or metal paneling had corroded through. Bushes sprouted from cracks in the streets, and the wreckage of one of the aerial bridges completely blocked an intersection. Otherwise the city might have been sleeping rather than dead. It was easy to tell that its builders had loved beauty and put that love into their city, without a thought for the war which their love of beauty hadn't been able to prevent.

On the hillside sloping down to the city, Blade saw cl.u.s.ters of ruined buildings. Some of the cl.u.s.ters were practically small towns in themselves, others were isolated and overgrown. The "suburbs" hadn't been so robustly built as the towers of the city itself.

In a way, Blade found the city of towers a more depressing sight than the ruins to the west. He was glad it was late enough in the day to give him an excuse to stay out of the city until morning. He didn't care for the thought of prowling dark streets where the least superst.i.tious man might find himself watching and listening for ghosts.

Blade stiffened as he realized the morbid and dangerous turn his thoughts were taking. He'd been letting his attention wander, at a time when he had to be even more alert than he'd been in the forest. He took cover behind a bush and found that when he could no longer see those dead towers looming over him, the gloomy thoughts went away.

He also realized that if he hadn't been alone he wouldn't have felt this way. He wouldn't be too particular about the company, either. He remembered some of his old comrades from MI6A, dour men who seldom talked about anything except their profession and the price of whisky. Even one of them would have been a relief.

Blade was as much a loner as any sane man can be. He wouldn't have joined MI6A in the first place if he wasn't. But even a man as naturally solitary as a cat can occasionally want someone to talk to or at least to guard his back. But Blade didn't even have someone else who'd faced the dangers of Dimension X and could swap stories with him over a bottle of Scotch! According to Leighton, they were one step closer to sending someone else to Dimension X, once an alloy-weapon or suit could he manufactured to increase the survival chances. Still, even if such a protective device were made, they'd still have to find someone who could travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane, and the search for such a person was as far from success as ever.

Blade decided that if he had a choice between a happy marriage in Home Dimension and a comrade-in-arms for travel into Dimension X, he'd choose the second. It was hard to imagine a woman worth marrying who would accept being shut out of most of her husband's working life. She would be shut out-the Official Secrets Act would see to that. Even worse, she'd have a good chance of ending up a widow without ever being allowed to know how!

Blade rose, stepped out into the open, then stopped in midstride. Smoke and dust were rising from one of the cl.u.s.ters of ruins, less than half a mile away. Then he saw running figures burst out of the ruins onto the open hillside. They seemed to be human, with dark skins or wearing dark clothing. Some ran singly, others in pairs. Darker shapes, low to the ground, seemed to be running after the people and among them. As Blade watched he saw the reddish flicker of sunset light on metal, then a longer, greenish glow which looked artificial. Lasers?

Blade drew his knife and started down the hill, using every bit of cover he could. About halfway down the hill he saw what the low dark shapes were. He saw the short legs, the smooth brown coats, the pointed heads with ugly red eyes, the obscenely hairless tails.

Rats.

Rats the size of German Shepherds!

Blade charged out from behind a stretch of broken wall and plunged down the hill like an Olympic sprinter.

Blade loathed rats. He'd loathed them ever since a night on one of his first missions for MI6A. He'd spent that night in a hut on the outskirts of Calcutta, along with the rat-gnawed corpse of a baby no more than three months old. Ever since that night he'd killed rats any time he had a chance, coolly, efficiently, and as thoroughly as possible.

Blade went down the hill with all thoughts of having no one to guard his back quite forgotten. He didn't quite forget that he had a back to guard. He never went that far, one of the reasons he was still alive after so many years of enough dangers to kill a dozen men. Instead of staying under cover of the ruins, Blade now stayed in the open, as far from any cover as possible. Crumbling walls and fallen roofs could hide the rats. With his knife and club, Blade could fight them safely only if he saw them coming a long way off. It would also help if he didn't suddenly burst out of nowhere at the people fighting the rats. They might be just a little bit trigger-happy right now!

Blade counted about a dozen people and at least twice that many rats. Four of the people seemed to be armed with rifles firing lasers or some other type of energy beam. The others carried bows or spears. All of them carried short swords strapped to their hips. So far none of the rats were close enough to make the people draw their swords.

The battle was moving uphill toward Blade, and the people were leaving a trail of dead or dying rats behind them as they climbed. Every time one rat went down, two or three more seemed to pop out of the ruins, and they were tough. Blade saw one lose a leg to a laser beam but keep coming on three legs until someone else put an arrow through its brain.