with the drug factory. Fisher moved in close beside him.
'Are you sure this is the right place, Hawk? If Morgan's got a packing and
distribution setup here, he's going to need a lot more room than this pokey
little warehouse.'
'This is the place,' said Hawk, hoping he sounded more convinced than he felt.
When all was said and done, all he had to go on was the dying words of a girl
already out of her mind on chacal. He pushed the thought to one side. He'd
believed her then; he had to believe her now. Or she had died for nothing.
'There are mystic wards all over the place,' said Mistique. Hawk jumped
slightly. He hadn't heard her come up behind him. The sorceress smiled briefly,
and then turned her attention back to the warehouse. 'I can't quite make out
what kind of wards, though. Given the circumstances, I think we ought to tread
carefully, just in case.'
Hawk nodded, and gestured to two of the Constables. They moved forward and
cautiously tried the warehouse door. It was locked, which surprised no one. One
Constable kicked the door. His clothes burst into flames that leapt up around
him in seconds. He screamed shrilly and staggered back, beating at his blazing
clothes with his hands. The other Constable quickly pulled him down and rolled
him back and forth in the snow to smother the flames. Hawk scowled. He hadn't
expected to hit a magic defense this quickly. He made sure the injured Constable
would be all right, and then turned to the sorceress.
'Get us in there, Mistique. I don't care how you do it, but do it fast. They
know we're here now.'
The sorceress nodded eagerly, her earrings jangling accompaniment. She stared
thoughtfully at the door, and wisps of fog began to appear around her, circling
and twisting on the still air. The misty grey strands grew thicker, undulating
disturbingly as they drifted away from the sorceress towards the warehouse door.
The mists looked almost alive, and purposeful. They curled around the door,
seeping past the edges and sinking into the wood itself. Mistique made a sudden,
sharp gesture and the door exploded. Fragments and splinters of rotting wood
rained down on the Guards as they shielded themselves with their cloaks. Where
the door had been, there was now nothing but an impenetrable darkness.
Mistique turned to look at Hawk. Strands of fog still swirled around her, like
ethereal serpents with no beginning or end. 'Fast enough for you, darling?'
'Very impressive,' said Hawk courteously, trying hard not to sound too
impressed. 'Can you tell us anything about what's beyond the doorway?'
'That's the bad news, I'm afraid,' said Mistique. 'The darkness is a dimensional
gateway, leading to a small pocket dimension, the inside of which is a damn
sight bigger than that lock-up. I've knocked out the protective wards so we can
get in there, but I've absolutely no idea of what might be waiting for us. Sorry
to be such a drag, but whoever designed this beastly setup was jolly good at his
job.'
'All right,' said Hawk. 'We'll just have to take it as it comes. Brace
yourselves, people; we're going in. I want Morgan alive, and preferably intact
so we can ask him questions. Anyone else is fair game. I'd prefer prisoners to
corpses, but don't put yourselves at risk. We don't know what kind of odds we'll
be facing. Try not to wreck the place too much; you never know what might turn
out to be useful evidence. Right. Let's do it.'
He hefted his axe and walked forward, Fisher and Mistique on either side of him.
From behind came a brief whisper of steel on leather as the Guards drew their
weapons and started after him. Hawk gritted his teeth and plunged into the
darkness. There was a sharp moment of intense heat, and then he burst through
into Morgan's factory. His first sight of the place was almost enough to stop
him in his tracks, but he forced himself to keep going to make room for the
others coming behind. Morgan's warehouse was an insane mixture of planes and
angles and inverted stairways that could not have existed in anything but a
pocket universe.
There was no up or down, in any way that made any sense. People walked on one
side of a surface or another, or on both, and gravity seemed merely a matter of
opinion. Simple wooden stairways connected the various level planes, twisting
and turning around each other like mating snakes, and walls became floors became
ceilings, depending on which way you approached them. Hawk shook off his
disorientation and concentrated on the force of armed men rushing towards him
from a dozen different directions. He didn't have to count them to know his own
small group was vastly outnumbered.
'Mistique!' he yelled quickly. 'Take out the stairways. Bring this place down
around their ears!'
'I'm afraid we have a slight problem, dear,' said the sorcerer, staring off into
the distance. 'Morgan has his own sorceress here, and I'm rather tied up at the
moment keeping him from killing us all.'
'Can you take him?'
'Probably, if you stop interrupting. And if you can keep those nasty-looking
men-at-arms away from me.'
Hawk yelled instructions to his people, and the Constables moved forward to form
a barrier between Mistique and the approaching men-at-arms, while Captain
Doughty and Captain Burns stayed at her side as bodyguards. Fisher looked at
Hawk.
'And what are we going to do?'
'Find Morgan,' said Hawk grimly. 'I'm not taking any chances on his getting
away. Mistique, when you're ready, don't wait for orders from me. Just trash the
place.'
Mistique nodded, absorbed in her sorcerous battle. Thick strands of fog twisted
around her like dogs straining at the leash. Hawk started down the nearest
stairway, with Fisher close behind him. They hadn't gone far when Hawk heard the
first clash of steel as his people met the men-at-arms. He didn't look back.
In what might have been the center of the mad tangle of planes and stairways was
a more-or-less open area with a lot of excited movement. It seemed as good a
place as any to start looking. The stairs turned and twisted under Hawk, and he
quickly learned to keep his gaze on his feet and ignore what was going on around
him. A man-at-arms in full chain mail came running up the stairs, waving his
sword with more confidence than style. Hawk cut him down with a single blow, and
hurled his body over the side of the stairway. The dead man fell in half a dozen
different directions before disappearing from sight in the maze of stairways.
More men-at-arms came charging towards Hawk, six men in the lead, with a lot
more on the way. Bad odds, on a rickety wooden staircase. He looked quickly
about him, and grinned as he spotted a large flat plane not too far away. It
stood at right angles to him, but then, so did the two men on it, frantically
packing paper parcels into two large crates on a wide table. He looked back at
Fisher, and pointed at the plane. She raised an eyebrow, and then nodded
