Arch Wizard

'safe paths' through rooms and along passages. He hoped.

Syregorn stalked patiently after Rod, smiling a ruthless smile. Rod kept backing away, trying to recall how long this run of passage was.

'So you kill me,' he asked the warcaptain, sounding calmer than he felt, 'and then what? How are you going to get out of here alive?'

Syregorn shrugged. 'Carry you, and use you as a shield. Let the traps savage your body. You won't be that heavy a burden, with some of the unnecessary limbs lopped off.'

Rod tried not to shudder. 'And if you find yourself facing Malraun?'

'Bargain for my life with all I can tell him-all you told me- of this world you come from, Lord Archwizard; this 'Earth.' A place he can rule. A place he'll need strong arms who know how to swing swords to guard and patrol for him.'

'Strong arms like yours?' Rod let his amused disbelief rule his voice, to try to make his question a taunt.

'If men of Earth are like you,' the warcaptain observed calmly, 'my arm alone might be all that's necessary. It takes little skill to butcher-or cow-bumbling, unthinking children.'

The heel of Rod's rearmost foot struck the smooth hardness of a wall, and Syregorn's contemptuous smile widened. Rod had reached the end of the passage; the stair that had led down into it had been narrower. He sidestepped to the left, kicked gently back, and felt the bottom step instead of wall. Waving his foot from side to side until he felt the side-wall of the stair, he backed into the stair.

Syregorn shook his head. 'Enough of this,' he remarked pleasantly-and charged.

All the screaming was God-damned deafening.

Rusty Carroll winced more than once as he dodged frantically-fleeing secretaries, who slammed into him and clawed their way past him almost blindly, not even seeing the gun in his hand as they sought to get away.

He caught glimpses, as he struggled through the flood of terrified Holdoncorp staffers, of what they were fleeing. The men in black armor were striding everywhere through the maze of cubicles, smoked glass dividers, potted palms, and brightly-glowing flat-panel monitors-and they were hacking at things indiscriminately as they went.

Glass tinkled and shattered, earth spilled across the floor as hewn plants toppled, and sparks spat here and there as cables were severed. Somewhere a fire alarm went off. Not the incessant ringing it was supposed to emit, but a hiccuping brring-off-brring-off-brring annoyance that made Rusty heartily wish he'd insisted on headphone-style earplugs as part of full-crisis company security uniforms, not just infrared goggles and gas masks.

Neither of which he'd bothered to scoop up before running down here, he remembered, which meant using tear gas on these Dark Helm clowns was out-until he could get back to the security closet where the gas canisters and a dozen masks were stored.

That closet that was clear across the far end of this floor, of course. Put in entirely the wrong place so an architect could give the Senior Brand Overmanager of Strategic Marketing Initiatives who'd engaged his services for the Corporate Headquarters Ground Floor Front makeover a nicer view of the nearest green hillside, a neatly manicured slope across the encircling drive that only a very wildly-hit golf ball might ever roll down…

Snarling under his breath, Rusty ran toward that distant closet. He'd have preferred to keep right along the marble wall, but at least a dozen executives had wangled permission to extend their offices across the back fire route corridor to meet that wall. Of course.

So in three places he had to dodge out from the wall, following the winding passage that left the black marble temporarily behind to run out and along the curved glass fronts of their offices, separating them from mere peons in the company hierarchy. Right now, though, they and said peons were all crammed together in this same passage, shrieking in terror and punching, kicking, and clawing at each other to try to get past. Co-workers as inconvenient obstacles…

Rusty wasn't sure where they all thought they were hurrying to, being as the only ways out that didn't involve going up or down in the building (using the stairs he'd just come down, or the far more palatial adjacent bank of elevators) were straight at the Dark Helms and out the front glass doors, or through one of the locked doors in the marble wall into the luxurious offices of upper management, the Inner Sanctum with its floating- glass-steps rear stair. Unless you were bold enough to make your own exit through a glass wall somewhere-an escape route quite likely to sever heads, arms, or otherwise prove fatal to an unprotected and terrified secretary trying it. Just thinking about that made him wince.

A particularly hard knee nigh his crotch brought him back to the here-and-now with a jolt, and left him facing a rather more immediate truth. Head of Security or not, he was damned cold certain of one thing: these long-haired, well-dressed, uppercrust cubicle mice were all in his way, and determined to scratch, claw, and even bite him to get past him.

And if he hit back at just one of them, just one, he knew the lawsuit that would eventually follow-from whoever he hit, no matter what she'd done to him, or from her next of kin-would ruin his life more thoroughly than-

One of the great electronic locks hummed and clicked, in the black wall right beside Rusty's elbow. Just now, he was hurrying down one of the doglegs in the fire route corridor that swung back to run along the marble for long enough to go around the curved back wall of an office shared by four Executive Graphics Facilitators. Clawing at that glass to halt his rush, he only just had time to hurl himself back, and against the black marble.

So the large, rarely-used 'side door' into the Inner Sanctum, constructed for rolling large pieces of new machinery-such as the monster photocopiers and color plotters-in and out of the executive offices with relative ease, didn't break his nose or toes when it swung open.

It did knock three running, shrieking secretaries flat. Only one of them was still moaning and feebly moving on the floor as three grandly-suited vice presidents, resplendent in gleaming designer shoes and Ivy League ties Rusty happened to know came from institutions they'd never attended, strode out into the tumult, regarded all the running or sprawled and senseless underlings with clear distaste, and demanded of the world at large, in only slightly-varying queries: 'What the fuck is going on?'

The only answer they got was more screams.

'You!' the florid Vice President Finance boomed, pointing at a particular gasping, sprinting young woman. 'If you want to remain employed here an instant longer, come here!'

The terrified secretary obviously decided she did not desire to continue employment with Holdoncorp if it meant getting sliced open with a broadsword in the next moment or so, and kept right on running as fast as she frantically could.

So did the panting, one-shoed woman behind her-and right behind her came striding two Dark Helms in armor, visors down, and swords up and hacking at everything handy.

'What's going on? Is this someone's idea of a joke?' the Vice President Legal demanded, jowls quivering. He peered wildly around, then poked his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, as he did every few moments of his waking life.

Again, no one deigned to reply. Rusty was quietly keeping hold of the door, both to hide behind it and to prevent it from swinging closed. The escape route it offered might very soon be urgently needed.

Then the screaming was elsewhere, and fading into distances fast. The secretaries, clerks, and clerical supervisors who normally populated this part of Holdoncorp's Ground Floor Front had all fled, leaving two Dark Helms-with more coming up behind them-striding to meet the three gaping Holdoncorp vice presidents.

Executive Vice President Jackman Quillroque had not reached his exalted position by being indecisive-or slow to confront potential trouble. He had always been tall, loud, and fearless. No waiting for inconvenient results of marketing surveys for him.

'Swords? Dark Helm costumes? Who are you, and just what by all the smoking pits of Hell do you think you're doing? What's going on here?'

Rod Everlar hastily backed up two steps, caught his heel and stumbled on the third, and sat down on the fourth hard and helplessly, his improvised spear clattering from his grasp.

He grabbed for it desperately, managed to snare its end in his fingertips, and looked up-into the grinning