The Chosen

the angle of the walls acted to deflect the blast, Center said. chaotic effect, and not predictable.

Good thing for the plan it did what it did, John thought as he rummaged for the first-aid kit.

your death at this point would decrease the probability of an optimum outcome from 57 % ±3 to 41 % ±4, Center said obligingly.

'Nice to know you're needed,' John said.

The ringing in his ears was less, and he could see properly. Good, no severe concussion; he squatted beside the wounded Marine.

'Hold him,' he said to the others. 'Let's take a look at this.'

Two men held the shoulders down. The arm was not broken, but it was bleeding freely, a steady drip rather than an arterial pulse. He slipped the punch-dagger out of his collar and used it to cut off the sleeve of the uniform jacket; not the ideal tool-it was designed as a weapon-but it would do. The flesh of the man's forearm was torn, and something was sticking out if it. John closed his fingers on it. A splinter of wood, probably oak, from a structural beam. Longer than a handspan, and driven in deep.

'This is going to hurt,' John said.

'Do it,' the Marine gasped, gray-faced.

One of the others put a rifle sling between his teeth. John gripped firmly, put his weight on the hand that held the man's wrist to the ground, and pulled. The Marine convulsed, arching, his teeth sinking into the tough leather.

The finger-thick dagger of oak slid free. John held it up; no ragged edges, so there probably wasn't much left in the wound-hopefully not too much dirty cloth, either, since there was no time to debride it.

'Let it bleed for a second,' he said. 'It'll wash it clean.'

There was medicinal alcohol and iodine powder in the kit. John waited, then swabbed the wound clear with cotton wool and poured in both. This time the Marine simply swore, and John grinned.

'You must be recovering.' He packed the wound, bandaged it, and rigged a sling. 'Try not to put too much strain on this, trooper.'

'Yessir. Ah. . what the hell do we do now, sir?'

They all looked at him, battered, bruised, a few bleeding from superficial cuts, but all functional. He looked down the street; there was a breastwork of stones four feet high in front of them, and more behind, but the road downslope looked fairly clear. Smoke was mounting up rapidly, though; the fires were out of control; the waterworks were probably hit and the mains out of operation. It lay thick on the air, thick between him and Pia.

'First we'll get this road cleared,' he said briskly, spitting again. 'Goms'-who looked worst injured-'there's some water in the boot of the car, see to it. Smith, check the car and see what it needs. Wilton, Sinders, Barrjen, Maken, you come with me.'

He studied the way the rocks interlocked in the barrier ahead of them. 'We'll shift this one first.'

'Sir? Prybar?' corporal Wilton said. The crusted block probably weighed twice what John did, and he was the heaviest man there.

'No time. Barrjen, you on the other side, there's room for two.'

Barrjen was three inches shorter than John, but just as broad across the shoulders, and thick through the belly and hips as well; his arms were massive, and the backs of his hands covered in reddish hair. He grinned, showing broad square teeth.

'If'n you say so, sor,' he said, and bent his knees, working his fingers under the edges of the block.

John did likewise and took a deep, careful breath. 'Now.'

He lifted, taking the strain on back and legs, exhaling with the effort until red lights swam before his eyes and something in his gut was just on the edge of tearing. His coat did tear across the back, the tough seam parting with a long ripping sound. The stone resisted, and then he felt it shift. Shift again, his feet straining to keep their balance in the loose rubble, and then it was tumbling away down the other side like a dice from the box of a god, hammering into the pavement and falling into the gutter with a final tock sound.

Barrjen staggered backward, still grinning as he panted. 'You diplomats is tougher'n you looks, sor,' he said, in a thick eastern accent.

John spat on his hands. Center traced a glowing network of stress lines across the rockfall, showing the path of least resistance for clearing it.

'Let's get to work.'

* * *

'I want to go home,' Lola said-whimpered, really.

Pia fought an urge to slap her. The other woman's eyes were still round with shock; understandable, and she was less than twenty, but. .

'Up here.'

The staircase was empty; it filled the interior of the square tower, with a switchback every story and narrow windows in the cream-colored limestone. Smoke was drifting through them, enough to haze the air a little. The light poured in, scattering on the dust and smoke, incongruously beautiful shafts of gold bringing out the highlights and fossil shells in the stone. Pia labored upward, feeling the sweat running down her face and soaking the nurse's headdress she wore, thanking God that skirts had gone so high this year-barely ankle-length.

'Come on,' she said. 'We'll be safe up here.'

'Safe for a little while,' Lola said. Then: 'Mother of God,' as they came out onto the flat roof of the tower.

Ciano was burning. The pillars of fire had merged into columns that covered half the area they could see. Heavy and black, smoke drifted down from the hillsides, covering the highways that wound through the valleys running down to the Pada. The warehouse districts along the river were fully involved, the great storage tanks of olive oil and brandy bellowing upward in ruddy flame like so many giant torches.

'Nobody's fighting the fires at all,' Pia whispered to herself. The waterworks must have been finally destroyed. And the streets by the docks, they were stuffed with timber, coal, cotton, so much tinder. She could feel the heat on her face, worse even in the few moments since they had come out onto the flat rooftop.

Lola looked around. 'What can we do?'

'Wait,' Pia said. 'Wait and pray.'

Thunder rumbled from the eastward. Pia's head came around slowly. The sky was summer blue, save for the great pillars of black smoke. Rain would be a mercy, but God had withheld His mercy from the people of the Empire. The sound rumbled again, then again-too regularly spaced for thunder, in any case.

The rain was not coming. The Chosen were, and those were their guns. She slipped to her knees and crossed herself, bringing the rosary to her lips.

Come to me, John, she thought. Come quickly, my love.

Then she began to plan.

CHARTER NINE

'Ciano's burning,' Jeffrey Farr said, opening his eyes.

Get out of there, he added silently to his brother. Afterimages of buildings sliding into streets in sheets of fiery rubble washed across his vision as the link through Center faded.

'Ya,' Heinrich Hosten said cheerfully. 'Maybe we shouldn't have bombed it quite so heavy.'

He looked eastward, toward the smoke that hazed the horizon. The distant thump. . thump . . of artillery sounded, slow and regular.

'Street fighting,' the Chosen officer went on. 'We may have trapped them too well-there are a quarter of a million troops in there, less what's getting out, the net's not watertight.'

'Why not just let it burn?' Jeffrey asked.

'The High Command may do that for a while. Praise the Powers That Be, we won't