The cyborg turned on its pursuers. There was a desperate, abandoned look to the maneuver. Killeen sensed stubborn, fatalistic defiance in the cyborg’s movements. Its arms came up in a clenched gesture, like six fists shaking in rage at once.

It fired everything it had at something out of view. But its cause was hopeless. It lurched to the side and took another massive blow. Smoke poured from it. Small rattling bursts struck its natural, organic body, leaving shallow red craters in the rough hide.

Without pleasure Killeen watched the thing die. The cyborgs were, for all their uncaring brutality and deep strangeness, based on natural beings, organically derived from the world. He had felt some strange respect for the one which had spared him, cast him onto this maimed planet. He was not happy to see one brought down by mechs, even though he himself had been among the killers.

The faint calling came to him as he thought this, and at first he did not register it. Only when the small human figures came running into view, waving their puny weapons in triumph, did he understand.

THREE

The tent was worn and frayed and stained. Killeen wondered if this was for camouflage, since it blended well into the jumbled terrain.

All during the walk here his escort had said nothing beyond curt orders. He had not been surprised that their thickly accented speech was in his language; it had never occurred to him that humans spoke more than one way.

They had led him through rambling encampments of tattered tents and lean-tos of scrap and brush, past more people than he had ever seen assembled. Even the Citadel had held fewer Bishops than this. Flapping pennants with unfamiliar symbols suggested that this was a full Tribe. No such grand meeting had occurred on Snowglade within living memory.

A woman in gray coveralls pulled back a tent flap and someone poked Killeen in the buttocks. He walked in, taking long quick strides to avoid another poke, and to maintain some shred of dignity.

The tent seemed larger from inside, with a high peak lit by a phosphorescent ivory ball. Oil lamps glowed along the tent’s four oblique diagonals, casting blades of yellow down onto the heads of dozens of people. They were gathered at an orderly, respectful distance from the man at the very center of the tent.

A black desk of polybind ceramic dominated the room. Killeen wondered if these people had carried that heavy mass around with them. It looked mechmade, smoothly curved and sculpted so that its sharp arc focused the eye on the small man behind it, lounging in a light metal chair.

The figure did not seem impressive enough to merit the fixed, hushed attention of everyone else in the tent. He was short, stocky, with hair as black as the ebony desk. A long gash of sullen red ran from above his right temple down across the swarthy skin to the hinge of his jaw. Something had nearly struck his eye, for the mark burrowed into his heavy eyebrows.

About a dozen men and women flanked the desk like guards. No one said anything. They were all watching the man eat a large piece of green fruit. Juice ran down his chin and dripped onto a white cloth set on his chest. The man’s uniform was made of a cool-blue, light, comfortable-looking fabric unlike any Killeen had seen before. He smacked his lips. He was giving all his attention to his eating and everyone else seemed to be, too.

The long silence continued. Killeen wondered if this show was for his benefit and dismissed the thought when he saw the rapt look on the faces around him. This was some sort of privileged, special audience, unlike any meeting of a Cap’n and his Family that Killeen knew. The man eating wore no signifying patch. The people nearby had makeshift uniforms of rough cloth, with insignia vaguely similar to the house emblems of Snowglade. Their faces, though seemingly dazed, bore a certain intense look of authority. Some wore small medals of tarnished, ropelike silver. Could these be the Cap’ns of the legions he had seen outside?

Finally the small man sucked on his snaggly teeth, smacked his lips, and tossed the remnant core of the fruit over his shoulder.

As someone moved to pick it up the man leaned back and stretched, yawning, still not looking at anyone in particular. Then he seemed to notice Killeen and regarded him with unreadable blank eyes. “Well?” the man said.

“I, my name is—”

“Knees!” the man shouted.

Killeen blinked. “What? I—”

Someone hit Killeen hard yet neatly across the backs of his knees, knocking his support away so he dropped forward and hit the floor, barely managing to stay on his knees.

“Signify!” a voice whispered near him.

“I come from Family Bishop. I honor these lands of, of…” Killeen had begun the old greeting in hopes that some idea would come to him, but now he needed to insert the name of this Family.

“Treys!” the whisper said.

“…Treys, seeking help in a time of dire need, against the depredations and torments inflicted by our mutual—”

“Bindings!” the man behind the desk shouted.

Instantly hands grabbed Killeen’s arms and swiftly tied them behind him. He let them without protest, because of something he glimpsed in the man’s eyes as the orders were given. The empty eyes had suddenly jerked with animated fire, a spasm of wrenching pleasure.

The man stood up. Honorific pendants swayed from a broad scarlet belt that neatly bisected his blue suit. “He is disarmed?”

A whisper answered, “Aye, Your Supremacy.”

“He understands his position in our cause?”

The whisperer near Killeen hesitated, then said, “He is a Cap’n, Your Supremacy, so we did not feel qualified to instruct him.”

Evidently this transparent attempt to shift responsibility worked, for the swarthy man nodded calmly and spread his hands toward Killeen, as if addressing a problem. “I must attend to this myself, then.” Abruptly he frowned at Killeen. “Your Family?”

“Bishop.”

“No such.”

“We’re not from this planet.”

“Never heard such.”

“We came here searching for refuge from the mechs.”

“Ha! You chose well. Here we have vanquished them.”

“So I see.”

“You see only that which I determine,” the short man said reasonably. “You will understand that.”

“I, ah—”

“It is the devil Cybers we fight now. They too shall yield to our bravery and ardor and spirits of fire.”

“Cybers?”

His Supremacy nodded, eyes empty again. Lips pursed, expression expectant, he seemed to be listening to some distant voice. Then his attention returned and the muscles of his face stretched his olive skin so that it gleamed beneath the cone of phosphorescent radiance that cascaded around him. The brilliant ball directly above cast a pearly circle on the floor, with the swarthy man as its center. The crowd kept its distance, venturing only as far as the softer glow of the oil lamps intruded into the hard, white circle.

He continued abruptly, as though there had been no pause. “They cut the lands with their great sword. Just as victory came to us, as the mechs fled before our assaults, these giant things fell upon us from the sky. Our triumph was denied. But we shall conquer!”

This provoked loud shouts of agreement from everyone in the tent.

The man looked expectantly at Killeen. “This action is, of course, a tribute to my immortal nature. They send against me the very worst that the evil-hinged skies can muster.”

His eyes left Killeen and shot around the room, moving intently from face to face beneath the oily yellow glow. His lips bulged out as if barely containing a vast pressure.

“They compliment us! By sending their most awful and powerful, now that the mechs are rabble scurrying to escape our bootheels. They do us honor! And they shall die.”