They had gone a few steps when the woman behind cried out. The tree was smoking. She stepped back, cutting off the laser pulses, and the tree trunk began jetting a thin, whitehot flame. Blowtorch intensity threw a sudden, welcome heat. The fierce gout of smokeless flame grew rapidly.

The woman stared dumbfounded at the glowing lance. Toby pulled her away. “Run!” he shouted.

Killeen tugged Besen uphill. The Bishops took a moment to register the danger. Then they started off at a determined trot, laboring uphill as the flame grew behind them. Cermo was shouting orders.

“What… what you think… was?” Shibo asked beside him. The best they could manage uphill was a ragged trot.

“Some kind energy resource, maybe,” Killeen answered. “Mechs must’ve grown ’em.”

“Mechs use biotech?”

“Did on Snowglade, some.”

“Just fact’ry stuff. Replacement parts for their own innards.”

“Far as we know, yeasay. Here they did better.”

They stopped at the first shoulder above the broad forest. Toby and Besen struggled up the slope with a wall of billowing smoke behind them. The woman had started a ferocious forest fire.

At least it might slow the Cybers, Killeen thought. He tried to see a way to use the flame trees against them when they came up through the forest. The thought gave him a spurt of energy and he overtook the point party, led by Cermo. He was still mulling over the possibilities when they saw a squad of people on the far ridgeline.

“Tribe!” Cermo called ahead. “Bishops approach.”

—That fire’ll show us up good,—a distant voice answered sardonically.

“You bastards left us back there!” Cermo called.

—Orders. His Supremacy said was only way.—

Cermo said, “Only way of savin’ your asses you mean.”

—Stuff that. His Supremacy says, you do. Lucky you got out.—

To Killeen the Tribe’s attitude was bizarre. As the Bishops came up onto the stark ridgeline they found ranks formed in moving defensive perimeters. The Tribe was making good time toward a high, wooded knoll. Though the Tribe greeted the Bishops with some warmth, many showed no sign of guilt over having left their fellows on the battlefield. Bishops muttered angrily. Some of the Tribe were reticent and moved away. The bulk, though, looked at the struggling Bishop remnants with interest but obviously without for a moment considering that a gross breach of ordinary human morality had occurred.

“Don’t give a damn ’bout us, do they?” Toby said.

“It’s their faith,” Besen said. “His Supremacy says we’re expendable, so be it.”

“None so blind as she who will not see,” Shibo said, her voice soft with fatigue. She had helped Besen up the last rise and her power reserves were gone.

Killeen looked at her quizzically and she said, “One my Aspects fed me that. Old saying from Cap’n Jesus. Figure we need all the wisdom we can get.”

The situation would have been far more tense if the Bishops had not been so tired. They rested along the ridgeline as more Families marched past in open-arrow formation, wedge flanks far out to guard against Cybers.

Oily smoke came rolling up from the spreading fire below. Killeen could see trees catch and spurt out their pencil-thin gouts. Curiously, the trees burned only at regularly spaced points up the trunk. He watched as a tall one caught. The first plume shot out near the base. Then another started farther up the trunk and directly above the first. Soon there were seven whitehot flames evenly spaced along the trunk. The top of the tree began to rock and then it went over, pushed by the thrust of the escaping brilliant gas. He marveled at them in his exhaustion.

The forest fire guttered out into sour smoke as the stand of trees was exhausted. Killeen felt in his mind the persistent weight of what he now thought of as his Cyber, but he could not tell if it was getting closer. Smoke layered the valley like smudged glass and made it impossible to see approaching Cybers. He smelled their fog-dabs at the edges of his sensorium, though.

They lay in the waxing morning sun and let it take some of the ache out of them. Besen was throwing off her dizziness and even made a joke. It was as if they had all agreed to set aside the press of the world and evoke some vestige of earlier Family times. Shibo contended with a riddle: “What’s the best kind pain?”

Killeen murmured, “What’s this, old Pawn Family saying?”

“Yeasay.” Shibo was the only surviving Pawn member.

“No kind pain’s good,” Besen said reasonably.

“I give up,” Toby said.

“Can’t be real pain, right?” Shibo hinted with a slight smile.

“Fake pain?” Toby was puzzled.

“Right,” Shibo said. “Champagne.”

It was weak humor but they were weaker and everybody laughed. Nobody had seen champagne since the Citadels and the origin of the term was buried in antiquity. His Grey Aspect tried to tell Killeen something about Family France but he lay back in the warming sun and ignored her. Bishops repeated Shibo’s joke and he could hear the tired laughter work its way along the ridgeline.

A rest can seem to last a long time when you need it and so Killeen came back from a place far away when the voice said loudly nearby, “So you have rejoined us?”

His Supremacy stood with his marching escort talking to Jocelyn. Killeen had not registered any of the conversation until this point, but when he did sudden anger spiked through him.

“You left us out there,” Jocelyn said flatly.

As Killeen got up, His Supremacy said grandly, “I determined that your feint was insufficient.”

“We lost plenty people!”

His Supremacy coughed slightly as a wreath of greasy smoke drifted up from the valley. “In our heroic struggle there are martyrs, of course.”

“You ran off!” Jocelyn’s fists were clenched.

“I used your diversion to effect an escape—”

“You turned tail!”

“—from our untenable situation. And I expect you to keep a respectful tongue while addressing myself.”

“We could have withdrawn if you’d told us. Before we reached the valley floor.”

“As I said—”

“I couldn’t even raise you on deep comm. You wouldn’t—”

“That is enough!” His Supremacy’s eyes flickered with a strange pale cast.

“I demand that you—”

“No one demands of God. You will now—”

“Some God! You’re just a—”

His Supremacy made a small gesture with his hand. One of his guards stepped smartly forward and clipped Jocelyn expertly on the side of her head with a pistol, as if he had done the same thing many times. She went down heavily and lay still.

“Stake her,” His Supremacy said. “She is obviously ridden by the demons she has battled.”

He gazed out over the ridgeline where Bishops were gathering. A knot of them had formed behind Killeen, who stood absolutely still.

“And as well, I see there are others among the Bishops who seem to neglect the holy nature of my office.” This was plainly calculated to throw fear into the Bishops.

A Bishop man shouted, “You’re bunch cowards!”

“You turn ’n’ run pretty quick, for a God,” a woman called sarcastically.

Some Bishops’ hands began to creep toward their weapons but His Supremacy’s escort leveled theirs immediately, catching them by surprise. His Supremacy said hotly, “I believe I see demons dancing in the eyes of many here. Careful of your wild talk.”

“Keep your damn hands off Jocelyn,” a voice yelled from the knot behind Killeen.

“Yeasay!”

“Gutless bastard!”

“Yellowbellies!”

“Fatass poltroon!”

His Supremacy gestured slightly and two men in his escort started toward the knot. They trotted forward, trying to see who had yelled.

Killeen said, “Stop them or you’ll have a fight.”

His Supremacy gazed at him as though looking down at an insect. “You would threaten the deputy of All Living Holiness?”