53

The temperature plummeted. My headache worsened till Cat had to help me stay on my feet. Numerous top god types tried to break up the fight. The Godoroth and Shayir went on like fools with nothing to lose and a complete willingness to take everybody with them. And they seemed to get support from some odds and ends of petty pewter types from other pantheons, mainly of the strike-from-behind, score-settling sort.

We made good time despite being inside the bag. We were behind the knee of a hill when the Bohdan Zhibak lit up with the grandaddy of all light pops.

I went down. "Bet they saw that back in town." My headache grew so intense I blacked out.

I recovered in seconds. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to get us out of this."

Trying to take a powder, actually. Hell. Give her the benefit. Say she was trying to scram because I was out and she couldn't move the sack with all that dead weight in it.

My head didn't hurt nearly so much now. I found the knot, got us out in seconds. Fourteen went catatonic with terror. I restored my cord to normal, wrapped it around my waist again.

There was a lot of noise from the other side of the hill. Cat told me, "We've got to keep going."

"In a minute." I wanted a peek. Just one little look. I was pretty sure my Midnight of the Gods was cooking now. Be a shame not to witness some of the action.

I kept a tight grip on Cat. Just in case. Much as I hate horses and heights, I hated the prospect of walking home more. Especially walking home while suffering a headache and a psychotic parrot. She had the strength to break away. She just didn't try. Ever seen a sea anemone? Thing like a little flower a couple inches across, pale tentacles that just drift around? Maybe not. I had the advantage of an all-but-the-pain expenses-paid trip to remote islands. Anyway, these little guys just sit there with their arms up and when something drifts by they snag it.

A black version thirty feet in diameter with two hundred tentacles fifty feet long was stuck in a hole in the air where Lang and Imar had been banging on each other. It was twenty feet off the ground, tilted forty degrees and wiggling like crazy. "No wonder the gods wanted to come over here."

The thing plugged the hole so tight no cold could come through. The snow had begun to melt.

The gods were active. Frantically. Some tried to deal with the interloper. Some tried to get loose from it. The really big guys were feeding it. I saw Ringo get flung into the middle of the tentacle forest. Many of the visible victims, in fact, seemed to be of Shayir or Godoroth extraction. Guess this will settle that question.

Other old scores were being recalculated as well. A general trimming of the divine population was under way.

There seemed to be enough gods actually taking care of business to push that thing back. While I watched, the hole shrank several feet.

Nog is inescapable. Oh my. Somebody fell through the cracks.

"Time to go."

Cat had gotten it, too. She outran me, though not by much. Wonder of wonders, her flying pals had not left us twisting in the wind. Considering Fourteen's timidity, I'd figured to find them long gone.

Nog is inescapable.

Maybe so. He was closing in fast.

He was so close, in fact, that he leaped and landed a raking blow on my mount's left flank as we went airborne. Which naturally irritated the horse. It gained some altitude, turned, dove, did a fine job of thunking all four hooves off Nog's noggin. Nog said, Ow Stop! That hurts!

The retard had double the vocabulary I had thought. But I didn't dwell on that. I was too busy screaming at the horse to get the hell out of there before I fell off or Nog showed us what other divine talents he possessed—or Magodor caught up or the other gods got bored with feeding each other to their new pet.

The winged horse took my advice.

As we gained altitude again my headache diminished. I was soaked with sweat from gutting it out.

The moon had climbed only slightly higher. At this rate, if we hustled, we could get back to town before we left. Or at least meet ourselves on the way. I could warn me not to go.

I looked down. The Haunted Circle crawled like the proverbial anthill. There had been a lot of breakthroughs. The one I had seen was just the biggest. In numerous places one or two tentacles reached through and tried to find something to grab. But the gods had covered themselves. There wasn't so much as a bush out there. When a tentacle grabbed a boulder somebody zapped that into pea gravel. The home gods were winning. Rah! The wannabes were being driven back. Rah!

Rah! But at terrible cost. Boo! This insanity would decimate every pantheon in the Dream Quarter. Wait! Would that be so awful?

None of this was likely to touch the man on the street. I could not see, for example, the New Concord Managerial Recidivist gods informing their faithful that good old Gerona the Tallykeeper was no more, so they needn't trouble themselves with bringing in those tithes. More likely they would hear about several new diocesan appeals, maybe aimed at fixing up the mother temple in TimsNoroe or financing another mission to the heathen Venageti. And one sceat out of every silver mark really would go toward carrying out the fund's dedicated purpose.

Not that the gods would themselves be much concerned about money or precious metals.

Well! Look at this. Not every god is woven of the stuff of heroes. I was too far up there to recognize individuals, but quite a few had run from the bad place. Was it all cowardice, though? One group of several dozen was headed north in a purposeful manner. I had a notion that if I dared swoop down there, I would find some very familiar folks.

In fact...

54

In fact, a pair of familiar shapes hurtled past, zip! zap! to my right front from my left rear, angling down from above, too swift to see but trailing giggles that gave them away. One looped back and took a seat right in front of me, where she changed into a half-naked girl. The other one circled and complained.

"I got here first, slowpoke. Hi, Garrett! Surprised? Can we talk? We're lots smarter than we always acted."

"I'm real uncomfortable up here. That first step down is a killer. No offense, but do you think you could maybe keep your hands to yourself till we get a little closer to the ground? I don't have your advantages over gravity. If I get distracted I just fall."

The circling owl girl giggled. The other answered peevishly, "He is not! He's just behaving like a mortal." She did not take her hands off me. "Wouldn't it be exciting way up here, Garrett? I've never played with mortals anywhere but down on the ground."

Does a bimbo become any less a bimbo because she is smarter than everybody thinks?

"For about as long as it takes for me to lose track and let go here." I tried to get a hint of the color of her rags. "Look, Dimna, darling, you're just about the greatest thing that ever happened to me." Wow! I got it right first try! "But now just isn't the time to show you just how much I mean that. I hate horses. I'm terrified of heights. I have a murderous headache from all the power in that mess back there, and I haven't eaten or slept since this insanity began."

So I exaggerated. We all do that to save somebody's feelings. Or to avoid getting tossed off a two-thousand-foot drop for our thoughtlessness. She sure did look good, though. I am a pig, I know. I have been told. But I can't help it. Maybe if I didn't run into this kind of woman all the time? Maybe if I got into a more boring line of work? Maybe I could just drop over the side right now, die happy making Dimna squeal all the way down.