Chen, Zhu Irzh, together with Jhai and Miss Qi, had sidled one by one out of the truck and bolted to the makeshift shelter of one of the tanks.
"Wish we still had No's invisibility spell," Zhu Irzh said. "I just tried to replicate it. Can't. Can't do much down here, it seems."
"Do we even have a plan?" Jhai asked.
"Yes," Chen said. "Stay out of the way of the action."
"That's not going to be easy."
Chen pointed to the rocks, the ragged boulder field that led into the mountains. "Not a lot of people up there."
Jhai squinted narrowly. "No, you're right. In the absence of anything better, let's go for it."
Each of them broke cover from the tank and sprinted across the short strip of desert that separated rocks from army. Chen, as he did so, felt that at any moment the alarm would sound and bullets or spells would be shrilling at his heels. The reality was a welcome anticlimax. He reached the rocks in safety and was hauled down by Zhu Irzh. The women were already there.
"This feels safer," Miss Qi said.
"Qi, that's a nuclear plant," Zhu Irzh told her. "You won't be used to that, coming from Heaven. If that thing goes up, we'll be fried. We're well within the blast zone."
Miss Qi looked understandably uneasy. "What will happen to us then? We will not die."
"We'll probably just glow for the rest of our lives," Jhai said. Then she pointed. "Fuck! Look at that!"
They watched as kuei and dragon hurtled toward the valley.
"See what I mean?" Zhu Irzh said. A second dragon was flying in to take the place of the first, a kuei in hot pursuit.
"Do they battle it out first?" Chen asked.
"No." It was Miss Qi who replied. "This is ritual combat. They will continue until no dragons or kuei are left. See? Everything else is taking place around them."
She pointed to a line of dust advancing across the desert. Chen shaded his eyes against the glare and saw white and gold shapes in the front line, great prancing creatures with glittering manes.
"Kylin," he said. "Heaven's using lion-dogs."
"Must have just landed," Zhu Irzh said. Hell's tanks were turning, forming a wall, but one of the lion-dogs, complete with an armored rider, raced ahead of the rest and leaped up and over a tank, leaving dented footprints in the metal. Inside the hastily improvised blockade, it set about tearing demons to pieces, dismembering pieces of scattered limbs that crawled blindly about of their own accord. There was the shriek of machinery as someone brought a rocket launcher around and fired. The missile hit the lion-dog broadside and blew it to pieces in turn. Bits of hairy flesh shimmered and disappeared.
"It will return to Heaven," Miss Qi said, sounding suddenly quite calm, as though she were discussing a game of chess. "It will not see the rest of the battle."
The main line of the lion-dogs had come within yards of the tank wall now, and the creatures were either leaping across or being torn apart. Something like a long iron spear shot screeching down from the sky and buried itself in a puff of dust not far from Chen and the others. It stood, quivering and emitting a mosquito-whine.
"What in gods' name is that?" Chen said.
"Leg of a kuei," Zhu Irzh answered. "Dragon's winning this time."
More iron legs showered down from the sky like giant needles, impaling luckless demons and spearing a tank through its engine casing. The machine howled. Steam poured out of the vent made by the kuei's leg and the tank glowed red hot. Demons fled as it exploded.
"It strikes me," Zhu Irzh remarked, "that Hell's not doing all that well at the moment."
"I don't know," Chen replied. "There's a dragon down."
Two hours or so later, Chen and Zhu Irzh were still trying to formulate a plan of escape. The demon's latest notion had been to seize one of the small planes that had now landed across the desert and fly it back up to the higher levels. This idea suffered an early termination when it transpired that no one knew how to pilot an aircraft.
"Besides," Jhai said, "you'd have to get past the rest of the air forces, and that lot." She gestured upward. Five of the kuei and three dragons had now perished, although it was rather difficult to tell how many of each remained through the clouds of smoke. Now the kuei had retreated to one side of the sky, where they formed an enormous writhing knot, and the dragons to the other. Qi thought that they had agreed on some kind of breathing space while the rest of the forces went into battle, but Zhu Irzh disagreed.
"Kuei don't give up," he explained. "They're relentless. There must be some other reason."
Jhai half-rose, shielding her eyes. "What's that plane doing?"
One of Hell's bombers was shrieking across the desert, low over the shadowless sands, heading in the direction of the mountains. The sound of the battlefield—lion-dogs and the big spike-horned, moon-colored unicorns that had made mincemeat of several rows of infantry—had diminished to an ominous hum.
Chen and the others watched the bomber until it became no more than a speck on the horizon. Then it began to grow larger again.
"It's coming back," Chen said.
Zhu Irzh surged to his feet. "It's heading here!"
Moments later the bomber roared overhead, sending a hailstorm spatter of bullets down into the rocks. Chen and his companions threw themselves flat. The wail of the bomber was retreating again but Chen, glancing up, saw that it was turning. Beneath them, the ground shuddered, casting a shower of little stones down the hillside.
"For fuck's sake!" Zhu Irzh said, bitterly, brushing dust from his coat. "So much for staying out of the action. An entire battlefield to choose from and they pick on a bunch of noncom escapees."
"Zhu Irzh," Chen said. He'd just seen what was rising out of the shaking ground, beyond the demon's shoulder. "I don't think it's us they're aiming at."