Deep in the Web, Race and Julia ran the figures of warriors through the icy fingers of their minds. Sorting, choosing; plucking one here, another there.
The terrible weight and chill of the Matrix impinged upon the Searchers, but they no longer felt its crushing burden as they had on their previous journeys into the frozen heart of probability.
Race and Julia were carrying out orders, as they were sworn to do. If the results were not what Venkatna desired, then he should have thought of that before he screamed his orders. This day he would get precisely what he asked for—
To the hilt.
Figures moved in two discrete settings, dwarfed by the vastness of infinity. The Searchers merged portions of one parcel with the shrinking remainder of the other; picking and choosing; using the power of the Web, but working with a subtlety that only the knowledge they had gained as humans made possible.
No peace? Then war would continue.
Warriors disappeared from North's battleplain. Their figures reappeared in the stinking, smoke-shrouded corral outside Frekka, at the side of Nils Hansen.
A warrior in red-and-gold armor, a warrior in horizontal stripes of black and yellow, a warrior in armor burnished to the bare metal, save for the chevrons of a marshal on the sides of his helmet. . . .
There were not so very many of the warriors who joined Hansen: a handful, a score; perhaps as many as a hundred at the end.
A warrior in lime green with a gold phoenix on his breast, a warrior in red and white; a warrior whose battlesuit had a blue torso and limbs of gleaming silver. . . .
Not so very many warriors; but they all wore armor of royal quality, and they were all very good men.
A pirate with bronze wings welded to the sides of his helmet, a warrior in orange swirls; a warrior in gleaming silver with no other marking. . . .
Or they had been good men, in the days they lived and walked the Open Lands.