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But Gurt heard the noises first-scraping sounds, but very loud, as if something was being dragged
through the sand outside. As these sounds drew nearer, Xylina felt the hair on the back of her neck
rising. Whatever was out there, it was heading for the palisade.
Then Xylina heard more of the sounds, coming from another direction-and Marie heard them as well,
from his section of the palisade. The conclusion was inescapable. Whatever was out there, there were
many of them, and they were all converging on the palisade!
Xylina sent Gurt around to wake the others, and lit her oil-soaked torch, going to stand beneath the wall
with her sword in one hand and her torch in the other. Fear sent a chill hand walking down her spine,
and her eyes burned with the strain of trying to see what was over the top of the wall. Would the wall
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stop it, whatever it was? Or could it fly or climb?
The scraping sounds reached the rock wall-and stopped for a moment. She thought then that it was over,
that they were safe, but then the sounds resumed-and continued up the wall. Her heart pounded in her
ears; her mouth tasted dry, and her knees trembled. Still, she stood her ground, standing at the foot of the
palisade, waiting to see what was coming for them. She could not let the men see how frightened she
was-or they might lose their own courage. She must hold fast, or they would not be able to. But she
followed the sounds up the wall with her eyes- and so she was the first to see the new monsters as soon
as they topped the rock of the palisade.
Something like a talon hooked over the edge of the rock; a second appeared beside the first, then the
edge of something huge and saucer-like heaved up into the light from the torch. It was shiny, and there
were many legs attached to it; a pair of faceted eyes, glittering like some malignant jewel, looked down
at her in the torchlight. Beneath the eyes were sickle-shaped mandibles, sharp and as long as her arm,
serrated on the inner edges. Another moment passed, and a second creature hauled itself up to stand on
the palisade beside the first. More followed, until the rock walls were ringed with them.
The first thing she thought of was that they were some kind of horrid giant spider. But their limbs were
armored, and besides those terrible mandibles that clicked menacingly, each of the monsters was armed
with two huge pinchers, as large as Faro's torso, that they held just in front of their mouths. They were
each as large as two horses put together; they glared down at her, their eyes reflecting a hundred tiny
flames in the light from her torch, and one of them made a move to descend the wall, groping down for a
foothold in the stone.
She acted before she thought, on pure reflex. She plunged her torch into the oil-filled trench, and leapt
backwards as the flames exploded upward, licking hungrily at the wall.
The flames were not the only things roaring; the monsters let out angry sounds of their own as the
flames lashed out toward them. Most of them retreated backwards, down the way they had come-but a
few of the largest gathered their legs under themselves, and sprang at her, at the men, landing in the
camp on the other side of the flaming barrier.
Afterwards, she could not recall anything clearly; only a horrible confusion of claws and blades clashing
together, of Faro dousing one of the things with oil and setting it afire, so that it scuttled madly about the
encampment, shrieking. Fire and reflected flame, screams of men and monsters-at one point she found
herself fighting back-to-back with Gurt, Horn, and Barad, sweat pouring down her face and stinging her
eyes, her body shaking with fear and fighting-frenzy. She conjured weapons for those who had lost
theirs, calling up anything that happened to spring to mind-torches, staves of metal, fistfulls of fabric to
cast over the eyes of the monsters to blind them for a precious moment. Someone called an alarm as the
flames in the trench died; she conjured more oil to keep the trench burning. Faro backed three of the
things into a corner, catching them between himself and the flames; she sprinted to his side and conjured
more slabs of rock to topple onto the monsters to break their armored legs. Jan fell and one of the beasts
grabbed his leg, trying to drag him away. She left the fighting circle to dash in and sever the joint of the
claw holding him, then stood over him until two of the others came to drag him to cover. In the next
instant, Barad was taken and torn apart by two of the beasts, then devoured before their eyes, the
creatures stuffing still-twitching limbs into their greedy maws.
Ware took advantage of their preoccupation with feeding to slay them both, stabbing them with long
poles topped with spines, up through their mouths. Horrid black ichor spurted from their mouths as they
backed into the flames from the trench.
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There was no time-no time-
In the next moment, she came between Gurt and another of the beasts, forcing it away from him,
hacking at it with an arm that felt leaden and burned with fatigue. Ware got this one as well, tossing a
swath of oil-soaked fabric over it from the rear and letting her back it into the fire from the trench so that
it went up like the others, screaming and waving its pinchers in the air.
Faro seemed to be everywhere, stabbing at the creatures' eyes with improvised spears made of spines
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