The Great Dane was puzzled as to why the Chimerae had left one fixed position only to occupy another, but only then noticed that by dressing his lines against the alcove, he had placed his squad out of position to assault the stairs: its left flank was near the stairway, and was already pelting forward, not waiting for the tardy right flank, which was still milling near the alcove, some dogs casting for scent, having not seen which way the Chimerae went, so dark and evil-smelling was the gunpowder-filled chamber and so rapid was Chimerical flight.

The Kine brandished spears and bills they had found fallen from the trophies on the walls, but they never actually engaged any foe, except by cheers and hoots.

The Chimerae women fought like she-demons or pagan goddesses of the hunt.

The girls impaled dog things with arrows, missing never a shot. Each had shrugged one shoulder free of her uniform, so they were half-naked, breasts bound up with medical tape to protect them from the snap of the bowstring. Back they drew the creaking bows, feathers to the ear; aimed; and let fly.

It was nearly perfect conditions for shooting. Indoors, with no wind, good lighting, at close range, and no need to arc any shot; nor did the dog things or Blue Men have any cover or concealment, not even a shield to hold overhead.

Their pretty eyes narrowed and glittered with concentration. They spoke only in grunts of one word or two:

“Five confirmed.”

“Four confirmed.”

“Seven. Arm. Could die.”

“Five. Arm doesn’t count.”

“Seven. Groin.”

“Six. Ouch! But doesn’t count.”

“Seven. Through both temples.”

“Counts. Seven confirmed. We’re tied.”

“Nine. Blue.”

“Only Eight!”

“Blues count double.”

And on and on the bowstrings sang.

After a time, Suspinia ordered Franz and Ardzl to climb over the railings of the stairs and pass among the dead to recover their arrows, and whining, the Kine obeyed.

The Lady Ivinia, wielding a kitchen knife in either hand, very neatly butchered one dog after another, parrying a bayonet or cutlass with one knife, disemboweling her attacker with the other. She was careful to leave the dying sufficiently alive to die slowly, so that a pair of comrades would come to their aid and drag the wounded from the fray, occupying three soldiers for each casualty.

The Great Dane, seeing this and realizing how dangerous Lady Ivinia was, ran toward the stairs on three legs, drew its black powder pistol with its fourth, and shot her point-blank. The bullet lodged between the breasts that had suckled so many warriors of the Chimera race, and she fell backward, a look of bliss on her features. The Great Dane had time to see that neither its nor any musketballs were igniting, and had time to start wondering why, when shots from the ceiling guns blew its head and upper body into chunks and scattered them.

When Ivinia fell, a peculiar wailing cry went up from Alpha Daae, and a look of madness was in his face, and all the other Chimerae echoed it; and throughout the chamber both the later-period Witches, and the early-period Nymphs, and any who had ever faced the Chimera race for a moment quailed at that dread keening, their limbs shaken with terror; and the dogs quailed also. It was the wail of the Chimerae.

The second-in-command after the Great Dane, a Golden Retriever, barked out the order. “You! Blades out! Bayonets only! Hold fire!” And this order was repeated in other parts of the chamber, in the other fights breaking out at this same time, for others had been slain by overhead shots. The fire control panel had been destroyed, and Menelaus could give no new order to the Mälzel brain controlling the local defense, but the orders he had typed in still stood, and that included retaliation against gunfire.

Gamma Phyle, bellowing and screaming, stood above Ivinia’s fallen body and slung pellets from his sling into the skulls of any dog things or Blue Men who seemed to be giving orders. His pellets neither exploded nor emitted microwave radiation, but even a man of ordinary strength can kill with a sling and a stone, and Phyle was bred and bioengineered to strength twice that of the strongest unmodified athlete, and his eye was more keen and his aim more sure.

Preceptor Ydmoy, who despite being of greater intelligence than the Followers did not have as swift of reflexes or a habit of obeying orders, just then aimed his jeweled pistol at Gamma Phyle and fired.

With astonishing reflexes, Gamma Phyle twisted just as a microwave ray from Ydmoy’s pistol struck him, intercepting the beam-path with his left hand, so that his left arm up to the elbow was charred, but his chest was not struck and no major organs were damaged.

Meanwhile, Ydmoy was felled by wall-guns. His coat gems deflected the shots seeking him, but the weapons in the lintels of the great doors, more sophisticated, sprayed him with a gush of liquid fire, a substance his magnetics could not deflect. He could utter only one scream, because after that his lungs were charred and motionless. The little man ran hither and thither for a moment, eyes and tongue consumed from his skull, fatty cells in his skin and muscles being eaten by fire, and then collapsed to the floor, flopping like a beached fish, in a spreading stench and puddle of his own blood and entrails, and many gems of his torn coat lay in the red mire glowing like live coals.

Phyle continued to fight one-handed, and the smart fibers in his uniform sleeve made themselves into a tourniquet. Because he had no sensation in that arm, he thrust the smoking arm fragment into the jaws of a dog thing that leaped on him; it closed its jaws on the dead arm by reflex, and Phyle, with reflexes better trained, crushed its windpipe with a stiff-fingered blow from his other hand. He plucked the saber from its belt as the dog-corpse fell away and he slew any dog near him, cutting his way toward the commanding Blue Men. More and more fell before him: there was something horrible in the sight, like seeing awkward but enthusiastic children cut down by a hardened and trained veteran.

Phyle was not the most excellent of his race. He was merely a Gamma.

Daae strode forth, crying out the name of Ivinia, challenging all comers. He killed dog things, one after the next after the next, with perfectly executed and practiced strokes of his shillelagh.

After killing an even score of them, Daae turned and saw a grenadier among the dogs, with a haversack full of petards and grenades. Now he nimbly plucked the musket from dying paws, turned, and drove the bayonet into and through the grenade pouch of the grenadier, and into its kidneys. Now he leaned into the musket and screamed and ran, pushing the stumbling and bleeding grenadier dog thing back into the arms of its own comrades and pack leaders. These were the highest ranked of the dogs, their alphas and captains. Then Daae shouted, “Save my people, Judge of Ages! I never disbelieved of you!”

He pulled the trigger, so that the grenades, petards, fuses, and powder in the bulging ammo haversack ignited in every direction, killing more than a dozen at once, including the pack leaders, and wounding many others. A fusillade from the ceiling guns blew apart his shoulder, chest, and head, and Daae fell without a word. But even as the bullets struck, even as he fell, even as he died, he contrived to fling his body forward onto the dogs, so that the ricochets, divots, and shrapnel from the overhead guns would pass through his body and pierce his foes. With his last thought and his last breath and his last moment of life, he made his own corpse into a weapon against the enemy.

The dogs in this part of the chamber all yowled in panic and wrath, and they broke ranks, each attacking merely whatever was before its nose, without discipline or thought. That was the turning point of the fight.