Outside there came shouts, screams, the rip-crack of flechette rifles and the twang-thud of heavy crossbows firing. Something heavy smashed into the wall of Ardis Hall and a second later a window in the room next door exploded inward. There were flames lighting the win-dow—flames outside and below.

Ada jumped out of bed. She hadn’t even taken her boots off, so she tugged her tunic straight and followed Emme out into a hallway filled with running figures. Everyone had a weapon and was heading for his or her assigned positions.

Petyr met her at the base of the stairs.

“They’ve broken through the west wall. We have a lot of people dead. The voynix are in the compound.”

Ada emerged from Ardis Hall into confusion, darkness, death, and terror.

She and Petyr and a group of others had rushed out through the front door onto the south lawn, but the night was so dark that she could see only torches on the palisades and the vague shapes of people running toward the Hall, hear only shouts and screams.

Reman jogged up to them. The powerfully built bearded man—one of the earliest of those who came to Ardis to hear Odysseus’ teachings while he was still teaching—was carrying a crossbow with no bolts left in it. “The voynix came in over the north wall first. Three or four hundred of them at once, concentrated, en masse …”

“Three or four hundred?” whispered Ada. The previous night’s attack had been the worst, and they’d estimated that no more than a hundred and fifty of the creatures, spread out, had attacked all four sides of the compound.

“There are at least a couple of hundred coming over each wall,” gasped Reman. “But they came over the north wall first, behind a fusillade of stones. A lot of our people were hit… we couldn’t see the rocks in the dark… and when our numbers on the ramparts dropped, we had to keep our heads down, some ran, the voynix came leaping over, using each other’s backs as springboards. They were in among the cattle before we could bring up the reserves. I need more quarrels for the crossbow and a new spear…”

He started to brush past them into the foyer where the weapons were being dispensed, but Petyr caught his arm.

“Did you get the injured back from the wall?”

Reman shook his head. “It’s crazy up there. The voynix butchered those that fell, even those with just light head wounds or bruises from the rocks. We couldn’t… we couldn’t… get to them.” The big man turned away to hide his face.

Ada ran around the house toward the north wall.

The huge cupola was on fire and the flames illuminated the confusion. The temporary wooden barracks and tents where more than half the people at Ardis slept were also on fire. Men and women were running back toward Ardis Hall in total panic. The cattle were lowing as shadowy, flick-fast shapes of voynix slaughtered them—that was what voynix once did, Ada well knew, slaughter animals for humans, and they still had their deadly manipulator blades at the ends of those powerful steel arms. More cows went down in the mud and snow as Ada watched in horror, and then the voynix began hopping and leaping her way, quickly covering the hundred yards toward the house in giant grasshopper bounds.

Petyr grabbed her. “Come on, we have to fall back.”

“The fire trenches …” said Ada, pulling out of his grasp. She made her way across the current of running people until she reached one of the torches along the back patio, caught it up, and ran back toward the nearest trench. She had to dodge and weave her way against the crowd of men and women running toward the house—she could see Reman and others trying to stem the flight, but the panicked, defeated mob ran on, many of them throwing down their crossbows, bows, and flechette weapons. The voynix were past the burning cupola now, their silvery forms leaping across the burning scaffolding, striking down men and women trying to put out the fire. More voynix—scores of them—were hopping, scuttling, and running toward Ada. The trench was fifty feet away, the voynix less than eighty.

“Ada!”

She ran on. Petyr and a small group of men and women followed her to the trenches, even as the leading voynix leaped across the first ditch.

The kerosene drums were in place, but no one had poured the fluid into the trench. Ada pried the top off and kicked a heavy drum over, then rolled it along the edge of the trench as the strong-smelling fuel poured sluggishly into the shallow ditch. Petyr, Salas, Peaen, Emme, and others seized more of the heavy drums of lamp oil and began tipping and pouring them.

Then the voynix were on them. One of the creatures leaped the ditch and slashed Emme’s arm off at the shoulder. Ada’s friend did not even scream. She looked down at her missing arm in silent astonishment, her mouth hanging open. The voynix raised its arm and its cutting blades flashed in the light.

Ada dropped the torch into the trench, picked up a fallen crossbow, and fired a bolt into the voynix’s leather hump. The creature turned away from Emme and coiled, crouching, ready to leap at Ada. Petyr sloshed half a can of kerosene across its carapace at almost the same time that Loes threw his torch at the thing.

The voynix exploded into flame and staggered in circles, its infrared sensors overloaded, metal arms flapping. Two men near Petyr fired clouds of flechettes into it. Finally it fell into the ditch and ignited that entire section of the trench. Emme collapsed and Reman caught her, lifting her easily, and turned to carry her back to the house.

A fist-sized rock came hurtling out of the darkness, fast as a flechette and almost as invisible, and smashed in the back of Reman’s head. Still holding Emme, he tumbled backward into the burning ditch. Their bodies burst into flame.

“Come on!” shouted Petyr, grabbing Ada’s arm. A voynix leaped through the flames and landed between them. Ada fired the remaining crossbow bolt into the voynix’s belly, grabbed Petyr’s wrist, dodged past the staggered voynix, and turned to run.

There were fires all over the compound now, and Ada could see voynix everywhere—many past the flame trenches already, all of them within the walls. Some fell to flechette fire or were slowed by well-placed crossbow bolts and arrows, others were flung back when hit by flechette bursts, but the human firing was sporadic, individual, and poorly aimed. People were panicked. Discipline was not holding. The hail of flung rocks from the unseen voynix beyond the walls, on the other hand, was incessant—a constant and deadly barrage out of the darkness. Ada and Petyr tried to help a very young redheaded woman to her feet before the voynix overran them all. The woman had been struck in the side by a rock and was coughing blood onto her white tunic. Ada threw down her empty crossbow and used both hands to help the woman get to her feet and begin staggering back toward the Hall.

Flame trenches were being ignited on all four sides of Ardis Hall now by the retreating humans, but Ada saw the voynix run through the fire or leap over it. Wild shadows leaped everywhere on the lawn and the temperature rose a dozen degrees or more in a few seconds.

The woman sagged against Ada and almost pulled her down as she fell. Ada crouched next to her—amazed at the amount of blood the redheaded girl was vomiting onto her tunic—but Petyr was trying to pull her to her feet, guide her away. “Ada, we have to go!”

“No.”

Ada bent low, got the bleeding girl over her shoulder, and managed to stand. There were five voynix surrounding them.

Petyr had lifted a broken spear from the ground and was holding them back with feints and stabs, but the voynix were faster. They dodged back and lunged forward more quickly than Petyr could turn and thrust. One of the creatures grabbed the spear and wrenched it out of his hands. Petyr fell onto his stomach almost at the voynix’s feet. Ada looked around wildly for any weapon she could grab or use. She tried to set the girl on her feet so she could free her own hands, but the redhead’s knees buckled and she fell again. Ada rushed at the voynix standing over Petyr, ready to use her bare hands on it.