"What about an active defense?" Jan asked. "What if you made a lot of sharp poles thrusting upwards, like the spines on those spine-balls we saw?"
"The spines did not help those creatures much," she pointed out. "And if I planted them that closely together, there would again be no room for us."
"What of a solid wooden roof?" asked Faro.
"Fire," she replied succinctly. "And wood can be broken. Rock and the amalgam I made for the bridge are both heavier than metal. And there is another thing; making our palisade is very tiring for me. I could begin creating a large covering of metal mesh or wood or almost anything, but frankly I am certain I could not finish it."
It cost her something in pride to admit that, and from the surprise on the men's faces, it must have been the first time they had ever heard a Mazonite say that something was beyond her.
"You can create oil, can you not?" Barad asked.
She nodded. "Several barrels' worth, I believe."
"Then let us make torches and have a trench of oil about the inside of the palisade," Barad suggested. "If something seems to be coming over the wall, or attempting to fly down into our camp, we can set fire to the oil. I have never seen a wild beast that would willingly fly or climb into fire."
That seemed the best solution possible, and this was precisely what Xylina did.
As the last of the light died, they set their guards. There were twenty-nine of them altogether; they set watches of nine, ten, and ten. Ware would command the first watch, Xylina the second, and Faro the third. The rest drew lots for which watch they would take.
The first watch passed without incident, but midway through the second watch, Xylina's fears of an attack from above were realized.
The first watch had noted strange lights that passed overhead, but they did not seem to portend anything, and they did not descend far enough down that anyone could see what they were. Xylina guessed that they might represent some night-flying version of the floating monsters, creatures which carried lights like fireflies, or like the foxfire found in rotting stumps. They might even be lights like those that floated above swamps: false-lanterns, the Mazonites called them. All about them, the night remained peaceful. Xylina dozed through the first watch, waking from time to time as the men spoke with each other, but there was nothing to suggest that they were in any danger.
The sounds from outside the palisade, which had been suggestive of insects and small animals, suddenly changed midway through the second watch, however. Xylina had patrolled with the rest, listening carefully to the chirps and buzzes of insects, and the rustling noises that could be small animals disturbing foliage. She peered up at the floating lights-red and green and blue, some in patterns, some alone. Nothing threatened, and she began to feel very foolish.
Then the night grew suddenly quiet. Alerted, she strained her ears for some sign of what had come to prowl out there, for surely something had, and had disturbed the night-creatures enough to silence them. 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 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.
There was no time-no time-