Ni watched Stump-Leg die. In one moment the rebel was beside him, cursing gutturally and firing his ancient rifle at unseen guards. He was probably unaware that the man he fought beside was a Swarna clone. Ni was just another rebel, firing at guards and soldiers with lethal skill. In the next moment, Stump-Leg’s head was aflame, slagging, and then the skull exploded in a shower of brain and bone and smoldering hair.
The men and women of Five Songs had converged in the night. Maps supplied by the clones revealed safety corridors through the Menagerie and the garden, protected by electronic pain transmitters. The safety corridor was mined—and every day the security computer selectively armed and disarmed different segments of the minefield. They could only hope that their map was up to date.
They were wagering their lives that it was.
So far, it was a poor bet. They had made it as close as the garden, but were pinned down in a cross fire, faces in the mud and muck, drowning in the torrential rain in a night that threatened to last forever. When they tried to move, the mines blew them to pieces.
Screams of pain and frustration churned the air, some of them originated in the throats of the camosaurs behind them. The sound, the shock, the smell of torn flesh combined into an overwhelming sensory collage, paralyzing the warriors of Five Songs where they crouched.
And then—
The energy bolts, pulse-rifle plasma blasts ripping them in unending salvos, just stopped. The sky no longer rippled with fire, was no longer seared with an angry aurora borealis. A guard screamed in frustration and fear and confusion, cursing his suddenly useless weapon.
Ni smiled grimly, gripped his machine rifle, and charged across the minefield. Behind him, the rebels gasped at his lone, headlong plunge, expecting to see him blown into bits in the next moment.
But—there was no explosion.
Bullets exploded around him as the guards switched to the non-energy-based weapon. Ni charged directly into the fire, a lone figure screaming defiance, and for a long moment the rebels watched him. Watched as he fired, cutting down two guards atop the wall. Watched as the bullets finally found him, and tore his body to pieces, throwing him this way and that, until he lay, in the rain, unmoving.
And then, something broke among the rebels, and they charged. Charged across the dead minefield, charged the inaccurate rifles and machine guns. Charged the ancient walls of Caernarvon Castle.
They died the way Zulus died at Roerke’s Drift, by the hundreds. But over their shattered bodies came more, and yet more, and the guards were overwhelmed, screaming.
The earth shook. And in the light of the flaming wreckage, a giant shadow fell upon the rebels from behind.
Again the carnage paused, and all turned to look.
One of the great placid plant eaters stood watching them. A speaker box chained at its throat suddenly crackled with sound.
“Hello,” the box said. “I am an ankylosaurus, an herbivore of the Cretaceous—” Then it stopped, and seemed to shudder. Then there was … a change. Something happened in its eyes, and it no longer gazed at them dully. Suddenly, its eyes were focused, intelligent. And the speaker said, “Follow me. We have taken control of the Menagerie. Follow me …”
And the ankylosaurus charged, directly into Caernarvon’s suppressing fire.
They watched as the machine-gun fire ripped into it, and then a rocket, blowing a great piece of living armor from its hide. It screamed in an agony that was too human, the scream coming from its throat and the box at the same time, and it collapsed, dead, tail twitching. But its enormous bulk gave them cover closer to the wall.
Then there was a scream from behind them, as a thirty-foot iguanodon charged. Bipedal, carnivorous, a relic of the lower Cretaceous, it shrieked, folds of loose flesh beneath its jaw puffing and deflating with each scream. On thick, gnarled legs it plunged through the deactivated minefield. The earth thundered as it approached, and the men on the wall screamed, pivoting their weapons as the creature, suffering unimaginable torment, charged through the electronic barrier and went to the attack.
On momentum alone, it made it all the way to the wall, and slammed into it headfirst. The men on the wall screamed, as much in sheer terror at the size of the beast as anything else.
And as they fired—
Another iguanodon came out of the smoke, through the barrier, and attacked at the northeast corner
And then another, and the rebels of Five Songs watched, amazed, and then raised their arms to the sky, screaming and shrieking their pleasure.
Truly, the gods were with them.