Orellt was squirming backward through the gap. Dellian took two fast paces and saw the next morox appear on the top of the fuselage. No time. He flung the axe, sending it spinning through the air as the morox leaped at him. It hit the side of the beast’s forelimb and bounced away, clattering off the rocks. And Orellt was standing in the gap, the knife pole ready to throw like a spear.

The creature smashed into Dellian, its forelimbs lashing out. He felt talon tips slash down his left arm, then it juddered, a knife pole sticking out of the back of its neck. Its weight was on top of him, carrying him to the ground. The fall dazed him, and all he knew was the mass of the dead carcass pressed unmoving against him, pinning him down. Then boys were yelling all around. Hands dragged the dead creature off him. He glimpsed Orellt and Falar back in the open, their knife poles jabbing into the darkness. Hable retrieved the axe. Xante, Janc, and Colian were holding burning branches, scything them about furiously. Uret picked him up and manhandled him through the gap, where Yirella half carried, half dragged him to a seat. She and Ellici were immediately busy with antiseptic sprays and long strips of a-skin while behind them the boys performed an orderly withdrawal back into the flyer’s cabin.

“You’ll be fine,” Yirella was saying loudly as torch beams wobbled about, shining on his arm. There was plenty of blood. “The cuts aren’t deep at all.”

Orellt’s face loomed up in front of him, grinning wildly. “We got another one! And we reset the fire. It’ll burn for another hour at least.”

“Terrific,” Dellian gasped, and winced as Ellici applied a strip of a-skin to his bicep. It stung as it adhered.

“Drink this,” Yirella ordered, shoving a flask at him. “You need fluid.”

“It’s not piss, is it?”

“No.” She grinned. “I’m saving that for breakfast.”

—

The surviving moroxes howled to each other for the rest of the night. One even ventured up toward the gap in the fuselage again, only to have Xante and Colian ward it off with the knife poles.

Dellian dozed for most of the time, falling into a deeper sleep sometime well past midnight, only to be dragged from slumber by a fresh morox howl. He saw Colian in the gap, holding a knife pole ready, but not jabbing or shouting for help.

The next thing he knew it was dawn, and the cabin was full of his yawning friends. A wan gray light was shining in through the small windows, and the smell of smoke was heavy in the air.