Blackbirds swing down toward Saskia and the dip. I hear cries from men on rooftops—Makemin is there among them and with a loud command they open fire. The blackbirds fly apart and scatter, tumble down the slope, others rush for the fortified rocks. Saskia charges after them alone—she flashes over the stones and down behind the fortifications as a deafening shout rises in the air and a numberless wave of enemy come crashing down the slopes like an avalanche. One wave descends toward the city and two others swarm and proliferate to either side along the slopes like a pot overboiling down its sides and along its rim at once—I see it all from here. Wacagan swoop, bobbing on many legs, the terrible shrilling of their guns tears loose in a seething ring.

A mass of our men, the asylum soldiers, rushes out to meet them, clotting up along a line formed by the foundations of a ruined aqueduct, now just a low strip of black stone and mortar not a foot high. They gather there firing into the encroaching enemy they are jumping in place waving their guns hooting and firing they are being shot down on all sides but they don’t waver, they don’t move, they stand and fire reload and fire barking with murderous ecstasy roaring from swollen throats, and the enemy, so much more numerous, shrinks from them—they are being blown to pieces on all sides but they do not move, they do not pause in their firing—they fire, and the enemy scatters in front of them. I see half a dozen drop at once nearly all in a row—I see another standing by himself surrounded by his dead comrades howling wildly his gun butt braced against his stomach wheeling this way and that shooting and reloading and shooting. His head twitches as though he’d sneezed, and he collapses on the spot—but more asylum soldiers rush to the front with terrifying cries. They can’t retreat, they can’t move, they are held there by madness that teems through the air turning men into shrieking—they can only stand and shoot their eyes streaming with thick tears of rage.

The onflow of the enemy reverses and they are regrouping now out of range on the heights not far from me—fast!—and the single remaining grenadier hurries by below my position, heading toward them. As I look in the direction he’s taking I see Jil Punkinflake there ahead and below me; he’s in a wide hollow hidden from the enemy, slumping down in my direction so I can see him there. He’s dithering back and forth, maybe wondering whether or not it’s safe to come out. The grenadier enters my view, rushing awkwardly up along the ridge above the hollow, leaning nearly double as he tries to get up among the rocks. Jil Punkinflake puts his hands to his mouth and calls, the grenadier pauses and looks down and the back of his uniform emits a single sheet of dust in a plume—he flops to the ground where he is and I hear Jil Punkinflake scream. He drops to his knees and onto the ground, curling up. I can’t get to him from here. He is lying on his side in the dirt, shaking. His face, chin down on his chest, is almost unrecognizeably distorted with terror; sobs expand and contract it without let up.