Yarn sprints over to us and his shoulder explodes just above the bicep—he falls on his side his head towards me and, after one numb moment, a howl is forced out of him as though he were being run through a mangle.

His groin ruptures, then his belly and chest at nearly the same moment, and immediately he is lifeless as a stone. A few more bullets pat noisily into his leg, and one dings his ear, causing his head to rock back and forth two times.

A boulder topples and falls away on my left, and two dark figures silently bound through the gap. I am frozen. One of them is in the light now; I see his short beard is white. Something crashes down on me, only sound, and the one I am looking at jerks, his left arm parts from his body, and I can see through the shredded uniform the white of his collarbone in a spray of blood. He glides weightlessly backward into the second one, who is lit too briefly to see by a muzzle flash. I think the bullet strikes his comrade. Another crash above me and now there is only a dim concatenation of whirling shapes there in the vague gap. I look up at Makemin, who has already rechambered his gun. He glances down.

“Get back to the cart!”

I follow him there. Silichieh is crouched down behind the box, which has unfolded to expose something like a metal cask that narrows to a blunt bottle neck. He is reaching and adjusting. I am hidden. Thrushchurl comes stalking up and begins firing around the cart that hides me, and Makemin is aiming and shooting, deliberate and steady. I peer out and see shapes massing high on the slope, all black streaks popping with gunfire.

“Shoot damn you!” someone yells at me.

I pull my pistol, but I can’t clearly see anything to shoot at. My hands rest on the rock in front of me, pistol in my right hand. Explosions all around. My right hand hurts—I glance at it and smoke is puffing from my gun. I suppose I must have been firing it. It was pointing up the slope. It was full, now it’s empty.

Something white, far up on the slope, and almost wholly concealed behind a stone—it’s there only for an instant—an indistinct shape that pulls itself in and is gone.

A sound like popping stitches thunders up behind me. I drop down looking. Silichieh is pumping these two handcranks on either side of his metal barrel, which is mounted on hinges attached to a shield. I see the shield blacken in one spot and the whole thing vibrates, a bullet deflected there. Discrete packets of brown smoke snap from the front of the barrel, and Silichieh, pumping frantically, is peering through a wire circle on top of the barrel, swinging it deliberately from side to side, and Makemin is ordering everyone to shoot. The bottom of the slope, where we are, is exploding with flashes and blasts, and above us I can see the enemy soldiers going down, tumbling in air without hitting the ground. Brown gobs of smoke are growing here and there on the slope, like ghost rocks, and around them the enemy begin to writhe and paw their faces. I hear retching and belching howls. I see an arm spin against the stars, and I hear screams, orders, a weird bleating horn is blowing.