"What else can we do? I have no weapons, Vingole. I have no weapons!"

"I do."

"What do you mean?"

"I risked my life a thousand times to collect the animals in this park. Especially the ones I brought in today. I intend to defend them." He turned away from Yarmuz Khitain. "Here! Here, give me a hand with this cage!"

"What are you doing, Vingole?"

"Never mind. Go see after your gates." Without waiting for help, Nayila began to shove the cage of dhiims onto the little floater-dolly on which it had been rolled into the building. Khitain suddenly comprehended what weapon it was that Nayila meant to use. He rushed forward, tugging at the younger man's arm. Nayila easily pushed him aside, and, ignoring Khitain's hoarse protests, guided the dolly out of the building.

The invaders from the city, still roaring their leader's name, sounded closer and closer. The park will be destroyed, Khitain thought, aghast. And yet—if Nayila truly intends—

No. No. He rushed from the building, peered through the dusk, caught sight of Vingole Nayila far away, down by the east gate. The chanting was much louder now. "Thallimon! Thallimon!"

Khitain saw the mob, spilling into the broad plaza on the far side of the gate, where each morning the public waited until the hour of opening arrived. That fantastic figure in weird red robes with white trim—that was Thallimon, was it not? Standing atop some sort of palanquin, waving his arms madly, urging the crowd on. The energy field surrounding the park would hold back a few people, or an animal or two, but it was not designed to withstand the thrust of a vast frenzied mob. One did not ordinarily have to worry about vast frenzied mobs here. But now—

"Go back!" Nayila cried. "Stay away! I warn you!"

"Thallimon! Thallimon!"

"I warn you, keep out of here!"

They paid no attention. They thundered forward like a herd of maddened bidlaks, charging without heeding anything before them. As Khitain watched in dismay, Nayila signaled to one of the gatemen, who briefly deactivated the energy barrier, long enough for Nayila to shove the cage of dhiims forward into the plaza, yank open the bolt that fastened its door, and dart back behind the safety of the hazy pink glow.

"No," Khitain muttered. "Not even for the sake of defending the park—no—no—"

The dhiims streamed from their cage with such swiftness that one little animal blurred into the next, and they became an airborne river of golden fur and frantic black wings.

They sped upward, thirty, forty feet, and then turned and swooped down with terrible force and implacable voracity, plunging into the vanguard of the mob as though they had not eaten in months. Those under attack did not seem at first to realize what was happening to them; they tried to sweep the dhiims away with irritated backhand swipes, as one might try to sweep away annoying insects. But the dhiims would not be swept away so easily. They dived and struck and tore away strips of flesh, and flew upward to devour their meat in mid-air, and came swooping down again. The new Lord Thallimon, spurting blood from a dozen wounds, tumbled from his palanquin and went sprawling to the ground. The dhiims closed in, returning to those in the front line who had already been wounded, and slicing at them again and again, burrowing deep, twisting and tugging at strands of exposed muscle and the tenderer tissues beneath them.