Danton thought. But the officer—hadn't meant it. He hadn't wanted to shoot the woman. That might be very important to consider.

Presently the officer stood up. "Men. The Redbirds will follow up this bombardment with a winged attack. They always do when the moons are right. We'll remain hidden along the trail and take them as they come in. They've never learned the strategy of ambush. Make ready for the attack. Be alert!"

Danton motioned and the three of them retreated slowly, as silently as possible. They had crawled probably a hundred yards when the attack came.

The Redbirds were red. They also might be considered birds, with a reptilian dominance. Their wingspread was enormous, and their bodies were very nearly human to look at—with an alien deviation that made them seem grotesque when they really weren't grotesque at all. In a way they were beautiful. Red feathers and gold-flecked eyes.

And then the air was torn apart. Explosions, rushing bodies, breaking wings, burning feathers and singeing flesh and hissing screams. The moonlight fluttered with winged shadows.

"This is real war," Danton heard Van Ness yell. "Hand to hand. The real thing."

Danton couldn't see either Van Ness or Keith. He fought, firing wildly at shadows and substance. The real thing. It was strange, he thought, but in that fifty years of the bloodiest war, the most destructive in history—he'd never killed anything hand to hand. It had been coldly impersonal, that war. A million here, a million there. Nine million at once. And nothing remaining except charred craters. No bodies around. No one crying either. Nothing at all. But this—

Van Ness's fading scream chopped down like hot steel. Danton couldn't fire, afraid of burning Van Ness, who was being lifted up by a Redbird. Van Ness was gone almost before Danton realized that he was being carried up and away over the tree tops.

Danton crawled around in the flame-blasted clearing. His rifle was gone. The Redbird's powerful wings had slammed it into shadows and brush. He looked for Keith.

Keith!

He didn't find Keith either.

He lay still, very still. Several soldiers were poking around in the tangled debris of bodies and blood and torn brush. It was so still all at once. No sounds at all except the hard breathing of men. No wings threshing, or screams penetrating.

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