The Dark Symphony

Populars.
    They might just have a chance.
    "Chances!" Strong hissed.
    "Still fifty-fifty," Gypsy Eyes whined.
    Tisha tried to snuggle even closer.
    "Something has to break," Strong said. "Something just has to!"
    Then Redbat was there with his legions.
    They filled the air, flapping, gliding, making shrill sounds to one another as they jockeyed for position. They dived with such speed and in such a vertical angle that Guil thought they must surely smash into the earth and shatter themselves to pulp. But, at the last feasible moment (no, the moment was not feasible; they were beyond the brink of disaster; it was of the nature of a miracle that they could recover in-so short a distance) they thrust their wings out, breaking their fall, and were on the Musicians.
    The night was a shattered mirror.
    The screaming reached them where they sat on their lofty sled like spectators at a game.
    Bats fell on half the Musicians, tore into them with unrestrained fury. The landscape was a bubbling froth of combat that exploded and steamed and whirled. The excitement was too much for the winged Populars; their bladders could not hold up in the fury and confusion. . Guil saw Redbat strike a Musician's neck, rip upward with claws. He flapped madly to gain height, pulling the Musician's ruined neck away from the rest of him. Satisfied, Redbat dropped back into the skirmish.
    "Let the angel of the Lord chase them…"
    Malignant, awful angels: bat-winged and fanged…
    A new element was added to the scene now. The Musicians had recovered from the surprise. Of the thirty left alive after the initial attack, eighteen now wore the yellow sound shields. Some had been carrying or had thought to grab their shield generators, had stuffed the wallet-sized affairs into their voluminous robes and had affectively rendered themselves, now that their wits were again with them, indestructible.
    Almost as if to testify to this invulnerability, one of the manbats swooped upon a shielded Musician, smashed legs first against the glow and rebounded, screaming in agony, his legs ruined, shattered beyond repair. Another Musician mercifully gunned him out of existence.
    Or was it out of mercy?
    Guil could not decide. It might have been anger. Or worse. It might have been simply a desire to kill.
    "Attack only those without shields!" Redbat was shouting, his voice a loud, ghostly hiss that carried well in the cool night air despite the uproar of conflict.
    The manbats heeded their general, striking the un-protected with a vengeance too brutal to watch closely. They gutted, flayed. They went for eyes and genitals. But that sort of macabre joviality could not be sustained without casualties. The animal side was dominating their reasoning—and that could prove disastrous.
    Now that the Musicians did not have to worry for their lives (the shielded ones, that is), they raised sound rifles and sonic knives and were calmly and with disturbing accuracy cutting and dissolving the manbats. Dozens of the winged mutants fell off their victims as they chewed overlong at a face or worried at the crotch of a dead man. Sonic knives denied them their wings. Sound rifles popped them into glow ashes. Some Musicians simply pointed to the sky and waved sonic knives at enemies they could not see but whom they knew were nonetheless there.
    Strong pulled the sled back out of range of the knives. They continued to watch. In fact, they could not look away. Here hinged the whole crusade. Gruesome as it was, it would either put meaning to the previous deaths or make all those who had died fools who gave up life for a pointless cause.
    If there was any cause that
wasn't
pointless, Guil thought. He had not fought for this cause, really. He had merely acted as a catalyst for a change that was about to come some day—with or without him. He liked to think that, anyway. It made him more detached, less personally involved with the blood.
    Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God to whom vengeance belongeth, show thyself!"
    Guil was not certain whether Strong was looking for a holy sign to mark his campaign with godly grace and to assure him victory, or whether he was, literally, expecting God Almighty (in one of the many forms authorized by the Universal Church) to come forth from the stars and set foot on the battle, crushing the Musicians, saving the manbats by letting his foot land so that the spaces between his toes brought the manbats and other Populars a favored safety. As Strong