Dark Of The Woods

going with you," she repeated.
    He saw the determination in her face, the tightening of the muscles along her jawline, and he knew there was no sense arguing. "The way's going to be a little tough, and there isn't room to spread your wings and fly if you should fall. But if you're still all that set on going—"
    "I am."
    The way was not as rugged as he had thought. His perspective, peering through the jumbled rubble earlier, had made the slanted corridor below look longer than it was. In ten minutes, they were in what had been the bottom floor of the shelter, a three-level affair. Here, the Demosians in hiding from the Alliance gases had not been killed by the force of the explosion itself, but by the firestorm which it had engendered. The bodies of about two hundred winged men and women and children laid about the room, mostly against the walls where they had been caught and suffocated so swiftly that they had not had a chance to move. The suction of the explosion and the intense heat must have snatched the air from their lungs in one instant and replaced it with flames the next. At least, he thought, it had been a swift end. There was nothing now but bones, a few skeletal masts of cartilage that had once been the bearers of membranous wings. And four hundred eye sockets, oval eye sockets, staring accusingly…
    Proteus soared the length of the chamber, certain that there must be an adversary in such an uncommon place. When he reached the far corners of the room, forty yards away, the rat overhead screeched its battle cry, spraying spittle down onto Davis's head…
    He looked up, saw red eyes as large as quarters.
    The rat leaped, striking Leah's shoulder and sinking tiny, razorlike claws through her toga.
    To the modern Alliance man, the ability to commit violence, against either another man or an animal, was something distasteful, barbaric, something that only an Alliance soldier had. And since most Alliance soldiers were power soldiers, robotic devices, machines, and cybernetic systems, there were relatively few men capable of violence in the entire system of settled worlds. The Proteus robots had, after all, all but negated the necessity to know how to defend yourself.
    This atrophy of the violent ability very nearly meant the winged girl's death, for Davis found himself staring with fascination at the rat which scrabbled at her, tore her toga as it tried to sink claws into her flesh and gain a purchase from which it could bring its wicked, yellowish teeth into play as well. It was as if he were in a dream, moving through syrup or suddenly turned to stone just when it was essential that he act most swiftly. Then, fleeing across the back of his eyes like a specter across a moor was a vision of Leah with her face chewed up, an eye torn loose by the vicious fingers of the ratlike thing. In a moment, the antiviolence tendencies which had been nurtured through his entire life evaporated and were replaced by a manic and uncontrollable rage.
    Had he looked over his shoulder, he would have seen that Proteus was rapidly returning to do battle, but he did not even think of that. He reached out and seized the animal by the back of the neck, tore it loose from her. He saw blood on its claws, matted in the thick fur of its paws. Her toga was stained crimson where it had had hold of her. Screaming, not aware that he was and wondering who was making that ungodly noise, he grabbed the head of the rat with his other hand and simultaneously attempted to crush its skull and strangle it.
    It wriggled loose and leaped at his chest where it gouged its nails into him, struck upwards toward his neck with its deadly teeth…
    He grabbed its head again, pulled it away from him just in time, though it still held onto him with its rear feet, claws dug deeply into his flesh. Me wrenched at it, ruthlessly unconcerned about what such an action would do to his chest, ripped it loose, turned, and slammed it into the wall. It screamed, wiggled and kicked to get free again. But he clenched it tightly, ignoring the dozens of scratches it inflicted on his hands. He slammed it again, again, twice more until its back was broken, its spine shattered. Its blood ran down his fingers and dripped onto the floor.
    He was no longer screaming, but he found himself making heavy, rasping breathing sounds as air rushed raggedly in and out of his lungs. And he was whimpering, deep inside, like a child. And he was squeezing the lifeless rat as if he would squash