"A gleaming shape came flying over the side of the stairs, driving into the man like a huge spearhead. Unfolding a pair of mighty legs, it stood up on the bodies, anchoring itself with great talons. Its exterior was metallic, with a distinctly burnished appearance; in form it most nearly resembled a wingless bird, but instead of a head, it had a long ramlike projection, on which the man hung like a lizard on a shrike's beak. Whipping him to the right, it swung him off the crimsoned point, flinging him farther up the steps, almost to Zancharthus's feet. Then it sprang to the bottom and bounded away. "Zancharthus picked his way down the steps. The barracks looked as though a whirlwind had swept through it, dozens of bodies strewn amid overturned bunks and weapons-racks. A few survivors were stumbling around in the sambles, trying to dodge the ice-axes. Launching themselves from the wreckage, bouncing from corners and walls, the demons seemed everywhere at once, blurs of fierce activity.