Fiefdom

'Gene the Hackman, top dog, him done the great Walk Around. Not for him the darkness, not for him the Time of Ice that we know today.' Evelyn War is a Believer. She knows that in the Old Time, long before the Time of Ice, the Masters fought a war with Them, great chitinous beasts that stalked the world and rended and killed. She knows that the Masters set fierce, doglike Aux like her to watch over their great sleep and to keep Them off their Lawn. She knows that the stories are not just lessons in the ways of war. Them were real. But in the frozen ruins of Berlin, Them have not been seen for many years. Now the Aux fight among themselves and say all that was just stories. They scorn Evelyn and mock her warnings. But the ice is melting, and the whistling calls of Them can be heard in the tunnels of the U-Bahn once more....