A Different Flesh by Harry Turtledove

great lady of the court, to the sim he had fought as to an earl. Holding Joanna tightly to him, he backed slowly toward the brush where his companions waited. He expected the tableau to break up at any moment, but it held. The sims watched him go, the firelight reflecting red from their eyes.
    He was close to the place from which he had come when Caleb Lucas said from the bushes, “Splendidly done, oh, splendidly, Edward!” His voice was a thread of whisper; none of the sims could have heard it.
    â€œAye, you have the girl, and good for you.” Henry Dale did not try to hold his voice down. Indeed, he rose from concealment. “Now to teach the vermin who stole her the price of their folly.” He aimed a pistol at the sims behind Wingfield.
    â€œNo, you fool!” Lucas shouted. He lunged for Dale at the same moment the sims cried out in fear, fury, and betrayal. Too late—the pistol roared, belching flame and smoke. The lead ball struck home with a noise like a great slap. The sim it hit shrieked, briefly.
    With a lithe twist, Dale slipped away from Caleb Lucas. His hand darted into his boot-top for his other pistol. The second shot was less deliberately aimed, but not a miss. This time the screams of pain went on and on.
    By then Wingfield was among the bushes. Behind him, the sims were boiling like ants whose nest has been stirred with a stick. Some scrambled for cover; others, bolder, came rushing after the Englishman. A stone crashed against greenery mere inches from his head.
    â€œNo help for it now,” Henry Dale said cheerfully, bringing up his crossbow. The bolt smote a charging sim square in the chest. The sim staggered, hands clutching at the short shaft of death. It pitched forward on its face.
    More rocks flew. Wingfield turned to one side, to try to shield Joanna with his body.
    Allan Cooper got to his feet. “God damn you to hell for what you make me do,” he snarled at Dale. He fired one pistol, then a second, then his crossbow.
    A sharpened stone tore Wingfield’s breeches, cut his thigh. Had it hit squarely, it would have crippled him. The sims were howling like lost souls, lost angry souls. Dale was right—no help for it now, Wingfield saw. His pistol bucked when he fired one-handed. He did not know whether he hit or missed. In a way, he hoped he had missed. That did not stop him from drawing his other gun.
    â€œYou purposed this all along, Henry,” he shouted above the din.
    â€œAye, and own it proudly.” Dale dropped another sim with a second crossbow bolt. He turned to kick Caleb Lucas in the ribs. “Fight ’em, curse you! They’ll have the meat from your bones now as happily as from mine.”
    â€œNo need for this, no need,” Lucas gasped, swearing and sobbing by turns. But whether or not that was true, he realized, as Wingfield had, that there was no unbaking a bread. His pistols barked, one after the other.
    But the sims on their home ground were not the skulking creatures they were near Jamestown. Though half a dozen lay dead or wounded, the rest, male and female together, kept up the barrage of stones. Their missiles were not so deadly as the Englishmen’s, but they loosed them far more often.
    One landed with a meaty thud. Allan Cooper, his face a mask of gore, crumpled slowly to the ground.
    Dale shot his crossbow again, wounded another sim. He turned to Wingfield, who was struggling to fit another bolt into his weapon’s groove. “Go on!” he shouted. “You have what you came for. I’ll hold the sims. As you say, I am to blame here.”
    â€œBut—”
    Dale whipped out his rapier. Its point flickered in front of Wingfield’s face. “Go! Aye, and you, Caleb. I promise, I shall give the brutes enough fight and chase to distract ’em from you.”
    He sprang into the clearing, rushing the startled sims. One swung a stout branch at him. Graceful as a dancer, he ducked, then