"I think that there are many more than one hundred" Dreyfus said with a tone halfway between mocking and worried. His old face was crisscrossed with tension lines and even through his thick glasses Malcolm could see the concern in his eyes. It was rare that Dreyfus was so anxious, but after all in this situation it was more than justifiable.

Malcolm stared at the dinosaur pack. They were motionless in their positions, there in front of the walls, and all of them had not very reassuring expressions on their faces (or snouts?). At a guess, there must have been at least two thousand. There were of all kinds, herbivores and carnivores. And before them, kneeling in plain sight, were the thousands of workers who worked in the various mines, sawmills, factories, oil wells and so on scattered throughout the colony. "Did they catch them?" he whispered.

Dreyfus nodded. "It is clear that they want to make some kind of demonstration. I don't know if they want to kill them in front of us, but the weapons are ready. The city militia are scattered all over the wall and they are ready to fire as soon as I give the order. If this dinosaurs will dare to do something stupid, we'll open fire"

Dreyfus wasn't a fool. Even though the dinosaurs looked terrifying, he knew that at that moment it was humans who were in a position of strength. The high city walls could easily resist to a dinosaurs' load and the militia could simply kill them all from the top. If they would attacked, the humans in all likelihood would win.

The dinosaurs seemed to know this. They didn't seem to want to attack either: they just stood motionless in front of the wall and glared at the humans with angry eyes. Dreyfus was sure they were there just to give a message to the humans.

But after a wait that seemed endless, something changed. A roar rang out across the valley and the dinosaurs immediately changed their behavior. Like a swarm they moved together, lowering and lifting something. To the amazement of Dreyfus, Malcolm, and any other human he was watching, the dinosaurs took up shields!

Not small and rough shields, but real movable walls that gave the idea of being extremely resistant!

"It is not possible... are they already at this level of civilization?" Malcolm whispered breathlessly. Even though he wasn't an expert, it was clear that very elaborate metalworking techniques were required to make those shields. This meant that whoever made them knew how to create a flame hot enough to melt the metal and shape it. Did dinosaurs really have all this knowledge?

If that were true, then dinosaurs should already have been at least on the level of a medieval civilization. Whereas until recently the idea of intelligent dinosaurs was preposterous, dinosaurs were progressing at an unimaginable rate. They had achieved it in… how much? A few months? In a few months had they really achieved what human civilization had taken tens of thousands of years to develop?

Dreyfus was sweating. Now one of their advantages was gone: with shields their weapons became ineffective against the dinosaurs. Cartago didn't have high-powered weapons: most of its defenses consisted of machine guns and some bazookas. They had no tanks or missiles. With those shields, if the dinosaurs had decided to advance they could have reached the entrance of the city without being injured. They would just have to form a sort of 'shield wall' and slowly move up to the doors, and then try to break them down.

He tried to keep calm. Humans still had the walls. Even a herd of dinosaurs would have struggled to tear down meters and meters of reinforced concrete. And the doors, even if more fragile, were nonetheless built to withstand the most violent stresses. Humans could still survive.

But suddenly, the dinosaurs moved again, opening a way between them. Then they began to beat the ground with their paws and repeatedly bang their shields on the ground. Then came the roars: each dinosaur uttered noises in perfect sync with all the others. The effect was something very terrifying to the hearts of humans: someone on the walls began to feel the urge to flee.

"What the hell is going on...?" Dreyfus murmured, when a figure appeared in the middle of the road that the dinosaurs had opened. It was bigger than any other dinosaur and walked slowly in the direction of Cartago. Its bearing was both regal and frightening.

"A parade? Is that what they're doing?" Malcolm said. "Do they open the way to their leader?"

It seemed that this was exactly what was happening. The giant dinosaur kept walking until it was in front of all the dinosaurs. The more he moved forward, the louder and more intense the chorus became.

Then the beast roared, so loud that the humans on the walls felt their skin tremble from the blast; the chorus of dinosaurs stopped and there was complete silence. From that moment, not even the buzzing of a fly was heard in the whole plain.

"Dreyfus..." Malcolm whispered in his friend's ear. "It's him"

The mayor gritted his teeth. "I figured it out" he said hoarsely. His hands were shaking. Even though they were separated by a wall he felt there was something terrifying in that dinosaur. The flames of Hell seemed to dance in its eyes. It looked like a real demon king, no... a true devil. It had an aura of incomprehensible that surrounded it; Dreyfus didn't even understand what dinosaur it was, but he agreed with Malcolm's words when he remembered that he told him that the dinosaurs leader looked like a spinosaurus.

Then the dinosaur raised its right paw; Dreyfus assumed it was a signal to the other dinosaurs, but instead the spinosaurus showed its claws and then moved its hand with inhuman speed, as if it were slapping. There was a creak and three deep cuts opened in the wall more than a hundred meters away. The blast alone had cut through the reinforced concrete!

The humans felt their blood run cold and many pissed on themselves. What strength did the spinosaurus have to cut through a wall without even touching it? For Dreyfus, that was clearly a warning. The spinosaurus was proving that the walls couldn't stop them. Now he was really afraid: with no more walls and weapons, what protected humans against dinosaurs?

The spinosaurus rose to its full height, then opened its jaws: "Humans!"

A jolt shook the walls. All the soldiers dropped their weapons in surprise and many even lost their balance. The hearts of all human beings, both military and civilian, began to beat like drills. Dreyfus felt short of breath: even though Malcolm had talked to him about talking dinosaurs, he hadn't really believed it. Until now.

"We don't want war! But we will fight if you make it necessary!" the spinosaurus continued. "This is our land. It is our home. We were here before you, and you ruined your welcome very bad!"

The spinosaurus tone was calm, but there was a streak of fury in every word that underlined its anger. It also chewed its words as it stared at the humans on the walls, as if it were imagining chewing them. "When you first came here, we were willing to let you stay. But you have torn everything from us! You have swept away our trees and our dens, you have stolen our food, you have chased us from our homes and hunting grounds, you have stolen our resources, you have poisoned the air with your fumes! You have kidnapped our brothers, our sisters, our children, our parents, our companions... and not for hunger or for defense but for profit! We thought that by retreating into the depths of the forest you would curb your greed, instead you came to attack us there too! That's enough! We are no longer willing to tolerate it! The time has come for you to leave! Out of our territory!"

"OUT OF OUR TERRITORY! OUT OF OUR TERRITORY!" the other dinosaurs joined in chorus and roared all together, shaking the walls and the whole city. The humans in the stands instinctively recoiled: from their words it seemed that the dinosaurs were about to attack them.

Just as Dreyfus was beginning to fear the worst the spinosaurus roared and the area went silent again. "Release the prisoners" he ordered.

Dinosaurs on the front line began to nudge the kneeling humans screaming for them to stand up. They were clearly terrified, but they obeyed without much pretense. Once released they ran towards the walls and began yelling to let them in.

The spinosaurus ignored them, continuing to stare at the humans in the stands. With a claw it pointed to the ground: "Dinosaurs' home" it said, and then it pointed to the mountains in the distance: "Humans' home". At that point it stared intently at the humans and in everyone's eyes it seemed to became even scarier. "One day to go away. Not two. Not three. One"

And after those words the spinosaurus turned, not looking back even for a moment, and walked towards the forest. One after the other all the dinosaurs followed it, not before throwing a menacing look at the people on the walls, as if they were shouting 'we will tear you all to pieces!'. As swift as it had appeared, the dinosaur herd disappeared.