Orlind

Chapter One ‘Sir? Sir! Are you awake, sir?’ Aysun opened his eyes to find bare earth two inches from his face. A hand was shaking him, hard, and the voice — Ven’s voice, he realised — shouted directly in his ear. Even then he had trouble hearing the lad over the ear-splitting noise of destruction, shrieking draykoni and wailing alarms. ‘I’m alive,’ Aysun grunted, and Ven mercifully ceased his attempts to shake him to pieces. He tried to sit up, but his back protested forcibly. A curse escaped his lips as he eased himself back to the ground. He lay still for a moment, trying to assess the damage. His body hurt almost everywhere, especially his back, but he didn’t think anything was broken. He flexed his limbs one at a time; all functional, if bruised. It was only his back that was the problem. ‘Help me up,’ he said to Ven through gritted teeth. The younger engineer was quick to obey, supporting his commanding officer until he was on his feet again. Aysun’s back continued to protest, but as it didn’t give way he ignored the pain. ‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘What’s the damage?’ ‘The tree’s down, sir,’ said Ven. ‘The enemy gained a square hit on the cap, knocked most of it down in one. Took half the trunk with it.’ Aysun nodded. This was bad news; the tree in question had been one of a number of glissenwols that he’d turned into defence towers. Their wide caps were ideal for supporting war machines. He and Ven and their team had manned this one all yesterday and today, hurling boulders and explosives at the invading draykoni. They hadn’t done much damage, he had to admit; trying to hit an airborne enemy with missiles such as those was like trying to down a fly with a pellet gun. But they’d caused enough damage and enough confusion to break up the coordinated attacks the draykoni were attempting to launch against the city of Waeverleyne. It was only a matter of time before those attacks were turned on the war machines themselves. The enemy draykoni had already retaliated in kind: they had collected up the boulders Aysun’s engineers had been hurling at them and started dropping them down upon the citizens of Waeverleyne. A few minutes ago, three draykoni had come at Aysun’s tree, each bearing boulders somewhat larger than his head. There hadn’t been time to evacuate. One minute he had a draykon in his sights and a missile ready to launch; the next instant all was confusion as the cap split and fell and Aysun fell with it. He was grateful for two things. One, that his team had had the foresight to stretch nets under the glissenwol trees in case of just this calamity. The fall would have killed him otherwise. Secondly, he was profoundly grateful that the exploding missiles he was using detonated on impact and left nothing behind. These, at least, could not be turned against the defending forces. Ven was looking at him oddly, his expression apprehensive. ‘What is it, Ven?’ he asked tiredly. ‘I’m afraid that’s not all, sir, but I thought I’d give you a moment to catch your breath first.’ ‘It’s caught. Out with it.’ ‘Well… all but one of the towers are down, sir, and the last won’t hold up much longer. Also, we have three casualties among the engineers.’ ‘Names.’ ‘Polis, Aram and Niefer.’ ‘Injured?’ ‘Dead.’ Aysun closed his eyes. Polis had been younger even than Ven, and Aram and Niefer were two of his best. He looked about himself, but from his new vantage point on the ground he couldn’t even see where the towers had previously stood. He would have to take Ven’s word for it. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘The towers weren’t working well, but they were all we had. We need another plan, and fast.’ ‘There are some more suitable trees, sir. We’ve enough men left to build some new machines—’ ‘No,’ Aysun interrupted. ‘Any more such towers will be shot down immediately, and the machines were not good enough.’ He thought for a few moments. Ven didn’t venture any more suggestions, but he did keep the other men from interrupting Aysun’s reflections and he was grateful for that. ‘We need information, for a start,’ he decided. ‘Which means we need some more people up in the air. But they’ll need to keep out of sight.’ He grabbed a passing man at random — a member of the now decimated city guard, by the look of him — and forced him to a stop. ‘Get me scouts,’ he ordered. ‘As many as you can. Glinnish — they’ll need wings. I want them up in the air, best vantage points they can find. But they mustn’t be seen. Make sure they’re coordinated — I want a report every thirty minutes. Understood?’ The man looked terrified, but he nodded decisively enough and left. Aysun turned back to Ven. ‘We need better machines. Something that can be more precisely aimed, that doesn’t take so infernally long to load, and that can’t be so easily destroyed. That means they ought to be ground-based. We were sitting targets up there.’ Ven nodded thoughtfully. ‘I have an idea or two, but…’ He trailed off. ‘But what?’ Ven’s eyes turned upwards. Following the direction of his gaze, Aysun saw three dark shapes soar overhead. A moment later, more rocks crashed around them. He dodged, only just in time as a chunk of glissenwol cap fell to the ground, landing with a deafening thump. ‘They’re not going to give us any time,’ Ven shouted, his hands raised in futile defence against the shower of leaves and bark and wood that fell around them. ‘Half the city could be destroyed by the time we’re ready. More than half.’ Aysun’s stomach clenched in outright fear at that thought. Ven was right. If he thought too long about the damage already done, it would break his heart. Many of the proud, soaring glissenwol trees had already come down, or been broken beyond repair. The draykoni were tearing the treetop buildings apart with teeth and claws; most of the inhabitants had been evacuated already, but not all, and the civilian casualties were far too high. Worse, their own explosives had been a mixed blessing. They had taken down two draykoni with the fragile balls of fire, but most had missed their targets and fallen instead among the trees outside of the borders of Waeverleyne, burning large areas of draping vines and soft blue moss into blackened wasteland. And he was pretty sure that even those two draykoni they’d killed had come back. The draykons could regenerate their own; he knew that from Llandry and her strange friend, Pensould. But his team hadn’t been able to get to the bodies before the draykoni. They had nothing to defend against this onslaught. Nothing. The guard had already dashed itself to pieces against the implacable beasts and the army was faring little better; they had no weapons that could stand long against a draykon. Even their guns were having little effect, as the beasts rarely came within range and even then, their hide was virtually impenetrable. If matters continued in this way, Waeverleyne would fall, and soon. After that, the draykoni would move swiftly on to the rest of Glinnery’s settlements, and the realm would be taken in its entirety. Nothing would remain of his wife’s beloved country. ‘We don’t have any choice, Ven,’ he said, trying to sound firm. ‘If we don’t come up with something effective, and fast, it will be too late.’ Ven nodded shakily, his face pale. He wasn’t even Glinnish; he was a wingless human, a citizen of Irbel like Aysun himself. He was here because he worked for the engineering outpost that Irbel maintained in Glinnery as part of a complicated trade agreement. It wasn’t his home to defend, but he was risking his life anyway. ‘It’s not just Glinnery, my friend,’ Aysun reminded him. ‘Once they take this realm, what will they do next? They want Glour, that I know, but will they stop there? Doubtful. This is vengeance. They won’t hesitate to destroy Irbel as well.’ Ven nodded again, more firmly this time. ‘You don’t need to remind me of that, sir.’ ‘Then we do it. Everything we’ve got goes into building a new weapon. Gather every engineer left alive and pull them out; we’re going to need everyone. And where is Rufin? I want him.’ ‘I’ll find him,’ Ven promised. He left immediately, already shouting orders. Aysun felt a brief flicker of pride in the lad. He was young, but he had pluck. If Aysun had had a son, Ven was exactly the type of young man he’d have wanted. He dismissed the thought, and squared up. His back still hurt, but he would have to live with it. His immediate task was to salvage everything he could from the wreckage of his previous batch of machines, and get them somewhere protected. Then he could work. The salvage produced just enough solid timber and reusable metal parts to get Aysun’s hastily-assembled team started, and for that he was grateful. He had little time to reflect as he worked; he had to produce a workable design, as quickly as possible (though he did have Ven’s capable help there) and he also had to keep his fifteen engineers working at unprecedented speed, which meant maximising efficiency. He could only spare an occasional thought for the other cares that weighed upon him: the fate of his wife, for example, whom he had taken out of the city before the conflict began. She was with his irascible and much-detested father in the Upper Realms, where he hoped she was safe. But she had suffered some grave injuries, inflicted by one of the invading draykoni when she’d attempted a parley. Had she recovered? Would she recover? And what of his daughter? Llandry and Pensould had used their draykon powers in some way that Aysun didn’t understand, trying to heal Ynara. They hadn’t managed to revive her. Instead Llandry had overextended herself and she, too, had fallen into a state of unconsciousness. She had been taken away at last by the strange white-haired man Aysun knew only as Limbane. He had been curiously powerless to prevent it. His only consolation was that Pensould vouched for the man, and had gone with them both. He hadn’t had time to communicate with Pensould in days, though he had given the man a voice device. What had become of Llandry? In a strange way he was glad that he was too busy to reflect much on these matters, as they would have driven him mad otherwise. Save the realm, he told himself, and worry about the rest later. And he would save the realm. He was determined. He would save it for Ynara and for Llandry, and hope that they would recover enough to enjoy it. The sounds of on-going battle continued unabated as his team strove to build Aysun’s new machine. They were all trying to ignore the conflict, but he could see that the strain wore on them. They all had more than enough imagination to guess what was occurring outside, and the work could never progress quickly enough. ‘Calm down, Ays,’ came Rufin’s voice. ‘Strutting about like a frenzied bokren-bird isn’t going to get it done faster.’ Aysun scowled at his friend. Rufin — another Irbellian citizen — was no engineer, but he was something of a weapons expert. At least, he knew more about guns than anyone else Aysun knew, and as such his presence was necessary. But his acerbic comments didn’t help any more than Aysun’s pacing did. ‘How are the bullets coming?’ he asked. ‘Fine,’ Rufin grunted. He was seated at a bench with two assistants under his command, the three of them fashioning Aysun’s newly-designed bullets as fast as possible. He’d managed to alter the design of a couple of manufactory gadgets to help them; the machine did the hard work of producing the raw object, and Rufin and his team refined them by hand. It was a dull, thankless task, but to their credit the three kept up the pace without complaint. Aysun clapped him on the back. ‘If there are problems, let me know. Otherwise, keep it up.’ Rufin merely grunted again in reply. Aysun made his way back to where the first machine was being assembled, judging it about time for the next phase of construction. He was right: his engineers had just finished putting the frame together, and now it was time to fit the parts. Aysun had already wrought the new fittings and he remained in attendance while they were put in place, ensuring that everything went together as planned. When the group finished, somewhat less than an hour later, Aysun surveyed the machine. A huge wood-and-metal frame supported an even larger gun, modified on Rufin’s advice. The weapon was designed to be fairly flexible in its movements, allowing the person who operated the gun to aim it accurately at moving targets. The thing would take Rufin’s enormous, hide-piercing bullets in strings and fire them in a ceaseless barrage, and at a much longer range than any hand weapon. If it worked, it would satisfy all of Aysun’s criteria. Instead of one enormous missile, they would have many smaller ones, most of which had a fair chance of hitting the target and piercing the thick, scaled hide. If they could get enough of those bullets into a draykon, the beast would probably fall. Failing that, they could at least shoot the wings to shreds and ground the beast, in which position the troops would have a much easier time of finishing it off. ‘Time to test,’ Aysun ordered. The engineers backed away from the machine, leaving Aysun to operate it. He did so with enormous trepidation. This was the best effort his team could make. He had no more ideas, and they had no more time. If they couldn’t make it work now, they were out of options. He powered it up, turning the crank as fast as he could. A stream of bullets shot from the weapon and thudded into the far wall with enough force to tear a large hole in the woodwork. He angled it up and down and it responded with ease. By the time he’d finished, most of the wall was gone. A cheer went up around him, and Aysun allowed himself to join in for a time. Then he sobered. That it worked in the workshop was fantastic, but they still had to test it against a real moving target. ‘Right, get it out there,’ he barked. He wanted to operate it himself, but he couldn’t; he was needed to oversee the construction of as many more of these things as his team could possibly produce. They would be handing this machine over to the army. But for the first time today, he felt a touch of hope. They were no longer helpless against the draykoni. The machine was wheeled out of the workshop and, cheered by their success, the engineers fell to work on the next with renewed enthusiasm. But the buoyant atmosphere didn’t last long. Half an hour later, a messenger came tearing into the building, shouting at Aysun to be heard over the noise of construction. ‘Sir,’ yelled the messenger. ‘The draykoni are gone.’ For a moment Aysun could only blink stupidly at the man. ‘Gone?’ he managed. ‘What do you mean, gone?’ ‘They’re just gone! Ten minutes ago they all turned about and flew off together, like there was some signal they all heard but we didn’t. And that’s it. They’re gone.’ Some of the engineers had heard the messenger’s words and stopped work. Aysun halted the rest, and silence fell in the workshop. True silence, for there was little sound either inside or outside of the building. The noises of battle had entirely died away. The man was right: the draykons had left. The news ought to have cheered him, he knew. It meant his team had an unexpected reprieve, more time to prepare their new weapon against the next attack. But the draykoni’s sudden departure troubled him too much. The enemy had been winning, decisively. Had Aysun’s new gun alarmed them that much? He doubted it. He hoped it would prove a potent weapon, but he had no illusions that twenty or thirty draykoni would flee the field on the mere appearance of one machine. There had to be some other explanation. But what could it be? They might have taken their attack somewhere else; another city in Glinnery, perhaps, or even Glour. But all their might had so far been levelled at Waeverleyne. Why would they leave that conquest unfinished, and move on to another? Aysun feared that this sudden departure was bad news indeed, far worse than any of them knew. But it was impossible to guess what might have motivated their enemy. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We make the most of this time. We’ll start working in shifts, so some of us can sleep, but I want at least ten of those machines ready before the draykoni come back.’ ‘But they could come back at any time,’ somebody said, in a voice of bewilderment. ‘Yes,’ Aysun said. ‘I know. We’d better work fast, hm?’