Orlind (24 page)

Nonetheless,
Llandry sensed something building among the crowded officials
gathered in that small room: hope, faint but growing, tinged with
desperation. Maybe, just maybe, they could win. If these machines
were effective, they might stand a chance.

Maybe.
If.

Commander Iver
spoke next. He had already constructed his battle plan, so he’d
known of the nature of the devices beforehand, but probably not the
details. Iver was a tall man, unusually well-built for a
Glinnishman, though his powerful wings looked well able to bear his
weight. He combined the honey-brown skin of her people with dark
brown hair and eyes of a similar colour. Despite the desperate
circumstances, he was calm. He ran through the deployment of
Aysun’s machines in detail, marking the position of each device and
its crew on a large map he had hung on the board. It was some time
before he came to the draykon element.

‘
You
four are our secret weapon,’ he said, looking at Llandry. ‘This is
important, so I want you to understand this. Some here are
concerned about your safety.’ His eyes flicked to Ynara as he said
that. ‘I happen to concur. Aysun and his team will be building more
machines as fast as they can, but we cannot conjure ourselves any
more draykoni loyal to our cause.

‘
I
have a strategy I want to follow. I’m told that a few of our foes
have met Llandry and Pensould before; they know, then, that we have
two draykoni on our side, though they may choose to believe that
two alone will not dare to oppose more than thirty. I don’t wish
for them to know about Avane and Orillin at all.’ He paused to
stare, hard, at each of the four of them in turn. ‘You are the
contingency plan. We won’t use you until we’ve tried everything
else first. This will be hard for you. You’ll have to keep
yourselves out of the fight until
I
say otherwise, no matter
what happens. Is that clear?’

Llandry exchanged
a doubtful look with Ori. Iver’s commands would be hardest on
herself and Orillin, because Waeverleyne was their home. Were they
to hang back and merely watch while the city crumbled around
them?

‘
Sir...’ began Ori, but Iver cut him off.

‘
You
can have nothing to say or to ask, Orillin Vanse, because there is
nothing to discuss on this point. You’ll do as I’ve said, or you’ll
be responsible for the complete disintegration of the strategy this
council has spent many hours discussing.’

Ori opened his
mouth again.

‘
Or
are you wishful of getting yourself destroyed in the first five
minutes of the battle? If so, at least you’d be out of my
hair.’

Ori shut his
mouth.

‘
Better. Any more problems?’

Llandry, Avane
and Pensould shook their heads.

‘
Very
well. Listen closely then, please. I’ve no intention of sending you
out against such terrific odds as we’re likely to see at first.
We’ll be waiting until we’ve reduced their numbers, but it’s likely
that you will still be outnumbered. When - or I should say,
if
- you are deployed, this is what I want you to
do.’

‘
Pensould,’ Llandry said later, once they were returned to the
comfort of her own house. ‘Papa said most of his machines had been
tested. Bolts proven to pierce draykon hide, that kind of thing.
How did he manage that?’

Pensould gave her
a lopsided smile in response. ‘How do you think,
Minchu?’

She shook her
head. ‘I asked you to help Papa, but not like that! I had no idea
he’d be punching you full of holes.’

He shrugged. ‘The
holes heal fast. And what else did you have in mind? He needed to
test what he was doing, and I provided the opportunity.’

She stared at
him, saddened, her flesh shrinking at the images her mind offered
up. Pensould in his draykon shape, steeling himself while another
of Papa’s wicked-looking machines was aimed at some unimportant,
but nonetheless painful part of his body. Waiting patiently while
bolts and bullets and harpoons were fired into his skin, refined
and tested again.

‘
I
didn’t want you to be hurt, Pense,’ she said, clutching at his
shirt.

He smiled gently,
but his voice was serious. ‘The sad truth, my Minchu, is that we
are all likely to be hurt before long. I have helped your Papa to
improve the defences he has built, and as a result they will be
more effective. We may be able to hope that they will be enough,
and we will not have to risk people like you.’

Llandry thought
of the three enraged draykoni she and Pensould had fought before.
Then she multiplied that image by three, and four, and five... ‘I
can’t imagine that’s likely.’

‘
It
may be. Don’t forget that humankind won the last war, and because
of ingenious minds like your father’s.’

She bit her lip.
‘I hate that we cannot join the fight until late, maybe not at
all.’

‘
But
we will obey, because the Commander knows what he is doing and he
is right on all counts. You are not to be risked if it can be
helped. And the impact we four will have will be the greater if our
appearance is unexpected.’

‘
I
know, I know,’ she said with a touch of impatience. ‘But it’s still
going to be hard.’

‘
I
know, Minchu.’ Combining his comforting tone with a soothing
embrace, he seemed calm, but she could hear his heart beating too
fast.

‘
Are
you afraid?’ she whispered.

‘
Yes.’

‘
Me as
well.’

Llandry’s house
had been hit at some point, and the upper storey torn away. The
lower part was still sound, and here she and Pensould, Ori and
Avane had been living for the last several days. The quarters were
cramped, but better than many others had found in Waeverleyne. Ori
and Avane were in the kitchen, cooking something. Avane was
teaching Ori a recipe from Glour; the quiet murmur of talk and the
gentle clatter of cooking drifted through into Llandry’s living
room, peaceful and soothing in its domesticity. Llandry remained in
Pensould’s arms for a long time, trying to calm the frightened
beating of her heart.

Pensould dropped
soft kisses on her hair, his arms tightening around her. She lifted
her face to his and he kissed her mouth instead, gently, learning
the motions of human affection that must be so unfamiliar to him.
His kisses grew deeper and more urgent, and Llan’s heart began to
pound again with a different type of anticipation.

But something
intruded upon her bliss, sounds that sent her labouring heart into
a frenzy of sudden fear. She and Pensould broke apart, both frozen
with dread, listening.

Nothing. No sound
met her ears, not even the quiet, mundane conversation of Ori and
Avane. Waeverleyne held its breath.

Then it came
again. A piercing shriek and a shattering roar, horrifically
blended. The tumult built and built, more voices joining the first,
growing louder as it approached.

‘
That
is the war cry,’ Pensould whispered, his face whiter than she’d
ever seen it before.

Llandry could
only stand, rooted to the spot, her heart pounding so hard she
feared it would burst. She didn’t want to go outside, didn’t want
to see what now approached her beloved Waeverleyne. Hiding her face
in Pensould’s shirt, she stifled a brief flood of hot
tears.

‘
Well,
Minchu,’ he said quietly, stabilising her. ‘Now is the time to be
brave. Can you?’

Blotting her eyes
with shaking hands, she nodded. ‘I can.’

Ori and Avane
came rushing in, their faces drawn and pale. ‘Up we go,’ said Ori
tersely. ‘They’re here.’

‘
No
draykon shapes, remember,’ Llan said quickly, having to suppress
her own instinct to Change right away.

Ori just shook
his head impatiently, already yanking open the door. He jumped out,
his wings carrying him out of sight. Llan and Pensould followed,
leaving wingless Avane in her dark glasses to occupy the
doorway.

The three of them
reassembled atop the wreckage of Llandry’s upper storey. They
stood, necks stretched, staring into the sunlit skies of
Glinnery.

Over the city
flew the first wave of draykoni. Glorious beasts of all sizes came
in organised formation, largest at the centre, smallest fanning out
to the sides. Their beautiful scaled hides glittered in the sun,
shining in every colour of the rainbow. They roared as they flew,
their combined war cry near enough to shatter the ears.

Behind them flew
a second formation, and then a third. Llandry couldn’t speak.
Thirty draykoni at least, rage pouring off them like water,
enflamed with the desire to rend her home into pieces.

A whispered
expletive came from Ori. It took Llandry a moment to realise he
wasn’t looking at the advancing army of draykoni. His head was
turned to look behind her.

She spun around.
Something else approached the city, airborne and vast but not
draykoni. At least, she didn’t think so. It was larger than almost
every other draykon, roughly of a size with Eterna, the enormous
green-and-white creature that led the charge. It flew oddly, its
vast wings flapping ponderously in a manner not quite natural. It
was dark, matt black, its hide swallowing the light instead of
reflecting it the way scaled hide did. It had the wedge-shaped
head, long neck and snaking, sinuous tail of a draykon, but somehow
Llandry knew that it was not one.

Its movements
were graceless, purely functional, and there was something oddly
contrived about the way its neck moved, swinging its head from side
to side as it took in the scene. Llandry had seen that form of
movement before.

Her mind jumped
back to Limbane’s Library, to one of the many laboratories that
littered the building. He and several Lokants had stormed Krays’s
Library not long before, bringing back with them a specimen of his
engineering projects. The creature had obviously been modelled on a
whurthag, formed of biological and mechanical materials with
draykon parts added. She’d watched the thing moving around,
fascinated and horrified in equal measure. It was so frightening
because it looked and moved more or less like a whurthag, but it
was
empty:
no animal soul in there at all. It was a machine,
with the superior flexibility of a biological animal and at least
some of the magical capabilities of a draykon. Its mind was blank,
ready to do whatever it was instructed without any form of feeling
or reasoning.

The beast now
approaching Waeverleyne was the same. Only this one was impossibly
large, and based not on a mere whurthag - which suddenly seemed all
but harmless in comparison - but on a draykon.

To Llandry’s
renewed horror, the thing cranked open its jaws, displaying teeth
that shone with a disturbing metallic glint. A gout of blistering
flame shot from its mouth.

‘
No,’
she whispered. Legend said that draykoni breathed fire, but that
had not turned out to be true.

No matter. Now
they did.

‘
There’s another one,’ Pense said softly, nodding in the
opposite direction. Following his gaze, Llandry saw a second,
identical monstrosity closing on Waeverleyne from the
south.

‘
And
three,’ Avane said softly. From the west came another dark,
terrifying shape, casting long shadows over the ground.

Three of them.
Aysun’s machines were not equipped to deal with these beasts. She
remembered the hide of the whurthag-thing, virtually impervious to
weapons. Would her father’s specialised weapons be capable of
piercing that unnatural skin? Could the things even be killed? If
they were like the whurthag-machines then they weren’t really
alive. That would mean they couldn’t die, either; they could only
be broken. And disabling one single whurthag-construct had almost
got two of Limbane’s team killed.

‘
We’re
done for,’ Ori said, his words emerging in a frightened
croak.

Llandry wanted to
reassure him - all of them - somehow, but she couldn’t. Because he
was right. What possible defence could they muster against this new
threat?

Chapter Seventeen

A short time
later, Llandry sat in her father’s workshop, watching Aysun from an
out-of-the-way corner. Papa was looking strained, like he was only
just holding himself together. That was highly unlike him, but with
a fearsome mechanical menace threatening the realm, everyone was
looking to the engineers to provide a solution. Aysun was widely
accepted as the best of them, but that didn’t make him a match for
Lokant technology. How could he be expected to solve this
problem?

The worst part
was that he expected himself to be able to combat the
draykon-things. Frustration was etched in every line of his face,
and when he spoke his words emerged in a growl. His wife’s home was
burning around him and he couldn’t fix it.

Many of the war
machines he’d been building had been deployed, but they were
designed with living draykoni in mind and it was obvious very
quickly that they would have little effect against the
fire-breathing constructs. Bullets, missiles and harpoons alike
were bouncing harmlessly off their strange black hide.