Lokant

by Charlotte E. English

  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 co-ordinated 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 co-ordinated - 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 draykoni. 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.<
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