Orlind

Orlind

(Book Three of
the Draykon Series)

2nd
Edition

by

Charlotte E.
English

Smashwords
Edition

Copyright 2012 by
Charlotte E. English

Cover design
copyright 2012 by Elsa Kroese

All rights
reserved.

This ebook is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
re-sold.

***

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
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.

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.