Penult (54 page)

“
I am afraid I bear some
bad news,” said Viktor. “The second valley has fallen. New Axum is
now surrounded on all sides. Zhang is negotiating terms with the
Lords of Penult. They have begun evacuations by air.”

Yaqob looked vexed. “We agreed they
should wait for the outcome of the raid. Did we not?”

“
Master Zhang says they
have no choice. Reznak dissents. The Old Ones are withholding their
judgment for now. Every insect in the bog is being sent to the
mountain, but we have not nearly enough wings to bring every
refugee to the bog lands by air.”

“
Reznak will set things
straight,” said Yaqob.

Viktor noticed Tigger flitting about
the treetops, He beamed.

“
How’s your young mount
shaping up?”

“
He’s … uh … got a mind of
his own.”

“
My robber fly is extremely
well behaved,” said Karla. “Just … not very fast.”

“
Oh, but those robber flies
maneuver well in tight quarters,” said Viktor. “They can take a hit
too, and keep on flying.” He pulled a fistful of pale, chalky
flakes from a sack. “Frog jerky, anyone?”

Karla accepted a piece, but I decided
to stick with the manna for now. Ubaldo climbed atop a dune and
stared out across the across the bay. I went up and joined him.
There was some action in the sky out over some distant shoals. From
this distance, they just looked like a bunch of specks.

“
We’ll have to go north
before we turn east,” said Ubaldo. “We stay low, close to the wave
tops. Otherwise they will spot us.”

Something flashed at ground level and
went flying up towards the specks. A rumble followed a few seconds
later.

“
Hey, those are … some of
those are bugs!”

“
The scouts!” said Ubaldo.
“Merde! They are being chased. I see only two. We lost
one.”

Olivier and Yaqob emerged from the
forest and hurried up the side of the dune, their faces
concerned.

“
Fools!” said Yaqob. “They
passed too close to the beach head. They were spotted.”

The two dragonflies were being
followed by a flight of seven falcons, sleeker and quicker than the
ones we had tangled with in the valley. These had a single pilot,
and instead of talons they had gleaming blades on the tips of their
wings. Three condors escorted by several standard falcons followed
close on their tail.

Yaqob exchanged words with Ubaldo in
the guttural language of the Deeps.

“
Everyone! Call your
flies.”

Ubaldo shrieked and his hornet
immediately took wing. Hurtling over the forest it pounded into the
sand beside us, its eyes gleaming, abdomen pulsing, its saddle
already in place. Yaqob’s scorpion fly came buzzing down beside it,
also already saddled.

“
Keep the beetles
grounded,” said Yaqob. “But I want every swift bug in the
air.”

He and Ubaldo swung up onto their
mounts, with Ubaldo right behind him. They sprang off the dunes and
darted out over the bay, skimming low over the wave
tops.

The scouts had spotted us and altered
their course. They remained ahead of their pursuers were steadily
losing ground. The new falcons were swifter than anything Penult
had in the air previously, and nearly the equal of any bug. They
spat out projectiles that left spiral, greenish vapor
trails.

The dragonflies made quick and twitchy
adjustments to their flight path to evade the objects coming at
them from behind. The bulge of their compound eyes gave them, in
effect, eyes in the back of their head.

Volunteers variously screeched and
clapped and whistled for their beasts. The canopy bounced and
swarmed with bugs sorting themselves out and seeking their riders.
I attempted to mimic how Ubaldo had called Tigger the other day,
but my voice cracked before I get out a decent screech and I was
reduced to a fit of coughing.

Karla’s robber fly came buzzing down
into the glade and she leapt on its back, wielding a scepter like a
knobby wooden baton. Her fly had no saddle.

“
You’re riding
bareback?”

“
There is no time!” she
said, her eyes anxious. “Where is your bug?”

“
I don’t know,” I said. “He
was just up there.”

I screamed again for Tigger. My shriek
was a little more convincing this time, but it still got me
nowhere. I gazed up hopefully at the dragonflies flitting back and
forth overhead but none bore Tigger’s distinctive broad
striping.

In quick succession, one volunteer
after another alighted from the dunes until half a dozen were
winging out after Yaqob and Ubaldo.

“
Enough,” said Karla, and
she too took to the air, followed by several more
stragglers.

“
We’re heading into the
trees to get the beetles tethered,” said Olivier. “They’re not
equipped for aerial dog fights.”

“
I’ll stick around here,” I
said. “Maybe Tigger will show.”

I was the last dragonfly rider left on
the dunes. When the last of the robber flies took off, I was alone,
feeling useless and impotent. I couldn’t even strap on a pair of
Seraph wings. Tigger still had them lashed to his side.

I kicked my way through the light,
fluffy sand to the crest of the tallest dune and watched as the
volunteers closed on the first wave of attackers. Behind them, an
array of old-style falcons escorted a pair of huge, lumbering
condors carrying something large and bulky in their
talons.

Ubaldo’s hornet raced into the lead,
accelerating past the scouts. He homed in in on the lead falcon,
weaving erratically to avoid the barrage of bolts emanating from
the bristling nose of the enemy craft. His hornet swung its abdomen
stinger first and pierced the Hashmal pilot through his cage. All
six wings instantly ceased and the craft went tumbling into the
surf. Yaqob came zooming up behind him, his scorpion fly flailing
its spiked tail, raking and slashing at the other falcons. Pieces
flew off and another falcon went crashing into the sea.

The volunteers caught up just as the
second wave hit, firing a massive barrage of ballista bolts, some
of which found their mark. A robber fly spun away from the
formation, its wing damaged, spiraling down to the water. It made
its way back over the shoals, staying just above the waves until it
crumpled onto the beach, spilling its rider in the sand.

I ran down the dune towards the beach,
fearing it was Karla who had fallen. But it was a guy, some Duster
fellow I didn’t know. He rose from the sand and tried taking a
step, but couldn’t put any weight on it. He fell back down and just
sat there, staring at his robber fly which was just as battered,
its wings torn, thorax pierced with bolts.

I rushed down to help him. His foot
jutted at an odd angle from the rest of his leg. He had badly
broken his ankle.

“
You okay? Is it just your
leg?”

He nodded, grimacing. I helped him up
and over the dunes and got him tucked away under the
trees.

The battle in the sky had drifted
closer to shore. A wild dogfight was underway, flies and falcons
dodging, diving, firing bolts, exchanging bursts of plasma. A
cluster of falcons harried Ubaldo like nesting sparrows chasing a
crow, but few bolts struck the shifty hornet.

Yaqob’s scorpion fly fought like a
winged demon, whirling and slashing at any falcon that came within
reach. Several falcons had already begun to retreat back to the
beach head, their cages shattered, six wings reduced to four or
five.

Amidst the chaos, I noted a set of
striped wings on a rider-less dragonfly. Tigger was up there
battling without me.

I noticed the cracker columns sitting
out into the open on the forest side of the dunes. Someone had
hauled them out to make it easier for the beetles to pick them up.
The Pennies were bound to spot them. I didn’t care about the
copies, but the real one had to be protected.

I ran back out onto the dunes and
peeked under the shroud of each column, looking for the real one.
Olivier’s was easy to spot. It was crudely carved with grooves too
shallow, bumps too rounded. But the other two were practically
indistinguishable. I grabbed the lines securing each or their
shrouds and dragged them towards the underbrush. They weren’t heavy
at all, just bulky.

A condor hovering over the shoals
fired a blast from the device dangling from its talons. A fiery
orange blob came thundering into the side of a dragonfly, tearing
it in half and unsaddling its rider who went plummeting into the
drink.

Distracted, I tripped over some
driftwood and went chin first into the sand. But I kept on going,
hauling the columns the rest of the way on my hands and knees. Once
I got beyond the first line of trees, I ripped some branches off
some saplings and arranged them to conceal the columns as best I
could.

I went back out onto the dunes. The
sky directly above me was now a chaos of darting bugs and falcons.
Ballista bolts and plasma bursts flew every which way. I saw
another Duster fall from a dragonfly, her long grey hair trailing
like a streamer. Her dragonfly continued to fight, slashing at a
falcon with its claws. I held out my sword, searching for that
willful feeling in my middle, but things were so confused overhead,
I held back. I feared hitting one of our own.

A condor landed on the beach, not
downed but rather executing a hard, but intentional landing. Viktor
on his damselfly, swooped down to harass the armored Hashmallim who
poured out of its cages. He engaged them with bursts of his
scepter, nimbly dodging the bolts they shot back his
way.

I retreated back into the trees as the
Hashmallin ran up and over the dunes, heading straight for the
column I had left behind. I watched them bash it to bits with their
heavy staffs. They were welcome to whack away at Olivier’s replica
all they wanted. I stood ready to defend the real thing with my
blackened and blunted, but still potent sword.

One of the Hashmallim spotted me
lurking in the trees. Before he could do anything, I leveled my
sword at him and let loose a blast. I had no inhibitions today. A
tight little baseball-sized wad of supersonic energy struck his
side and slammed him down. His staff went flying. The Hashmal I had
hit writhed a bit and then went still.

Emboldened, I came out of the trees.
The other Hashmallim brandished their staffs at me, grasping them
by the middle. The staffs flattened and curved into bows. They
peeled perfectly formed arrows from the bodies of the bows and
strung them on what seemed to be invisible bowstrings.

As they raised their newly conjured
bows, my sword shuddered. A blast ripped out of the tip and flared
out wide, striking both Hashmallin with one hit, crumbling their
bows, stripping off their armor and vaporizing their
arrows.

They looked at me with some
astonishment before turning and running back towards the condor,
abandoning their fallen comrade in the sand.

The condor pilot witnessed all of it
was already preparing to flee. He raised his wings and turned the
craft to face the wind while the fleeing Hashmallin sprinted across
the beach and clambered aboard.

I stalked after them, stretching my
sword out at the condor just as it lifted off and turned out over
the ocean. It was still gaining altitude when another blast
thundered out of my sword tip. This emission, wider and more
diffuse, caught the condor, shredded its membranes and splintered
its frame. The condor collapsed in on itself and crashed into the
surf.

I looked up and found the sky still
full of bugs. Five of the sleeker falcons remained engaged in
battle but the other surviving craft were retreated south down the
shore.

A volunteer on a robber fly took down
a falcon with a burst from a scepter that gummed up its wings and
stuck them together. Tigger zoomed down to give it a bump for good
measure before it crashed into the trees, unable to recover from a
steep dive.

Ubaldo’s hornet was a killing machine,
systematically destroying each falcon it encountered, latching on
and stinging each pilot through the cockpit cage. Wings would go
slack, the hornet would release, and falcons would drop, limp wings
trailing like the feathers of a shuttlecock as they crunched onto
the beach or splashed into the surf.

This dog fight had turned into a rout.
The last two falcons disengaged and fled, zipping away at top speed
to catch up with the other retreating craft. Bugs began landing on
the beach and dunes all around me. I was heartened by how many had
survived the battle. But where was Karla?

“
Damn good show!” said
Olivier, striding up behind me.

Two beetle riders came slinking out of
the scrub where they had taken cover with Olivier. One by one, the
rest of the bugs landed on the dunes, some without riders. Tigger
did not join them but instead flew back to the fig tree and its
aphids. I looked around for Karla and her robber fly but could not
spot her. My stomach dropped.

“
Looking for me?” I turned
to see Urszula smiling back from atop a dune, beside her dragonfly,
her short but sturdy scepter propped over one shoulder.