Valour and Victory (33 page)

She was a nurse
and people needed her help. She would mourn for Maura later.

Now what did
Doctor Hallam say about burn injuries?

Tears running
down her blackened face, Zilla entered the tent and began to look
around for smaha ointment, bandages and clean water.

* * * * *

Danal

“Remember,
Danal of Vadath,” said Chizu, holding Danal’s gaze, his eyes
gleaming. “Good will come of this evil. Live, live in peace and joy
and harmony. I wish you happiness. Do not fail me.”

Danal and Asya
watched Tala and Chizu fly away.

The two of them
stood unmoving for a long time after the golden flyer had
disappeared over the horizon.

* * * * *

Niaill

The Larg
advance stopped, all at once.

A crescendo of
anguished howling filled the air.

Taraya
staggered and fell to her knees and Niaill all but passed out.

The mind of
every Lind and every vadeln-paired human was hit by such a surge of
anguished emotions as to incapacitate them completely, which would
have been disastrous for Julia and Alyei’s army except that every
Larg was in the same state.

“What is
happening?” Niaill heard his voice ask as the pain inside his mind
subsided enough to be replaced by a feeling of loss.

He was only
marginally aware of the fiery battle in the skies as objects
dropped from the Lai burst on top of the Quorko. Some of the ships
were damaged. On three their engines began to stutter and black
smoke was belching out. The Lai were diving and the undamaged
Quorko lifted their bows to meet the unexpected challenge.

: The Dglai
have turned on the families the kohorts left behind :
Taraya
managed to say.

: So that is
why there are only ten Quorko here :

: The other
fifteen are gathering in the Larg eln and lin and are driving them
towards the Ammokko. Many are dead :

Niaill had an
outside in headaches but he managed to make himself concentrate.
His eyes focused on the Larg.

Every one of
them was standing motionless. They were growling. Their heads were
raised towards the skies above. Niaill and Taraya followed their
gaze.

The Lai were
engaged in a wheeling, turning, fiery fight with the Quorko, using
their greater aerial agility to get as close as possible and
breathing great gouts of flame at them.

The Quorko were
trying to extricate themselves.

The Lai were
taking casualties. Niaill watched as one golden dragon body was
hit. Writhing in the flames that enveloped its body it plummeted to
the ground.

But the Lai
were forcing the Quorko to fly lower. One of the damaged Quorko
crashed to the dirt.

With howls of
rage the Larg swarmed over its fuselage, scraping and gnawing at
any bits they could get hold of. Niaill couldn’t see the
superstructure for the tawny bodies.

The troops
around Niall began to cheer as another Quorko hit the dust.

In all, nine of
the ten Quorko were forced to the ground. Only one managed to
escape the holocaust, rising with difficulty through the flames of
the Lai and heading west.

Niall gazed
mesmerised at the Larg who were quite literally rending each Quorko
apart piece by piece. He could hear their blood-roars as first one
Quorko then another was forced open and he could hear, clear as
day, the piercing shrieks of the Dglai inside as they met their
deaths.

* * * * *

The Guildmaster
and the Lai

Annert got the
second bomba ready.

Haru dove down
again, towards a Quorko that was making its wobbly way out of the
battle area.

He dropped the
bomba, it hurtled down. He watched the Lai who were flaming the
Quorko move away to avoid the blast.

The bomba
missed but not by very much, exploding perhaps three lindlengths
away.

Annert crouched
low on Haru’s back as he had been instructed.

Haru would now
take on the Quorko with flaming breath.

He dove but
then he swooped away.

Annert looked
down. There would be no need for Haru to take on the Quorko. The
Larg were doing just fine on their own.

* * * * *

Danal

The whimpering
Inalei and Asya were cowering down, trying to blot the howls of
agony that were hitting their minds. Danal clamped his hands to his
ears in a vain attempt to blot it out too and fell to his
knees.

“The Dglai,” he
managed to gasp, “they are killing the families of the Larg. It is
terrible.”

“How? What?
Where?” screamed Grainne, looking frantically around her as if the
Dglai were about to descend on their campsite.

“Far to the
south,” Inalei raised his head, his voice shocked and dull.

“They must be
killing many for the emotion wave to have got this far and with
such strength,” pronounced Danal. “Lai, but my head is
pounding.”

“I am sorry,”
said Asya, “there was no time to shield.”

Danal swayed to
his feet.

* * * * *

The Quorko

At first Quoi
hadn’t been aware of the golden arrow descending from above.

The first Quoi
knew of it was when he felt something impact the hull to the rear
of his craft, where the engines were. It was Master Annert’s bomba.
Then came the explosion and the engine began to stutter. The cabin
of the Quorko began to fill with black smoke and the scout ship
began to lose height. All he could do was to try and keep the nose
up as it fell to the ground.

The smoke
cleared as the extractor fans kicked in and Quoi spied a wedge of
golden shapes flying down towards his and the other Quorko.

They looked
familiar.

What is
happening? What, who are they?

His Quorko hit
the ground with a crash and a rending of strained metal. Out of the
window-shield he could see were masses and masses of hairy bodies,
the furious and angry Larg who were intent on gaining entry to his
ship and tearing Quoi and the four crewmembers apart.

He kept firing
the flame weapon but it was only making them angrier.

He could hear
their talons scratching at the hull.

Quoi knew his
death was only a matter of time.

* * * * *

Quoi and his
four crewmembers had been the first Dglai to land on the planet. He
was among the first to die.

The arrogance
of the Dglai was their undoing, that and the fact that Kalavdr the
Largan had never completely trusted his erstwhile allies. He hadn’t
told Quoi that the Larg were telepathic. Qu therefore, when he had
ordered the round up of the female Larg and their young, the eln
and the lin, hadn’t realised that the males in the kohorts would
know immediately when it happened.

* * * * *

Niaill

It was
over.

The Larg took
one last look up at the ridge before they turned and began to run
back home, all but one kohort.

That kohort
watched in silence as the Lai began to wheel down to the ground.
Some, wounded, landed in a tangle of wings and bits of wing
membrane, holed and charred.

“Medics!”
Niaill shouted. “We need Medics down here! Fast!”

* * * * *

Tala

Qu was aware
that the
Ammokko’s
external sensors had detected an incoming
flier but he thought that it was one of the ten Quorko returning
unannounced. He knew that they had come under attack but not from
whom, Quoi’s message had been very quick and garbled. Qu assumed
that the planetary inhabitants had found some way to attack the
Quorko from the ground. It had happened on other planets. He was
more concerned with the success of the fifteen Quorko who were
rounding up the Larg who had not gone north with the kohorts. Larg
meat would make a tasty alternative to the dull protein mix that
was presently being served on the
Ammokko
.

Qu looked at
the sensor screen. The blip was approaching fast and it was a
strange shape. The locator system had not been made to home in on a
small non-metallic attacker and he was having to rely on the less
efficient short range sensors.

“Turn the
exterior monitors on,” he ordered, “and point the long range
locator towards where the sensor reports incoming.”

It took a
moment for the Dglai to do this but at last, as Qu stood with
impatience watching the screen resolve itself above his head, it
came into focus and he could see exactly what it was approaching
the ship.

Qu staggered
backwards in shock.

“It’s not
possible!” he gasped.

The Lai! It had
to be, unbelievingly, the Lai! The legends spoke of the Lai! The
shape could not be anything else. The Lai, with whom the Dglai had
shared a planet once upon a time. He wondered what the Lai wanted.
By the seas of the lost planet of Diaglon, how did he come to be
here?

Qu ordered the
ships guns to be made ready but he knew there would not be time for
their mechanisms to charge before the Lai flyer was upon them.

The
Ammokko
was not furnished with the same type of weaponry as
the Quorko. Her weapons were designed for an attack on or defence
from other space ships. They fired missiles and smaller shells
designed to punch through metal hulls.

The Dglai had
never before had to use them while on a planet. The smaller of the
weapons were ready first and began to fire out shells.

It was one of
these small shells, filled full of shrapnel that got Tala and
Chizu. It burst to one side of them, exploded its insides out with
lethal intensity and shredded Chizu’s right wing. Chizu had no time
to dodge away. He tried to compensate his flight path with his good
wing but began to lose height.

Tala realised
in that instant that they would no longer be able to place the
power-core where they had first intended (it thrummed through her
body, the needle on the dial quivering over the red point on the
dial that told her it was about to blow) and then fly away.

She too was
hurt, a piece of shrapnel had entered her shoulder with such force
that if she hadn’t been tied on to Chizu’s back she would have
fallen off.

Chizu would not
be able to fly away from the blast when it came.

She knew what
had to be done and so did he.

She glanced at
the dial, the needle was well over the danger point. The power-core
thrummed and began to judder.

She held the
connector in place with determination, forcing the crystal to
transfer, receive yet more energy into the core, trying to ignore
the pain in her shoulder. She felt faint, her left hand didn’t seem
to want to do what it was told.

“Head for the
ship,” she shouted but the wind flipped her words away.

Chizu, striving
mightily to retain air-height, stretched out his good wing and
tilted towards the vast, shining, metal space ship.

Tala closed her
eyes as Chizu glided straight for the
Ammokko
.

* * * * *

Danal

Danal stood
beside Asya staring through the desert glare towards where Tala and
Chizu had gone. Grainne brought him water but he would not eat.

The flash, when
it came, filled the sky.

Danal and Asya
continued their vigil. Chizu had said that he would be able to
out-fly the blast wave. He was a strong Lai. He had told Danal that
he was always the winner in the flight games and races. He was
fast, perhaps the fastest Lai who had ever lived but as night
passed into day and still they did not reappear Danal realised with
an empty pang of loss that they would not be coming back.

All he had left
of Tala were the memories of their time together, always snatched
but always precious.

Asya said
nothing, neither aloud nor telepathically. She did retain a
presence in his mind and Danal was glad of the comfort.

His legs gave
way beneath him as full realisation hit and he sat on the sand,
sobbing. He scooped up a handful and watched it trickle through his
fingers.

: Going,
going, gone :
he looked at Asya. Her glowing eyes were filled
with compassion and love.

: They did
it :
she said.

: They did
it? :
he asked in a ‘voice’ absolutely devoid of emotion
:
the Ammokko is destroyed? :

: It is, I am
sure it is :

: Are you
definitely sure? :

: The
power-core blew up did it not? :

: That doesn’t
mean that it took the Ammokko with it :

Inalei came
running. “There are Larg approaching,” he barked, the hackles down
his neck and back rising so as to seem almost perpendicular.

Danal drew his
sword.

: We’ll never
know for certain if Tala and Chizu did it :

: We have done
all that we could my Danal. I am sure she and Chizu did destroy the
Dglai. I love you and am glad to be with you, here at the end :

As Zaoaldavdr
and what remained of his warriors approached the gridref they saw
two humans and two Lind standing beside a large rock waiting for
death.

* * * * *

“Denei managed
to get very strong mental thought through. He said that he was
fighting,” Zaoaldavdr said in strangely accented Lindish, “then his
mind-sense disappeared.”

“Denei is
dead,” said Danal in a dull voice, “we met up with a Larg.”