“Nothing. Vulcrows, two leopards that scurried back to thetree, some birds.” Lorn shrugs and dismounts. He pulls out a water bottle that will need to be refilled before long and takes a swallow, then blots his forehead. “We watch and wait for the Mirror Engineers.”
He is blotting his forehead again, in the midday heat, when a voice rides through the silence.
“Ser!” calls the duty sentry, pointing to the north.
Lorn unties the gelding and mounts, as do the four lancers he had selected earlier. From the saddle he can see three firewagons approach, crossing the deadland from the outer perimeter road, and angling toward the point where the trunk and the ward-wall intersect.
“Mount up! Engineers are here.”
“Mount up!” Kusyl and Olisenn echo Lorn’s orders.
Lorn fingers his grimy and stubbly chin, then eases the gelding toward where the three firewagons are slowing along the inner road that flanks the ward-wall. The third firewagon is armored in cupridium plate and tows an armored two-wheeled device with a tubular projection that can only be one of the special firecannons that Commander Meylyd had mentioned.
A thin-lipped engineer majer steps out of the first firewagon. He glances around, then spots Lorn, and marches toward the mounted lancer captain.
“Majer Weylt, Captain. I’m in charge of the engineer detachment at Eastend.” The thin lips twitch into a smile. “When we received your message, I had some questions about the size of the trunk. But your lancer messenger was insistent, and I decided to come with the large firecannon. I’m glad we brought it.”
“Captain Lorn, Majer. We’re glad to see you.” Lorn smiles. “The tree seemed large, but I’m new to this. I just followed the procedures.” He calls up what he has read. “You’ll cut away the trunk from the ward-wall ….”
“Exactly.” Weylt bobs his narrow face up and down. “We make sure that the road is clear first, and then destroy the crown to make sure it harbors no creatures, and that there’s no residual order poison.”
“What do you need from us?”
“Just a loose guard while we set up. That’s so we’re not surprised. Then you pull back and let us get on with it.”
“Yes, ser.”
“Good.” The majer almost spins on one boot and heads back to his firewagon.
Lorn remains mounted, with Kusyl to his left, as the halfscore of Mirror Engineers unhitch the armored firecannon on the wall road, and wrestle it into a position roughly three hundred cubits from where the trunk rests on the ward-wall. One turns a crank-like handle, and a hatch opens on one side of the cannon. The engineer vanishes into the hatch.
Another rolls a long cable from the firewagon that has towed the cannon to an assembly on the rear of the cannon and inserts it into a square bracket. Lorn senses that the cable is cupridium sheathed in something, almost a shimmercloth substance of many layers, clearly designed to keep the chaos flows within the cable.
Seemingly from nowhere, Majer Weylt appears, again marching briskly toward Lorn. “Pull your lancers back behind the cannon, Captain-and out from the ward-wall,” orders the thin-lipped Mirror Engineer. “At least a third of a kay back. Have them ready for more creatures.”
Lorn wonders about how many more cats and stun lizards will rush from the crown and the upper trunk, but only nods. “Yes, ser.” He turns and stands in the saddle. “Second Company! Pull back to seven hundred cubits!”
Half-wondering just how accurate any of them will be judging seven hundred cubits, Lorn guides Second Company to a position perpendicular to the trunk, closer to a half kay, he suspects, back from the crown itself. He turns his mount and reins up, watching Olisenn from the corner of his eye, and observing the engineers as well.
Two of the three firewagons roll back down the ward-wall road, almost a kay, leaving only the firecannon and the firewagon to which it is connected. All the Mirror Engineers have vanished, except for one, who then climbs inside thehatch door on the right side of the cannon and closes it behind him.
Of the score of Engineers, none remain in the open, Lorn notes.
HHHSSSTTT! With a whining, whooshing hiss, a single jet of flame slices through the dark order of the trunk. The heat radiates even to where the lancers are reined up.
Clunnnnnk! The ground shakes, a half kay away, as the trunk outside the ward-wall drops onto the road and the deadland.
A second jet of flame-somehow both blue and black-flares skyward from where the trunk has contacted the ward-wall. Smaller explosions follow, and sections of wood, shredded and twisted, begin to fall.
A dull clunking announces the impact of a ten-cubit length of branch on the armored shell of the firecannon.
Lorn turns in his saddle and studies Olisenn. Is the heavy-set squad leader pale? Lorn’s eyes go to Kusyl, who is definitely pallid and tense. Then his eyes go to the tree’s fallen crest, where the branches keep twisting.
In an instant, a half-score of the night leopards appear at the edge of the crown. Abruptly, all charge the Second Company, clearly without any hesitation, as if they had known all along where the lancers were.
“Discharge lances at will! Short bursts! Short bursts!”
“Short bursts!” Olisenn adds in an even louder bellow.
Nine of the leopards fall before reaching the Second company. The last slams into a lancer’s mount, but the man keeps his head and drives his sabre down and through the beast’s neck, awkward as the blow is.
The mount screams, a long slash across the point of her left shoulder, but the lancer manages to remain mounted, and slowly gentles the mare.
The rest of the lancers reform into their squads, watching the vegetation, but no other creatures emerge.
Discreetly readjusting his garrison cap, and blotting his forehead, Lom glances back-toward the cannon, where theengineers are working to reposition the weapon. “Steady! They’re going at it again!”
Another whining whistling blast follows, and a gap ten cubits wide appears between the ward-wall and the remainder of the trunk.
The second blast dislodges no more creatures, although a number of birds circle the trunk.
There is no sign of the vulcrows-none at all. Once more the engineers reposition the firecannon, and after each searing blast do so again until they have opened a gap between the wall and the remainder of the trunk that is more than fifty cubits wide.
Once the gap has reached that width and the inner road is clear, the Engineers turn the firecannon. The armored firewagon slowly tows it outward until it is roughly a hundred cubits from the crushed crown, between the crown vegetation and Lorn’s company.
The Engineer Majer strides from the cannon toward Lorn, and Lorn rides forward to shorten the senior officer’s walk.
“Thank you, Captain.” Weylt smiles.
Lorn waits.
“Captain Lorn … now we’re going to fire the crown. It’s going to burn hot. I’d leave your men where they are until the worst dies down. You might get another giant cat or two. You might not.”
“We’ll be ready, ser.”
“Fine.” Weylt turns and walks back to the firewagon.
Shortly the cannon screams again, except the fire flares into a broad fan, and immediately flames begin to shoot up from the center of the mangled limbs and leaves. As the fires spread, one section of the branches shudders, and a long gray-black giant cat leaps from the twisted branches and greenery, padding right past the armored firecannon.
The cat pauses two hundred and fifty cubits out from the spreading flames. Its dark eyes study the Second Company, lined five abreast at least a good five hundred cubits away. Then, as suddenly as the others had attacked, the giant catlopes almost due north, well away from the lancers and the engineers and their equipment.
Lorn has no intention of chasing it, not with the state of his company’s firelances.