Harus and Ven sprawled in their flight chairs, panting as though it were they who had done the fighting. Only Karn seemed relaxed as the ship rose and hovered above the Green Ones.
“Well,” Andra said bitterly, “Nobla
is gone. There’s only Luma now. And soon the Green Ones will have that.”
“Nobla was yours?” Karn asked.
“All of Mahlo was ours,” Andra told him. “But that was only until the Green Ones got started. Now we have only one city left, and not many Mahloans to defend that.”
Scorn flashed from her eyes at Harus and Ven. “And you saw how brave they are,” she said to Karn.
“Where is this Luma?” Karn asked, disregarding her thrust at the two Mahloans.
“Not far. After we have a look at what the Green Ones have done to Nobla we’ll go there.”
The great ball skimmed over the meadow, lifted above the walls of Nobla and rose to the height of the tallest towers of the city. For a while it hovered alongside a great stone gargoyle that peered down into the street below. Bodies were strewn along the streets, Karn saw. They were all male.
“The women escaped,” he observed. He heard Andra suck in a sharp breath and turned to her.