Alchymist twoe-3

by Ian Irvine

  'It's been there a while. We should be safe from it, unless they've picked Ullii up to track me.'

  The cold was spreading across Nish's chest now, but his forehead was dripping with perspiration.

  'Is something the matter?' said Flydd..

  Nish managed a limp wave with one hand. 'S'orright,' he slurred, holding his side. 'Just a flesh wound.'

  'Where?' Flydd unfastened his shirt. 'How did you get this?'

  'Soldier in the forest. Stuck me in the ribs. Not serious.' Nish tried to lie down.

  Now Flydd was furious. 'I'll be the judge of that. You're a fool, Nish. Why didn't you tell me?'

  Nish groaned as the scrutator probed the wound with fingers that seemed deliberately rough.

  'This should have been treated last night. Now it's infected. You need a swift boot up the arse!' Flydd proceeded to give Nish one, knocking him down on his face. He leapt up with the empty water bottles and disappeared.

  Nish closed his eyes. He deserved no less.

  It was dark by the time the scrutator returned. Nish woke from a feverish sleep to find Flydd looming over him.

  I didn't want to risk a fire,' he said, the anger gone, 'but we've got to have hot water. That wound must be cleaned out.'

  'I didn't think it was that bad,' said Nish, who felt cold all over. 'It didn't bleed much.'

  'You've been lucky, but if the infection sets in you'll die of it. And that might not be such a bad thing,' Flydd said cheerfully. 'At least you won't be able to cock up anything else.' At the look on Nish's face, he added, 'I'm joking.'

  The scrutator kindled a small fire well under the overhang of a boulder and climbed up to check that it could not be seen from above. 'This'll have to do. I'd have to be really unlucky for that to be spotted. But lately, I have been really unlucky.'

  When the water was boiling, Flydd cleaned the wound with rags soaked in scalding water, before making a poultice of herbs beaten into the pulp of one of the knobbly fruits and binding it over the gash. Subsequently he stewed meat and vegetables for dinner.

  Though famished, Nish was unable to take more than a few spoonfuls. The scrutator ate the rest, pulled his coat around him and closed his eyes. Nish did too, and slept, until his dreams forced him to wake.

  Seven people had died last night and he was responsible for five of them. He hadn't meant to kill anybody, but they were dead nonetheless. It was not an attractive thought. The soldiers might have killed him without a qualm, but he could not feel the same way about their deaths. Mylii had been harmless. Worse still, the pilot of the air-floater had been a female, as most pilots were. He had killed a woman. In a world where the falling population was a disaster, to kill a woman of child-bearing age was the worst crime in the register. He let out a small, squeaking choke.

  Flydd rolled over in his coat. 'What is it now?'

  'I killed the pilot. A woman. What am I to do, Scrutator?'

  'Find a way to atone for it. And you can start by not disturbing my sleep.' Flydd rolled back the other way, snapping the collar about his ears.

  Nish kept seeing her face — she had been a pretty little thing. It became a night of horrors. Each time he dozed off he dreamed about the dead, but now all were women with babies in their bellies — his children. Each time, the dreams jerked him awake. Nish stared into the night but their faces were painted on the darkness. And Mylii. For all that it had been an accident, he had killed Ullii's brother and nothing could undo that. It must destroy everything that had ever been between him and Ullii. If only she would come back and he could, at least, explain.

  Flydd's poultice proved efficacious, for Nish's wound was better in the morning. It was just as well, as Flydd's left thigh, the one torn open and burned by his first crystal, had become infected. Nish spent the best pan of an hour cleaning and dressing it in the foggy dawn, with the scrutator stoically enduring the pain.

  There was no sign of Ullii. They continued north and west in silence. It was like being a slave all over again, only that Nish was pushing himself to the limit of his endurance. He'd hoped that exhausting mind and body might keep the nightmares at bay, but even in his most agonising moments, when the blisters on his feet had burst and he drove himself on raw, weeping flesh, the dead faces were there.

  They began before dawn each morning and walked long into the evening. In this flat country they must have been making four or five leagues every exhausting day. Flydd matched Nish stride for stride for the next few days, despite the infection. Nish lost track of time, so long had the days been, and so full of torment.

  The scrutator now took them on a westward path, towards the sea, not wanting to get too far from Jal-Nish's army. Outlandish though it was, he still intended to try and stop him. Flydd never gave up, no matter how hopeless things became, and that was a lesson to Nish.

  However, when they had wandered more than forty leagues and seen not a soul, one day Flydd began to fall behind. Around dusk, Nish turned to say something to him, only to discover that the scrutator was just a dot on the horizon.

  Nish sat down to wait for him, but resting was too pleasant. There was no pain in it. He drove himself back to the ailing figure.

  'What's the matter?'

  'My leg,' Flydd gritted. 'I can barely lift it.' In a few hours his left thigh had swollen to twice the size of the right, and the wound had become an inflamed, weeping sore.

  The dust cloud was moving in a south-westerly direction.

  The spyglass resolved it into a large column of soldiers, set to pass a league or two north of him. He made signals with his coat until his eyes were raw, and eventually a small group broke away from the column, heading in his direction.

  Nish watched the riders with a feeling of mounting terror. If the army belonged to the scrutators they would torture him publicly, to serve as a lesson to others. For malefactors in every profession or trade, an ironic and appropriate death had been prescribed, and each victim's fate was subsequently written into the Histories, so that all would know that justice had taken its merciless course.

  Nish could not forget poor Ky-Ara, the clanker operator who had gone mad with grief at the loss of his machine. He had killed another operator then run renegade with the man's clanker. Flydd had ordered the clanker dismantled before Ky-Ara's eyes and every part of it fed into the furnaces. Ky-Ara had been forced to destroy the controller hedron himself, but instead had called so much power into the crystal that it had burned him from the inside out.

  Nish was used to death, in all its forms and horrible finality. He hoped he could face his with dignity intact; he had to, though it would not redeem him. The Histories would describe his folly and inglorious end for as long as they endured. He would be a cautionary tale for the children of the next twenty generations. The only consolation would be that he had done his best.

  A horseman trailing a blue banner galloped towards the foot of the hill. Three others followed. Nish waved the coat and trudged down to meet them.

  'Did you put out the fire?' Flydd rasped as Nish passed by.

  'It's an army. I signalled them and riders will be here shortly.'

  'If you're wrong you won't have to worry about the scrutators. I'll kill you myself!'

  Nish avoided Flydd's eye and kept going. At the base of the hill he stood on a fallen tree trunk, waving as the soldier with the banner raced up. Nish vaguely recognised the fellow, a pitch-black, good-looking man with a halo of frizzy hair and a nose as hooked as a parrot's beak. What was the name? Tchlrrr, of course. He'd accompanied Nish on that humiliating embassy from General Trout to the Aachim Nish felt his face grow hot at the thought of it.

  Tchlrrr grounded his pole. Two soldiers trotted forward, followed by an officer in a cockaded hat, and another pair of soldiers. The uniforms were familiar.

  'Who are you?' called the first soldier. 'Why did you signal us?'

  Nish took a deep breath. 'I'm Cryl-Nish Hlar. My travelling companion is Scrutator Xervish Flydd, and he is sorely wounded. Without th
e service of a healer he may die.'

  'C-Cryl-Nish Hlar!' stammered the officer in the middle. 'I've often w-wondered what happened to you. Come down.'

  Nish practically fell off his rock. The officer was Prandie, one of the lieutenants of General Troist. Nish had saved Troist's twin daughters, Liliwen and Meriwen, from ruffians near Nilkerrand, a hundred and fifty leagues to the north, and subsequently rescued them from a collapsing underground ruin. The army must be Troist's, which meant that, for the moment, he was safe.

  'Lieutenant Prandie,' he said. 'I'm so very glad to see you.'

  Twenty-two

  No questions were asked. The soldiers rigged a litter between their horses to convey a weak but querulous Flydd back to the main force. Nish rode behind Tchlrrr, keeping well out of the scrutator's way, and within the hour they had joined the column. Flydd was placed in a wagon pulled by one of the clankers, and Troist's personal healer called to attend him. Healing was a mancer's Art these days and had advanced rapidly during the war, so Nish had hopes that she could save him.

  Nish was taken into another clanker, where he lay on the floor and tried to sleep, though that was hardly possible with the bone-jarring shudder of the machine, and the squeals, rattles and groans of its metal plates against each other. Clankers lived up to their name. However, he did doze, to be shaken awake in the late afternoon. Finding good water, the convoy had stopped for the night.

  'General Troist wishes to see you, surr,' said an aide.

  Nish got out the rear hatch and looked around, rubbing his eyes and feeling more than a little anxious. Shortly General Troist appeared, a stocky, capable man. His sandy curls were longer than before, and tousled as though he'd been running his hands through them all day. His blue eyes were bloodshot, his uniform the worse for wear, but the soldiers saluted him smartly. Troist drove his troops hard, but not as hard as himself, and he took care of the least of his men before attending to his own needs. They loved him for it.

  'It's good to see you again, Cryl-Nish,' Troist said. 'Come this way.'

  Nish followed, sweating. True, he had saved Troist and Yara's daughters, twice, but there had also been that unpleasant scene at Morgadis with Yara's sister. Mira, and the fiasco of his embassy to the Aachim camp. Every success was matched by a failure. And no doubt Troist already knew of Flydd's fall, if not Nish's own.

  They went up the line to Troist's command clanker, a great twelve-legged mechanical monstrosity the size of a small house, with a catapult and two javelards mounted on the shooter's platform. Nish had never seen one like it. Troist offered him a seat, an oval of slotted metal with an embroidered cover depicting a vase of bluebells, cheerfully but amateurishly sewn. The work of his daughters, no doubt. Troist was a methodical general, but a sentimental father.

  'What are you doing here, Cryl-Nish?' Troist asked, holding out a leather flask of ale.

  Nish took a careful sip, not sure what to say. The general knew his duty and, if that required him to give Nish up, he must do so whatever his personal feelings. I was sure you'd know all about it,' he said obliquely.

  Troist frowned. 'Know what? Tell me straight, Cryl-Nish, I don't have time for foolery.'

  So he hadn't heard. Nish saw a chance to save himself, and Flydd, if he could just put things the right way. 'The great battle at Snizort, weeks ago.'

  'I knew there was going to be one, but I've not heard how it went. There's been no news from the south in a month, so I brought my army this way to find out.'

  'No news at all?' said Nish. The scrutators prided themselves on their communications; it enabled them to control the world.

  'The lyrinx locate our messengers from the air. They've also worked out how to track our skeets and kill them. It's next to impossible to get messages through to garrisons along the Sea of Thurkad. Were you at the battle for Snizort?'

  'Yes,' said Nish, 'though not as a soldier. I was held prisoner bv Vithis the Aachim.'

  'You two have come a long way on foot, with such injuries.' He was studying Nish as if he suspected something had gone unsaid.

  Nish wasn't sure how to proceed. If the general discovered what had really happened, he might clap Nish in the brig and deliver him up to the scrutators. But if Nish lied …

  He took a deep breath. 'I must be completely honest with you, surr, no matter what it may cost me. The Snizort node exploded, destroying the field, and after that the battle went terribly wrong, for neither our clankers nor the Aachim's constructs could move.'

  'I knew something was amiss,' said Troist, rubbing his lower belly, for he suffered with his bowels. 'Tell me all that has happened.'

  Nish related the tale of the desperate battle at Snizort, the failure of the node and the consequent slaughter, the scrutators saving what remained of the army with their airborne mirrors, the underground fire and the abandonment of Snizort by the lyrinx. He hesitated, then told the rest, including Flydd's slavery and his own condemnation by his father, the escape, his folly which had caused the death of Mylii and the loss of Ullii, and his father's mad quest to attack the lyrirrx. 'That's all, surr; he said finally, 'save for a secret to do with the node—'

  'I don't want to know any mancers' secrets, lad,' said the general. 'Go on.'

  'I've been condemned by my own father, surr, and Scrutator Flydd by the entire Council. We fled for our lives, and now you have us …' Nish could think of no defence, nothing at all. 'You must send me back in chains, I suppose.'

  'I have no orders concerning you, Cryl-Nish, and must rely on my judgment. In the past you served me well. I haven't forgotten that.'

  Nish blushed to think of his flight from Mira's house with his trousers about his ankles. 'But there was an incident at Morgadis …'

  'A misunderstanding on your part, Mira tells me. She was mortified that you fled her home in terror of your life, but I'll leave her to explain when next you meet. She's suffered terribly, my wife's sister, and can be emotional.. 'He grimaced. To Troist, such feelings were a private business. To matters that do concern me. You say that the surviving army is being led into greater peril.’

  'My father, Jal-Nish …I don't know how to say it, General Troist, but his injuries have transformed him. He's a bitter man, full of hate and rage. He even condemned me—'

  'You told me already.' Troist turned away, his mouth hooked down. 'How any father could do that to a son — the man is surely a monster. And you say Ghorr required it of Jal-Nish, to prove his worth? How can that be? Duty is everything to me, yet such deeds shake my faith in our leaders.'

  'After the battle, the lyrinx withdrew south-west from Snizort, towards the Sea of Thurkad/ said Nish. 'My father plans to hunt them down, once he's dragged our clankers to the nearest field, and surely he's done that by now.'

  'Where would that be?' Unrolling a canvas chart, Troist spread it on a table.

  Nish heard shouting outside, then the rear hatch was jerked up and Flydd appeared in the opening, swaying on his feet. His face was grey-green, his lips blue and he was clearly in great pain. It had not improved his temper. A young woman in a healer's cap clutched at his arm but he pushed her away.

  'I'm Scrutator Xervish Flydd!' he rapped. 'You are General Troist?'

  'I am,' said Troist, leaping to the hatch. Are you sure you're—'

  'Surr, I implore you,' cried the healer, tugging at Flydd's sleeve. He fixed her with a glare of such ferocity that she drew back, twisting her fingers together. 'This is most unwise. You risk—'

  'You've done your work, now leave me be!' snapped Flydd. 'The fate of the world hangs upon my stopping Jal-Nish. Your coming is timely, General Troist.' He tried to pull himself up but let out a gasp and fell against the sill of the hatch.

  Troist and the healer lifted him in and guided him to a seat. Behind Flydd's back Troist beckoned the healer, a sturdy young woman in her mid-twenties, blonde of hair and blue of eye, with worry lines etched across a broad forehead. She sat in the shadows, looking troubled.

  'You didn't think so a
few hours ago,' Nish said quietly.

  'And I'll make you suffer for disobeying my order,' Flydd snapped. 'Out of the way, boy! The men have work to do.'

  Nish moved back next to the healer, feeling empty inside.

  'I value Cryl-Nish Hlar's counsel, surr' Troist said evenly. 'He has served me well on more than one occasion.'

  'And failed you disastrously on others, no doubt,' said the scrutator curtly. 'To business.'

  'If you would take the rear seat for the moment, surr,' said Troist. 'Cryl-Nih was briefing me on the situation at Snizort and I value his account.'

  Nish sat up, astonished. It was unheard of for anyone, even a general, to defy a scrutator. Of course, Flydd was now ex-scrutator, but it would be prudent to avoid offending him. What kind of a man was Troist, to stand up for someone who was of no further benefit to him?

  'More than you fear the just wrath of the scrutators?' Flydd said menacingly. He was unused to defiance and did not like it.

  'I do fear the just wrath of the scrutators, surr/ said Troist, 'as any sane man would. I even fear the wrath of those who are no longer scrutators, should I meet one of them.' His eyes held Flydd's and, though Flydd played the game of staring him down the general did not look away.

  'Is there no secret you haven't blabbed, boy?' cried Flydd.

  Nish made allowances. The scrutator was in pain and not himself.

  'I believe the lad felt he was doing his duty/ Troist put in. 'If you please, surr.' He indicated the seat up the back. 'Cryl-Nish, would you go on?'

  Flydd sank onto the bench, wincing. He delivered the healer such a black look that she shrank into the corner.

  Nish collected his thoughts. The constructs were being hauled north-west to a node. About here, I'd guess' He pointed The lyrinx fled this way He traced a line on the map with his fingertip, south-west towards the narrowest section of the Sea of Thurkad. "But that was weeks ago. They could be anywhere by now.'