Alchymist twoe-3

by Ian Irvine

  'Only the boldest of men would engage the enemy so close to the sea,' said Troist. 'Reinforcements could fly from Meldorin in less than an hour.’

  'Jal-Nish thinks his forces will have the advantage of a demoralised and weakened enemy' said Flydd. 'He doesn't know the lyrihx as I do. They abandoned Snizort because they'd got what they wanted, and they'll be waiting for him.'

  'I don't know that country well' said Troist, 'but something nags at me, Scrutator. Why has the Council given Jal-Nish command? He's junior to them all.'

  'The scrutators are afraid to lead' said Flydd, 'for none are battle tacticians and they value their own skins too highly. Yet they can't bear to give up control to the generals, so Jal-Nish is the only choice. He's a dangerous man, General Troist, for he truly believes he's better than them all.'

  'What does he want?'

  'Not gold. Nor knowledge, nor the company of beautiful women. Jal-Nish Hlar desires only one thing — to take over the Council and impose his twisted will on the entire world. He's a driven man.'

  Someone rapped on the rear hatch. The healer threw it up and a young aide whispered something in Flydd's ear. Flydd nodded and made to climb out, but a man concealed by cloak and hood pushed forward. He and Flydd spoke in low voices for several minutes, and Nish caught only one phrase. At the node?' the man hissed in surprise, before turning away.

  'General Troist?' said Flydd.

  'Yes?' Troist was puzzled by the interaction.

  'That was my personal prober, Eiryn Muss, who's just had urgent news by skeet.'

  Nish gaped, for even under his cape the man had not resembled the fat halfwit from the manufactory. 'How did he know you were here?'

  Muss's talent for spying, and finding, verges on the miraculous—' said Flydd. He gnawed at a fingernail before going on. Sometimes, beyond the miraculous. His news: Jal-Nish's army left the node some days back, heading for Gumby Marth, a valley east of the coastal town of Gnulp Landing, here. It's preparing to do battle in a few days with a small force of lyrinx, maybe seven thousand. It's a trap, of course.' 'How can you be sure?' said Troist.

  'Muss could find no evidence that the rest of the lyrinx have withdrawn across the sea, apart from a small number of fliers, so they must be hidden, to draw Jal-Nish in. And they would number an additional twelve thousand, or more.' 'And Jal-Nish's army?' 'Forty thousand men.'

  A man so bold, so forceful and aggressive, might even beat such a force of lyrinx,' said Troist thoughtfully.

  'Not on a battlefield of their choosing. If he fights, we'll lose the entire army and a month later the enemy will be dining on the fat burghers of Lybing.' 'How can you be sure?'

  'I was there when Jal-Nish addressed the Council, and I know him better than he knows himself. His tactics rest on the enemy being a demoralised rabble, but the lyrinx are leading them into a trap. More than twenty thousand of them got away from Snizort, and that many alone would be the equal of his army. To be sure, Jal-Nish has five thousand clankers, but the country near Gnulp is rugged and rocky, with great swamps to either side. Our machines will be little use there. But that's not my main worry.' 'What is?' said Troist.

  As you said, the lyrinx can swiftly bring in reinforcements from Meldorin, by flying and by boat. Whatever position we occupied, they could surround us. The army would be annihilated; humanity could not recover from such a loss.'

  Troist walked six paces to the empty operator's seat, head bowed beneath the low roof. He turned back. What do you have in mind? My force might make the difference if I could get there in time.’

  'Or it might be lost as well. Flydd said I'd prefer to avoid battle, if that's possible.

  'What's your plan, surr?'

  "To wrest control of the army from Jal-Nish and retreat back east to safety.'

  And then take on the scrutators, Nish guessed.

  'How are you going to do that?'

  'I won't know until I get there.'

  'If you're planning a mancers' duel…' Troist frowned. 'How can you be sure you'll win? He has a reputation for cunning.'

  As do I, General.'

  'Of course' Troist said hastily. And yet—'

  'If you don't think I'm up to it, say so!' snapped Flydd.

  'Certainly I do …Er, when you're in health …'

  'Then I'll just have to get better in a hurry, won't I?'

  'What if the enemy attacks before you're ready? If the main army of the west is lost at Gumby Marth, mine cannot long survive' said Troist. 'Scrutator Flydd, there's no time to wait. We must risk all to save all. We must march to the rescue straight away.'

  Troist glanced at Flydd, who was rubbing the bandage on his left thigh. A dark bloodstain, spiralling like a coiled snake, showed through it.

  'I suppose we must,' said Flydd.

  'Is that an order from the scrutator?'

  'It is.'

  'Then I will obey it, since I have no official reason to suppose you are scrutator no longer.'

  Troist's army had grown both in men and in efficiency since Nish had left it, long months ago. It now numbered thirteen thousand men and more than nine hundred clankers. A powerful force, and seasoned in a number of battles, though seven thousand of the enemy would be its match.

  That night after a dinner that sat uncomfortably in Nish's shrunken belly, they stood around the chart table to make plans. Yellow globes glowed to either side.

  The general was measuring distances on his map with a pair of silver dividers. 'Presently we're here, around twenty leagues north-west of Snizort, and only a few leagues from the sea. Gumby Marth is some forty leagues south. In good conditions, my clankers can manage ten leagues in daylight, so it'll take us four or five days to get there.'

  "Too long.' Flydd lay back in his chair. He was too weak to sit upright for any time, but would not go to his bed. 'What if we travelled through the night?' He already knew the answer, but wanted to hear the general say it, or make excuses.

  'We have to sleep sometime, surr, and that's as good as impossible in moving clankers. Travelling part of the night, we might do another league or two, where the country permits us, of course.'

  'Of course,' Flydd said sardonically. 'And it does, most of the way from here to the Landing, I believe. It's open plains and gentle hills, easy going for men and clankers alike. The last five or ten leagues are rugged, forested too, but that could be to our advantage.'

  'Unfortunately …' Troist hesitated.

  Flydd smiled, as if he had been expecting it. 'Yes?'

  'We don't have enough clankers to transport thirteen thousand men.'

  'Do the numbers.'

  'What?' said Troist. 'Oh! We have roughly nine hundred clankers. If each carried ten soldiers, which is their limit, that's only two-thirds of my force.'

  'How many are mounted?'

  'Another eight hundred and fifty, more or less.'

  'The riders should be able to keep up with the clankers.'

  'If their mounts don't go lame.'

  'Any that go lame, we'll eat,' said Flydd. 'The horses, that is. So all we have to do is cram another soldier inside, and two up on top with the shooter, and we can do it.'

  'In theory.' said Troist, though it'll put a big strain on the mechanisms and the operators, not to mention the soldiers.’

  'Not as big a strain as facing the lyrinx all by yourself soldier, after they've annihilated Jal Nish's army.'

  'If they come upon us instead of Jal-Nish s army, they'll destroy us.'

  'I may be able to prevent them finding us,' said Flydd, 'with help from your military mancer I propose to attempt a form of cloaking.'

  'Cloakers haven't been a great success with clankers, surr, with all due respect.'

  'This spell is greatly improved' said Flydd. 'I learned of it in Nennifer just a few months ago. I think it'll prove satisfactory, for a short time at least.'

  'If you say so, surr,' said Troist, 'then I suppose it could be done.' He looked dubious.

  Troist was an ambitious man
, but an honourable one. He did not want to drive his men or his machines beyond their breaking point, as a headlong march was likely to do. And perhaps he lacked confidence in his ability to fight a full-scale battle. Troist had been a junior officer when the bulk of his army was destroyed by the lyrinx attack on Nilkerrand, and all the senior officers killed. He had built this army from the surviving rabble, scattered across a hundred leagues of country. Troist had done a brilliant job and his soldiers would have followed him anywhere, but he surely worried about his limitations. His skirmishes with the enemy had involved no more than a few hundred soldiers; here he must manage thirteen thousand. If he achieved the impossible, it would make him. Should he fail, he and his army, and Flydd and Nish, would end up in the bellies of the enemy.

  Flydd seemed to be weighing the general up. Finally he nodded to himself, 'Then let it be done.'

  The fretting healer, who had been sitting in the shadows behind Flydd since dinner, said, 'Surr, such a journey is likely to kill you.'

  Flydd swung around in the metal seat. 'What business is that of yours?'

  The healer was shocked. 'Surr—'

  'What are you doing here anyway, Spying on my secret councils?'

  'I'

  'I told her to sit there, Scrutator!' Troist said coldly. 'And I'll thank you not to harass my healers, or anyone else under my command.'

  'How dare you tell me what I may or may not do!' cried Flydd. 'I could break you to a common soldier for such insolence.'

  Troist stood up. Though a compact man, he had to bend his head under the low roof. 'Then break me you must, Scrutator Flydd, for I will defend my healer, as I would any soldier in my army, to the last breath.'

  Flydd hauled himself out of the seat, glowering at the general; Troist stood his ground. Nish trembled for what might happen.

  Suddenly Flydd let out a great, booming laugh. 'I like you, General Troist. You're my kind of man.' He put out his twisted hand.

  After a momentary hesitation, Troist took it, though it was some time before the wary look left his eyes. 'I'll see to the orders,' he said. 'We move in thirty minutes.'

  Nish wasn't sure whether to be glad or sorry. He hoped he'd done the right thing this time, but what if it all went wrong and the lyrinx attacked Troist's army instead of Jal-Nish's much larger one? That worry was soon dwarfed by another that had been growing ever since the possibility had first been raised. What would happen when he met his father again? Just the thought made his heart race and his palms sweat.

  Twenty-three

  Someone was screaming, a long, drawn-out wail of anguish that rasped at Ullii's nerves. Having lost her earmuffs and earplugs long ago, she could do no more than push a finger in each ear. It made no difference — the dreadful wailing penetrated her entire body. It came out of the ground up her legs; down from the sky through her skull; it was everywhere. She ran into the night and the sound followed her.

  Ullii burst through thickets, heedless of the brambles tearing through her clothes and scoring her baby-soft skin. She crashed over crumbling embankments, through sandpaper shrubbery and into a boggy wallow where buffalo came down to a creek to drink. She splattered through the muck but the ghastly sound went with her, as if a ghost had thrust its head inside hers and was screaming into her brain.

  Ullii slipped in the mud, fell into cool water and, as she went under, the sound cut off. The relief was so miraculous that she lay on the bottom, thinking that she might stay there forever. She felt no urge to breathe; there was no reason to live. Her beloved Mylii was gone, snatched away the instant she'd found him. Killed, murdered by Nish, her lover. He'd done it deliberately, to hurt her. He must have, or he would have come after her and told her how sorry he was. But he wasn't sorry. He didn't care about Mylii, or the baby, or her.

  Flydd and Irisis, once her friends, were nearly as bad, hey'd lied to her, used her, and when they didn't want her any longer, they'd simply abandoned her.

  Her body's will to live drove Ullii to the surface. She stood op in the shallow water and breathed. The screaming had stopped but the pain was still there, and it was unendurable. Reaching inside herself, Ullii flicked the switch that severed her consciousness. Blessed oblivion.

  An hour later she was still standing there, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing.

  A memory woke in her and Ullii realised that she was standing in waist-deep water, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her beloved Mylii lay in his blood in the clearing, alone and abandoned.

  Ullii had no idea where she was. In that fit of madness and grief she might have run in any direction. She searched the lattice for her brother's knot, which had appeared so miraculously last night, but it was not there. Mylii was dead; his knot had vanished forever and she was lost.

  The sense of abandonment grew stronger. Mylii, Mylii, lying on the hard ground all alone. Was there a way to find him? He'd left no trace in the lattice, nor had the other dead at the air-floater. Not even the unfortunate little pilot made a mark now, for death wiped all knots away.

  But the air-floater was powered by a controller, and it must still have a working crystal. She sought for it but found nothing — Flydd had taken the crystal with him and he was beyond range. Deeper, further, she sought; there had to be some trace left. At last she picked up a tiny smudge of aura, a chip broken off the controller crystal in the crash. It gave her the direction. Ullii turned that way and started running.

  It was only an hour off dawn when she got there. The declining moon slanted across the clearing to light up the canvas of the air-floater from behind. The collapsed airbag was a crumpled rag outlined by black struts and wires. The little pilot lay with her head over the side, her neck bent at an unnatural angle.

  Ullii only had eyes for the slim shape lying in the moon-shadow: beloved Mylii. She did not run. Ullii was afraid to approach him too quickly.

  Stopping on the far side of the clearing, she stared at her brother Unlike the pilot and the soldiers, who all looked dead, he just appeared to be sleeping. She felt as her sensitive eyes strained to pierce the blackness that she saw his chest rise and fall She tried to make out his features but they blurred into the dark.

  She allowed herself to hope that it had just been a horrible nightmare. She did not want to wake him in case it turned out to be real. How could he be dead? Nish was a kind, gentle man who had done so much for her. He would not harm Mylii. It had to be a dreadful mistake, a dream that she had woken from. Or was it? She felt so confused.

  Ullii took a slow, fluid step, careful to make no sound. Any noise might wake her brother and everything would turn out wrong. A warm breeze soughed through the treetops, curling round the clearing and tickling the back of her neck, lifting the hair of her nape just as it lifted the dry leaves on the floor of the clearing, sending them whirling like fairy dancers in a circle. It made her smile. Mylii would have loved to see it — he had always been fond of music and dancing.

  She took another step, and her brother's prone form seemed to shift, as if moving to a more comfortable position, before settling back into sleep with a little sigh. The gesture was so familiar that it made her heart ache. Tears sprang to Ullii's eyes and suddenly she had to take him in her arms.

  Her small feet made barely a sound as she ran. From halfway across the clearing, Ullii called her brother's name Again he seemed to move, then suddenly went still, and with every step she took Mylii grew more rigid. The silver bracelet on his wrist was a manacle fixing him to the earth.

  'Mylii!' she cried, but he no longer seemed to be breathing.

  She crossed the short distance that separated them and threw herself at him. 'Mylii!'

  He did not move. Mylii was as unyielding as a log. Ullii pushed her arms under his back. A bubble burst in his throat and the remaining air sighed out of his lungs. The ground was damp beneath him. His whole back was wet, and when she withdrew her hands and held them up, his congealed blood was black in the moonlight.

  'Mylii.' she wailed, picking
him up in her arms, holding his body tightly as she rocked hack and forth, back and forth …

  A faint ticker-tick-tick roused her this time. It was an air-floater, not far away. Ullii sat up, not so much listening as watching its knot in her lattice. It was roving back and forth across the country south of here, coming steadily closer as if searching. It had come after the wrecked air-floater, and something far more precious — Mylii the seeker.

  The machine turned, flying directly towards the clearing. They were coming to take Mylii away. They must not get him. She tried to lift her brother, but he was heavier than he appeared. Ullii had him halfway to her shoulder when a sharp pain in her lower belly reminded her of the baby.

  Taking Mylii under the arms, she tried to drag him, but had only gone three steps when the air-floater was overhead. It was bigger than the crashed one, and she could tell that there were scrutators aboard, though in her distress Ullii could not identify them.

  'It's down there!' roared a barbed voice. 'Stay well up, Pilot. Captain, your troops must be ready for anything.'

  If the scrutators caught her, they would use her in place of Mylii. She had to let her brother go. Gently laying the body down, she crouched beside him for a moment, saying her farewell. Her eye caught a gleam from the bracelet and she tried to unfasten it, as a token of him, but the clasp would not budge. No time to work on it; they were coming. Ullii scuttled into the trees.

  The air-floater remained hovering above the clearing while soldiers came down on ropes. They were big, heavily armed, and Ullii was repulsed by the smell of their unwashed bodies. The first three assumed positions at the points of a triangle, crossbows thrust out, while the remainder came to ground inside the triangle. They formed more points and expanded outwards.

  Lanterns were unshuttered and directed at the forest. The troops, heavily armoured and helmeted, looked like savage demons. Ullii could not bear to look at them — nor away from them.

  Search it." said the captain, pointing to the wreckage of the air-floater. He shouted orders.