Chimaera twoe-4

by Ian Irvine

  Fusshte realised it and a spasm of terror crossed his face. For Nish it was almost worth it, to see Fusshte turn and run, then understand that there was nowhere to run.

  One or two bolts struck the thapter though most of the archers couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting the huge rotors. The thapter hurtled towards the air-dreadnought. Fusshte glanced over his shoulder; Nish saw the whites of his eyes and, caught up in the madness of the moment, felt a surge of savage glee. The thapter wiggled at the last second and shot past the rotors, its slipstream making them flutter. Flydd twitched his hand and the machine struck the side of the air-dreadnought, knocking it sideways in a hail of shattered timbers and shredded ropes and canvas. The archers were thrown off their feet; three went over the side.

  Flydd moved the controller again and the thapter smashed into the bow of the air-dreadnought, tearing part of it off and sending more of Fusshte’s troops plunging to their deaths. The thapter turned so sharply that Nish was crushed against the side. He got to his feet in time to see Fusshte dive into the central cabin.

  Flydd, teeth bared in a maniacal rictus, turned the thapter directly towards the cabin. More bolts hit its front and a javelard spear screamed off the rim of the open top hatch. There wasn’t time to reach up and pull it over. Flydd didn’t even flinch.

  Nish did, as Flydd drove the thapter straight into the air-dreadnought, amidships, smashing its flimsy timbers. A length of canvas wrapped itself around the front of the thapter, cracking in the wind as it shot out the other side. Nish couldn’t see anything out the front. Neither could Flydd, though it didn’t seem to bother him.

  Nish climbed up onto the side and looked back. The air-dreadnought had broken in half, its two hull sections swinging wildly from the tangled rigging of the five airbags and spilling the remaining crew down into the walled yard.

  Flydd shook the thapter from side to side until the canvas tore away, then turned again. ‘Where is he?’ he grated. ‘Did you see him fall?’

  ‘No,’ Nish said quietly, not wanting to assist Flydd in this madness. Malien’s eyes were open but she wasn’t resisting him either. Irisis stood at the back of the cockpit, saying nothing at all.

  Flydd tore through the wrecked craft again and again, after each impact standing off and searching the floating remains for his enemy.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Nish. ‘He must have fallen long ago. You can stop now, surr.’

  ‘If he was I’d know it,’ said Flydd. ‘He’s still – ahhhhh!’ he sighed.

  Nish saw it too. The air-dreadnought had been reduced to a tangle of rigging, two deflated air-bags and one that was still full of floater-gas. It was drifting across the yard towards the rear of Nennifer, with a dark-clad, meagre man clinging desperately to the ropes below the airbag.

  Flydd brought the thapter up beside the rigging, matched its motion and stood on tiptoe to look over the side. Fusshte, battered and bleeding from mouth and nose, stared defiantly back at him. His feet rested in a tangle of loops and knots. One arm was twisted through the rigging, the other hand resting on a rope.

  ‘Surrender?’ said Flydd.

  ‘To be tried by you?’ spat Fusshte. ‘I’ll die first.’

  ‘Either way,’ said Flydd. The madness had passed, leaving him worn out and wasted.

  ‘But surr …’ said Nish, troubled in spite of his loathing for Fusshte.

  ‘He has to die,’ said Flydd. ‘While any of the old Council remain alive, the foolish and greedy will rally to them, and we’ll be fighting them instead of the enemy. Let’s put an end to it.’

  Fusshte looked as though he was going to beg for his life, but steeled himself and nodded. ‘Would you grant me a dead-man’s boon?’

  ‘You mocked my agony as my manhood was cut away. I’ll grant you nothing but a quick end.’

  Fusshte’s grotesque face crumbled. ‘Aaah!’ he wailed. ‘It’s not for me. It’s for my crippled mother …’ He reached out one hand in entreaty. ‘Once I’m dead, she’ll starve.’

  ‘Begging doesn’t become you, Fusshte,’ said Flydd.

  ‘Surr,’ said Nish, thinking of his own mother, whom he hadn’t seen in years. ‘Surely you can –’

  ‘What do you want, Fusshte?’ Flydd snapped.

  Fusshte reached into his coat and held up a small object, like a jewelled bird’s egg. ‘It’s all I have now. Would you sell it and give her the coin?’

  Flydd nodded stiffly and held out his hand. Fusshte sent the egg spinning across. Nish caught it and was about to hand it to Flydd when Irisis sprang up and batted it over the side.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ cried Nish.

  As he finished speaking the egg burst asunder, peppering the base of the thapter with glassy shards that would have torn straight through their living flesh.

  Without a word, Flydd spun the thapter around, curved away then drove it straight at the centre of the full airbag. Fusshte was begging, pleading, weeping, but nothing could save him this time.

  Irisis pulled Nish down into the corner, pressed his face against her chest and bent her own head over his. There was an enormous bang and a flare of blue flame. He felt his hair crisping, his ears and the back of his neck burning. Irisis pulled him harder against her and then they were through it and out the other side. He smelt burnt hair, opened his eyes and Flydd was standing up at the controller, as bald as an egg. Every hair had been burnt from his head.

  He turned and even his continuous eyebrow was gone. ‘It’s done.’ He released the controller to Malien and slumped to the floor. ‘It’s done at last.’

  Nish looked over the side and saw Fusshte’s remains hit the ground. There was no movement but the people on the ground swarmed over the corpse and didn’t let up until there was nothing left of it. The other two air-dreadnoughts were hovering now, and the soldiers had their hands up. Nish signalled them to go down.

  ‘How did you know, Irisis?’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t. I just knew that Fusshte could never be trusted.’ She helped Flydd up. ‘You’d better say something to the crowd before we go.’

  Blisters were rising on his cheeks and the top of his head, but the haggardness had gone from his face. Flydd had been relieved of his greatest burden. Still on his knees he turned to Malien, bowing so low that his forehead touched the floor.

  ‘I apologise most abjectly,’ he said. ‘I lost control.’

  ‘Never ask anything of me again,’ she said, so cold that Nish couldn’t look at her, ‘for I will not grant it. I’ve suffered enough from men like you for more than one lifetime.’

  She set the thapter down next to the dirigible, which was packed with all sorts of gear recovered from Nennifer. Inouye went aboard and made it ready for flight. Nish fastened its tether, then Malien took the thapter over the yard and Flydd stood up on the rear platform. The people were spread around the walls of the enormous yard, apart from the few on their knees beside the bodies of those slain in Fusshte’s initial attack.

  ‘The old Council has finally been extinguished,’ he said, not loudly but in a carrying voice. ‘And the new one must fly to fight the enemy. These two air-dreadnoughts are yours – use them to ferry everyone to safety, then prepare to fight with us again, until Santhenar is free.’

  He raised one fist. Every individual in the crowd raised their own with a great roar of acclamation.

  ‘Take us home,’ said Flydd and, with a nod to Malien, went below.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Flangers was still clinging to life, though only because of Healer Evee’s Arts, when Nish and Irisis came down the ladder.

  ‘How is he?’ Nish said.

  ‘He may live,’ said Yggur, ‘though with two bolts through the ribs and one that’s smashed his thighbone, I doubt if he’ll walk again, much less fight.’

  ‘You stupid, brave fool,’ Irisis said several hours later as Flangers came round after the bolts had been removed and the bone set.

  ‘I had to atone for my crime,’ said Flangers. ‘You knew that
.’

  ‘And have you finished atoning?’ she said gently. ‘Or can we expect more such follies next time?’

  ‘I laid down my life, and it wasn’t taken. Only a fool would do it twice.’ He closed his eyes and slept.

  ‘You can’t talk!’ Nish accused her. ‘Going after him was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘The line has to be drawn, Nish,’ said Irisis. ‘In this bloody war I’ve done a hundred things I’ve regretted, and I expect I’ll do more before the war takes me. But I won’t turn my back on my friends ever again. That’s all there is to it.’

  She must have been thinking of Inouye. ‘Flangers should have been dead, with three bolts in him.’

  ‘But he wasn’t.’ Irisis leaned against him and closed her eyes.

  Nish was exhausted but his mind was too busy for sleep. He looked around. Tiaan was sitting in the corner, staring fixedly at him. She looked angry, lost and desolate in equal parts. Did she hold him to blame? Perhaps she did – he’d robbed her of the amplimet she’d striven so desperately to regain.

  He had avoided her since, thinking that his presence could only make things worse. Tiaan had been in good hands. Malien had taken charge of her, bathing and delousing her and spending long days and nights talking to her, working to bring her out of her withdrawal psychosis. It seemed to have worked. Tiaan had been almost her normal reserved self by the time the air-dreadnought returned from Fadd. Nish had seen her laughing and joking with Malien, and once even with Yggur, though whenever Tiaan’s eye fell on Irisis or Nish he knew that she’d forgotten nothing and forgiven even less.

  Nish looked away with a mental shrug. What did it matter? They didn’t need to work together.

  Malien was so angry that she kept flying all night, only setting down at dawn for a brief rest stop before heading on. Her fury began to wear off during the day and at sunset she set the thapter down on a slaty hilltop in an unknown land. Flangers was out of danger and sleeping, so they left him inside with Evee and Inouye.

  ‘Let’s talk about the war,’ said Flydd at the campfire that night.

  ‘I’ve been putting together a plan,’ said Yggur.

  ‘So have I,’ said Flydd. ‘But let’s hear yours first.’

  Nish was a little surprised at Yggur’s forthrightness. When they’d first come to Fiz Gorgo, about six months ago, he’d professed little interest in the war. But of course, the Histories told that Yggur had been a great warlord once.

  ‘Humanity is still strong, but its people, manufactories and armies are scattered across thousands of leagues and can’t easily be coordinated. But if they could be, we’d be a formidable force and many of the lyrinx’s advantages would evaporate.’

  ‘Intelligence and communication are the keys to victory,’ said Flydd. ‘To win we have to beat the enemy at both.’

  ‘The lyrinx avoid war during the winter mating season, and immediately after it,’ said Klarm. ‘So we have till early spring to prepare ourselves for the final phase of the war – just over three months.’

  ‘And in that time,’ said Yggur, ‘we must do a number of things. First, we must draw together all our allies, near and far.’

  ‘It would take a month to contact them all by skeet,’ said Klarm, ‘assuming we had enough skeets. And another month before the replies all came in.’

  ‘With the thapter we can visit them all in weeks …’ said Flydd. He gave Malien an abashed glance, which she did not acknowledge.

  ‘But the next time you want to consult them it’ll take just as long,’ Yggur said reasonably.

  ‘And the time after,’ Klarm chimed in. ‘You can’t be tied up as a messenger boy, Flydd. And if something goes wrong with the thapter, or we lose it, or it’s needed elsewhere –’

  ‘We must have more of them,’ said Yggur, ‘which is my second point. We’ll come back to the first. Are you prepared to share the secret of making thapters with us, Malien?’

  After a brief hesitation she said, ‘With some disquiet.’

  Yggur bowed his head. ‘Thank you. That raises another problem, of course. We can’t build thapters, or any kind of flying machine more complex than an air-floater, at Fiz Gorgo. We’d need an entire manufactory for that and it would still take years to construct one.’

  ‘Then the second problem is as insoluble as the first,’ said Klarm. He drained his goblet, which had been half full of a fine wine from the Council’s cellars. One of his crates had contained several small barrels. Klarm lived life to the fullest. ‘Why go back to Fiz Gorgo anyhow? Why not Lybing, for instance?’ Klarm had been the provincial scrutator for Lybing before his leg injury.

  ‘Lybing doesn’t have manufactories either,’ said Yggur.

  ‘But it does have skilled workers.’

  ‘We can bring skilled workers from anywhere,’ said Flydd. ‘In Fiz Gorgo we have an establishment and complete control.’

  ‘If you’re going to take on the role of head of the Council,’ said Klarm, ‘you need to be seen. Otherwise the generals and governors will seize the chance to intrigue against you. You’ve got to show them you’re just as tough as Ghorr.’

  ‘In Lybing I’d be pestered constantly by people wanting favours,’ said Flydd, ‘and I’ve no time for it. There’s a war to win.’

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ said Klarm. He sighed, presumably for the fleshly delights of civilised Lybing. ‘Pass the barrel, Flydd. This is thirsty work.’

  Flydd rolled it across.

  Yggur scowled. He didn’t like indulgence, in any form. ‘Some months ago we recovered parts of a construct abandoned at Snizort, including its flight controller. With Malien’s advice, we ought to be able to make the controllers needed to turn constructs into thapters.’

  ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ said Flydd. ‘You’ll take charge of that work, Irisis, and Tiaan can help you. If you require more artisans, we’ll press them from a manufactory.’

  ‘And the moment the flight controllers are ready,’ said Yggur, ‘we’ll fly to the battlefield at Snizort, put them in the best of the abandoned constructs and fly them back.’

  ‘But the node exploded,’ said Irisis. ‘There’s not enough field at Snizort to flutter a handkerchief.’

  ‘Leave that to me,’ said Yggur. ‘I dare say I can think of a way.’

  She regarded him dubiously. ‘How many controllers will you need?’

  ‘As many as twenty, certainly,’ said Yggur. ‘More, if you can make them in time. We’ll need as many thapters as can be made to fly.’

  ‘So you’ll need to take a small army to Snizort,’ said Klarm. ‘And dozens of trained pilots, though I don’t see how you’re going to train them.’

  ‘And we’ll need a means of getting them there,’ said Yggur, standing up and circling the fire before sitting down again. ‘The plan is coming together. First we must train artificers to fix those constructs that aren’t too badly damaged, and pilots to fly them. That’s going to take a long time. Meanwhile, we’ll need enough air-floaters to carry everyone to Snizort. Cryl-Nish, you will command this operation.’

  ‘I don’t see how it can be done in time,’ said Nish.

  ‘You’ll have to find a way – we’ve got to have the thapters before spring.’

  ‘It takes time to train people.’

  ‘It has to be done, Nish, and you’ve got to do it.’

  Nish gritted his teeth. ‘If I had a year and a hundred people I couldn’t do it all,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t just wave a magic wand like some people. I have to do real work.’ Irisis squeezed his arm, warningly. Yggur was glaring down his long nose at him. Nish buried his face in his goblet.

  ‘That’s only the first stage,’ Yggur said coldly, ‘but everything else relies on it. Coming back to my first point, of finding a way to talk to our distant allies and our scattered forces, there’s this.’

  Yggur withdrew a glass globe, the size of a grapefruit, from a leather case at his side. He held it up. ‘Some of you may have
seen it before. Fusshte stole it from Fiz Gorgo and it was the first treasure I went looking for in Nennifer. It’s one of the few surviving farspeaker globes of Golias the Mad.’ Flydd cleared his throat. Yggur continued. ‘Or if not, it’s closely based on his original. It doesn’t work, unfortunately. The secret was lost with Golias’s death.’

  He glanced briefly at Nish. ‘I plan to rediscover Golias’s secret and, once I have, our skilled artisans will craft as many globes as we need. You may give one to each of our allies, Flydd. Such a gift, and the hope of greater ones, will do more to unite us than all the former Council’s threats and punishments.’

  ‘Many have sought Golias’s secret,’ said Flydd, ‘but none have succeeded.’

  ‘But they worked as individuals for their own greed or glory, sharing neither their discoveries nor their failures. For us, it’s our very survival. And around this campfire, Flydd, are people whose grasp of the Art is as great as any who have ever lived.’

  ‘I thought you said you were going to do it,’ Flydd said.

  ‘It’s my task,’ said Yggur, ‘but I plan to call upon everyone here. Everyone with a talent for the Art, I mean. We now have the greatest secrets and Arts of the Council, and they’d made many breakthroughs the world was never told about. If we can work as a team, and we must, together we will be greater than the greatest individual. We must crack Golias’s globe. We cannot win the war without it; not even with a hundred thapters.’

  ‘The Council didn’t believe the war could be won at all,’ said Klarm.

  ‘I do,’ said Flydd. ‘Is that your entire plan, Yggur? You haven’t given me much to do. Or Malien. Or Klarm, for that matter.’

  ‘Klarm will be poring over the Council’s Arts and devices. Malien … can speak for herself.’

  ‘I expect I’ll be at the controls of the thapter most of the time,’ said Malien.