by Ian Irvine
A bell rang in front of the operator. The clanker stopped. The sighting mechanism creaked above them. Crack! Again the clanker jerked, though not as hard as when the catapult had fired. They moved off again. It was snowing. The wind intensified, whirling the flakes about. The weather was turning bad.
‘Any luck?’ cried Nish.
‘No. We’re too late; it’s nearly to the ice …’
Her voice trailed away. Perhaps she was thinking through the consequences of failure, for them. Nish certainly was.
‘It’s on the river. The ice must be thin; I can see patches of water. Arple will never risk the clankers out there.’
‘We’ve lost,’ Nish said dully.
‘Oh!’ Irisis exclaimed. ‘Brilliant. Your father did have a trump after all. Oh, yes!’
‘What?’ he said frantically.
‘There’s another clanker coming down the far side of the river, with a squad of soldiers. He must have sent them out secretly, before the blizzard, just in case.’
‘A lucky guess!’ Nish felt miffed that, after all, the success would be his father’s.
‘Maybe. The lyrinx would have had to cross this river somewhere. From a high place they could have seen our flares in the night. Plenty of time to get into position.’
‘The beast has stopped,’ Irisis continued in a low voice. ‘It knows it can’t get away.’
The clanker stopped too. ‘Are we close?’ Nish was practically screaming with frustration.
‘Just at the edge of the river.’
Pulling the hatch up, he leapt out. Ullii, who had been silent during the long chase, let out a wailing cry and snatched at his hand, but too late. Irisis went after him. Ullii crept out too. The light was fading; snow began to fall more heavily. Jal-Nish was making hand-signals to the fourth clanker.
‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ said Irisis, stumbling on blocky ice.
‘It’s a lousy one.’ Nish kept going. ‘But I’m not going to cower inside after all we’ve been through. I want to see it taken.’
‘Tiaan isn’t even running,’ said Irisis. ‘Maybe she was the spy after all.’
‘I’ll have none of that talk,’ grated Gi-Had, peering through his spyglass. ‘Her hands are tied!’
‘She’s more afraid of us than of it.’ A rare interjection from Ullii, beside Nish.
Only Nish heard, but he was too distracted to notice. The wind drifted clouds of snow across the ice. Nish could hear it howling through the rods and wires of the javelard. He shivered. It was going to be a miserable night, whatever happened.
In a movement too fast to see, the lyrinx pulled Tiaan up before its chest. Gi-Had called out to it to surrender. It did not move.
‘What are we going to do?’ said Nish. ‘If we fire, Tiaan will surely die.’
‘I want her alive,’ grated Jal-Nish. He called Fyn-Mah over. ‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘Not at this distance,’ the querist said. ‘Besides, there’s people watching. The Secret …’
‘Damn the rules! Try!’
The querist shrugged then made a circle of her fingers and sighted through it. She whistled between her teeth, her black hair stood up and a globe of mist condensed in the air several paces in front of her.
Ullii screamed as there came a clap like two shields being struck together. A cloud of loose snow was kicked up to the right of the lyrinx. A roar echoed back and, as if hit by a fist of compressed air, Fyn-Mah was tossed off her feet.
Nish helped her up. The querist’s lip was bleeding. ‘It’s too strong,’ she mumbled, cross-eyed. ‘Reflected it back.’
Irisis was staring at her pliance, which momentarily glowed a baleful green before fading.
‘What is it?’ Nish said.
‘I have no idea, but something just activated my pliance and I saw the field as clear as day, streaming out in all directions.’
‘Was it the beast or Tiaan’s crystal?’ Jal-Nish demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ said Fyn-Mah, ‘but the lyrinx is strong in the Art. Too strong for me.’
Irisis was pleased at the admission. The snooty querist was not as capable as she made out. ‘We want the crystal too,’ Irisis reminded them.
Jal-Nish gave her a considered glance. ‘Indeed we do, but we want Tiaan more. I’ll have the head of anyone that harms her. If the beast doesn’t surrender, Arple, fire when I say the word. For its legs.’
‘What if you hit Tiaan?’ said Gi-Had.
‘She doesn’t need legs to be an artisan.’
Ryll stopped midway between two beads of clear water. The ice was thinner here. Tiaan felt it bow beneath their weight.
‘Release the prisoner, lyrinx!’ screamed Gi-Had. ‘Hold your arms high.’
Ryll clutched Tiaan to his chest. She could feel his muscles quivering. ‘Shoot me and she dies,’ he roared back.
Tiaan looked from one clanker to another. Their javelards seemed to be pointing directly at her. But surely … surely they were not shooting at her.
‘Fire!’ snapped Jal-Nish.
The revelation struck her. If they could not get her back, they would kill her rather than allow her talents to be used by the enemy.
The clankers fired. They were trying to kill her. Ryll moved so fast that she had no idea what had happened. They went head first into the water. The shock was so great that Tiaan felt her heart stop beating. Her lungs went into spasm. It was as if she had been buried in ice.
THIRTY-ONE
As the lyrinx dived through the hole in the ice, Irisis let out an involuntary cry of anguish. The clankers fired, one first, followed by the other three together. Two javelards went through the hole. A third whistled over the heads of Jal-Nish and Gi-Had, to plough into the toe of an avalanche mound. The fourth hit to one side of the hole and went skidding across the river. Its bladed tip carved the ice with an ear-piercing shriek, it curved around in an arc, sending up a spray of ice like a turning skier, and slammed into the front foot of the fourth clanker.
‘Stop!’ roared Arple, waving his arms. ‘You’ll kill somebody!’ He ran to the ragged hole, which was about the size of a clanker. The other troops followed. ‘Careful. It’s thin here!’
It was getting dark. The snow fell thickly now. Jal-Nish was beside himself. His face had gone purple. ‘If it’s got away with her,’ he choked, ‘if the crystal is lost, I’ll have every man whipped to within an ell of his life.’
The soldiers went still in their ranks. Arple stalked to the nearest troop and ordered them to be silent. He turned back to the perquisitor. ‘I’d be careful of making threats out here, all alone,’ he said quietly.
‘Are you threatening me?’ cried Jal-Nish.
‘I’m a loyal soldier, surr.’ Arple touched his helm. ‘I’m trying to protect you. My troops have done their best ever since we left. We followed your orders, surr. Had we been able to fire at will we would have had the beast.’
Jal-Nish spun the other way, his round belly quivering. He looked as if he was going to burst.
Nish went to him, stepping carefully on the ice. ‘Are you all right, father?’
‘If she’s lost …’ Jal-Nish began. His purple face went soggy. For one horrified moment Nish thought his father was going to burst into tears. ‘Aah, Cryl-Nish! She could have made me.’
‘She could still be alive, father. There’s still a chance.’
Jal-Nish waved him away. Nish hurried towards the hole. ‘Did you see blood in the water?’ he asked Arple.
‘No, but doesn’t mean we didn’t hit the beast. The water is really racing under the ice.’
Jal-Nish stalked toward them, holding his face rigid. ‘The artisan must be found, sergeant, and her crystal. I …’ He hesitated. ‘She has secrets. She is vital to the war.’
Arple snapped to attention. ‘The war!’ He began shouting orders. One clanker headed downstream. ‘Troops, fall into pairs. Tar up stakes, light them and go down the river as far as the bend. Check every patch of water;
be very careful. Nix and Thurne, head upstream. I doubt that a lyrinx could swim that way – they’re hopeless in the water – but we’ll take no chances. Stay in pairs. Move carefully. Beware of the ice. And if the weather closes in, follow the edge of the river until you see our flares. We’ll camp here.’ He indicated the jumbled rocks by the river bank.
‘Lyrinx are much tougher than we are,’ Arple continued. ‘Never think that one is dead until you see its corpse, preferably with the head well severed from the body. And even then, give it another ten minutes. Many a soldier has seen his guts spilled on the ground from a dead lyrinx’s last reflex.’ The soldiers hurried off, their flares disappearing in the whirling snow.
He turned away. ‘We must set the camp up while there’s light, perquisitor.’
‘Damn the camp, I want every man …’ Jal-Nish broke off, as if realising how foolish he sounded.
‘It’s got to be done now, surr,’ Arple insisted. ‘For our own survival. And if the artisan is found we’ll need fire and hot food to save her.’
He gave orders to search the avalanche mounds for firewood. The remaining soldiers went about the set-up efficiently, slinging tents in the shelter of the boulders, making a latrine around the back, fetching water and erecting the pitch-burning cooking stoves. The clankers were drawn up side by side. The fourth was a different design from the others, shorter but more bulbous and with lengths of rod bound to the top. Nish wondered what they were for. Its troops, in white uniforms, were led by a tall, stern-looking sergeant, Rustina, a young woman with long red hair. That was unusual – only rarely were women of child-bearing age permitted to become soldiers. No one knew anything about her and Rustina’s troops were close-mouthed.
‘What are your orders, perquisitor?’ Arple asked when everything was organised.
‘Search all night!’ Jal-Nish said curtly. ‘Tiaan must be found. And if we can take the beast alive, so much the better. If it has survived, it will be weak.’
‘No one could survive in that water, surr.’
‘I still have to see the bodies. The scrutator will expect no less.’
‘They would be a league downstream by now, under the ice.’
‘Would you like to explain that to the scrutator?’ Jal-Nish hissed.
‘No,’ said Arple calmly. ‘I would not.’
‘And neither would I. We’ll search every hole, and the banks around.’
Irisis joined a search detail. Nish went with one of the clankers up the slope to a gully where earlier they’d seen a stand of straggly pines. An axeman soon brought down a dead tree and the clanker dragged it back to the camp, where it was cut into fuel for the night. The soldiers gathered cones and kindling, not wanting to use the precious pitch stores unless they had nothing else. They could be trapped in a blizzard for days up here, even in autumn.
Irisis returned alone from the search as the fire blazed up. She looked depressed. ‘No sign of either of them,’ she said to Jal-Nish, who grunted and walked off.
‘Where’s Ullii?’ Nish asked.
‘How should I know?’ Irisis snapped.
They found her among the boulders, close to exposure, wearing only her spider-silk undergarments. ‘What are you doing out here dressed like that?’ Irisis scolded. ‘Have you no sense at all?’ Taking off her coat, she wrapped it around the small woman and carried her back to the fire. Ullii was too listless to protest.
‘He was coming after me,’ she whispered. ‘He wanted to hurt me.’
‘Who?’ said Irisis, head snapping up. ‘The lyrinx?’
‘The man inside. He was picking at the lattice, trying to get into my hidey-hole.’
‘What is he doing now?’
‘I can’t see him,’ she whimpered.
Nish and Irisis went to the clanker, wondering. They found only the body of Dhirr, tormented mouth open, fingers hooked as if he had been trying to get at the seeker, though no doubt it was only a death spasm.
‘He’s dead!’ Irisis said soothingly. ‘He can’t hurt you now, Ullii. Hop in; it’s warmer than outside.’
Ullii would not go into the machine, even after they’d carried the body out and left it with Arple for burying. They dressed Ullii, who squatted between the boulders on the far side of the fire, mask well down over her eyes.
Nish stood by the blaze, warming his hands on a mug of soup. He could hear his father’s voice through the wall of one of the tents.
‘That was a good bit of work you did today, sergeant.’
Rustina’s nasal accent replied. ‘It was close, surr, but I wish it had been closer. A lucky stroke that we were in position in time. We were near to perishing in the great blizzard.’
‘I was worried,’ said Jal-Nish.
I’ll bet you were, Nish thought. Worried that you’d be blamed if they were lost. The only thing you care about is becoming scrutator.
‘We could see foul weather coming from up top,’ came Rustina’s voice. ‘We’d planned for it and took shelter in an old mine tunnel. Lucky we got there in time. The blizzard came on faster than we expected. Without shelter we’d have been frozen solid.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down,’ said Jal-Nish.
Nish was disgusted. For the first time in his life he saw that ambition wasn’t everything.
In a bitter voice she replied, ‘No one wants to destroy lyrinx more than I do, surr.’
It was not until they had finished their dinner, and those not on watch or out searching were preparing for sleep, that anyone thought to ask Ullii if she could see Tiaan.
‘I could not see her when I was in the clanker,’ she said. ‘The evil man cried out and tried to claw me. I ran away and then I saw her crystal.’
‘That was just after Dhirr died,’ Irisis said to Jal-Nish. ‘He’d blocked her inner sight.’
‘And then what happened?’ asked Jal-Nish.
‘I saw her!’
‘You already said that.’
‘No, I saw her, through my goggles.’
‘As well as in your mind?’ Irisis asked.
‘Yes! But the clawer jumped into the water with her. I could not see her after that. Or her crystal.’
‘You could not see her with your mind?’ Nish guessed.
‘She went out like a lamp.’
‘She’s dead!’ said Irisis. ‘She either drowned or froze, and the hedron fell to the bottom. The cold put it out too.’ She turned away, looking bleak.
‘We should keep looking,’ said Fyn-Mah, who had scarcely uttered a word since her failed mancing.
‘Of course we will,’ Jal-Nish snapped. ‘We’re not here to guess but to make certain.’
It blew a gale in the night. Arple called his troops in and even Jal-Nish knew better than to argue. The sentries had one of the most miserable nights of their lives and it was still blowing hard when dawn came.
Nish’s fingers were so cold that it hurt to bend them. He said nothing – as a child his father’s belt had taught him not to complain. As soon as it was light he joined in the hunt, walking as fast as he could in the conditions, up and down river, across and back, with Irisis. He found nothing. No one did.
Jal-Nish refused to give up. The day passed and the following night, which was, if possible, even more bitter. The day after that dawned bleak and blizzardy. The soldiers began to mutter among themselves and not even Arple could stop them. The querist spoke to Jal-Nish several times during the day but he would not relent.
Finally Artificer Tuniz, after a long consultation with the clanker operators, spoke to Fyn-Mah, who accompanied her to Jal-Nish. Nish, waiting to go on watch, overheard their conversation.
‘We must go back, surr,’ said Tuniz, ‘else we are liable to lose the clankers.’
He turned sharply. His round face was pinched and hollow, the full lips a bloodless grey. The perquisitor looked like a man who had failed and could never accept it. ‘How so, artificer?’
‘It’s just too cold. The oil goes hard and does not do its job. If
it gets any colder, and the oil freezes, we won’t be able to move the clankers at all.’
‘Then warm it up! You can do that, surely?’
Tuniz smiled with those filed teeth. ‘Aye, but it will just go hard again. And there’s another problem. A worse one.’
‘What now?’ Jal-Nish hated it when someone tried to convince him against his own conviction.
‘The metal of the linkages gets brittle in this kind of cold. If we break just one, we’ll have to abandon the clanker, and by the time we come back it will be buried for the winter. In the thaw it will rust solid.’
‘Very well,’ Jal-Nish said, bitter in his failure. ‘We leave at dawn.’
THIRTY-TWO
Tiaan dreamed that a lyrinx’s huge mouth had closed right over her head, to bite her off at the neck. She dreamed that she was whirled in visible currents of water, blue and green and purple. She dreamed that she had swallowed a fish, which was flapping around inside her left lung, its spines prickling.
Piercing, brittle cold; the worst she’d ever felt. A blow in her chest; another. Something with an overpowering gamey smell went over her face.
Thump, thump, thump, fading to nothing again.
Her fingers and toes hurt so much that she woke weeping. She was wrapped in something that itched and her feet felt as if they had been rubbed with broken glass.
Tiaan opened her eyes. She seemed to be in a cave, the entrance closed off by a hanging. A fire blazed behind her, another not far from her feet. Ryll squatted there, rubbing her feet and calves. The claws were retracted. His hand looked fully regenerated. He had a massive bruise above his right eye.
‘My feet feel like icicles that you could snap off,’ she whispered, too listless to question or even wonder.
‘There is broth.’ He busied himself at the fire, returning with one hand cupped. ‘Open your mouth.’
She opened up but, thinking what he might have made soup from, snapped it closed again.
‘What is wrong?’ the lyrinx asked.
