They joined the last of the villagers disappearing through a hidden passageway at the back of a drum alcove. Tymon helped one of his injured companions through the opening, staggering down the steep spiral staircase beyond. The wounded boy stumbled and moaned, leaning heavily on his arm. A soldier slid a panel into place behind them. They wound on and on, down successive flights of steps, deep into the branch at the promontory’s heart. At last they reached the torch-lit Tree-cavity about a hundred feet below the level of the arena, where the remaining Freeholders had gathered to organise a retreat. The walls of the cavity shuddered with the echoes of the bombardment above.
Tymon laid his charge on one of the woven straw pallets reserved for the wounded, and made certain that the village doctor was aware of his case. The preoccupied grunt with which the harried, white-haired woman answered him appeared to be all he could expect in the way of a response. After that, he sought Samiha. He was relieved to find her entirely unharmed and distributing packs of emergency rations to the people gathered in the centre of the hall. He watched her a moment from the background, not willing to interrupt. She had an encouraging word for every one of the soldiers, he noticed, a hopeful remark or a piece of quiet praise. No matter how despondent the Freeholders were, they held their heads a little higher, and walked a little straighter after she had spoken to them. When she saw him she hastened to his side with a cry of joy. To his surprise and pleasure she threw her arms about him and pressed her face to his neck.
‘Tymon! I was almost beginning to think…it’s good to see you,’ she stammered, her helmet smashed uncomfortably against his ear. Then she disentangled herself, a pink flush in her cheeks. ‘You must be the last squadron to return. Was it bad up there?’
‘It was bad,’ he answered gravely. ‘We lost two men. They just kept pounding us with that new shot. I didn’t think it was possible. They never even stopped to breathe.’
She shook her head. ‘The Council has outdone itself this time. To use blast-poison openly—to destroy the Tree so completely—it’s unheard of! No one has committed such a crime before!’
‘With respect, shanti, no one has committed such a crime for a very long time,’ put in Jamil from nearby. He smiled softly at the two of them. ‘It is said the Old Ones waged war in this manner. Syor Galliano is not the only one to be inventing, or perhaps reinventing mechanical abominations.’
‘Speaking of which, where’s the old man?’ asked Tymon, glancing about him. He could not make out the scientist’s bent form anywhere among the Freeholders gathered in the cavity.
Jamil frowned. ‘He should be here,’ he said. ‘He was here, perhaps an hour ago. I left him here to wait before I helped syor Laska start up the Lyla…’
A quick interrogation of the other members of the workshop team revealed that Galliano was not there, however, and indeed that he had left the Tree-cavity some time before, bound for the hangar in the company of one among their number, a youth named Shasta. Shasta was accordingly found and questioned. He was a slight lad of about twelve and trembled under the wrathful gaze of the workshop supervisor, his eyes as round as a Tree-hare’s.
‘Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?’ cried Jamil, beside himself.
Shasta gazed back at him in consternation.
‘Syor said he already discussed it with you,’ he chirruped. ‘The secret weapon. He went to get the secret weapon. When the drums started he sent me back here just in case. He said he’d arranged for you to pick him up in the Lyla. Did I do wrong, syor?’
25
‘Absolutely not. I won’t hear of it.’
Samiha flung rations, blankets and a gourd of water into a shoulder pack. Tymon had to step around the bag to speak to her as she moved with quick, angry motions from one task to the next.
‘I have to go, Samiha,’ he insisted. ‘You know that. Why not just help me?’
‘I must stay here and organise the retreat. I’m the only judge left in Laska’s absence, the others have already gone on ahead—’
‘I mean, let’s make an arrangement. I’ll go now, alone. If I make it back to the Tree-caves with the old man, fine. If not, you were going to do a last flyover with Laska, looking for anyone who might be stranded, right? Come to the hangar—we’ll be there.’
‘Of course we’ll go to the hangar,’ she exclaimed. ‘But that doesn’t mean you need to rush off now, on foot, through a storm of blast-poison. When we meet up with Laska at the other end of the Tree-caves, we’ll take the Lyla and search for Galliano together, I promise you.’
‘By then it’ll be too late,’ argued Tymon. ‘What if he’s hurt? The Tree knows what he’s planning out there with all this talk of a secret weapon. What if he has some notion of saving the Freehold and sacrificing himself in the process? That would be just his style. This isn’t heroics, Samiha, it’s necessity.’ He peered into her furious, downcast face. ‘You know I’m right.’
She was silent, wrestling with a stubborn knot on the bag. At last she threw up her hands.
‘I can’t stop you,’ she said. ‘You’re an Argosian and an honorary Freeholder, not one of my subjects. But it would please me if once—just once—you took my advice. If you go out there again in that fire-storm, you will die.’
‘You don’t need to worry about the fire-storm, at least. The attack is over,’ he replied. ‘Listen.’
And it was true. The distant thunder of the explosions had ceased. The woody walls about them were no longer trembling.
Samiha glanced towards the line of soldiers quitting the cavity. There were several exits to the chamber, most of them natural chimneys that plunged down through the heart of the branch to emerge at different points in the lower canopy. The Freeholders were climbing a ladder into one such shaft, their whispers echoing up the narrow chute. The wounded soldiers, including Tymon’s two comrades-in-arms, had been lowered down before them on slings or woven bark litters. Only a few people remained behind in the encroaching dark; they waited at the top of the shaft for the Kion to join them. She shouldered her pack, her mouth set.
‘Do as you will, Argosi,’ she observed, tersely.
‘Syora.’ Solis stepped up to her side with a deep bow. ‘I beg allowance to go with.’
‘You do?’ she said, taken aback.
‘I help look for syor Galliano.’ The guard flashed his impish grin. ‘I promise Argosi we die together. Y maza Sav, not able to keep promise before.’
‘Solis saved my life out there once already,’ put in Tymon. ‘I’ll go with him, if you’re agreed, shanti. I can’t think of a better teammate.’
‘You don’t seem to need my consent,’ Samiha noted. ‘Be that as it may—Solis, beni. You have my permission to go. Though I’d appreciate as little dying as possible, please.’ She turned her back on the boys, heading towards the shaft.
‘We’ll see you at the hangar!’ Tymon called after her.
She waved to him without looking back, a brief gesture of impatience. He did not observe her face as she strode away, or see her bite her lip with anguish.
Solis borrowed one of the last remaining torches on the cavity walls and the two youths set off up the stairs again towards the arena. Tymon plodded despondently behind his companion. The spiral flight seemed, if possible, longer than it had coming down, and he did not like how he had parted from Samiha. He wished that he had found the courage to say goodbye properly, even to try and kiss her one last time while he still had the chance. Despite his brave words, he was not at all sure he would make it up to the hangar, or out again, alive. The silence overhead was ominous rather than reassuring. He wondered whether they would find the arena overrun by the enemy. Not one hint or glimmering of the Sight came to him to warn him of what lay ahead. He might as well have never heard of the Grafters or their unreliable power.
‘Do you think the village will be crawling with soldiers?’ he asked Solis as they climbed.
‘Maybe nothing left to crawl on, nami. Maybe village all gone. We soon see.�
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Tymon digested this in silence. ‘I didn’t expect you to be such a good friend, Solis,’ he admitted, after a while. ‘I didn’t think you’d ever accept the likes of me on the Freehold. And yet here you are again, risking your life for two Argosis. Thank you.’
The Nurian youth snorted with laughter. ‘Beni. You also surprise me.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Tymon, his eyes gleaming in the fitful light of the torch. ‘I saw what happened in duel,’ he said softly. ‘I saw you make Grafter fire. I tell others: Caro wrong. We all wrong. You are Sign of Sap, like shanti say.’
‘For what that’s worth,’ muttered Tymon awkwardly.
Sign or not, the Grafter’s power did not do him much good, he reflected. His talent had not turned out to be as practical as he had hoped. He could not reliably predict the future. He could not influence others as Lace did. Back on the catapult platform, in the madness of the bombardment, he had tried to set fire to a ball of shot with a whispered word as he had done to Caro’s club. The outcome had been a resounding failure. The pendant about his neck had remained inert, the gum-ball as smugly smooth and cool as a black egg. Whether because of his lack of experience or some other flaw, he was unable to consciously use his ability.
‘It doesn’t always work,’ he grumbled to Solis, trudging in the other boy’s long shadow. ‘The power, I mean. It’s hit and miss for me. And I didn’t predict the attack. That would have been more useful than setting fire to bits of wood.’
‘A Grafter is only a channel, Tymon. The Sap works through you. And you did not set fire to bits of wood: you made a Seeming. It appeared real simply because Caro believed in it.’
‘What did you say?’ Tymon faltered on the steps, staring up at Solis.
For the dark youth’s voice had suddenly changed. He had spoken Argosian like a native and like an adult. Even his tone had deepened. For an instant, Tymon could have sworn that it was the fifth Focal who walked ahead of him up the stairwell in the dancing shadows. And then there was only Solis, holding aloft the torch and peering down at him enquiringly.
‘What I say about what?’ he countered, with his usual merry inflections.
‘Did you say something just now about the Grafting?’ asked Tymon.
‘I say nothing. I know nothing of Grafting. Why?’
‘My mistake. Sorry, Solis.’
He continued on, nonplussed. The whimsical nature of his gift, the way it intruded on his everyday life and used him, rather than the other way around, was unsettling. The reality of having the Sight contradicted everything he had been taught at the seminary about what it meant to be living or dead. The two states were more permeable than he had ever imagined, uncomfortably interchangeable. Worlds made one, he thought—and could not remember where he had heard the phrase before.
Far below the two boys, on the creaking ladder that led down the Tree-shaft, Samiha also stopped short. She leaned her head against the side of the well and pressed her cheek to the cool interior grain of the Tree. The torchlight from below threw eerie shadows up the sides of the shaft.
‘Mother, help him,’ she breathed. ‘For he is weak.’
The arena was still there, even if nothing else was. They slid aside the panel behind the drum—the soldier guarding the entrance was long gone—and emerged into what at first appeared to be a shower of grey rain. It turned out to be falling ash, hot to the touch. It brushed their faces, settled on their hair and hands as they stole through the empty arena. Far off, lightning flashed on the horizon, visible through the gap in the eastern thickets. It was followed by the low rumble of thunder. The storm had yet to break over the Freehold.
The path that led up the slope of the southern branch was equally deserted, littered with smoking fragments of the Tree. The boys took long detours around chunks of bark and fallen twigs. Quick tongues of flame licked through the blackened and empty building frames in the thickets above and there was a suffocating pall of ash and smoke in the air. Tymon dropped further behind Solis, toiling up the slope, anxious and preoccupied. Had enemy soldiers reached the workshop? Was Galliano alive? His mind was on possibilities and probabilities, on rescue and escape, on everything but his immediate surroundings. As a result the ambush took him completely by surprise.
A soldier stepped out from the debris like a sudden wall before him, black. Tymon felt his arms being grasped and pinned to his sides. He kicked out uselessly with his feet; a gruff voice barked at him in Argosian, and for an instant he could not understand what it said.
‘Sign up for the tithe and get a full pardon, Nurry.’ The words coalesced at last to form some kind of meaning.
‘I’d rather die!’ he spat out bitterly.
‘By the bells. Look at this, Ned. What d’you make of it?’
The Argosian was a huge man, almost a giant. He lifted Tymon up bodily, turning him about as if he were a toy, and thrust his face close to the boy’s, ogling him curiously. Tymon was shocked at the whiteness of his features, partially hidden under his padded helmet and cheek-guards. Then he realised that ash had coated the man’s skin, giving him a ghostly pallor, and that he probably looked the same himself.
‘Half-caste?’ muttered the soldier doubtfully, as he scrutinised Tymon.
‘Not likely,’ sneered another, meaner voice. ‘I got one of those. Black lice can’t talk proper.’
Tymon glanced down in dismay to see Solis pinioned in the second soldier’s grasp. He had clamped a hand over the young Nurian’s mouth; Solis glared over the edge of it in mute rage.
‘Home-born?’ mused the giant.
‘One of us? Pah. What’s it doing here?’ laughed his companion.
‘I’m not one of you. I’m a Freeholder,’ cried Tymon vehemently.
The smaller soldier whistled, grinning through the caked ash. ‘Eddicated, too.’
‘Well, they’re young. Roll ‘em on back to cargo,’ grunted the giant.
As he spoke, two events occurred simultaneously. In a fluid motion, Solis jerked free of his captor and sprang away from him, mounting a broken twig-stump beside the path. He bent down swiftly and drew a leaf-shaped knife from his boot. The small man leapt after him, snarling, then halted, an expression of frozen astonishment on his face. He slowly toppled over, Solis’ hardwood blade buried in his neck. At the same time the giant hurled Tymon away from him with a shout and lunged towards Solis. Tymon sprawled onto the surface of the branch at an awkward angle, winded. An excruciating instant passed before he could stagger up to help his friend.
It was one instant too long. He stood up, panting and staring at the disaster before him in disbelief. Solis lay stretched out on the path, deathly still beneath the hulking form of the giant. Any hope that he might only be unconscious was dashed by the red stain that spread across his chest, the red that welled through his clothes and smeared the long blade in the giant’s hands. The red of Sacrifice, Tymon thought, distantly. He wrenched Solis’ weapon from the neck of the fallen soldier and ran forward with a yell, his voice thin and faraway in his ears. At that point he could have killed the other Argosian, stuck the knife into his countryman’s back without a qualm.
He was not given the chance. More shapes crowded around him through the drifting smoke and he was caught up and immobilised, the weapon plucked from his fingers. His enemies pushed him down onto his belly and twisted his arms behind his back, securing them with twine. They also tied his legs. Voices shouted at him incomprehensibly. He was hoisted up and carried like a sack on a man’s shoulder for a while, then thrown down again onto the surface of the branch.
He lay where he had been thrown, his face in the ash, unable to stop the shameful tears from rolling down his cheeks. Weak. The word echoed and re-echoed in his mind. He was weak and pathetic, and had brought nothing but trouble to his friends. He had not only failed to See the ambush; he had been instrumental in allowing it to happen. A thousand bitter regrets flooded over him. He should not have insisted on the trip to the hangar. He should have been more wary on the path
. He could have run to his friend’s aid a moment sooner. He had lost Solis and would probably never find Galliano. Black despair welled up in his heart and for a while he could see, and hear, no more.
He was roused from his stupor by the sound of ether venting from a dirigible. He craned his head to look about him, blinking. He realised he was not lying on the branch, as he had supposed, but on the floor of Galliano’s workshop. The hangar had changed beyond recognition. The hollow knot had been blown to pieces by a gigantic explosion, its cylindrical walls blasted away. The little covered shed where the scientist had kept his sketches was obliterated and the place strewn with broken shards and fallen sections of bark. Nothing remained of the half-completed second machine but a ruin of dislocated bars. There was no sign of Galliano. A group of Argosian soldiers sat crouched on the floor near Tymon, talking quietly among themselves. They paid him no heed. A shadow filled the sky above the hangar; the boy glanced up to see the smooth underbelly of a dirigible hanging over the hollow. It was with a sense of inevitability that he identified its sleek, all-too-familiar form.
The Envoy’s ship descended until it hovered a few feet above the hangar floor, its sails stowed. Soldiers appeared on the deck and lowered a ramp over the side. Tymon was slung once more over the giant’s shoulder and humped onto the ship. The soldier kicked him down the steps to the cargo hold like a cumbersome bale.
‘Catch yer breath while you can, Nurry,’ he shouted after the boy, before disappearing from the lighted square of the hatch.
Tymon rolled down the steps and lay still in the empty hold. Every bone in his body ached. His soul ached. He closed his eyes.
‘Who’s there?’ whispered a voice.
He was not alone in the hold, after all. He pushed himself up as best he could and squinted into the gloom. Someone else lay in a corner of the cargo bay. A little figure was splayed out on a heap of rags like a broken doll. Its face was turned expectantly towards him. In the place of eyes it had two closed wounds.
Tymon's Flight Page 38
