by Ian Irvine
‘Indeed?’ said the commander coldly.
‘Klarm has gone into the deadly shadow realm, all alone, in a desperate attempt to uncover the one weakness that will enable us to drive Stilkeen off – or bring it down.’
The commander blanched. ‘I cannot ask about that place; I must take you at your word. Are you done?’
‘Not quite.’ Flydd gestured behind him to Nish, to come forwards.
Nish did so, waiting out of sight from below. He could see why Flydd had left him until last, but Nish had an uncomfortable feeling his appearance was going to come too late.
‘With Jal-Nish gone, perhaps never to return,’ said Flydd, ‘and his anointed deputy lost in the shadow realm, Santhenar is leaderless for the first time in a thousand years.’
‘There are many men capable of stepping into the breach,’ said the commander. ‘I, myself –’
Flydd let out a scornful bray of laughter and the commander broke off. ‘Quite so. But there are others.’
Nish noticed that the chief scrier had moved behind the seneschal and was focussing his device on the air-sled again. The seneschal sat bolt upright, staring at Flydd, and the governor was at his side, though Nish felt that they were no longer listening. Flydd had tried to do too much, too soon, to an audience full of closed minds.
‘I don’t like the look of that scrier,’ Flangers said from behind Nish. ‘Chissmoul –’
‘Don’t teach me my job,’ she hissed. The tension was affecting them all.
‘None among you have the legitimacy or moral authority to take command,’ said Flydd. ‘If you tried, there would be civil war. The empire would be defenceless and Stilkeen would destroy our beautiful Santhenar …’
‘But?’ said the commander.
‘One man can save us,’ Flydd boomed, and everyone in the vast square snapped to attention. ‘The genius who led his tiny, untrained militia to a shattering victory over the greatest army on Santhenar. The man who swore to bring down the God-Emperor ten years ago and usher in a more peaceful world. The soldier who, despite a decade in the grimmest pit of Mazurhize Prison, refused to go back on his solemn oath.
‘People of Taranta,’ Flydd said, ignoring the dignitaries to sweep his gaze back and forth across the ordinary folk of the city, ‘you know who I am talking about – Jal-Nish’s only surviving son, Nish. Nish was a hero of the lyrinx wars and an architect of the peace that ended them. Nish is the one man on Santhenar who can step into his father’s boots and lead us through this terrible peril – and here he is.’
Nish came to the prow beside Flydd, rehearsing what he was going to say.
‘Damned if I’ll take this!’ cried the seneschal, pushing himself to his feet. A big, burly man with a sagging belly and a jutting, pugnacious jaw, he was seething. ‘My scriers can sort truth from falsehood in an instant, and they have read Flydd’s words – if that man is Xervish Flydd, which I doubt.’
He flung out his right arm. ‘That villain has stolen the God-Emperor’s air-sled, and now he’s trying to steal an empire, and I won’t allow it. Flydd is a condemned rebel; his speech was a dunghill of deceit. There is no Stilkeen! There is no such thing as chthonic fire! Our glorious army has not been defeated – and never will be.’
He gestured behind him and, on cue, his followers cheered.
‘We will never be defeated,’ he repeated, more loudly. Now cheerleaders throughout the crowd began to cheer, and it spread in waves across the square until everyone was brandishing their fists and praising the God-Emperor’s eternal reign.
Though not all with equal enthusiasm, Nish noted. Many people were mouthing the words and waving their fists, while their faces remained carefully expressionless. It gave him a little hope.
‘Bring them down!’ snapped the seneschal.
Squads of soldiers appeared at the corners of the square and, on the top of the building opposite the largest mansion, soldiers scrambled onto a huge pair of javelards – devices like giant crossbows that fired spears large enough to take down charging elephants.
TWENTY-TWO
‘Chissmoul?’ Flydd rapped, but the air-sled was already moving.
‘Hang on tight, everyone!’ Nish said, springing backwards to grasp the pennant pole.
With a bound, Flydd was beside him, taking hold of his staff. The air-sled shot up so quickly that Nish’s battle-weary legs could not support him, and he landed bruisingly hard on his knees on the metal deck.
A heavy spear whistled through the space they had just left, travelling so quickly that it outran the metallic twang of the javelard’s steel cable. It soared across the square and smashed into the portico of the mansion, sending out clouds of dust and a scything spray of rubble.
‘Get out of here, Pilot!’ said Flydd.
A pair of spears bracketed the air-sled to left and right.
‘They’re damn fine shooters,’ said Nish, who had fired many a javelard in the war and knew how difficult it was to bring them to bear on a rapidly moving target.
He glanced over his shoulder. Flangers was clinging to the back of Chissmoul’s seat, the militia hanging onto their safety ropes. There was nothing anyone could do; their survival was up to Chissmoul now.
Her eyes were alive with the fierce and terrible joy that he had last seen when she had been a thapter pilot during the war, the best of them all. If anyone could save them, she could.
The air-sled zigzagged left, shot up, then dropped sharply at the prow before banking and curving away in the direction of the Sea of Perion. A javelard spear came out of nowhere to clang off the iron top of the pennant pole in a shower of sparks, and Nish jumped. That had been too close.
‘How can any shooter be that quick and accurate?’ said Flydd.
‘I don’t know,’ Nish muttered. ‘I was accounted a good shooter in my day, but I couldn’t have done what they’re doing.’
‘Where did that last spear come from?’ Chissmoul cried, side-slipping to the left.
‘The alley running down to the sea cliffs,’ said Flangers, who possessed the rare gift of being able to take in the action on a whole battlefield within seconds.
‘I need a spotter,’ she said. ‘Tell me where they are and when they’re firing. I can’t fly and locate their attacks at the same time.’
‘Get out of the square,’ said Flydd. ‘They’re bringing up reinforcements.’
‘I’m trying, but they’ve got too many javelards as it is –’ Chissmoul broke off, working her fingers furiously inside the controller. The air-sled dropped sharply then went into a whirling pancake turn.
Nish tasted field rations in the back of his throat, while three militiamen lost their footing and were flung halfway over the side by the force of the turn. They cried out involuntarily as their fingers were torn from the safety ropes, and were only saved when the air-sled shot the other way, slamming them into their fellows, then streaked off. He heard retching.
‘Tie onto the ropes,’ he yelled.
‘We can’t take much more of this,’ said Flydd. ‘They’re too good, and if we can’t get out of the square soon, we never will.’
As the air-sled zoomed back the other way, a flight of three spears whistled over their heads.
‘How can their shooters be so uncannily accurate?’ Flangers said.
‘You’re right. It is uncanny,’ said Nish.
He squinted at the nearest javelard. Could that be a little wisp-watcher mounted on the side? Yes, it was, and it was operated by a scrier; Nish could see his black robes flapping in the wind.
The other javelards also had wisp-watchers and scriers, and why should he be surprised? His father had ever been one for new devices of war or mancery, all inventive, some extraordinary, and many bizarre. Most had failed to perform in battle, for one reason or another, but occasionally Jal-Nish had won an unexpected victory with a weapon no one had seen before.
‘The scriers are using their wisp-watchers to tell the javelard operators where to shoot, but even so, they’re
too accurate – it’s as if they know which way Chissmoul will go the instant she changes direction.’
‘It does seem like that,’ said Flydd, clinging to the pole as she hurled the craft backwards.
‘How could they know?’ mused Nish. ‘I don’t understand it.’
‘I have no idea.’
They were penned in the square, unable to fly away or climb out of range. More spears arrowed in at them and Chissmoul was flinging the air-sled about ever more wildly in her desperate attempts to avoid being hit.
As the craft banked side-on, Nish’s gaze swept across the square, which was emptying rapidly. Crowds of people were bolting down every street and alley, while the dignitaries had already taken refuge in the crumbling mansions or were huddling behind overturned tables.
The buildings surrounding the square had been hit by dozens of heavy spears, and a line of debris through the centre of the market stalls showed where a ricocheting spear, two spans long, the weight of a small flagpole and spinning like a top, had shattered the booths and flung their occupants out in bloody ruin.
More dead lay in random heaps across the paved square, victims of other stray spears, while a mound at the entrance to an alley was evidence of a stampede gone wrong, the smallest and weakest trampled to death in the rush to escape.
‘The seneschal doesn’t care how many innocent people die,’ said Nish, ‘as long as he brings us down.’
‘That’s the kind of world your father has created.’
‘And the scrutators trained him,’ Nish snapped.
‘They trained me too,’ said Flydd mildly. ‘Good can come out of ill, and the reverse.’
Nish did not reply, for he still maintained some small reservations about Flydd’s own character.
‘Damn you,’ Chissmoul was muttering as she tossed the air-sled this way and that. ‘Damn you, damn you, damn –’
She had just put it nose-up when there came an almighty crash, the craft jumped in the air and the hardened point and steel shaft of a heavy spear burst up through the deck beside the pennant pole, tearing the metal around its mounting socket. The pole was knocked out and toppled towards Chissmoul, who was too busy to protect herself.
Flangers threw himself sideways and tried to take the blow on his shoulder, but he was too far off-balance to stop the heavy pole. It drove him down, struck Chissmoul on the right arm and knocked her sideways off her chair.
She managed to hang onto her controller but lost control of the air-sled, which tilted over and plunged towards the centre of the square at frightening speed. Chissmoul shook her arm, crying, ‘It’s gone numb. Can’t feel a thing.’
‘Use the controller,’ cried Flydd, staring at the rapidly approaching paving.
She kept shaking her right arm uselessly. The fingers of her left hand were moving inside the wires but it was not enough to take back control.
Nish sprang over Flangers, who was still lying on the deck with the pole across his back, caught Chissmoul’s right hand and thrust it into the wires. The air-sled dipped momentarily, then continued its plunge.
‘I can’t see,’ she cried.
‘I can,’ said Nish, for his clearsight was suddenly there, as it sometimes was in an emergency. He could not work the controller – he would never have that gift – but he could tell where Chissmoul’s fingers were supposed to be because five of the spaces between the wires were outlined with faint white light. Pulling her right hand out, he reinserted her fingers one by one into the outlined spaces and rubbed her elbow. As the numbness faded, the fingers of her right hand began to move.
But they were very close to the ground now. Too close.
‘Look out!’ Flydd cried, covering his head with his arms.
Nish did too, for he was sure that they were going to smash into the pavement. Chissmoul shouldered him out of the way and the air-sled’s dive began to ease, though not quickly enough to stop them hitting at high speed.
They were about to when the spear shaft embedded in the keel screeched across the paving stones, pushing the prow up slightly and creating a trailing wake of sparks before it broke off.
The keel hit hard, making a colossal bang and another flurry of sparks, bounced, and Chissmoul gained a measure of control. The prow slammed into the God-Emperor’s throne and table, demolishing them. Wooden shards and splinters went everywhere. She curved around and shot along the front of one of the mansions, between the columns and the front wall, and zoomed up again.
Nish lifted the pole off Flangers, who wasn’t injured, laid it on the deck and tied it down.
‘Well done,’ said Flydd in a shaky voice. ‘But they’re bringing up more javelards,’ he added quietly to Nish, ‘and if we can’t get out of the square, sooner or later they’re going to score a direct hit on our pilot.’
‘No one could aim a javelard so accurately as to bring Chissmoul down with a single spear. Not even the scriers could train a javelard that accurately on a rapidly moving target.’
‘A lucky shot kills you just as dead as a well-aimed one –’ Flydd’s head whipped around. ‘What the blazes is that?’
Something blurred and unidentifiable was coming at them with frightening speed, making an unnerving humming whistle. Nish had heard that sound once before, but where?
‘Down!’ he roared. ‘Flat on the deck,’ and dropped prone as the sound grew ever louder.
The missile hissed just overhead, splat-whack. Warm, sticky fluid was flung in all directions, and then it was gone.
‘The scum are using chain-shot,’ Nish said, coming to hands and knees and shuddering at how close it had been. It could have killed them all. He wiped spatters of blood off his face. ‘I never thought my father would sink so low.’
‘Lengths of heavy chain, fired from a special javelard with colossal force,’ said Flydd, glancing towards the bloody mess down the back. Most of the militia had got down in time, but two had not. ‘It spins through the air and can scythe every man off the deck of a ship in a single pass. It simply smashes them to pieces.’
Chissmoul, back in her seat, hurled the air-sled one way and then another. At the rear, bloody-faced and bloody-handed militiamen were pushing the ragged remnants of their two comrades off the back. Someone was weeping; Aimee was swearing, the same word over and over.
Twenty-three able-bodied militiamen left, Nish thought, and how long have they got? ‘With chain-shot, you don’t have to be accurate. What are we going to do?’
‘Get out of the square, Pilot,’ said Flydd.
‘I can’t,’ said Chissmoul.
‘Then climb above their firing range.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Nish. ‘Their other wisp-watchers and loop-listeners are linked to Gatherer, so presumably the ones on the javelards are as well.’
‘Almost certainly,’ said Flydd.
‘And both Klarm and Father used Gatherer to direct and control the air-sled when they had it …’
‘That was my understanding.’
‘But what was Gatherer actually controlling?’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘What makes the air-sled go?’ said Nish.
‘A device the God-Emperor had built for the purpose, though I haven’t got the faintest idea what it is, and I’m not sure Chissmoul does, either. Wait a minute – are you saying that Gatherer could still be linked to the air-sled?’
‘If it is, and it’s also linked to the wisp-watchers, it would explain how the scriers know which way she’s going to turn. As soon as her controller signals to the device that makes the air-sled go, Gatherer knows it, and it tells the scrier.’
‘How does one sever a link to Gatherer?’ mused Flydd.
Another length of chain-shot came howling towards them but this time Chissmoul was ready and evaded it easily.
‘I don’t know – wait!’ said Nish. ‘Maelys did it once.’
‘Really?’ breathed Flydd. ‘How?’
‘It was just after she rescue
d me from Mazurhize. I was in bad shape; I don’t remember it well, but we were on the flappeter, Rurr-shyve –’
‘I remember Rurr-shyve,’ Flydd said. ‘We escaped from the inn at Plogg on the beast a few weeks ago –’
‘So I’ve heard.’ Nish managed a grin.
‘Until the wretched thing went into a mating ritual with a male flappeter in mid-air.’
‘I gather it wasn’t the only mating ritual that night.’ Nish laughed aloud.
‘It had been a very long time,’ Flydd muttered. ‘Can we get back to your point, before we die?’
Nish’s smile faded. ‘Seneschal Vomix was trying to take control of Rurr-shyve via its flesh-formed speck-speaker, but Maelys was so afraid that she hacked the speck-speaker off, and the link to Vomix was lost instantly.’
‘There must be a similar device inside the air-sled, between the deck and the keel, linked to Gatherer. Unfortunately, without a way of cutting solid metal, there’s no way to open it.’
‘You’d better think of one –’
‘Down flat, now!’ roared Flangers.
The militia hit the deck. This time the missile consisted of two heavy chains linked by an iron bar, spinning like a propeller and making a whoomph-whoomph sound as it came. Everyone was prone save Chissmoul, who remained slumped in the canvas chair, unmoving, her face strained. The air-sled dropped suddenly; the chain-shot thundered over her head, and she sat up and wiped the sweat off her brow.
‘When I say down,’ snapped Flydd, ‘I mean everyone. If you die, we all die and the war is lost – maybe the world.’
‘Sorry, surr,’ said Chissmoul. She looked exhausted, and her movements were slower now. ‘I – I went blank for a moment. The scriers must be getting to me.’
‘Then we’d better find the mechanism, fast. Where do you think it would be, Pilot?’
‘What?’ said Chissmoul dully.
‘The mechanism that makes the air-sled go.’
‘Oh, that! Below deck, directly behind me. But there’s no way to get into the deck.’