by Ian Irvine
‘Fly due west,’ he ground out, ‘towards the mountains. Make – make sure they see us. After nightfall, head for Kralt.’
PART THREE
THE FINAL BATTLE
THIRTY-SIX
‘Where’s the fleet?’ said Flangers as the air-sled slowly circled the cove at Kralt a few hours before dawn the following day. It was a clear, hot night and the whole bay could be seen in the light of the waning moon, but there were no ships at anchor, nor any troops visible. ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’
Nish, who was wrapped in a blanket behind the pilot’s bench, shivering one minute and burning the next, peered listlessly over the side. The healers had done their best for his two thigh wounds but they were still a mass of pain and the bone throbbed mercilessly.
‘Quite sure,’ said M’lainte, who held the map, though she did not bother to check it. ‘Chissmoul, circle around low and slow, in case it’s a trap.’
Chissmoul moved her fingers inside her controller but the air-sled continued on its course. She swore, shook it and the craft turned, though sluggishly.
‘Is something the matter?’ M’lainte said sharply.
‘The stupid controller is acting up again.’
‘I’ll take a look at it in a minute.’ M’lainte squatted down, her plump knees popping, and rummaged in a wooden crate.
Chissmoul circled over the scrub behind the sand but when there were no suspicious signs she set down on the middle of the beach, close to the water.
‘Stay at your posts in case of an ambush …’ said M’lainte, who had taken command as if she were born to it, ‘though our soldiers and ships have gone.’
‘Gone?’ said Nish dully. ‘Without us?’
‘There are tracks in the sand at the far corner of the beach. Yulla’s men must have crossed there, heading for that flat rock sticking out over the water. It’s the best place to embark, quicker than carrying everything through the surf.’
‘Why didn’t they wait?’ said Nish, trying to get up. He rose halfway but could go no further; the pain was too bad.
‘How would I know?’ said M’lainte mildly. ‘Let’s see what we can find. Guards, keep a sharp lookout. Lie down, Nish. You’re not looking too good.’
He fell down, cracking his head on the deck. Persia, who was ever solicitous of his welfare, put a folded coat under his head and spooned more potion into him.
Flangers and Clech took a troop and quartered the area behind the beach, searching the scrub with lanterns. Nish huddled under his blanket, watching the lights, which kept going in and out of focus. One minute the hot blood was roaring in his ears, the next he felt that he would never be warm again.
‘There might be a perfectly good reason why the fleet has gone,’ Persia said to Aimee and Clech, though from the tone of her voice she was trying to convince herself.
‘I can think of several perfectly bad reasons,’ Aimee said darkly.
Nish closed his eyes and drifted into a daze where time passed slowly, then quickly, then seemed to stand still …
‘Wake up, surr.’ Flangers was shaking him.
Nish surfaced slowly, having no idea where he was or what he was doing here, though he remembered a dream where he had been watched by black-robed scriers. He had always been afraid of them and the dream-fear still touched him. His hot, tight thigh throbbed with every heartbeat, and he was incredibly thirsty.
‘Leg hurts.’
‘Bugger your leg,’ M’lainte said. ‘Pull yourself together; we’re in trouble.’
He opened his eyes. He was still on the deck of the air-sled and the sky was starting to lighten. ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Chissmoul’s controller isn’t working.’
‘Are you saying the air-sled won’t go?’
‘It’s like last time,’ said Chissmoul. ‘It’ll go forwards, but not up.’
‘Thought you fixed it, M’lainte?’ Talking made Nish’s head ache.
‘This is a different problem,’ said M’lainte. ‘The air-sled’s controller was so badly made I’m surprised it works at all.’
‘It’s taken a lot of punishment,’ said Chissmoul defensively, as though criticism of any part of the craft was a criticism of her.
‘Weren’t you making a better one?’ said Nish.
‘I haven’t had a chance to test it,’ said M’lainte.
He pushed himself upright, which felt like climbing a mountain. She had something in her lap and her stubby fingers were working on it in the semi-dark.
‘Drink,’ he croaked.
‘You’ve got a fever,’ said Persia exhaustedly. ‘You can’t have strong drink.’
Her broken arm must be causing her a lot of pain and yet she had watched over him all night. Nish bitterly regretted the way he had spoken to her yesterday.
‘Give the sod a drink,’ said M’lainte, ‘and bring me one as well – a big one. I’m going to need liquid inspiration to get this thing working.’
Persia turned away stiffly.
‘I only wanted a drink of water,’ said Nish.
M’lainte chuckled. ‘Don’t spoil my fun; you should have seen her face. Your prim and proper bodyguard doesn’t approve of strong drink.’
‘Don’t tease her,’ said Nish. ‘She saved my life.’
‘And you saved hers, so you’re even. Ah, Clech, what’s that you’ve got?’
The giant was hopping across the deck on a pair of crutches, swinging a familiar, stolen flagon in one enormous hand. Aimee trailed in his wake.
‘Where did you get that?’ said Nish, remembering the enchanting liqueur, though it was the last thing he wanted now.
‘Divers found it on the bottom when they were putting the lifting ropes around the air-sled,’ said Clech. ‘Had to confiscate it, of course.’
‘How come you didn’t give it back to Flydd?’
‘Reckon the old coot has had enough to last a lifetime.’ Clech pulled the bung out.
‘What’s the matter with you lot?’ Aimee snatched the flagon from his hand and put it behind her back. ‘You’re not getting any ’till we’re safe on board ship.’
‘Does the prohibition include me?’ said M’lainte fiercely. She wasn’t a tall woman but she towered over Aimee.
‘Yes, it does!’ hissed Aimee. ‘And I don’t care how proud or important you are.’
They faced each other like a plump old turkey and a furious bantam hen, and finally M’lainte grinned. ‘Then I’d better get the controller going.’
She sat down and continued working on the device in her lap. Suddenly the air-sled’s mechanism produced a low, humming note, followed by a higher one, before dying away.
‘Did you find anything out there?’ said Nish. His mind felt a little clearer now.
‘A lot of footprints, and the wheel marks of supply wagons,’ said M’lainte. ‘In the dark it’s hard to tell what’s happened, but a group of soldiers definitely boarded ship. The overhanging rock is worn where they marched across it, though …’
‘What?’ said Nish.
‘It wasn’t an army of two thousand; nothing like it.’
‘Maybe Yulla couldn’t raise a whole army,’ said Nish.
‘She did,’ said M’lainte. ‘I’ve seen it.’
‘Then where is it? And where’s the fleet?’
The light grew; it wasn’t far off dawn and his foreboding deepened. Had this been a set-up from the beginning? Thinking that Persia was out of earshot, he said quietly, ‘Do you think Yulla …?’
‘She’s rock-solid, Nish,’ said M’lainte. ‘Which leaves only one alternative –’
There was a long silence. ‘That … that we’ve been betrayed by one of her allies,’ said Persia from behind him. ‘The army must have been captured. Maybe the fleet never came, only one or two of Yulla’s ships.’
A spasm lanced through Nish’s thigh to the bone. Could this be the end, before the real campaign had even begun?
‘They want you, so they must be out there somew
here,’ said Flangers, peering into the darkness. ‘Why haven’t they attacked?’
Nish was fever-hot again; his leg began to throb unbearably and it took an effort to follow the simplest train of thought.
‘If I were the enemy,’ said Flangers, ‘I’d wait until – Nish, what is it?’
He had gone from feverish to freezing in an instant, and the grogginess was blasted away by a rolling wave of clear-sight. ‘Soldiers, and scriers, on the southern headland. Where is everyone?’
‘Sleeping,’ said M’lainte, ‘or cooling down in the cove.’
Nish pulled himself up onto the pilot’s bench. A dozen militiamen and women were swimming, finally relaxing after the brutal day and sleepless night. ‘Call them back! Chissmoul, get it ready.’
As everyone ran to their posts, dawn broke and the shrubbery stirred on the headland.
‘Ambush!’ yelled Clech to the people in the water. ‘Into the cabin. Everyone!’
A force of several hundred troops rose above the scrubby bushes and began to storm down the slope. Their archers would soon be within firing range.
Nish cursed. ‘They’ll kill everyone in the water.’
The air-sled jerked forwards, stopped and began to shudder as if it was caught on a sticky surface. ‘What’s the matter with it now?’ wailed Chissmoul.
‘Their scriers must be interfering with your controller,’ said M’lainte.
A flight of arrows pocked the surface around the swimmers, one missile skipping across the water like a stone.
Chissmoul stood up, shaking the mechanism over her head, and the air-sled broke free and shot towards the cove. Unable to rise, it skidded sideways, sending out an enormous curving plume of spray that temporarily obscured all the swimmers. Naked men and women churned towards the air-sled and were dragged over the side, but not all of them made it.
An arrow, fired from the rocks at the far end of the beach, struck Chissmoul’s pale, nervous friend Allioun in the forehead as she was climbing aboard. She fell back with the arrow sticking straight up; her blood darkened the water.
Chissmoul gasped and tried to dive in, but Flangers held her.
‘There’s nothing you can do, love,’ he said gently. ‘She died instantly.’
‘I’m sick of this,’ she whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. The wire and crystal controller dangled from her right hand, forgotten. ‘I can’t take any more.’
The last of the militia were dragged over the side. Persia and Flangers carried Nish into the cabin as more arrows fell around them, zinging off the metal deck and embedding themselves in the bimblewood walls. The attackers were halfway down the headland already.
‘Give me the controller,’ said M’lainte.
‘You’re not taking that from me as well,’ Chissmoul said in a deadly voice. ‘Get out of my way.’
‘Chissmoul –’ began Flangers, reaching for her.
She slapped his arm aside. ‘Get down and stay down – you too, Mechanician.’
‘I’ll be beside you all the way,’ said M’lainte. ‘Try this.’
She handed Chissmoul the object she had been working on, which was red and the shape of a watermelon cut in half across the middle, with a single knobbed lever rising from its rounded top.
‘Stick the bottom to the deck and hold the lever. It controls everything – forwards and back, left and right, up and down – and the further you move it, the faster it goes.’
‘What about stopping?’ said Chissmoul.
‘Er, I haven’t done that yet,’ said M’lainte.
‘Then you’d better hang on!’
Nish clung to a bench, shivering, as Chissmoul jerked the lever towards her.
‘That’s backwards,’ cried M’lainte as the air-sled shot backwards, bouncing off the water and curving around towards the headland.
‘There’s no shelter for us if I go forwards,’ said Chissmoul grimly.
The air-sled bounced across the water, went blazing up the gentle slope of the beach and turned south along it, Chissmoul wobbling the stern to left and right so she could see past the cabin. She turned sharply up the headland, crushing the bushes in their path and barely missing boulders to either side.
Nish, who was peering through one of the mica windows, could not imagine how she was steering the ungainly craft so accurately. The metal keel hit a bump, shot upwards, and not far ahead he made out the attackers, a dark, running mass in the dim light. Arrows thudded into the bimblewood; he ducked, instinctively, and his thigh screamed at him.
An arrow smashed into the mica pane, tearing it from its timbers and sending it flub-flubbing past his ear across the cabin. The stern wobbled left, right, left so fast that his head spun, accelerated up the slope and he heard sickening thuds as it drove through the soldiers, scattering men to left and right and crushing dozens beneath its keel.
Thumpitty thump thump, thump thump. The keel careered off a small boulder, tilting the air-sled sharply to the right, and for a dreadful second he thought they were going to slam into the ground at high speed.
Chissmoul managed to right it but it tilted the other way, hurtled over the steep side of the headland and down towards the cove, leaning one way and then the other, and flattening out only to bounce off the water so hard that Nish’s teeth snapped together. He collapsed on the floor.
As the air-sled shot high into the air and straightened, Chissmoul managed to head it through the entrance of the cove and out to sea, but then the craft turned and kept turning until it was heading landwards again, racing directly for the cliffed headland.
‘Up!’ M’lainte yelled. ‘Pull it up.’
‘It won’t go up,’ said Chissmoul, her voice tight with fear. ‘I can’t control it.’
The cliff loomed ever closer. Nish rolled over and could see her struggling with the lever. M’lainte grabbed the controller, heaving the lever this way and that while muttering what sounded, to Nish, like a Spell of Breaking, and suddenly the scrier’s command of the controller snapped.
From up on the clifftop, a man screamed. M’lainte wrenched at the knob and the air-sled rocketed up, up and over the top of the cliff, so close that the keel brushed against the heath growing there. Arrows bounced off the thick metal as they soared away, out of range, and finally out of sight of the enemy.
Nish lay on the floor until his breathing had returned to normal and the pain in his leg had subsided to a dull throb. They’d got away, but what was he supposed to do without a fleet or an army?
As they climbed, the sun tipped the eastern horizon and shortly the lookout called, ‘A sail, due south.’
Chissmoul, who had snatched back the controller, turned the craft in that direction.
‘Sail, or sails?’ called Nish.
‘I can only see one so far, and it’s not a fishing boat; it’s a ship.’
‘One of Yulla’s?’
‘It’s too far away to tell,’ said M’lainte. ‘If her captain was alert, he might have escaped as the trap was sprung, with the troops he’d taken on board. Go closer, Chissmoul.’
Nish crawled around until he found his serpent staff then, using it as a crutch, limped to the side and scanned the seas. From this height Roros was a smoky smear to the north. A number of sails could be seen on the water near the city, though most appeared to be fishing boats or little coastal traders. There was no sign of a fleet.
‘Yulla said the fleet would be at least twenty ships,’ he said to Persia, who had come up beside him. ‘We’d need at least that number to carry two thousand men, plus all their gear and provisions, but there’s no sign of any ships save the one to our south. And the weather has been perfect for sailing …’
‘Yes, it has,’ Persia said uneasily.
‘Did you actually see Yulla’s fleet, M’lainte?’
‘She only had two ships in Crandor,’ said M’lainte. ‘She arranged to borrow the rest from Pensittor.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘An old friend from the time when she wa
s governor. He was her lieutenant in the old days, but he bought the spice monopoly after the God-Emperor deposed her, and is now very rich. Pensittor has fleets of ships; he trades all the way up and down the east coast, and west as far as Taranta.’
‘And I dare say he’s dependent on the favour of the God-Emperor to keep his monopoly,’ said Nish. ‘So what has he to gain if Father is overthrown?’
‘He’s been good to Yulla,’ said Persia severely. ‘After your father took her governorship away, he taxed her until she was bankrupt. Pensittor loaned Yulla enough to get started again, and he’s a man of his word.’
Nish looked questioningly at M’lainte. ‘I’ve met him several times,’ she said, ‘and he seemed an honest fellow to me – for a merchant, I mean. Though I did wonder where he got the coin to buy the spice monopoly. His family weren’t wealthy.’
‘What are you thinking?’ said Nish.
‘That his offer to lend ships to Yulla was genuine, when it was made, but Stilkeen’s proclamation changed everything. Before that, Nish, you stood a good chance of taking the empire, since everyone knows your claim is legitimate. However, after the proclamation you lost the advantage, because the local warlords could reach Morrelune long before you could and, as the empire collapsed into civil war, you would be just one of a dozen rivals for the throne. Vomix is another, one of the strongest. He was Seneschal of Fadd province for many years and he’s still more influential there than the seneschal who replaced him.’
Persia was clinging to the rope rail, shaking her head. ‘I can’t believe it. Pensittor is a man of honour –’
‘What if Vomix had a threatening word in his ear?’ said Nish, following M’lainte’s train of thought, ‘telling him that there was little to be gained by supporting Yulla or me, but much to be lost. If Vomix can get his army to Morrelune quickly, he can take it, but he’ll need a lot of ships. He must have demanded that Pensittor betray Yulla and lend him the ships, in exchange for more monopolies when Vomix becomes God-Emperor. What choice would Pensittor have? If he refused, and Vomix became God-Emperor, Pensittor would lose everything.’