by Ian Irvine
He would never do it. Just hanging by the arms was exhausting and willpower was not going to be enough. He simply didn’t have the strength to climb all that way. Yet, how could he not go on?
With his free hand Nish fumbled at the clamp, tried to get it over the cable, and dropped it. He hauled it up again, wound the screw out as far as it would go and forced it over. One-handed, he tightened the screw and climbed onto the shank, relieving the strain on his wrist at last. Sweat was dripping into his eyes.
Ullii came up the other side of the cable until she was level with him, moving easily. Her eyes met his.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said, fighting back tears of frustration. ‘I simply can’t do it, Ullii.’
Ullii was holding the cable between her thighs and feet, and pulling herself up with her hands. She didn’t seem to be under any strain. She was so slight that he could carry her with one arm, but Ullii was remarkably dextrous.
’I said I’d help you, Nish.’
He couldn’t have climbed halfway without her but, with Ullii’s help to embed his hooks into the ropes while he rested on the clamp, and then to slide the clamp up and hold it while he screwed it tight, Nish managed to inch his way up the cable, span by span. Even then, when they had but five spans to go and twenty-five extended below them, Nish didn’t think he would ever make it. He made the mistake of looking down, whereupon his head spun and his stomach heaved. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights but this was different. He lost his grip and hung by the grace of the right hook while he vomited all down the cable.
Ullii kept her eyes politely averted until his aching belly was empty, then wiped his face on one of his strips of rag and dropped it, fluttering in the damp breeze, into the yard.
‘It’s not far now,’ she said in an overly encouraging voice, like a teacher to a lagging child.
Nish didn’t have the strength to reply. Besides, this close to the deck, they might be overheard. He wasn’t encouraged. There must come a point where, no matter how strong the will, his muscles would simply not be able to respond. He was almost at that point now. Each time he hauled himself up another arm’s length, he had to rest, and the bandage on his left arm was red and soaked.
They went up another laborious span, followed by another. Ullii clung above him, pulling his left hook up as far as it would go and working it into the strands of the cable. Once it was well in, he tried to heave himself up. His muscles refused to move.
‘I’m sorry, Ullii,’ he said. ‘I’m done.’
She looked exhausted too. Her pale face had a grey tinge and her colourless eyes were rimmed with red and yellow. ‘I –’
The shout came straight through the canvas: a man’s voice, nasal, whiny, and not comfortable with the authority he’d been delegated. ‘Quiet, if you please. The executions will now begin.’
Nish’s heart hammered at his ribs. Who would it be? Please, let it be anyone but Irisis or Flydd.
A brief pause before the man continued, ‘We will take them in order of the trial. The first will be Pilot Inouye.’
Nish caught his breath, then let it out in a rush. To his shame he almost smiled with relief. He caught Ullii’s eye, and she looked shocked. She’d identified with the little pilot, of course. How could she not, after Nish’s tragic tale?
‘Come!’ Ullii hissed through her teeth. ‘Quickly.’ Going hand over hand up the cable, more like a monkey than a human being, she hung on with one hand and began to pull at Nish’s arm.
With the last of his strength, his screaming muscles managed to move him up another half-span, more or less.
Someone began shouting up above, a creepy, sibilant voice that had to be the vile Scrutator Fusshte. Nish couldn’t make out what he’d said but shortly he heard the whiny voice again, calling, ‘No, bring her back, lads’.
After a pause he went on, barely audible over the sighing of the wind through the cables, ‘The scrutators bid me execute the greatest criminal and traitor first, in case the enemy should attack. Ex-Scrutator Xervish Flydd,’ he said in tones that were almost respectful, ‘if you would be so kind as to step into the flensing trough.’
‘I’m just in time,’ Nish said to himself. ‘I will get there. I must.’ He hauled himself up another half-span and hung on, panting so loudly that he couldn’t believe the people above wouldn’t hear him.
Ullii fixed his hooks, went down and slid the clamp up the cable. Nish rested on it, trying to still his breathing so he could hear what was going on. Someone was talking in a deep rumble, though Nish couldn’t make out what he was saying.
There came a muffled wail, cut off abruptly as if by a hand clapped over a mouth, or a fist thrust into it. The prisoners were cracking up and he still had to climb two spans – the equivalent of four paces on the ground.
And then Irisis spoke and the sound of her voice, defiant to the last, brought tears to his eyes. ‘Take heart, Xervish. It’ll be over more quickly than you think.’
Flydd laughed, though there was no humour in it. ‘Somehow, that’s not nearly as comforting as when I said it to you.’
‘Begin, Master Flenser!’ Chief Scrutator Ghorr roared like an actor on a stage. ‘I’ll double your fee if you can take this scoundrel’s skin off in one piece – I’ve a special use for it.’
This galvanised Nish’s trembling muscles and he went up half a span, then three-quarters before grinding to a halt. Another man spoke, inaudibly. Perhaps he was talking to himself as he prepared to peel the skin off the living flesh.
Nish kept moving. Only one span to go. His muscles felt as though they were melting and oozing down his arms. He laid his head against the cable, despair washing over him. He was going to be too late to save Flydd.
‘Hold just a moment!’ cried Scrutator Fusshte. ‘There’s something wrong.’
Nish only caught part of what the other man, the whiny one, said. ‘I’ve done everything … in the rituals.’
Nish’s skin crawled, and every hair on his body stood up. He knew what Fusshte was going to say.
Fusshte snarled, ‘I’m not talking to you!’ Nish heard his feet pound across the canvas. ‘One of the greatest villains of all is missing. Where the devil is the arch-traitor, Artificer Cryl-Nish Hlar?’
SEVEN
Above them there was shouting, yelling and the sound of running feet. Ghorr said in low and deadly tones, ‘You bloody fool, Fusshte, why didn’t you check? You begged to be put in charge of the minors.’
‘It’s not my fault. I told Voine to go through the list…’
‘Don’t give me excuses!’ Ghorr hissed. ‘What’s the good of my creating this great spectacle if your incompetence is going to ruin it? Morale is a fragile plant, scrutator. Get your men down there and find him instantly. I won’t have a single blot on this victorious day. Not a smear. Fail and you’ll join the prisoners, scrutator or no!’
Ullii’s mouth opened and she almost lost her grip. Nish reached out to steady her. She wiped her face and climbed higher. Looping her arm around the cable, she dragged up his left hook, slammed it into the strands, and then moved the right.
Above them, orders were roared. Feet pounded across the canvas. ‘What do we do?’ Nish whispered. His mind had gone blank.
‘Up!’ she mouthed. ‘Under!’
He reached up with his weak left arm and forced its hook into the rope. He twisted out the other hook and tried to go again but the left hook pulled out. Nish slipped, clutched at the cable but his sweaty hands couldn’t get a grip. Ullii shinned down to him, grabbed his swinging arm and expertly slid the hook in between the strands of the cable. After doing the same with the other hand she went down and tightened the clamp.
Nish clung there, shaking. ‘I thought I was gone,’ he whispered. ‘I thought everything was lost.’
She touched her cheek to his, repaying him in kind, and it made all the difference. She pointed up underneath the canvas and began to climb to the knots where the horizontal stay ropes were fastened to the vertica
l cable. He followed carefully, the near-death experience bringing him a little strength. He slid his clamp around a stay rope that ran towards the centre of the deck and tightened it so it could slide along but not pull off. Nish went wearily, hook over hook, along the stay until he was five or six spans in from the edge and not so readily visible in the gloom.
‘You’d better tie on, Ullii, just in case.’
Ullii fashioned a rope harness around her chest, tied it to the stay rope and hung from it while Nish caught his breath.
Shortly, some thirty or forty spans to their left, a series of rope baskets were lowered over the edge, each containing about a dozen soldiers. The baskets were lowered swiftly to the yard. Nish counted them. Nine – more than a hundred soldiers, just for him, and any one of them could take him. It was enough to make him smile and, thinking about what Fusshte had said, he gave a wry chuckle. So they considered him a great villain. He’d better not disappoint them.
‘Don’t move,’ Nish mouthed. ‘If they look this way …’
Ullii scowled. She didn’t need to be told. It was dark under the canvas, but not so dark that an alert eye couldn’t pick them out. And the scrutators’ guards were very alert.
They waited until the grounded baskets had emptied and most of the soldiers had disappeared inside Fiz Gorgo. The remainder spread out through the yard and began to search the sheds and barracks.
‘Now,’ Nish whispered. ‘We don’t have much time.’
He reached back and lifted the flagon of naphtha over his shoulder. With it banging against his chest, he hooked his way towards the edge of the deck, where the horizontal ropes were tied to the cable in a series of complicated knots the size of melons, and carefully poured a measured dose of the clear, pungent liquid over the knots. The fumes made his eyes water. The liquid was quickly absorbed into the fibres, wetting the cable below for a span and wicking up for half that distance.
‘We have to do this to the next three cable knots.’ Nish pointed to each of them so she’d not be in any doubt. ‘Then I’ll set fire to them with flaming crossbow bolts.’ He drew a handful of rags from his pocket, poked them in through the mouth of the flagon until they were soaked, squeezed the excess naphtha back into the flagon then put the rags back in his pocket. ‘As soon as that’s done we go down the ropes as fast as we can, if we get the chance.’
‘What if we don’t?’
‘We die with everyone else.’ He expected Ullii to shrivel, for she’d always had the keenest sense of self-preservation, but she didn’t react.
‘I’m ready to die,’ she said. ‘Give me the flagon.’
Nish saw the sense in that. He couldn’t swing from rope to rope without her help, while she didn’t need his.
‘If there’s any left, reach up and pour it onto the rope that runs around the outside of the deck.’
Ullii nodded, stoppered the flagon, put it over her shoulder and then she was off, swinging hand over hand along the rope, her safety rope dangling below her, unfastened. Nish could hardly bear to watch. One slip, one oily piece of rope or even a place where she couldn’t reach far enough up under the tight canvas to get a grip, and she would fall to her death. He moved along his stay rope towards the centre of the deck, so he’d have a good angle for each shot.
Not far away, Ghorr roared, ‘Continue with the executions. Master Flenser, get the hide off the old villain without delay. If the lot aren’t finished within two hours you’ll be joining them.’
Nish heard a rebellious mutter among the master torturers. Evidently it wasn’t done to threaten their kind. Trying vainly to put Flydd’s torment out of mind, Nish lifted the crossbow off his back and tied it around his waist, in case he needed it in a hurry.
He wrapped a naphtha-soaked rag around one of his bolts, tying it on tightly with threads stripped from the side but leaving a tail of cloth to stream out behind. When satisfied that it would fly true, he slipped it into his pocket and did the same to another handful of bolts. He’d need three to light the three distant knots after he’d set the first one afire, plus a few extras in case he missed or dropped one.
A scream rang out above him – a cry of sheerest anguish – that made Nish’s hair stand up. To wring any kind of reaction out of Flydd he must have been in agony – the man had practically invented stoicism.
Ullii, who had already soaked the second knot and was halfway to the third, went still, rotating on her wrists until she was staring at Nish. He waved her on. Until she’d done the fourth knot and turned back, there wasn’t a thing he could do.
Before she’d got there, Flydd’s screams had become continuous. Nish fitted a bolt into the crossbow, only to discover that he’d lost the flint and steel. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he’d slipped earlier, and without it he had no way to set the naphtha-soaked rag alight.
He felt an urge to throw himself down into the yard for his stupidity. Why hadn’t be secured it more carefully? Ullii waved, telling him that he could fire any time. He beckoned her back.
Was there anything he could make a spark with? The amphitheatre was just rope and canvas with an occasional brass fitting – no help there. His pockets contained nothing except dirty lint. The stock of the crossbow was wood and the fittings brass, though the bow itself was steel. Nish wrapped a spare length of soaked rag around the bow then struck across it with the tip of his knife. It made an audible click but didn’t result in a spark.
He tried again and again, torn between the need for a spark, now desperate judging by the hideous shrieks coming from above, and the need to avoid detection.
Ullii was halfway back now, flying hand over hand along the rope. She stopped to signal him. He held out his hands. She grimaced – or was it a sneer of contempt? Not securing the flint and steel was an inexcusable blunder.
He kept striking, hoping the sound would be muffled by Flydd’s screams, but they stopped suddenly and someone called from the centre of the amphitheatre. ‘What was that?’
Nish froze. The shrieks resumed only to break off in mid-cry, as if Flydd had been struck down.
Ullii had stopped, hanging from one hand, but now she resumed, swinging towards him faster than before. He held his breath. One slip and she was gone.
‘It’s him!’ cried Ghorr. ‘It’s that bloody little bastard Cryl-Nish Hlar. He’s down there somewhere. Find him and bring him to me, alive!’
There was a stampede across the canvas. Nish struck furiously at the metal, but could not produce a spark. An uproar broke out, a horde of people roaring out his name, laughing, cheering and clapping. The prisoners were cheering him on and Nish felt such a surge of encouragement that for a moment he knew he could save them.
Reality crashed down on him as Ghorr roared, ‘Shut them up. The snivelling little coward can’t do anything.’
‘What if he has the seeker with him?’ came Fusshte’s slithering voice.
Ullii had passed the last knot but now stopped in mid-swing. No man terrified her more than Fusshte did. Nish held out his arms to her and she came on, more slowly, her mouth working.
‘Where is the seeker?’ said Ghorr.
‘I haven’t seen her since we took Flydd.’
‘And you didn’t think to check?’ Ghorr’s voice became shrill.
‘She was in your custody, Chief Scrutator,’ Fusshte snarled. ‘She’s your little pet. She must be with him.’
‘Of course she is, but we know how to deal with Ullii,’ Ghorr said. ‘Where’s Scrutator T’Lisp?’
‘Up on her air-dreadnought.’
‘Get her down here right away.’
Nish abandoned his spark-making as hopeless and began sawing at a cross-stay, not that it would make any difference.
No difference at all. His blunt knife made barely any impression on the tough fibres. It would take minutes to cut through, and minutes he didn’t have. As soon as one of the soldiers thought to look underneath the deck, they’d be seen. Sharpshooters could pick them off with crossbows from the gr
ound or through holes cut in the deck, or the mancers destroy them in any number of hideous ways.
Ullii was still about ten spans away when the canvas creaked above Nish, as if someone was creeping across it. He readied the crossbow, knowing that it could make no difference if he shot one soldier, or even ten.
‘There’s a funny smell over here,’ yelled a soldier from near one of the knots Ullii had soaked. ‘Like lamp spirit.’
Nish couldn’t breathe. A hand appeared over the edge, clutching at the melon-sized knot. It was a long time before the other hand appeared beside it. Perhaps the soldier was afraid of heights.
The soldier’s head appeared, bald patch first, looking the other way. Nish readied the bow then froze, hoping vainly that he might not be seen in the gloom, or that the soldier might be careless.
The head turned towards Nish, upside down and red-faced. He did not appear to see him. Nish breathed out, but unfortunately Ullii moved.
Nish fired, but not in time to prevent the soldier’s triumphant cry.
‘He’s down here, surr, underneath the deck. And the seek –’
EIGHT
The bolt struck him in the throat, the soldier lost his grip and fell, head-first, as dead as a stone, the naphtha-soaked tail fluttering at his throat like a necktie. But the alarm had already been raised.
An exultant Ghorr shouted, ‘Captain, call your men back. T’Lisp?’
There came a mutter that Nish could not decipher, just as Ullii reached him. Then came the scratchy, old woman’s voice that sent Ullii crawling into his arms. Nish hooked his way further from the edge and began to reload the crossbow.