by Ian Irvine
If Irisis meant to be reassuring, she wasn’t. Tiaan had no idea what would happen if she turned the thapter upside down. Would the controls work the other way?
Something smashed into the front, knocking the craft sideways. ‘That was close,’ Tiaan said to herself.
‘Ready, Tiaan?’
‘Yes,’ she gasped.
Irisis pushed her arm to the right as far as it would go. It wasn’t far enough.
‘It’s times like this,’ said Irisis, ‘that I wish controllers could be used by more than one person.’
‘I can see the virtue in it,’ said Tiaan dryly.
‘Is the weight easing at all?’
‘A little.’
Irisis put her shoulder under the dead creature and heaved. It moved fractionally. ‘See if you can squeeze out.’
‘Not yet.’
Irisis managed to push Tiaan’s arm across a bit further, then jerked it back sharply. Another building flashed by.
‘Oops!’ Irisis said. ‘Wasn’t looking.’ She pushed it over again, the thapter banked and the lyrinx slid against the right-hand side of the compartment, dragging Tiaan with it. Irisis pushed Tiaan’s arm a fraction more. The weight eased.
Tiaan wriggled free. ‘I feel as though I’ve been crushed flat.’
A blow struck the thapter, forcing it downwards. Clinging to the controller arm, Tiaan pulled it over as far as it would go. They plunged down and to the right. She had to do it now.
‘Hang on,’ she gasped. ‘I’m going to flip.’
The thapter banked even more and the ground appeared, upside down and very near. Irisis shoved and grunted and the dead lyrinx slid out, dragging her with it – a claw had caught in her pants leg. She clung desperately to the straps. The claw tore her trousers down to the knee and came free; the lyrinx fell out of sight.
Tiaan flipped the thapter back to level and was gasping so hard that she had to close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, thousands of enemy were converging on the thapter.
‘Oh, it hurts,’ whispered Irisis, sliding down onto the floor.
Her leg was drenched in blood. Red blood, not purple. It was typical of Irisis to say nothing about her own injury. ‘What happened?’ said Tiaan.
‘Dying spasms,’ Irisis whispered. ‘Its back claws raked up and down my leg.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘It hurts like hell. I think I’ll have a little rest.’ She pillowed her head on her hands and closed her eyes.
She’s bleeding to death like the lyrinx did, Tiaan thought. And I can’t do anything about it.
As she traced a zigzagging path across the sky between the enemy, Tiaan tapped on the lower hatch with her toe. ‘Nish!’
After a long while the hatch lifted. ‘Yes?’ His voice was as pale as Irisis’s face.
‘See to Irisis’s leg. She’s bleeding badly.’ Pushing the controller forward as hard as it would go, she streaked for the safety of the clouds.
Nish came up and began to tear cloth into strips.
‘Tiaan,’ squelched the farspeaker. ‘Tiaan?’
Flydd again. ‘We’re alive and we got the job done,’ she said. ‘We’re coming home.’
‘We lost the other thapter west of Thurkad,’ said Flydd sombrely.
‘What happened?’
‘A flying lyrinx shot Pilot Mittiloe with an aerial crossbow as they were coming in for the attack; can you believe it? The others got a message off before the thapter crashed. They didn’t get near the air shaft.’
Mittiloe had been Kattiloe’s little sister, one of the fourteen-year-old twins. She’d been so proud of her machine. The other pilots would be devastated, as was Nish. He was weeping in dry spasms.
‘What?’ said Tiaan, realising that Flydd was still speaking. ‘I didn’t catch that.’
‘I said, have you still got the spare barrel of spores?’
Tiaan was tempted to say no. How could he ask more of them? ‘It’s down below.’
‘Good. Go to Thurkad and do the job there.’
‘Can we come home then?’ she said with a hint of sarcasm.
‘Of course not. You’ll have to keep watch, at least a week, and tell us what the effects are. If any.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘I’m not confident that it’s going to work,’ said Flydd.
‘Oh. How did the other attacks go?’
‘Against the cities in the east? Well enough – they all got their spores in. So if you can do the same …’
‘We’ll do our best,’ she said and thumped the farspeaker to end the conversation. ‘Whatever we do, it’s never good enough. How’s Irisis?’
‘She’ll live,’ said Nish, who looked ghastly. He had two cuts across his forehead, still ebbing blood, one eye had a crusted red ring around it, and more blood was smeared across his cheek and the back of his hand.
‘And how are you?’
‘My head’s still ringing but I’m all right. Is any of that blood yours?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Ugh! It reeks.’
FIFTY-FOUR
Tiaan flew north at full speed until the lyrinx turned back, then kept going. The mountains curved away to the west, rising ever higher. Some hours later she passed over an enormous river that flowed to the sea, far to the right, debouching through a delta five or six leagues across, with many mouths. A broad road ran slightly east of north, and beyond sight in either direction. The land between the sweep of the mountains and the sea consisted of fertile plains cut by large rivers, though the country was already being reclaimed by forest. Abandoned cities and towns studded the plain. Tiaan counted the remains of a hundred villages below her, but there was no sign of human life.
‘This is Iagador,’ she said without consulting her map. ‘That great river is the Garrflood and the city covering the island between its branches would be Sith. The hilly country ahead to the left, bordering the mountains, is Bannador.’
‘Where’s Thurkad?’ asked Nish, who hadn’t been this way before. On the silk-stealing mission to Thurkad they’d travelled up and back on the western side of the mountains.
‘About sixty leagues up the coast, before the mountains curve back towards the sea. The lyrinx city is almost due west of Thurkad. Hours yet.’
‘Are we going straight there?’
‘We can’t get there before dark. Besides, none of us are up to it today. We’ll have to work out a plan to attack the place tomorrow. I’m going to set down at Sith.’
Shortly the thapter settled on one of the many jetties that ringed that once great trading city. ‘I don’t think there’ll be any enemy here,’ Tiaan said. ‘I’ve flown over Sith quite a few times and never seen them. Still, from here we’ll get a good view if they are coming.’
Nish roused Irisis, who was lying on the floor, and they carried her down onto the wooden deck. There they laid her in the shade of a ramshackle building, once a customs booth, stripped her off and bathed and rebandaged her wounds. Five deep claw marks ran down her thigh, one extending to her shin. She’d lost a lot of blood.
‘They’ll scar,’ said Tiaan. ‘We can’t do anything about that.’
‘I’ve so many scars now that a few more won’t make any difference,’ Irisis said wanly. She tried to perk up. ‘And mostly because of you, Tiaan.’
‘Me?’
Irisis rolled over and pulled her shirt up. Her creamy back was crisscrossed with scars, once purple but now faded to pale red and blue.
Tiaan put her hand over her open mouth. ‘You were whipped?’
‘Overseer Gi-Had did it, on the orders of Nish’s father. He flogged us naked, out in the snow, in front of everyone.’ Irisis managed to grin, though Tiaan couldn’t understand why. ‘Show Tiaan your scars, Nish.’
‘I’d rather not,’ said Nish. He looked deeply ashamed.
‘Because of me?’ said Tiaan.
‘Because of the way we undermined you. And for what Jal-Nish thought we’d done, though it was actually du
e to Eiryn Muss’s treachery.’
‘I’m sorry you were whipped,’ said Tiaan. ‘I hated you both but I wouldn’t have had you suffer that.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ lied Irisis, deliberately offhand. ‘I can hardly remember it.’
‘I remember every stroke,’ said Nish. ‘Not to mention the humiliation of being punished in front of the entire manufactory. It scarred me deeper than the whip.’
‘We earned it,’ said Irisis. ‘It’s not important.’
Nish’s face told a different story, but thankfully it wasn’t directed at Tiaan.
It was a sweltering autumn afternoon and so humid above the water that it was hard to breathe. Nish lay in the shade beside Irisis and went to sleep. Irisis closed her eyes but every so often gave a convulsive shudder of pain. Tiaan didn’t have anything she could give her for it, and she couldn’t bear to watch.
She wandered to the far side of the wharf, out of sight, and climbed down a decaying wooden ladder to the water. It was deliciously cool and inviting so she took off her boots and went in wearing her clothes. The river was low at this time of year and she could see pebbles on the bottom a couple of spans below. She scrubbed the lyrinx blood from her clothes, wishing she could wash the experience away as easily.
‘How are we going to attack the next shaft?’ said Irisis the following day, long before they were in sight of the northern city. ‘They’ll be waiting for us, and if they get the chance they’ll close it off or form a living wall over it.’
‘I was wondering about that,’ said Tiaan, who was already feeling anxious. ‘I think we’d better go in as fast as the thapter can fly, and hope to reach it before they can react.’
‘After their success in killing the pilot of the other thapter they’ll be waiting for us. Can you fly in with the hatch closed?’
‘Not in such a tight space, I’ve got to be able to see all around.’
‘How can we drop the spores and protect you at the same time?’ said Nish.
‘I’ll just have to take the risk. You two will be in more danger than I am.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Nish. ‘If they kill one of us, the others can still go ahead. If they kill you they kill us all – and deprive humanity of another priceless thapter.’
‘What’s the site like?’ said Irisis. ‘Have you seen it before?’
Tiaan recalled the maps to mind before answering. ‘The entry tunnels run horizontally off a series of sandstone cliffs. The air vents lie above the tunnels, disguised as caves, and they won’t be easy to get to. They’re sheltered behind a series of pinnacles rising up in front of the cliffs.’
‘How are we going to reach them?’
Tiaan had to think about that too, for she still hadn’t worked out the best means of attack. ‘I think – I think the best approach would be to fly along the face of the cliff at high speed, really close to the rock so we’ll be hard to detect from on high, and come hurtling around the end of the ridge just south of the city. We’ll appear without warning, hopefully, heading directly for the openings. That’ll give them the minimum time to react.’
‘Won’t it be dangerous, flying so close to the cliff?’ said Nish.
‘Very, but I don’t see any other choice.’
‘What if I took one of the curved side panels off and fixed it halfway over the hatch?’ said Nish.
‘What good would that do?’
‘If I angled it up from the back, it’d protect you from crossbow shots from behind and above, and even a bit from the sides, but you could still see. Except directly behind, of course.’
‘You’d have to fix it pretty solidly or the wind would tear it off,’ Tiaan said dubiously.
‘I’ll see what tools are below,’ said Nish. ‘Why don’t you set down?’
Tiaan settled under the trees and Nish went to work. It didn’t take long to remove a piece of metal from the side, shaped like a shield bent into a shallow curve along its long axis. However, it proved impossible to fix tightly in place, and eventually he had to tie it down.
‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ Nish said gloomily as he surveyed his work.
‘If it stays there,’ said Tiaan. ‘When we’re going quickly the wind might tear it away.’
‘We won’t be any worse off,’ said Nish.
‘We will if the wind drives it into the person who’s dumping the spores from the rear platform,’ said Irisis. ‘That’ll be –’
‘Me, of course,’ Nish said hastily.
‘It’ll be me!’ Irisis said. ‘You hit your head, twice.’
‘And you pumped a couple of flagons of blood out of your leg.’
‘It was no more than an eggcup and I’m going up the back.’
‘You’re not!’
Nish and Irisis were glaring at each other.
‘I can’t believe you’re fighting over who’s most likely to be killed,’ said Tiaan. ‘You’re like a pair of children.’
‘We are not!’ they said together, and burst out laughing.
Tiaan found them incomprehensible. How could anyone joke at a time like this? ‘It’s my thapter and I say who does what. Nish, you’ll dump the spores from the back, and you’ll also be under a metal hood. Irisis, you’ve lost too much blood. You might faint at the critical time.’
‘I’ve never fainted in my life!’ Irisis exclaimed.
‘Anyway, I need you in with me. You’ll probably have to hang onto the hood to stop it flying off, and you can do that easier than Nish could, since you’re taller. No, don’t argue. It’s settled.’
Tiaan’s palm was sweating on the controller. The thapter was hurtling along just a span away from the cliff, and maintaining that distance was much harder than she’d imagined. She hadn’t flown along here before and had no mental picture to rely on. The cliff looked smooth from a distance but, close up, ledges, rock outliers, pinnacles and angled trees appeared out of nowhere. She had to react by instinct to avoid them – there simply wasn’t time to think about it. Moreover, it was another sweltering day and the updraughts and eddies along the cliff could hurl the machine in any direction. Thunderheads were already forming in a line along the escarpment.
‘It’s just around the point of this ridge and back about a quarter of a league,’ said Tiaan. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes,’ said Irisis. Her left arm was upstretched, holding the hood, which was jerking up and down in the wind, threatening to tear the ropes away.
‘What about Nish?’
He was lying prone on the rear platform in his rope harness, under a curved sheet of metal taken from the other side of the thapter. Tiaan hoped the enemy wouldn’t realise he was there until he got up and hurled in the barrel of spores. If they did shoot at him, the black metal ought to protect him from a crossbow bolt, even one from a powerful lyrinx bow.
Irisis looked around the side of the hood. ‘He’s ready.’
As Tiaan reached the end of the rocky point she flung the thapter around in a tight turn, bouncing on the eddying updraughts. Irisis made a muffled sound in her throat as the hood was flung upwards and one foot lifted off the floor. She hauled the hood down again.
Something banged at the back. ‘Is he still there?’ Tiaan said.
‘Yes. Threw him around a bit, though.’
‘The main entrances to the city are just around the curve of the cliff to the right. See the caves?’
‘I see them. And that must be the air opening above them, where all the lyrinx are.’
A globe-shaped mass of flying lyrinx were circling around a smaller opening, the second of five in a row, some twenty spans above and a hundred to the right of the main entrances. In front, three jagged rock pinnacles rose up hundreds of spans from an outlier of yellow sandstone. Between cliff and pinnacles the cleft was only ten spans at its widest point, and half that at its narrowest, through which the thapter would have to negotiate at speed. There were lyrinx on the tops of the pinnacles, too, though from here Tiaan couldn’t tell what weapons they might have.
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‘I don’t see any bellows,’ said Tiaan.
‘It could be inside the air vent,’ Irisis replied.
‘There’s something wrong.’ Tiaan pushed the levers forward and the thapter rocketed along the cliff face.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
The sphere of lyrinx turned in their direction. ‘They’ve seen us.’
‘Ask Nish if he’s ready,’ Tiaan said, clenching her jaw so tightly that the muscles cramped.
‘I already did.’
‘Ask him again!’ she snapped.
Irisis called out. Tiaan couldn’t hear any answer but Irisis said, ‘He’s ready.’
‘Fifty seconds,’ said Tiaan.
Irisis relayed it to Nish.
An updraught sent them flying towards the yellow cliff, so close that Tiaan was sure they would hit. She corrected, the thapter sheered along the cliff and through a veil of water trickling from above, shaving off ferns growing in crevices on the wet surface.
‘That was close,’ said Irisis, seemingly unperturbed.
Tiaan’s knees had gone weak. ‘Thirty seconds.’ You trust me more than I trust myself, she thought.
She lined up with the cleft between the cliff and the pinnacles. At this speed there was no room for error or, hopefully, for a successful counterattack. Two lyrinx on the pinnacles had rocks above their heads, the third a javelard. The sphere of lyrinx in the air were armed with crossbows or other weapons.
‘Ten seconds.’ Irisis relayed it to Nish at the same moment, then counted them down.
‘Five, four, three, two –’
‘No!’ Tiaan screamed, pulling the thapter up so hard that her stomach churned. ‘No, Nish, don’t throw the spores.’
She flicked a glance at the openings as she passed. With an almighty crash, a boulder struck the left flank of the machine, which lurched sideways towards the cliff. There was a lyrinx right in front of her, aiming a crossbow. No time to turn or climb; the thapter ploughed straight into the creature as it fired. Purple blood streaked the screen but Tiaan had no idea where the bolt had gone. A clatter-clatter at the back told her that the machine had been hit several times. She prayed that they hadn’t got Nish.