Chimaera (67 page)

‘I don’t much go for poison,’ said Troist. ‘It’s a dirty way of fighting.’

‘Don’t see what the difference is,’ said Nish. ‘War’s a dirty business. This stuff is an easier death than the fungus, by all accounts. Besides, if those little creatures are what I think they are, we’ll need every advantage we can get.’

Troist turned away to the farspeaker and began calling urgently. Nish crouched low, the crossbow cocked. Where had it gone? The creatures could camouflage themselves almost as well as a lyrinx.

It shot out of the low grass, a spiny, toothy creature the size of a dog. Scooting across the bare earth of the path, claws scrabbling and raising puffs of dirt, it leapt at Troist.

‘Surr, look out!’ cried Nish.

The general turned and the nylatl, or a near cousin, struck him in the chest, knocked him down and lunged for his throat. Troist desperately tried to fend it off with the farspeaker globe but it was knocked out of his hands and rolled away. The claws tore his chest and arm, and Nish could not shoot for fear of hitting him. Soldiers were running from everywhere but they wouldn’t get to the general in time.

Nish dropped the crossbow, which fortunately did not go off, sprang and grabbed the nylatl by its tail. Its spines went through his palm and the venom burned. Nish bit down on the pain, heaved with all his strength and tore the creature off. It tried to go for him but he swung it around his head and hurled it at a rock three or four spans away.

It rolled into a ball in mid-air and the spines took the impact, bending then springing erect. The creature twisted to land on its feet and streaked for the general again. Nish grabbed the crossbow and, as the nylatl sprang, put the bolt in through its open mouth.

The bolt must have torn all the way through it. The nylatl screamed, turned over in the air and landed hard on its back with its legs spread. It kicked twice then went still, though its eyes remained open and its flanks heaved for a minute or two.

‘Don’t go near it!’ cried Nish as a bloody Troist wavered towards the beast. Troist froze.

Nish wrenched the sword out of the general’s hand and came up behind the creature. It rolled over and raised its bloody maw to snap at him. Its back legs scrabbled on the ground. With a savage blow that buried the blade a hand-span into the turf, he cut it in half lengthways.

‘
Now
it’s dead,’ he said after a careful look. ‘They’re flesh-formed creatures, surr. The spines drip poison and they can even spit venom at your eyes, if they get close enough.’

‘You’ve fought one before?’

‘I have, and it was one of the defining moments of my life. Aah!’ Nish wrung his hands, which were already swollen and burning. The pain grew until they felt as if they’d been skinned and dipped in vinegar. He wiped them on the grass, which did no good at all.

‘I owe you my life,’ said Troist, signalling behind him. A healer was already running towards them.

While she was attending to Troist, Nish took up the spyglass again to scan the battlefield. He could barely hold it. ‘I’d say they had about a hundred of these creatures, surr. Aah, Aah!’ The spyglass fell from his hands and he couldn’t pick it up again. ‘They’ve savaged hundreds of our troops. And hundreds more have been killed after their formations collapsed and the lyrinx attacked. If they’d had a thousand nylatl, it might have won them the day.’

‘It might anyway, the way things are going.’ Troist sat down suddenly.

‘How are you, surr?’ said Nish, wincing as a second healer began to bathe the poison off his fingers.

‘I feel … a little faint.’ Troist lay back and closed his eyes.

‘Is he bad?’ Nish asked the healer.

She pulled back Troist’s shirt. ‘He’s been clawed about the chest, but he’ll recover. Unless the poison takes hold or infection sets in.’

‘It knew how to pick its target, surr,’ Nish said to the general. ‘It went straight for you.’

Troist didn’t answer. ‘Bring the farspeaker, quick,’ he said in a faint voice. ‘And get me Flydd.’

An attendant ran up with it.

Flydd answered immediately. He knew about the nylatl attacks. ‘It’s not looking good, Troist. I think we’d better go with the dust again, just to reinforce the idea.’

‘I think so,’ said Troist, and closed his eyes.

The five thapters repeated the operation, exactly as before, except that this time one flew a little too low. Four javelard spears caromed off the sides and a fifth went just over the head of the pilot, who was flying with the hatch open. The sixth and seventh spears converged on the soldier hurling the dust from the rear platform, sending him spinning into space, dead before he hit the ground.

The battle swirled back and forth. The thapters finished their work and the four swept around and back, firing their javelards furiously. The fifth flew across as before, Merryl repeating his message with the speaking trumpet.

Nish looked down at his casualty sheets, adding up the dismal numbers. It was clumsy work with his bandaged hands, but when he finally looked up there was hardly a lyrinx to be seen.

‘Where have they gone?’ he said. When the nylatl had been released there had been more than twenty thousand of the enemy. ‘Troist?
Troist?
’ It must be another trick.

Nish swept the spyglass across the battlefield. The remaining lyrinx changed colour before his eyes until they blended with the grass. They’d had enough.

‘It’s over, surr!’ he roared. ‘The battle’s over. They’re running away.’

The healer helped Troist to sit up, and he took the spyglass in shaking hands. ‘A strategic withdrawal, I would say. There they go, back into the forest. We haven’t exactly beaten them, but we’ve severely damaged their morale. It’s the first time we’ve overcome a superior force on the battlefield. We’ve shown that it can be done.’

‘And we have Klarm to thank for it,’ said Nish. ‘Had he not forced them to battle we’d never have done it. And Yggur’s fungus spores have won the day.’

Troist chuckled. ‘Indeed, the fungus.’

‘I could use a laugh, if there’s some secret I’m not aware of.’

‘Yggur was only able to collect a cupful of spores. The rest was just flour stained with tea.’ Troist roared with laughter.

The victory turned out to be far greater than they’d first thought. On the east coast, from Tiksi north all the way to Crandor, every lyrinx force in the field withdrew on the same day, as if the reversal had shaken confidence in their tactics.

‘Their mindspeech must be better than we’d imagined, to call all the way to the east,’ said Flydd four days after the battle. They were back in the White Palace in Lybing, reviewing the struggle to see what could be learned. ‘I’d like to know more about it.’

‘I don’t know how you’re going to find out,’ said Yggur.

‘Did anyone notice any difference in the lyrinx this time?’

‘They didn’t seem to fight with as much conviction as before,’ said Nish. ‘I’d put that down to the after-effects of hibernation but … I’m no longer sure.’

‘You’re not the first to note it,’ said Flydd. ‘And I thought so too.’

‘And this time they didn’t feed on our dead,’ said Flangers. ‘Not a single body was despoiled, though there were plenty they could have fed on during respites.’

‘Now that
is
odd,’ said Flydd. ‘Something’s changed. I wonder what it could be?’

‘Judging by the personal hygiene of most of our troops –’ Nish began, grinning.

‘This is serious, Nish. Find out why they’ve changed and we may have the key to the war.’

‘I hope so,’ said Troist weakly. His wounds had become infected and he’d been brought to the meeting on a stretcher. ‘We may have won the day, but the cost was unsustainable.’

The smile left Nish’s face as he looked down at the final list. ‘Thirteen thousand dead, another five thousand seriously injured. Many of those will die and half the remainder will never fight again. We’ve lost almost a third of our forces in Borgistry.’

‘But saved two-thirds,’ said the scrutator, ‘while the boost to morale, all over Lauralin, is worth another army the same size. And there’s one other thing: Klarm’s spies report a number of lyrinx dead in Worm Wood, infected by the fungus.’

‘How many?’ said Yggur. ‘I hadn’t really expected there’d be any, spreading it out in the open like that.’

‘Three or four, and I dare say there are more we haven’t found. It’s not the numbers, it’s fear of the disease that’s done the damage. But the most interesting thing of all is their reaction to the defeat. To have withdrawn from all the other conflicts, we must have profoundly shocked them. For the very first time, they’re afraid of us.’

‘Our new tactics unsettled them,’ said Nish.

‘They’re conservative fighters. They prefer to use their own well-tried methods,’ said Troist, trying to sit up and grimacing at the pain in his clawed chest. His healer put two pillows under his back. ‘If they’re overturned, the lyrinx normally take a while to formulate new ones. It’s the first time we’ve taken the advantage, and we must capitalise on it. We must formulate new tactics for each battle, so as to unsettle them again and again.’

‘Dare we take the battle to the enemy and attack them in their cities?’ said Yggur.

‘We dare not,’ said Flydd. ‘We’d need at least a four-to-one advantage for that, and we’d have to be prepared to sacrifice most of our troops. It’s not worth it.’

‘How many cities do they have?’ said Nish. ‘And where are they?’

‘They have six main cities that we know of,’ said Klarm. ‘All underground, plus a number of smaller ones. They’re not comfortable living permanently in small groups, and never breed in such places, though they can live almost anywhere for a time, for some particular purpose.’

‘Such as the group living in the spire at Kalissin,’ said Flydd with a glance at Tiaan, who was sitting quietly up the back as usual. ‘Is that not so, Tiaan?’

‘It is,’ she said.

‘Seldom do they build structures above ground,’ Klarm went on, ‘and then only small and temporary. But underground they construct massive complexes of tunnels and chambers. Their warren of Oellyll, beneath Alcifer, is vast. They have two main cities in the west – one at Alcifer and another in caves in the escarpment west of Thurkad. From those they control the whole of Meldorin and reach out to threaten us here.’

Yggur cleared his throat.

‘Almost the whole,’ Klarm amended. ‘Alcifer is thought to hold seventy thousand. The city west of Thurkad, at least as many.’

‘What about those in the east?’ said Yggur.

‘We don’t know their precise locations because we’ve never been able to get near them. That may change once our thapters are free to search from the air. One city lies in the mountains west of Roros, in Crandor. Another two are somewhere in the wildness of the Wahn Barre, or Crow Mountains, one west of Guffeons and the other west of Gosport. The sixth, and I believe the last, is somewhere in the coastal range south-east of Stassor. As many as forty thousand lyrinx are thought to live in each of those four places.’

‘Why don’t we know exactly where they are?’ said Yggur. ‘I find that hard to comprehend.’

‘They cleared the land of settlers from the very beginning,’ said Flydd. ‘And guarded the borders before they went underground. The cities are all in rugged country, heavily forested. Even with all the Council’s efforts, which have been considerable, we’ve not been able to get a spy into any of those places.’

‘What can’t be seen from outside may be perfectly clear from above,’ said Yggur. ‘So many lyrinx, coming and going, will have beaten paths which must converge on their cities. Finding them must be one of our priorities.’

‘It must,’ said Flydd. ‘And that’s all, Klarm?’

‘As far as we know.’

‘What are their total numbers?’

‘Counting those away from their cities at any time, and those we know of in small settlements, around three hundred and fifty thousand.’

‘I had not thought quite so many,’ said Troist.

‘That includes infants and children, pregnant females, and old ones. The number of adults capable of fighting would be a little over half that number. Two hundred thousand at the very most, though they couldn’t put all of them in the field at any one time.’

‘So the army we’ve just defeated was a quarter of their fighting force, and perhaps half of the troops they have in the west.’

‘I should say so,’ said Klarm.

‘Maybe we despaired when we should not have,’ said Flydd. ‘The enemy know we have six thapters and many farspeakers. After this defeat, they may be afraid that the war is turning our way. And if we were to ally with Malien’s people, and Vithis with his ten thousand constructs, unlikely as that seems to us –’

‘With all the advances we’ve made over the winter, they’re vulnerable in ways they could not have imagined last autumn,’ said Klarm. ‘Back then they were definitely winning the war. But by the dawn of spring their spies and informers would have told them about our thapters and farspeakers. They must have been really worried, to risk so much on the premature strike against Borgistry.’

‘Let’s not get carried away by one inconclusive victory,’ said Yggur. ‘They too have made brilliant advances in the past few years. They’ll come back from this reversal with new tactics and new weapons, and they could snatch back our gains just as easily as we won them.’