Chimaera (73 page)

She plummeted towards the pinnacles, slowing so she could dart between them. The lyrinx were lining up their weapons. She swerved left, then right.

‘Keep your head down, Irisis!’

Irisis ducked just in time as bolts spanged off the sloping hood. She made a muffled noise in her throat and let go of the hood, pulling her hand down to reveal the blood welling from her wrist. The bolt had gone straight between the arm bones, leaving a hole that she could have slipped her little finger through.

The hood slammed up and tore half-off, flapping back and forth against the hatch cover. Tiaan almost allowed herself to be distracted, almost hit the pinnacle. She slipped between it in a positive cannonade of bolts and flashed towards the vent.

The lyrinx were pulling a cover across it, a frame covered in fabric painted to match the colour and texture of the rock. They weren’t quite in time. Tiaan struck it head-on and fortunately the frame was timber, not metal. It smashed, the fabric tore on the sides of the thapter and they were in.

‘Nish,’ she shouted over the scream of the mechanism. ‘Do it now. Irisis, what’s going on?’

Irisis pulled herself up on the side and blood dripped on Tiaan’s cheek.

‘He’s down! Ah, Nish, Nish!’ Irisis scrambled up onto the back platform, heedless of her bloody wrist.

Tiaan clambered up as far as she could go while still holding the controller. The rear hood looked crushed against the platform, as if a boulder had been dropped on it, though Tiaan could have sworn she hadn’t heard any impact, and two javelard spears had gone through it as well, pinning it to the platform. She couldn’t see Nish, who was below the coaming around the platform.

There had been no dust flying past them in the suction from the bellows, so he hadn’t got the spores away. They’d failed and she couldn’t see the barrel. It was time to go.

Tiaan jerked the thapter backwards. ‘Hang on, Irisis!’

Irisis was inside the coaming, tearing at the crushed hood, trying to lift it, but couldn’t budge the spears. You’ll never get him out, Tiaan thought. Anyway, he’s better off there, if he is alive.

The thapter went backwards as Irisis came to her knees and she nearly fell off. She hung on, dragged the barrel out from under the hood and punched the top in with her fist. She hurled it over the side just as Tiaan accelerated backwards and shot out of the vent, the rush of wind buffeting three lyrinx out of the way as if they’d been hit with the end of a piston.

The barrel struck the rocky rim of the vent, letting loose a cloud of spores, but fell outside. Tiaan didn’t see what happened after that, for Irisis lost her footing as the thapter accelerated. She slid head-first down towards Tiaan’s flapping hood and managed to wrap her arms around it.

‘Hold tight!’ Tiaan screamed, spinning the thapter in a semicircle. Irisis’s legs were thrown over the side and Tiaan could see the strain on her face as she struggled to hang on.

There was nothing Tiaan could do except tilt the thapter the other way and pray, for lyrinx were coming from every direction. The gap between the pinnacles came into view and she went for it.

Clang, clang, smash
. The binnacle that had been broken the previous day now shattered, sending glass, crystal and what she thought were drops of quicksilver flying in all directions. Fragments of glass stung her face and she closed her eyes, involuntarily.

For a second Tiaan lost sight of the gap and had to keep going from her mental image, praying that it would take her through. The gap wasn’t wide and she felt a horrible moment of panic that Irisis’s dangling legs would be torn off between the thapter and the stone.

She opened her eyes and Irisis was clinging grimly, desperately, to the flapping hood. The thapter was moving too quickly for the lyrinx to catch it, though it was still within range of their weapons. Tiaan didn’t dare weave around in case she threw Irisis off.

There were more crashes, thuds and spangs as the thapter was hit by everything the enemy could fire at it. At least one bolt ricocheted off the hood that partly protected her now.

It wasn’t protecting Irisis. What if the lyrinx targeted her? She had to do something. Tiaan put the nose down so sharply that Irisis’s legs went up in the air, and directed the thapter towards the canopy of the forest out of which the pinnacles rose.

‘How are you doing?’ Tiaan yelled.

‘I can’t hold on much longer,’ Irisis said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve got no strength in my injured wrist.’

Her arms were wrapped around the hood, and she had managed to twist her bloody wrist through the rope that was barely holding the hood on, but her fingers were slipping as the hood flapped up and down.

What if it tore away? It looked as if it might. Tiaan reached up on tiptoe and took hold of her friend’s wrist, the uninjured one. It was more reassurance than security, but Irisis managed a smile.

‘Just a few seconds more,’ Tiaan said. ‘We’re nearly down. Just hang on a few seconds more.’

The crowns of tall trees loomed up. Tiaan slowed, directed the thapter towards a gap and risked a glance over her shoulder. A host of lyrinx were heading after her like a swarm of wasps, and she could see dozens more threading their way down the steep slope below the cliff. She’d have to be quick.

The hood pulled free of the fastenings Nish had fixed to the rim of the hatch. The wind threw it backwards, and Irisis with it, until it was brought up by the ropes. Tiaan lost her grip on Irisis’s wrist. Irisis slammed into the rise leading up to the rear platform, was held there momentarily by the wind, then began to slip inexorably down the side.

It was still a long way to the ground. Tiaan couldn’t reach back to Irisis now; couldn’t do anything but head for the steeply sloping forest floor and hope she got there before Irisis fell.

She didn’t quite make it. The thapter was still five or six spans up when Irisis’s fingers were pulled free and she went over the side.

T
iaan threw the thapter at the ground, which sloped steeply here. The base of the machine hit wet, clayey soil and kept sliding, and she had to spin it around to avoid trees and rocks. She slowed, stopping against the base of a giant tree whose trunk was wider than the thapter was long.

She couldn’t see Irisis anywhere. A fall from that height onto solid ground could well have killed her, but the slope was so steep here, and the ground so slippery, that it would have helped to break her fall.

The sky had clouded right over now and grown ominously black. Lightning flashed, thunder roared and it began to rain. A spatter of hail struck the thapter.

‘Irisis?’ she yelled.

No reply. Tiaan could hear the lyrinx crashing down the slope above her. They’d be here within minutes. The fliers would be even quicker.

Her orders had been made more explicit after she’d nearly lost the thapter in the burning silk warehouse. Tiaan was not to risk the thapter, or herself, more than was necessary to complete the job. And once the mission had succeeded, or failed in this case, she must not risk the thapter to save any life but her own.

Her duty was absolutely clear. If she couldn’t find Irisis in the next minute she had to abandon her to whatever fate the lyrinx had in store for such a continued thorn in their side. And there still hadn’t been time to check on Nish. Tears pricked at her eyes and she dashed them away furiously. There wasn’t time for that either.

‘Irisis?’ she shouted.

Tiaan calculated where Irisis should have fallen and circled up and across the slope, looking for a body. She didn’t find one though she did discover a long yellow streak where Irisis had hit the slope, tearing though the thin grass and exposing the clay underneath.

Tiaan followed it down. Irisis must have slid a long way, and fast enough to smash bones or skull if she hit an obstacle. The minute was up. She hesitated, then decided to give Irisis another thirty seconds. The enemy couldn’t be that close yet, surely?

She headed directly down and saw a pair of clay-covered feet sticking up in the air some twenty spans below. Irisis had skidded all that way, then fallen over a couple of embankments before embedding herself in a wiry bush.

‘Are you all right?’ Tiaan called, settling the thapter against a tree trunk to prevent it from sliding. She was afraid to get out in case it slipped.

The feet moved. Irisis began to pull herself out of the bush. ‘Just wonderful,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Apart from ten thousand bruises, a badly wrenched ankle and a hole in my wrist I could thread a needle through.’

‘Can you hop?’ said Tiaan. ‘They’re after us.’

‘I heard them.’ Irisis stood up, holding her left foot up. ‘What’s that?’

It was a crashing and a rumbling that was growing ever louder. Tiaan spun around, staring up the hill. ‘It sounds like a landslide.’

‘It’s not,’ said Irisis. ‘They’re rolling boulders –’

The ground shook and a rock half the size of the thapter came thundering though the trees, bouncing ten spans high. Passing to Tiaan’s right, it struck the trunk of a big tree, smashing it into jagged splinters as long as Tiaan was tall. Leaves and wood rained down, fortunately below them, then the upper part of the tree toppled and fell down the slope. The boulder, hardly slowed by the impact, kept going and they heard more ground-shaking crashes before it disappeared beyond their ken.

‘Go!’ cried Irisis. ‘You know your orders. Don’t risk the thapter. You can’t get me in by yourself.’

Tiaan hesitated. She was obedient by nature. But then again … She leapt over the side, slid down the greasy slope and gave Irisis her shoulder. The rain grew heavier, running into her eyes until she could barely see. It had been warm at first but the drops now felt like melted ice.

‘Hop as if the fate of the world depended on it,’ she said, terrified that the thapter would slide away and be lost.

Irisis did so, ignoring the pain, and they slipped and staggered up towards the thapter. Another boulder came crashing down, smaller than the first and not bouncing as high, but all the more dangerous because of that. It followed the path of the other and disappeared.

They reached the side just as there came a rumble of thunder, though there was no lightning. The ground shook. Another crash and it shook again; the thapter moved.

‘That’s one hell of a boulder this time,’ said Irisis, putting her good foot onto the ladder. ‘Sounds like half a pinnacle.’

Tiaan felt a spasm of fear.
Thump.
She boosted Irisis up and pulled herself up the ladder after her. Thankfully Irisis had the presence of mind not to hesitate at the top. She simply went through the hatch head-first, heedless of her injuries.

Thump-thump
. The ground shook so hard that the thapter began to slide.

Tiaan fell in on top of Irisis, who let out a groan as Tiaan landed on her wrenched ankle. Tiaan pulled herself up using the controller.

Thump thump, thump thump. Thump-thump
.

She jerked up on the flight knob and the thapter lifted, with agonising slowness. One span, two, three. And then she saw it coming and could not contain herself.

The lyrinx had toppled half of one of the pinnacles, which had broken into two gigantic boulders, bigger than houses, plus a host of smaller, thapter-sized ones. They were thundering down the mountainside, spreading into a fan of devastation hundreds of spans across, smashing trees and rocks to fragments as they came. The thapter was right in their path and from a standing start she couldn’t see how she could get high enough to escape.

Thump. Thump-thump
.

Tiaan wiped her eyes with her free hand and tried to see where she could go. The two huge boulders were bouncing twenty or thirty spans high, the smaller ones five or ten. She couldn’t rise above them in time.

The only chance was to fly up the slope, between the biggest boulders, until she gained enough speed to sweep upwards. Tiaan turned that way, knowing that neither the height nor direction of the bounces was predictable. Just as dangerously, the air between the fan of boulders was full of fragments of rock and pieces of shattered wood, a hailstorm of it.

She had to fly on instinct, as she had before. Tiaan went left so as to put herself between the two big boulders, which were roaring towards her. She rose to avoid a pair of trees and corrected again as the right-hand boulder bounced in towards its twin. The next bounce took it out again and for an instant her hand froze on the controller, seeing that it was heading directly for her.

An instinctive wiggle took the thapter sideways; the boulder whistled past, its windstorm buffeting the machine wildly, and smashed off the top half of the tree just below her. She took the machine up and curved away as the smaller boulders, carrying a landslide of rocks, clay and wood with them, rumbled underneath.

The flying lyrinx, who had been hanging back to see the result of their handiwork, now turned towards her in an angry swarm, but it was too late. Tiaan peeled away and fled into the now freezing rain as fast as the battered machine could go.

Ten or fifteen leagues away, out of sight of pursuit, Tiaan set down on the first hill that had a clear view in all directions. She was still shaking.