Chimaera (92 page)

‘Have you … er, given any thought to what he said?’

‘I’ve thought of nothing else, Crafter. I’ve wracked my brains for a solution that doesn’t involve wiping out the enemy. My guts burn like acid, I can’t sleep, I –’

He laid his head against the side of the clanker and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Anyway, that’s my worry, not yours. Let’s go over it one more time.’

‘It’s got to be their power patterner,’ said Irisis blearily, much later, as the sun rose over the salt.

‘Of course it is,’ snapped Flydd, who’d reluctantly come to the same conclusion at the end of the sleepless night. ‘I just don’t see how it can be affecting our field controller. That’s why we put those banks of charged crystals at the heart of it – so it wouldn’t need to draw on the field at all. Otherwise any node-drainer could bring it down.’

‘Maybe that’s the problem,’ said Irisis. ‘I wonder …? What has the field been doing during our flight? Has anyone been watching it?’

‘It’s behaving oddly, Crafter,’ said the youngest artisan, Nouniy, who was only seventeen and wore her blonde hair in a myriad of plaits, in imitation of famous Pilot Kattiloe. ‘It’s been whirling, actually.’

‘Whirling?’ said Irisis.

‘That’s the only way I can describe it.’ Nouniy demonstrated its motion in the air with a fingertip.

‘Curious,’ said Irisis, touching her pliance and taking a look for herself. Pulling the rear hatch open, she knelt down and began scratching a design on the salt with the point of her knife.

‘What are you doing?’ said Flydd, crouching beside her with an audible click of his kneecaps.

‘The cycling field must be inducing a contrary field around your sensing crystals, cancelling them out. So the rest of the field controller is working but, since you can’t sense how the field is changing, you can’t do anything with it. Now, if we were to just add …’

She sketched for five or six minutes, stood up and looked at the design from all sides, then nodded. ‘That’ll work. Let’s get it made.’ Irisis carefully carved the pattern out of the salt and crushed it under her boot, in case of spies or traitors.

An aide ran up with a folded message strip. Flydd unfolded it and handed it back to her. She bowed and withdrew.

‘Better hurry,’ said Flydd. ‘Our entire army is on the salt. Whatever the enemy have in mind, it’s not going to be long in coming. And get someone to call Tiaan again.’

Each time a thapter was heard he ran out and stared up at the sky, but Tiaan didn’t appear.

After the modifications had been made, Irisis successfully tested the field controller and went looking for Flydd to tell him the good news. He was preparing a last-ditch defence. If that failed their only options were a suicidal attack on an enemy that vastly outnumbered them, or a desperate flight into the Dry Sea. And everyone knew how that would end.

Troist’s twelve-legged clanker came creaking and groaning towards them, stopped, and the rear hatch was thrown open. Gilhaelith staggered out, as white as the salt beneath his feet. He threw up and wavered off towards a vacant tent.

Troist got out soon after, tally sheets under his arm, and came looking for Flydd to give his report.

‘What’s the matter with Gilhaelith?’ said Flydd. ‘He’s usually the picture of self-control.’

‘I took him up to one of the battlefronts. I thought it’d do him good to see what his meddling had caused.’

‘He didn’t like it?’

‘It was a savage attack, and our counterattack was even more bloody. We were right in the thick of it and when it was over, the bodies – theirs and ours – were piled higher than my clanker. A lot of them were in pieces.’

‘That’s what war is like,’ said Flydd. ‘It doesn’t even shock me any more.’

‘It still has an impact on me,’ said Troist. ‘But Gilhaelith had never seen a battle before. I thought he was going to throw up all over my operator.’

‘It’ll do him good,’ Flydd said callously.

‘It’s given him a lot to think about. How’s it going?’ said Troist, nodding towards the field controller.

‘It’s got to work,’ said Irisis, gnawing on a leathery strip of some unidentifiable dried meat, as tasteless as anything she’d ever eaten in the manufactory.

‘Only if humanity is fated to survive,’ said Klarm, who’d recently came back from a spying flight in Chissmoul’s thapter. He was drinking strong black ale, his third for the morning, despite the edict that only weak beer was allowed before battle. Klarm had to have his drink. ‘It may be that our time is over and the lyrinx are due to inherit Santhenar.’

‘I always thought, if we did lose,’ said Irisis, ‘it would be after some mighty siege lasting for weeks, full of incredible deeds of courage and derring-do. I didn’t think they’d just drive us out onto the salt until we died of thirst.’

‘There’ll be an almighty battle before it comes to that. I’m not going out with a whimper.’

‘Nor I,’ she said fiercely.

‘I’ll make my last stand beside you any day,’ Klarm said.

‘Then bring it on,’ she said savagely, flinging the dried meat away. ‘With Nish gone, I don’t have anything left to hope for.’

‘He could have survived,’ said Klarm. ‘I’ve been to the site and found the bodies of the soldiers, but no Nish.’

‘They must have taken him away to question him. And after that, to eat him.’

‘The lyrinx don’t eat people any more, Irisis. Gilhaelith was right about that.’

‘They still kill them, though.’

Irisis stood in the shade of the canvas, watching as Flydd readied the field controller for a last desperate attempt. The struggle was going to be a long-range one, field controller against power patterner, so her work was done unless something broke or needed adjustment. The scrutator was sitting under a piece of sailcloth stretched out with ropes and propped up on poles to form an open shelter whose roof rose about four spans above the salt. He was stripped to the waist and covered in perspiration. She wished she could do the same but that wouldn’t have done in an army camp. Down on the salt, autumn was like midsummer up above.

A stone’s throw away, under another canvas, Klarm prepared to direct his team of operators, who were seated at a long table. Each had a farspeaker globe in front of them, tuned to the massive mind-shockers carried in the forward line of clankers. He and Flydd had concluded that the mind-shockers hadn’t worked because of the failure of the field controller. Runners stood ready to carry messages back and forth between Klarm and Flydd’s team at the field controller.

It squatted on five stubby legs in front of Flydd: an assortment of wires, crystals and strangely curved glass tubes protruding from the top of an open glass barrel. Its operator, Hilluly, another of those young cousins Nish had first tested at Fiz Gorgo, sat by the scrutator’s side, her hands in wired gloves and a bird’s nest of tangled wires and crystals on her head. She was petite, with ashy hair and Yggur’s eyes. She wore a simple white gown belted tightly at a waist that could have been spanned by Klarm’s hands.

A copy of Tiaan’s original but incomplete node map was wrapped around the barrel of the field controller, which could be rotated back and forth. Graduated brass scales ran down the length of the barrel and around its circumference, with pointers that could be slid along to take measurements.

‘What if we offered to give them the relics?’ said Irisis.

‘Out
here
? And give up the one small lever we have left?’

‘Or threaten to destroy them?’

‘I already tried that one,’ Flydd said ruefully.

Ten spans away, at the far side of Flydd’s shelter so the devices would not interfere with one another, Daesmie hunched over Golias’s globe, relaying messages from the army detachments distributed around them to the four points of the compass, and from Chissmoul’s thapter on watch high above. A runner stood by Daesmie. Because the salt was so flat, the enemy’s movements could not be seen from here. If they broke, or attacked, the news would be relayed at once.

Irisis went over to read what Daesmie was writing. ‘Still no change,’ she said. ‘None of the lyrinx armies have moved all morning.’

They’re playing with us, Irisis thought. They can overrun us whenever they like. She carried the message slate to Flydd, who had a pointed ebony cane in his left hand. He scanned it, nodded and waved her away. Irisis stood well back, and the struggle began.

Flydd pointed to a purple coloured node on Tiaan’s map with the tip of the cane, and said, ‘Ifis 44, Nihim 5, Husp 220, Gyr 8.’

Hilluly moved her fingers inside the gloves. A green light spiralled along one of the twisted tubes; a red one slid down another like an icicle down a wire. Strange poppings came from inside the field controller. Sweat broke out on her forehead.

‘They’ve countered your move with the power patterner, surr,’ Hilluly gasped.

Flydd cursed. ‘Ifis 38, Nihim 11, Husp 187, Gyr 22.’ More lights and noises. Much more sweat.

‘Countered at once,’ panted Hilluly.

‘Oh, have they?’ cried the scrutator. ‘Then let them try
this
!’

A third list, different names again, but the numbers were all single digits.

Hilluly was rigid, apart from her dancing fingers. A line of flies, which were everywhere down here, gathered on her wet lips. Irisis went to shoo them away but Flydd said, ‘No!’

Hilluly gasped and fell forward. The flies rose and settled on the back of her gown, which was wet with perspiration.

‘Now you can help her,’ said Flydd.

Irisis gave the operator a cool drink. Hilluly sat up, rubbing her eyes with her gloved hands, then tore them off and examined her fingers. They were bright red. She rubbed them on her gown and said, ‘Not that time either, surr.’

He rose from his seat, his every rib showing. ‘Thank you, Hilluly.’ Flydd went across to the farspeaker operator. ‘Any movement yet?’

‘No, surr,’ said Daesmie. ‘The enemy seem to be waiting for something to happen.’

‘Keep listening. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Irisis walked out with him. ‘That looked like a game of Strategies.’

‘It’s exactly like it. I don’t have a perfect understanding of the fields here, and neither do they. I have to guess where their knowledge lies, and their ignorance, and they the same about me. It seems we’re evenly matched – whoever guesses or bluffs best will be the winner.’

‘Or whoever lasts the longest.’

‘True. They have greater endurance than we do.’

‘Do you know anything about their operator?’ said Irisis.

‘Gilhaelith said it would be Ryll, the wingless male who made the power patterner, probably assisted by Liett. She worked with him to develop the first nylatl at Kalissin.’

‘Is there any way we can target them?’

‘We might if Tiaan were here. She knows them both.’ Flydd glanced out at the empty sky.

‘I don’t think she’s coming back,’ Irisis said quietly.

‘Neither do I.’

‘It’s going to be a long day.’

‘I can’t last all day and neither can Hilluly. She’s already flagging.’

‘We have other operators.’

‘Aye, but to change from one to another in the middle of a contest rarely works. We’re a team, Hilluly and I, and this extraordinary device you built.’

‘Dozens of artisans worked on it, not just me.’

‘And you supervised them, Crafter.’

‘Let’s see the device prove itself before we praise it,’ Irisis said superstitiously. ‘And Xervish, even if you win the game, what then?’

‘We don’t die immediately. More than that I can’t say.’

‘But you have a plan.’

‘Yes. I just don’t have much hope that it’ll work.’

Flydd went across to Klarm. Irisis followed at a distance. She had to know what was going on.

‘The enemy haven’t moved,’ Flydd said.

Klarm stretched and rubbed his eyes. ‘How long will it be? I can’t keep everyone on alert all day.’

‘Tell them to put their heads down, if they want to. It’ll be a while before you can use the mind-shockers, assuming we get that far,’ said Flydd. ‘I’ll give you warning.’ He swilled down a gullet full of tepid water and turned back. ‘All right. Let’s see what we can do now.’

The struggle went on, Flydd calling the numbers, Hilluly operating the field controller, and the flies hovering as if waiting for the inhabitants of the tent to die.

‘There’s movement in the south-west segment, surr,’ called Operator Daesmie.

‘Which way?’

‘The enemy are moving away.’

‘Quickly?
Fleeing
?’ he said hopefully.

‘No; quite slowly.’

‘Oh well,’ said Flydd. ‘It’s a point to our side, I suppose.’

‘Unless it’s a feint,’ said Irisis.

‘We’ll soon know.’

It was not a feint. The enemy just seemed to be reorganising their forces. The game went on almost to dusk, by which time Hilluly was so exhausted that Irisis had to sit beside her and hold her up, and even subtly try to feed power to her, a dangerous thing to do at the best of times. Despite Flydd’s earlier words, his back was as straight as ever and he seemed to be calling the numbers more confidently than before.

‘Tell Klarm to get ready,’ Flydd said suddenly. ‘I think we’re wearing them out.’

‘Is that possible?’ said Irisis. ‘The lyrinx are tireless.’

‘Physically, maybe,’ he said. ‘But their device must take more out of them than yours does.’

‘We designed it that way.’

‘They’re moving,’ shouted Daesmie. ‘They’re moving, surr!’

‘Tell Klarm to do his work with the mind-shocker,’ snapped Flydd. ‘Yes, they’re cracking. One last effort, Hilluly. Now,
now
! All the way.’

The messenger ran off.

‘The enemy have broken in the southern segment,’ called the farspeaker operator ten minutes later. ‘You’ve won, surr. Well done.’

‘It’s just the first round,’ said Flydd, ‘but we’ll keep the pressure up. Can you last a bit longer, Hilluly?’

‘I think so,’ she croaked.

‘This will be easier. Holding them isn’t as big a trial as breaking them in the first place.’

The struggle raged for days as Flydd and Klarm tried to drive the enemy’s vastly superior forces south-west along the edge of the Dry Sea, towards the marshland and salt lakes below the Trihorn Falls, and the enemy tried to force them out into the waterless salt. After the first day, Flydd had to use a team of three operators, taking turns with them, for the work was so exhausting that none could keep it up for more than a few hours. Irisis called Tiaan over and again but heard no reply.