Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (45 page)

Ryll sprang onto the terminus of an avalanche. Bounding recklessly from one ice-covered boulder to the next, he let out wild roars of defiance. One false step meant the end. She could sense the thrill of peril, of him pitting his strength against them all.

He took four great leaps, one after another, skidding, claws scrabbling for a grip, teetering, steadying, the great thigh muscles driving him on. Three times Tiaan thought he was going to fall and crush her. Three times he just made it. Across the river the soldiers were frantically regrouping. With a last bound he made it down off the toe of the avalanche and raced toward the river.

Ryll almost got across. He would have, had not one of the following clankers hurtled down the slope just as recklessly, and found a clear passage to the river well downstream. Ignoring Arple’s instruction, it was already ploughing across the snow-covered ice.

Emitting a deafening war cry, Ryll ran onto the ice. The surface was slippery; wind had blown the loose snow away. The clankers were not so encumbered. They converged from four directions, blocking any escape. Making a superhuman effort, Ryll gained the middle of the ice. It was not enough. They were surrounded.

The clanker bounced and jerked on uneven ground. Their headlong passage slowed. ‘Can you still see them?’ cried Nish.

‘Just now and then,’ Irisis replied. ‘The lyrinx is weaving through the boulders. We’ll have to go round. Ah, it’s a bad place for an ambush. I can’t see the beast. There it is – it’s out the other side – it’s got her under its arm. The lyrinx is really flying now. It’s going down a track between the avalanches – too narrow for us.’

Nish was practically jumping up and down. ‘Let me see, you selfish tart!’

Irisis held him away. ‘Stop it! You’re upsetting the operator.’ She turned back to the porthole. Her voice had gone flat. ‘It’s getting away. It’s up on the avalanche, bounding from rock to rock. It’s like a mountain goat,’ she said with a trace of admiration. ‘The only chance is to get it with a spear.’

‘Our shooter is loading one now,’ said Nish. ‘I can hear the ratchet going.’ He knew the sound intimately; one of his principal jobs as artificer was to adjust and repair the javelard, which could shoot a heavy spear a third of a league. It was deadly accurate in the hands of a skilled operator, though not from a moving clanker. Especially not on uneven ground.

A bell rang in front of the operator. The clanker stopped. The sighting mechanism creaked above them.
Crack
! Again the clanker jerked, though not as hard as when the catapult had fired. They moved off again. It was snowing. The wind intensified, whirling the flakes about. The weather was turning bad.

‘Any luck?’ cried Nish.

‘No. We’re too late; it’s nearly to the ice …’

Her voice trailed away. Perhaps she was thinking through the consequences of failure, for them. Nish certainly was.

‘It’s on the river. The ice must be thin; I can see patches of water. Arple will never risk the clankers out there.’

‘We’ve lost,’ Nish said dully.

‘Oh!’ Irisis exclaimed. ‘Brilliant. Your father did have a trump after all. Oh, yes!’

‘What?’ he said frantically.

‘There’s another clanker coming down the far side of the river, with a squad of soldiers. He must have sent them out secretly, before the blizzard, just in case.’

‘A lucky guess!’ Nish felt miffed that, after all, the success would be his father’s.

‘Maybe. The lyrinx would have had to cross this river somewhere. From a high place they could have seen our flares in the night. Plenty of time to get into position.’

‘The beast has stopped,’ Irisis continued in a low voice. ‘It knows it can’t get away.’

The clanker stopped too. ‘Are we close?’ Nish was practically screaming with frustration.

‘Just at the edge of the river.’

Pulling the hatch up, he leapt out. Ullii, who had been silent during the long chase, let out a wailing cry and snatched at his hand, but too late. Irisis went after him. Ullii crept out too. The light was fading; snow began to fall more heavily. Jal-Nish was making hand-signals to the fourth clanker.

‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ said Irisis, stumbling on blocky ice.

‘It’s a lousy one.’ Nish kept going. ‘But I’m not going to cower inside after all we’ve been through. I want to see it taken.’

‘Tiaan isn’t even running,’ said Irisis. ‘Maybe she
was
the spy after all.’

‘I’ll have none of that talk,’ grated Gi-Had, peering through his spyglass. ‘Her hands are tied!’

‘She’s more afraid of us than of it.’ A rare interjection from Ullii, beside Nish.

Only Nish heard, but he was too distracted to notice. The wind drifted clouds of snow across the ice. Nish could hear it howling through the rods and wires of the javelard. He shivered. It was going to be a miserable night, whatever happened.

In a movement too fast to see, the lyrinx pulled Tiaan up before its chest. Gi-Had called out to it to surrender. It did not move.

‘What are we going to do?’ said Nish. ‘If we fire, Tiaan will surely die.’

‘I want her alive,’ grated Jal-Nish. He called Fyn-Mah over. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

‘Not at this distance,’ the querist said. ‘Besides, there’s people watching. The Secret …’

‘Damn the rules! Try!’

The querist shrugged then made a circle of her fingers and sighted through it. She whistled between her teeth, her black hair stood up and a globe of mist condensed in the air several paces in front of her.

Ullii screamed as there came a clap like two shields being struck together. A cloud of loose snow was kicked up to the right of the lyrinx. A roar echoed back and, as if hit by a fist of compressed air, Fyn-Mah was tossed off her feet.

Nish helped her up. The querist’s lip was bleeding. ‘It’s too strong,’ she mumbled, cross-eyed. ‘Reflected it back.’

Irisis was staring at her pliance, which momentarily glowed a baleful green before fading.

‘What is it?’ Nish said.

‘I have no idea, but something just activated my pliance and I saw the field as clear as day, streaming out in all directions.’

‘Was it the beast or Tiaan’s crystal?’ Jal-Nish demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ said Fyn-Mah, ‘but the lyrinx is strong in the Art. Too strong for me.’

Irisis was pleased at the admission. The snooty querist was not as capable as she made out. ‘We want the crystal too,’ Irisis reminded them.

Jal-Nish gave her a considered glance. ‘Indeed we do, but we want Tiaan more. I’ll have the head of anyone that harms her. If the beast doesn’t surrender, Arple, fire when I say the word.
For its legs
.’

‘What if you hit Tiaan?’ said Gi-Had.

‘She doesn’t need legs to be an artisan.’

Ryll stopped midway between two beads of clear water. The ice was thinner here. Tiaan felt it bow beneath their weight.

‘Release the prisoner, lyrinx!’ screamed Gi-Had. ‘Hold your arms high.’

Ryll clutched Tiaan to his chest. She could feel his muscles quivering. ‘Shoot me and she dies,’ he roared back.

Tiaan looked from one clanker to another. Their javelards seemed to be pointing directly at her. But surely … surely they were not shooting at her.

‘Fire!’ snapped Jal-Nish.

The revelation struck her. If they could not get her back, they would kill her rather than allow her talents to be used by the enemy.

The clankers fired. They
were
trying to kill her. Ryll moved so fast that she had no idea what had happened. They went head first into the water. The shock was so great that Tiaan felt her heart stop beating. Her lungs went into spasm. It was as if she had been buried in ice.

A
s the lyrinx dived through the hole in the ice, Irisis let out an involuntary cry of anguish. The clankers fired, one first, followed by the other three together. Two javelards went through the hole. A third whistled over the heads of Jal-Nish and Gi-Had, to plough into the toe of an avalanche mound. The fourth hit to one side of the hole and went skidding across the river. Its bladed tip carved the ice with an ear-piercing shriek, it curved around in an arc, sending up a spray of ice like a turning skier, and slammed into the front foot of the fourth clanker.

‘Stop!’ roared Arple, waving his arms. ‘You’ll kill somebody!’ He ran to the ragged hole, which was about the size of a clanker. The other troops followed. ‘Careful. It’s thin here!’

It was getting dark. The snow fell thickly now. Jal-Nish was beside himself. His face had gone purple. ‘If it’s got away with her,’ he choked, ‘if the crystal is lost, I’ll have every man whipped to within an ell of his life.’

The soldiers went still in their ranks. Arple stalked to the nearest troop and ordered them to be silent. He turned back to the perquisitor. ‘I’d be careful of making threats out here, all alone,’ he said quietly.

‘Are you threatening
me?
’ cried Jal-Nish.

‘I’m a loyal soldier, surr.’ Arple touched his helm. ‘I’m trying to protect you. My troops have done their best ever since we left. We followed your orders, surr. Had we been able to fire at will we would have had the beast.’

Jal-Nish spun the other way, his round belly quivering. He looked as if he was going to burst.

Nish went to him, stepping carefully on the ice. ‘Are you all right, father?’

‘If she’s lost …’ Jal-Nish began. His purple face went soggy. For one horrified moment Nish thought his father was going to burst into tears. ‘Aah, Cryl-Nish! She could have made me.’

‘She could still be alive, father. There’s still a chance.’

Jal-Nish waved him away. Nish hurried towards the hole. ‘Did you see blood in the water?’ he asked Arple.

‘No, but doesn’t mean we didn’t hit the beast. The water is really racing under the ice.’

Jal-Nish stalked toward them, holding his face rigid. ‘The artisan must be found, sergeant, and her crystal. I …’ He hesitated. ‘She has secrets. She is vital to the war.’

Arple snapped to attention. ‘The war!’ He began shouting orders. One clanker headed downstream. ‘Troops, fall into pairs. Tar up stakes, light them and go down the river as far as the bend. Check every patch of water; be very careful. Nix and Thurne, head upstream. I doubt that a lyrinx could swim that way – they’re hopeless in the water – but we’ll take no chances. Stay in pairs. Move carefully. Beware of the ice. And if the weather closes in, follow the edge of the river until you see our flares. We’ll camp here.’ He indicated the jumbled rocks by the river bank.

‘Lyrinx are much tougher than we are,’ Arple continued. ‘Never think that one is dead until you see its corpse, preferably with the head well severed from the body. And even then, give it another ten minutes. Many a soldier has seen his guts spilled on the ground from a dead lyrinx’s last reflex.’ The soldiers hurried off, their flares disappearing in the whirling snow.

He turned away. ‘We must set the camp up while there’s light, perquisitor.’

‘Damn the camp, I want every man …’ Jal-Nish broke off, as if realising how foolish he sounded.

‘It’s got to be done now, surr,’ Arple insisted. ‘For our own survival. And if the artisan is found we’ll need fire and hot food to save her.’

He gave orders to search the avalanche mounds for firewood. The remaining soldiers went about the set-up efficiently, slinging tents in the shelter of the boulders, making a latrine around the back, fetching water and erecting the pitch-burning cooking stoves. The clankers were drawn up side by side. The fourth was a different design from the others, shorter but more bulbous and with lengths of rod bound to the top. Nish wondered what they were for. Its troops, in white uniforms, were led by a tall, stern-looking sergeant, Rustina, a young woman with long red hair. That was unusual – only rarely were women of child-bearing age permitted to become soldiers. No one knew anything about her and Rustina’s troops were close-mouthed.

‘What are your orders, perquisitor?’ Arple asked when everything was organised.

‘Search all night!’ Jal-Nish said curtly. ‘Tiaan must be found. And if we can take the beast alive, so much the better. If it
has
survived, it will be weak.’

‘No one could survive in
that
water, surr.’

‘I still have to see the bodies. The scrutator will expect no less.’

‘They would be a league downstream by now, under the ice.’

‘Would you like to explain that to the scrutator?’ Jal-Nish hissed.

‘No,’ said Arple calmly. ‘I would not.’

‘And neither would I. We’ll search every hole, and the banks around.’

Irisis joined a search detail. Nish went with one of the clankers up the slope to a gully where earlier they’d seen a stand of straggly pines. An axeman soon brought down a dead tree and the clanker dragged it back to the camp, where it was cut into fuel for the night. The soldiers gathered cones and kindling, not wanting to use the precious pitch stores unless they had nothing else. They could be trapped in a blizzard for days up here, even in autumn.

Irisis returned alone from the search as the fire blazed up. She looked depressed. ‘No sign of either of them,’ she said to Jal-Nish, who grunted and walked off.