The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (54 page)

‘Does the prohibition include me?’ said M’lainte fiercely.
She wasn’t a tall woman but she towered over Aimee.

‘Yes, it does!’ hissed Aimee. ‘And I don’t care how proud or
important you are.’

They faced each other like a plump old turkey and a furious
bantam hen, and finally M’lainte grinned. ‘Then I’d better get the controller
going.’

She sat down and continued working on the device in her lap.
Suddenly the air-sled’s mechanism produced a low, humming note, followed by a
higher one, before dying away.

‘Did you find anything out there?’ said Nish. His mind felt
a little clearer now.

‘A lot of footprints, and the wheel marks of supply wagons,’
said M’lainte. ‘In the dark it’s hard to tell what’s happened, but a group of
soldiers definitely boarded ship. The overhanging rock is worn where they
marched across it, though …’

‘What?’ said Nish.

‘It wasn’t an army of two thousand; nothing like it.’

‘Maybe Yulla couldn’t raise a whole army,’ said Nish.

‘She did,’ said M’lainte. ‘I’ve seen it.’

‘Then where is it? And where’s the fleet?’

The light grew; it wasn’t far off dawn and his foreboding
deepened. Had this been a set-up from the beginning? Thinking that Persia was
out of earshot, he said quietly, ‘Do you think Yulla …?’

‘She’s rock-solid, Nish,’ said M’lainte. ‘Which leaves only
one alternative –’

There was a long silence. ‘That … that we’ve been betrayed
by one of her allies,’ said Persia from behind him. ‘The army must have been
captured. Maybe the fleet never came, only one or two of Yulla’s ships.’

A spasm lanced through Nish’s thigh to the bone. Could this
be the end, before the real campaign had even begun?

‘They want you, so they must be out there somewhere,’ said
Flangers, peering into the darkness. ‘Why haven’t they attacked?’

Nish was fever-hot again; his leg began to throb unbearably
and it took an effort to follow the simplest train of thought.

‘If I were the enemy,’ said Flangers, ‘I’d wait until
– Nish, what is it?’

He had gone from feverish to freezing in an instant, and the
grogginess was blasted away by a rolling wave of clear-sight. ‘Soldiers, and
scriers, on the southern headland. Where is everyone?’

‘Sleeping,’ said M’lainte, ‘or cooling down in the cove.’

Nish pulled himself up onto the pilot’s bench. A dozen
militiamen and women were swimming, finally relaxing after the brutal day and
sleepless night. ‘Call them back! Chissmoul, get it ready.’

As everyone ran to their posts, dawn broke and the shrubbery
stirred on the headland.

‘Ambush!’ yelled Clech to the people in the water. ‘Into the
cabin. Everyone!’

A force of several hundred troops rose above the scrubby
bushes and began to storm down the slope. Their archers would soon be within
firing range.

Nish cursed. ‘They’ll kill everyone in the water.’

The air-sled jerked forwards, stopped and began to shudder
as if it was caught on a sticky surface. ‘What’s the matter with it now?’
wailed Chissmoul.

‘Their scriers must be interfering with your controller,’
said M’lainte.

A flight of arrows pocked the surface around the swimmers,
one missile skipping across the water like a stone.

Chissmoul stood up, shaking the mechanism over her head, and
the air-sled broke free and shot towards the cove. Unable to rise, it skidded
sideways, sending out an enormous curving plume of spray that temporarily
obscured all the swimmers. Naked men and women churned towards the air-sled and
were dragged over the side, but not all of them made it.

An arrow, fired from the rocks at the far end of the beach,
struck Chissmoul’s pale, nervous friend Allioun in the forehead as she was
climbing aboard. She fell back with the arrow sticking straight up; her blood
darkened the water.

Chissmoul gasped and tried to dive in, but Flangers held
her.

‘There’s nothing you can do, love,’ he said gently. ‘She
died instantly.’

‘I’m sick of this,’ she whispered, tears streaming down her
cheeks. The wire and crystal controller dangled from her right hand, forgotten.
‘I can’t take any more.’

The last of the militia were dragged over the side. Persia
and Flangers carried Nish into the cabin as more arrows fell around them,
zinging off the metal deck and embedding themselves in the bimblewood walls.
The attackers were halfway down the headland already.

‘Give me the controller,’ said M’lainte.

‘You’re not taking that from me as well,’ Chissmoul said in
a deadly voice. ‘Get out of my way.’

‘Chissmoul –’ began Flangers, reaching for her.

She slapped his arm aside. ‘Get down and stay down –
you too, Mechanician.’

‘I’ll be beside you all the way,’ said M’lainte. ‘Try this.’

She handed Chissmoul the object she had been working on,
which was red and the shape of a watermelon cut in half across the middle, with
a single knobbed lever rising from its rounded top.

‘Stick the bottom to the deck and hold the lever. It
controls everything – forwards and back, left and right, up and down
– and the further you move it, the faster it goes.’

‘What about stopping?’ said Chissmoul.

‘Er, I haven’t done that yet,’ said M’lainte.

‘Then you’d better hang on!’

Nish clung to a bench, shivering, as Chissmoul jerked the
lever towards her.

‘That’s backwards,’ cried M’lainte as the air-sled shot
backwards, bouncing off the water and curving around towards the headland.

‘There’s no shelter for us if I go forwards,’ said Chissmoul
grimly.

The air-sled bounced across the water, went blazing up the
gentle slope of the beach and turned south along it, Chissmoul wobbling the
stern to left and right so she could see past the cabin. She turned sharply up
the headland, crushing the bushes in their path and barely missing boulders to
either side.

Nish, who was peering through one of the mica windows, could
not imagine how she was steering the ungainly craft so accurately. The metal
keel hit a bump, shot upwards, and not far ahead he made out the attackers, a
dark, running mass in the dim light. Arrows thudded into the bimblewood; he
ducked, instinctively, and his thigh screamed at him.

An arrow smashed into the mica pane, tearing it from its
timbers and sending it
flub-flubbing
past his ear across the cabin. The stern wobbled left, right, left so fast that
his head spun, accelerated up the slope and he heard sickening thuds as it
drove through the soldiers, scattering men to left and right and crushing
dozens beneath its keel.

Thumpitty thump thump,
thump thump
. The keel careered off a small boulder, tilting the air-sled
sharply to the right, and for a dreadful second he thought they were going to
slam into the ground at high speed.

Chissmoul managed to right it but it tilted the other way,
hurtled over the steep side of the headland and down towards the cove, leaning
one way and then the other, and flattening out only to bounce off the water so
hard that Nish’s teeth snapped together. He collapsed on the floor.

As the air-sled shot high into the air and straightened,
Chissmoul managed to head it through the entrance of the cove and out to sea,
but then the craft turned and kept turning until it was heading landwards
again, racing directly for the cliffed headland.

‘Up!’ M’lainte yelled. ‘Pull it up.’

‘It won’t go up,’ said Chissmoul, her voice tight with fear.
‘I can’t control it.’

The cliff loomed ever closer. Nish rolled over and could see
her struggling with the lever. M’lainte grabbed the controller, heaving the
lever this way and that while muttering what sounded, to Nish, like a Spell of
Breaking, and suddenly the scrier’s command of the controller snapped.

From up on the clifftop, a man screamed. M’lainte wrenched
at the knob and the air-sled rocketed up, up and over the top of the cliff, so
close that the keel brushed against the heath growing there. Arrows bounced off
the thick metal as they soared away, out of range, and finally out of sight of
the enemy.

Nish lay on the floor until his breathing had returned to
normal and the pain in his leg had subsided to a dull throb. They’d got away,
but what was he supposed to do without a fleet or an army?

As they climbed, the sun tipped the eastern horizon and
shortly the lookout called, ‘A sail, due south.’

Chissmoul, who had snatched back the controller, turned the
craft in that direction.

‘Sail, or
sails
?’
called Nish.

‘I can only see one so far, and it’s not a fishing boat;
it’s a ship.’

‘One of Yulla’s?’

‘It’s too far away to tell,’ said M’lainte. ‘If her captain
was alert, he might have escaped as the trap was sprung, with the troops he’d
taken on board. Go closer, Chissmoul.’

Nish crawled around until he found his serpent staff then,
using it as a crutch, limped to the side and scanned the seas. From this height
Roros was a smoky smear to the north. A number of sails could be seen on the
water near the city, though most appeared to be fishing boats or little coastal
traders. There was no sign of a fleet.

‘Yulla said the fleet would be at least twenty ships,’ he
said to Persia, who had come up beside him. ‘We’d need at least that number to
carry two thousand men, plus all their gear and provisions, but there’s no sign
of
any
ships save the one to our
south. And the weather has been perfect for sailing …’

‘Yes, it has,’ Persia said uneasily.

‘Did you actually
see
Yulla’s fleet, M’lainte?’

‘She only had two ships in Crandor,’ said M’lainte. ‘She
arranged to borrow the rest from Pensittor.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘An old friend from the time when she was governor. He was
her lieutenant in the old days, but he bought the spice monopoly after the
God-Emperor deposed her, and is now very rich. Pensittor has fleets of ships;
he trades all the way up and down the east coast, and west as far as Taranta.’

‘And I dare say he’s dependent on the favour of the
God-Emperor to keep his monopoly,’ said Nish. ‘So what has he to gain if Father
is overthrown?’

‘He’s been good to Yulla,’ said Persia severely. ‘After your
father took her governorship away, he taxed her until she was bankrupt.
Pensittor loaned Yulla enough to get started again, and he’s a man of his
word.’

Nish looked questioningly at M’lainte. ‘I’ve met him several
times,’ she said, ‘and he seemed an honest fellow to me – for a merchant,
I mean. Though I did wonder where he got the coin to buy the spice monopoly.
His family weren’t wealthy.’

‘What are you thinking?’ said Nish.

‘That his offer to lend ships to Yulla was genuine,
when it was made
, but Stilkeen’s
proclamation changed everything. Before that, Nish, you stood a good chance of
taking the empire, since everyone knows your claim is legitimate. However,
after the proclamation you lost the advantage, because the local warlords could
reach Morrelune long before you could and, as the empire collapsed into civil
war, you would be just one of a dozen rivals for the throne. Vomix is another,
one of the strongest. He was Seneschal of Fadd province for many years and he’s
still more influential there than the seneschal who replaced him.’

Persia was clinging to the rope rail, shaking her head. ‘I
can’t believe it. Pensittor is a man of honour –’

‘What if Vomix had a threatening word in his ear?’ said
Nish, following M’lainte’s train of thought, ‘telling him that there was little
to be gained by supporting Yulla or me, but much to be lost. If Vomix can get
his army to Morrelune quickly, he can take it, but he’ll need a lot of ships.
He must have demanded that Pensittor betray Yulla and lend him the ships, in
exchange for more monopolies when Vomix becomes God-Emperor. What choice would
Pensittor have? If he refused, and Vomix became God-Emperor, Pensittor would
lose everything.’

‘An honest man would have spat in Vomix’s face,’ said
M’lainte. ‘But a prudent merchant with flexible morals would see where his best
interests lay.’

‘So Nish was right. Yulla has been betrayed,’ said Persia
bleakly, ‘and everyone who aided her is in peril. And our families too,
what’s left of them
, if Vomix succeeds.’
She stared blindly over the side for a moment before going on. ‘His troops must
be embarking on Pensittor’s fleet now, preparing to set sail for the south at
all speed.’

Nish swayed on his serpent staff as they drew closer to the
ship, trying to put as little weight on his injured thigh as possible.

‘Even if this vessel is Yulla’s, what’s the point of going
on? I can’t attack the might of the empire with a handful of troops.’

‘You certainly can’t if you’re not at Morrelune in thirteen
days,’ said M’lainte. ‘And you must go there, for that’s where the fate of
Santhenar will be decided. It’s also where Flydd will come, whether he finds the
true fire or not.’

‘I’ve got nothing left,’ said Nish, grinding his teeth with
every bump and lurch of the air-sled. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘Nish, we had no hope from the beginning,’ Flangers said.
‘We never expected to take Blisterbone, nor hold it against Klarm’s army, but
we did. And we bloodied Vomix’s nose back there, and made him look like a fool.
I say we go on, because we can’t go back and we can’t give in. The moment we
put a foot on the path to Morrelune, we had no choice but to follow it all the way
to victory – or oblivion!’

It was a long speech for Flangers, who was taciturn by
nature.

‘And you’ll feel better once your leg has healed,’ said
M’lainte. ‘Snap out of it, Nish. Everything relies on you.’

If M’lainte had meant to be encouraging, she failed
dismally, but Nish reminded himself of all those who had died so that he could
stand here today, and knew he could not let them down. ‘All right. Head for the
ship.’