The Third God (51 page)

Osidian smiled coldly. ‘The commanders will also be travelling at great speed.’

Carnelian thought about that. He could see how haste would benefit them. They might be hoping to be the first to arrive with the news of Osidian’s revolt. It could seem to them that only thus might they avoid retribution. He felt a stab of anxiety. ‘That is not going to leave us much time to get the legion ready.’

‘Long enough,’ Osidian said. ‘Though Aurum is close, I do not imagine he will be sent against us alone.’

Carnelian nodded. ‘It would be one legion against another.’

‘The Wise prefer not to take risks. They will attempt to muster overwhelming odds against us. Besides, Aurum’s naphtha will be much depleted.’

Osidian gazed at him expectantly. Carnelian realized that Osidian was expecting him to ask just how bad it had been for the Lepers. If he was being tested, he would pass. ‘What makes you think Aurum has not refuelled in the city to the north of here?’

Osidian regarded him, then allowed himself a smile. ‘Perhaps. That is not important. What is, is that when the attack comes it will not be from a single legion.’

The certainty they would be outnumbered left Carnelian feeling bleak. He remembered the dragon tower exploding. Death in such circumstances would be quick, but his heart ached when he imagined how the Lepers and the Marula would suffer on the ground. ‘How can we hope to prevail?’

Osidian’s smile surprised him. ‘I have a notion or two . . .’

Carnelian considered asking him what those might be, but suspected he would get no answer. He glanced down through the bars of the platform to the lights of the camp spread out below. Whatever Osidian’s plan, it would be unlikely to spare the Lepers or the Marula.

Back in his cell, Carnelian was struck afresh by how identical it was to the others he had slept in before. He touched one of the walls, knowing that behind it Legions and the other Sapients lay dreaming in their capsules, but it could so easily be his father, wounded. This illusion was so great, he almost moved to the door, going to see if it was possible he had dreamed all that had happened since then.

A movement in the corner startled him. A small figure adjusting itself. For a moment he could believe it was Tain, his brother. Then, a flicker of the lamplight caught a surface of its metal face. Not his brother, but the homunculus in his blinding mask. Carnelian squinted and once again it could be Tain, whom Jaspar had threatened to blind. There was a strange parallelism in all this. A pattern that, should he be able to see enough of it, would make sense of everything.

He gave up the struggle, despairing, and went to one of the slits he knew must look down into the stopping place. The fires spangling the land below seemed, at first, very like all those other stopping places, but then he noticed the hills of blackness arrayed along the edge of the road. Dragons. Still, the flicker of the campfires seemed welcoming even from that distance. Poppy and Fern were there somewhere. How he yearned to join them.

The next morning he rose and put on his leathers again with the help of the homunculus. Then, after feeding the Sapients, they descended the tower with Osidian. To Carnelian’s surprise, he did not go down into the stable levels, but walked out onto the leftway. As Carnelian followed him into the open, he was confronted by the flank of a dragon tower. Its brassman had the back of its head resting against the leftway where the crumbled edge had been hacked into rough steps.

Osidian’s Hands were there. ‘After I move Heart-of-Thunder away, they will bring up your huimur, my Lord. Follow me out.’

Carnelian lifted his hand in assent and Osidian descended the rough steps to the brassman. He crossed and entered the tower, his officers scrambling after him. The brassman was only half raised when Heart-of-Thunder began to move away. His footfalls sent tremors up through the leftway and caused more of its rubble to come loose and skitter over the edge. Carnelian watched the monster veer across the road, then saw below a dark mass of mounted Marula. Other dragons berthed all along the edge of the road, freed from their hawsers, were beginning to turn, their towers catching the morning sun. Beyond, spreading to the edges of the camp, was the paler multitude of the Lepers. He narrowed his eyes, searching among them for Poppy or Fern or even Krow, but it was impossible to make one figure out among so many.

More tremors in the ground alerted him to another dragon tower swaying towards the leftway. Taking a step forward he peered down and was sure he could see the distinctive configuration of Earth-is-Strong’s horns. Soon her brassman was lowering. He had begun to descend the rough steps to it, when he remembered the homunculus. The little man stood petrified, but came when Carnelian called him. He took his hand to lead him into the tower.

Soon Carnelian was settling back into the familiar hollow of his command chair. He glanced round to check that the homunculus was braced against the bone wall, then gave the command to take her out. His Lefthand gave a nod of acknowledgement and Earth-is-Strong began lumbering out across the road. Carnelian peered down to see riders swirling below. Then the dragon was descending a ramp into a rolling mass of red dust into which she plunged on a westerly course. On either side other dragons seemed ships in a fog.

The dust-clouds subsided enough for him to be able to see that they were passing along a red road trampled through hri fields that stretched interminably to lilac horizons. He presumed the road had been made by Osidian’s passage the day before. In the lazy heat he watched shadoofs like the necks of heaveners rising and falling as they poured water along ditches. The regular grid of kraals made the land look like some vast upholstery. Here and there dark lines of sartlar moved, hunched, across a field; he wondered that they did not lift their heads to watch the dragons pass.

At last they came into a region in which the tussocked hri fields were scorched and trampled. In places burnt kraals formed blackened craters. Osidian sent a signal from tower to tower, calling a halt. Carnelian saw other dragons turning and so gave the same command to his. Earth-is-Strong swung round and then the cabin stilled. For a moment rattles came from distant chains and mechanisms. Then all fell silent. The musk of hri rose up from the earth with the heat. Carnelian felt the sweat soaking into the bandages binding his body. A muffled voice in the deck below was answered by another. Then he heard the Lepers coming in a rabble down the red road. Carnelian looked among the mounted and the walking, among the bristle of forks and scythes, but could find little point of reference among that shrouded mass, never mind the hoped-for sighting of anyone he knew. Marula came riding from the north where he knew Osidian and Heart-of-Thunder lay. Leading them, grey-faced Oracles. As they encircled the Lepers, Carnelian suffered acute anxiety that they were going to attack them. He relaxed as soon as he saw the Oracles were doing nothing more than separating off groups of several hundred Lepers who, with a single Oracle in command and some dozen Marula warriors in the vanguard, detached from the throng and set off along the dragon line.

When more signals came from Heart-of-Thunder, Carnelian listened to his Lefthand explaining what Osidian wanted done.

‘This is what you did yesterday?’

‘Just so, Master.’

‘And no sartlar were harmed?’

‘Inevitably, some were crushed . . .’

‘But the pipes were not used?’

‘Only against some empty kraals, Master.’

Carnelian nodded and relayed the commands to the other two dragons of his cohort. Soon they were pounding across some virgin fields, the Marula and Lepers assigned to them forming horns on either flank, pursuing hapless sartlar that they were trying to encircle.

From Earth-is-Strong’s tower, Carnelian watched the Lepers pour back into the watch-tower camp. As they entered the stopping place they raised a great cloud that glowed in the light of the westering sun. He was troubled. All day he had worked with the Lepers assigned to him. All attempts to coordinate them with the advance of his dragons had led to a shambles. Some riding, others jogging, they had not even managed to keep together. The formations that the Oracles and Marula had attempted to marshal them into had ended up scattered all over the fields. The Marula had been difficult enough to manage from his high vantage point. He could hardly blame them for not understanding the signals flashed to them. Why should they? Even the other two dragons had made mistakes, though these were perhaps a consequence of the recent changes in their crew hierarchies. The dragons, Osidian could deal with. What was concerning Carnelian most was the Lepers. In any fight with auxiliaries, they would be annihilated.

As Earth-is-Strong cruised through the camp and up the ramp onto the road, Carnelian commanded his Lefthand to bring her to a halt short of the watch-tower. His Hands followed him as he descended to the ground. Heart-of-Thunder was sliding alongside the leftway. Marula were dismounting around him. A mass of dragons was moving along the road towards the breach in the leftway. The percussion of their footfalls was producing a constant thundering earthquake. Glancing up at the watch-tower, Carnelian was almost surprised it was not shaking to pieces. He turned west, angling the eyeslits of his mask against the liquid gold sun that was squeezing between the vast black shapes of the dragons as they were marshalled to form a rampart along the edge of the road. Through them he caught intermittent glimpses of the milling chaos of the Leper camp. He needed to talk to Lily.

‘I am going down there,’ he cried above the din.

His Hands grimaced, lifting the flaps of their helmets to hear him better.

‘Down there,’ he shouted, pointing towards the Lepers.

They made to come and stand behind him, but he waved them away. He pointed up to Earth-is-Strong, who seemed a cliff cast from gold, and, with his hands, he made them understand they were to return to her tower and take her to her berth alongside the watch-tower. He watched them begin to ascend the rope ladder and then waited for the last dragon to lumber past before setting off for the ramp.

As he stepped off the ramp, several legionaries rushed up. Before they could kneel, he gestured them aside, declining their obeisance and their offers to escort him. The odour of render was tainting the musky breeze. Looking along the beaked line of dragons, he saw they were being fed. Beneath their prowed heads, marumaga were lighting fires and distributing sacs for their dinner. Carnelian turned to contemplate the Leper multitude, rosy in the sinking sun, and wondered how he was going to find Lily. There was nothing for it but to go and ask someone. He paced slowly towards the Lepers as if they were a colony of seabirds he was anxious not to startle into flight. When shrouded heads turned at his approach, he expected panic, but they merely bent back towards their fires as if he were a ghost they did not want to believe was really there. He went right up to one cluster, coming close enough that he could smell their sweat and the render that they were eating. Towering over them, he asked to be directed to their leaders: to Lily in particular. At first he thought they were not going to answer, but then an arm rose that lacked fingers. He moved off towards the cisterns, to which the stump was pointing. Two legionaries came past, bearing a great waterskin between them upon a sagging pole. He waved them on before they could kneel and they loped past, spilling some water that seemed to turn the earth to blood. Several times more Carnelian asked directions and, each time, a spot near the cisterns was indicated.

He was approaching one clump like any other, thinking he must ask again, when he recognized the breadth of shoulders beneath the shrouds of a hunched figure. One of the Lepers nudged another and all who were round that fire stood up to face him.

‘Master,’ said one with Lily’s husky voice.

Carnelian saw the smoulder in their midst that turned it into a hearth. It made him feel he was intruding. He touched the metal over his face and had a desperate urge to unmask.

‘That’s not the Master, it’s Carnie.’

The voice came from a slim figure, Poppy. All of them save Lily pushed back their cowls: Poppy, Krow beside her, Fern. It was the latter who was regarding Carnelian as if he were an enemy. ‘What do you want, Master?’

Shock made Carnelian unable to speak. Perhaps he should have anticipated Fern’s reaction. What did he know of what his life had been since last he saw him? Raising his hands in appeasement, he was startled by how alien they seemed, sheathed in their pale leather. ‘You’re not warriors—’ He sensed anger in a shifting of Lily’s weight. ‘I’ve come to offer my help to train you.’

Fern’s eyes became a hawk’s. ‘Has the Master given you permission to make this offer?’

Carnelian was stung by that, but chose not to justify himself. ‘I am here,’ he said, simply.

Fern’s contempt spread to his lips. ‘So you want to help us so that we can fight for the Master . . . train us as you once trained the Marula . . . ?’

Carnelian felt anger burn his face.

Fern threw his hand out in dismissal. ‘We don’t need your help.’