FORTY-SIX

After the air-floater returned with the initial bad news, Yggur and Flydd had been in despair, which redoubled when Tiaan failed to return from her own mission. They held an anxious meeting, and another the following day when there was still no sign of anyone. They were sitting gloomily by the fire when Fyn-Mah came running with the news that a thapter had been sighted, flying slowly and erratically.

Yggur ran all the way along the long hall to the front doors and threw them open. Flydd came scuttling after him. As they went down onto the steps, a thapter wobbled in, to thump onto the paving stones.

‘That’s definitely Tiaan’s,’ said Yggur. ‘What’s the matter with her?’

The hatch was pushed open and Kattiloe’s head appeared, beaming to split her face in two. ‘I did it!’ she cried, capering about dangerously on top of the machine.

‘Report, if you please,’ said Yggur sternly, though it was undermined by the delight he couldn’t suppress.

Before she could jump down they heard the scream of a second thapter travelling at high speed. It shot across the yard and, with reckless insouciance, carved an ascending spiral around one of the horned towers, a descending spiral around the next, then hurtled towards the front door. Yggur and Flydd ducked as it banked sharply just over their heads, spun in a circle and dropped neatly to the paving stones beside the first, so lightly that it would not have crushed a feather.

‘Who the devil is that?’ cried Yggur.

Two guards staggered down the ladder, ashen-faced and holding their bellies. Then Chissmoul, so quiet and shy that few people had ever heard her speak, sprang up onto the open hatch, laughing like a drain. Catching sight of the astonished mancers she broke off at once, though she didn’t look repentant.

Soon two more thapters were scattered across the yard, these rather untidily. The fourth, flown by Kimli, had almost taken off Yggur’s first-floor balcony as it came in. Yggur was grinning broadly now, though he could not relax yet. Finally, a few minutes later, a fifth thapter appeared, shepherding the sixth –Tiaan’s battered machine – though it was evident that she wasn’t flying it. They landed in the middle and Tiaan waved. She had elected to fly the faulty one.

‘The air-floaters are on their way,’ said Nish, springing out after her and grinning as if he’d just won the war by himself. ‘I’m sorry that we only managed five thapters, surr, but we did it without the loss of a single man or woman.’

Yggur was so overcome that he embraced Nish, and then the lot of them, even Chissmoul. There was something suspiciously like moisture in the corner of one eye, though he pretended it was a piece of grit. ‘After the bad news, I would have been happy to see a single thapter,’ he said. ‘This is more than I could have hoped for.’

Tiaan came up beside him. ‘How about you, dear Tiaan?’ Yggur said quietly. ‘Did you get what you went for?’

‘It’s down below, in the lead casket.’

‘Splendid. Leave it there; we’ll retrieve it after dark. And then, I think, the first banquet Fiz Gorgo has seen in a thousand years.’

Nish was hovering, just down the hall. ‘Could I ask a favour?’ he said.

‘Just name it,’ smiled Yggur.

‘It’s Pilot Inouye. She hasn’t seen her little children in a year, and she’s in despair. Could we send her home now? We don’t need her air-floater any more.’

‘Of course,’ said Yggur. ‘She’s served us faithfully and well, and we can do no less for her.’

It was worth all the pain and trouble of the past months to see the look on Inouye’s face when Nish gave her the news.

The next few weeks passed swiftly. Tiaan was away with Malien for most of the time, completing her node survey of Meldorin and subsequently the part of Lauralin lying between the Sea of Thurkad, the Karama Malama and the Great Chain of Lakes.

Flydd raced east in Kattiloe’s thapter, taking two of her sister pilots as well, so as to fly day and night. He’d gone to the manufactory to collect the ten farspeaking globes and hundred slave units ordered from Tuniz, and to order many more. He planned to take half to allies in the east, then bring the remaining sets home for the imminent spring offensive. He returned a fortnight later to be confronted with another problem. The farspeakers did not send as far as Golias’s globe, and were much less reliable. After conferring with Yggur and Irisis, he sent her back to the manufactory to sort out the problem.

And in practice, even Golias’s globe proved not to be quite the panacea Flydd had expected. There were limits to how far a message could be sent, though they varied all the time. One day the governor might be contacted in Lybing, the next Flydd could have trouble speaking to someone as close as Old Hripton. And messages could rarely be directly to farspeakers as far away as Tiksi or Roros. To speak to people at such a distance the message might have to be relayed several times, but often it did not get through at all.

On the first day of spring, Yggur began to mutter about Klarm’s absence. They were waiting for him to return with the latest intelligence so that the offensive could be planned. He was well overdue and they were beginning to fear that he’d been taken by the lyrinx, which would have been a disaster. Klarm knew too much and, tough though he was, the enemy had ways of extracting the truth from anyone.

He arrived with a bang at lunchtime the following day, the air-floater coming in so quickly that it scraped varnish off its keel going over the wall, before skidding across the paving stones between the sheds and piles of timber.

Nish looked up from the thapter mechanism his artificers were repairing, said, ‘Keep at it, you’re doing well,’ and wiped his greasy hands.

Klarm was over the side before it stopped, taking the steps three at a time and crashing through the front door. Nish followed.

‘I’ve got it!’ Klarm shouted up the hall.

‘Got what?’ said Yggur, emerging from his office polishing Golias’s globe with a scrap of airbag silk.

‘I’ve discovered where the lyrinx from Snizort and Gumby Marth have been hiding all this time. The ones who didn’t fly back to Meldorin.’

‘Come in here and tell me about it.’ Yggur took the little man by the arm and began to steer him into his workroom. ‘And you can start by telling us where the blazes you’ve been. You should have been back weeks ago.’

‘Not in there. We’d all like to hear the news,’ said Flydd, hurrying up the hall with his hands still dripping from the washtub. ‘Nish, would you call everyone together?’

Nish collected Flangers, Fyn-Mah and Merryl. Tiaan and Malien were away, mapping, and Irisis was still in the east. They assembled in the dining hall, neutral territory as it were, and Klarm began.

‘We’ve always wondered where the bulk of the lyrinx army went after the battles of Snizort and Gumby Marth. Most of the fliers returned to Oellyll but the others disappeared, as did the armies that had been terrorising Taltid and Almadin since the spring. They simply vanished at the beginning of winter. It was thought that they’d taken ship back to Meldorin, though we could find little evidence for it. I now know that they did not.’

‘Where did they go?’ said Flydd.

‘Underground,’ said Klarm. ‘They made their winding way by night, in small groups so as not to attract attention, to the sea caves of Rencid. They went into the caves but they didn’t come out again.’

‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me,’ said Flydd. ‘They’d have to cross running water just to enter the sea caves, and a lot more inside.’

‘That’s why we didn’t look more closely,’ said Klarm. ‘We knew it was against their nature, but there’s no doubt about it. The leaders must have fed their people an elixir to overcome their terror of water.’

‘I’d be more convinced if you could tell me where they went,’ Yggur said dubiously.

‘I know exactly where they went. At some stage, perhaps decades ago, they found or made an underground connection between the sea caves and the deep caverns that honeycomb central Rencid, a good hundred leagues away.’

‘They couldn’t have made a connection all that way,’ said Flydd. ‘It would be the work of a thousand years.’

Klarm shrugged. ‘It’s mostly limestone country and no one knows how far the caverns run. They’ve never been explored. But that doesn’t matter – the lyrinx now lie hidden in their tens of thousands, deep underground, within a stone’s throw of Worm Wood.’

‘How can you know?’ said Yggur. ‘How do you know they went through the sea caves, for that matter?’

‘My spies have been scouring the area between Nilkerrand and Snizort ever since we came back from Nennifer,’ said Klarm. ‘Talking to the hunters and scavengers, and the nomads who used to wander those plains. It’s surprising how many people still live in those lands. Most useful were the scavengers who roam the west coast of Lauralin. A rat doesn’t scurry from one side of a ribcage to the other without them knowing about it.

‘My spies have talked to thousands of people over the past months, and very expensive it was. I felt positively profligate.’ Klarm’s eyes flashed at Yggur. ‘And when I wasn’t wenching and boozing like the dissipated sot you think me to be, I put together a picture from all those tiny fragments of information, and it told me where to search.

‘We identified the right sea cave a month and a half ago, and I checked out the signs for myself. There was nothing at the entrance; the enemy had wiped it clean of tracks, but there were plenty inside. They’d gone in and there were no tracks coming out again. Where had they gone and how would I find them? Even ten thousand lyrinx, hibernating deep underground, would produce no sign that could be detected from above.’

‘So how did you find them?’ said Flydd, signing to an orderly. The fellow went out silently.

‘The only way I could. I followed their tracks.’

‘What, underground?’ cried Flydd. ‘You bloody fool, what if you’d been caught?’

The little man bowed in his direction. ‘It had to be done, Xervish, and I couldn’t send anyone else to do such a dangerous job. Besides, no one was more suited to it than myself, my father being a caver. I was born underground.’

‘And had they caught you, you would have died underground,’ said Yggur, ‘though not before telling them every secret we have.’

‘I carried a poison pill set in wax inside a hollow tooth,’ said Klarm. ‘If taken, I would have bitten it in half.’

The orderly reappeared with a flagon of black beer and a large tankard, which he placed in front of Klarm before withdrawing. Klarm nodded his thanks and filled the tankard. ‘It’s surprisingly thirsty work, following a lyrinx army underground.’ He downed half the tankard in one swallow.

‘And frightening too, I dare say.’

‘Aye.’ Klarm took another pull at the tankard. ‘It was that. In truth, I had little expectation that I’d come out alive. There’s bad air in places, and fast streams, and it wasn’t unguarded either. That was the hardest part of all. I couldn’t kill the guards, nor harm them in any way, or they would have known someone was spying on them. All I could use was my natural cunning and the odd small illusion.

‘But illusions work better underground, and the enemy were more frightened than I was, despite their elixir. They had to cross many subterranean streams and their terror gave me heart. But, terrified or not, they’d gone on, and so must I. That’s why I was so late back. I followed them the whole winding way, at least a hundred and twenty leagues underground, through one system of caverns after another. Many a marvel I saw that no man has seen before, and in the end I found them, hibernating in groups of thousands, unguarded apart from sentries at entrance and exit.

‘There were more lyrinx than I could count – thirty thousand at the very least, and there could be other groups I didn’t find. They’re hiding three hundred spans underground not far from the abandoned town of Strebbit. They’ll be coming out of hibernation any time now. They’re less than a night’s march from Worm Wood, the perfect cloak for their movements, and they’ll be ready to attack within weeks. Once they reach the forest they can go anywhere, unseen.’

Flydd swore. ‘I’d assumed they would come from the coast, and that we’d hear of their march a good week in advance.’

‘What do we do now?’ said Yggur.

‘We must attack them the moment they come out,’ said Klarm.

‘How do we know where they’re going to come out?’ said Flydd. ‘If my memory serves me, those caves have dozens of outlets.’

‘But the cavern they’re hibernating in has only one dry exit,’ said Klarm. ‘All the connecting caverns are partly flooded. Their elixir allowed them to endure the terror of the water, but I’m betting they’ll avoid it on the way out. All elixirs take their toll and they won’t want to be suffering from it on their way to war.’

Klarm’s voice went hoarse. He drained his beer, licked the foam from the rim of the tankard, and filled it again.

‘The dry passage opens out into a natural bowl.’ He shaped it in the air with his hands. ‘If we can get our forces into position in time, we can ambush them as they come out, still sluggish from hibernation.’

‘And if they retreat?’ said Flydd, smiling as if he already knew the answer.

‘We drive them into the underground streams and cut them down in their panic.’

‘Have you been in contact with General Troist?’ asked Yggur.

‘I have, and he gave me heart. His troops are well armed, well trained, and he has supplies stockpiled. Moreover, he has a keen eye for the weaknesses of the enemy and how best to attack them.’

Yggur looked questioningly at Flydd. Flydd nodded.

‘If they take Borgistry,’ said Yggur, ‘western Lauralin must fall and then sooner or later the whole continent will be lost. But while Borgistry survives, the enemy can’t control the west. We’ll do it.’

‘How soon can we be ready to strike?’ said Flydd. He went over to study the map that covered half of one wall. Yggur joined him, measuring distances with a length of string. ‘Troist could be there in nine days.’

‘Two weeks for us,’ said Nish. ‘All the thapters need work, and three of the air-floaters. They can’t go to war the way they are.’

‘Two weeks!’ Flydd cried. ‘What if the enemy come out sooner? Why do they hibernate anyway? Merryl?’

‘In order to survive in the void,’ said Merryl, ‘they flesh-formed their unborn to the limit. They made themselves the most formidable fighters ever seen, but it came at a cost. They have to hibernate for at least a month every year to repair the damage the past year has caused.’

‘So it’s a necessity, not just a custom,’ mused Flydd. ‘Good – all the less likely that they’ll cut it short. Even so, we’ve got to be ready sooner.’

‘Well, Nish?’ said Yggur.

‘If all our work goes perfectly,’ Nish said, ‘and we get just the right weather when we’re flying, we might be ready to attack in ten or eleven days. But things never go perfectly, so I can’t possibly promise less than twelve.’

‘Perfect!’ Flydd conferred with Klarm and Yggur. ‘A strike in ten days will catch them still lethargic from hibernation.’

‘But I just said –’ Nish began desperately. Allowing three days for the slow air-floaters to fly there, it meant he only had seven days rather than the nine or ten he needed.

‘The attack is set for ten days. Be ready!’

The first thapter flight left eight days later, and Yggur wasn’t pleased at the delay. It carried Klarm, an advance guard and a number of devices that had been made in the eastern manufactories. The destination was an isolated valley north-east of Strebbit, where everyone would rendezvous with Troist’s army, then march down to encircle the bowl-shaped depression in which the cave mouth lay.

Now it was the following day, and Nish hadn’t slept for two nights. One of the thapters was still being repaired after crashing into a small tree in darkness, and the floater-gas generator on Gorm’s air-floater had failed and had to be completely taken apart, though even then no one could work out what was wrong with it. Yggur came down to Nish’s shed every hour, demanding to know when they would be ready, which only made matters worse.

‘I knew this would happen,’ Nish raged when Yggur turned up for the fifth time that morning. ‘I told you it couldn’t be done.’

‘I don’t like excuses,’ said Yggur frostily.

There were plenty when your work wasn’t done on time! Nish thought, though he was wise enough not to say it. ‘It’s not an excuse. It’s reality. Things go wrong and you have to allow time for it. I’m not a magician –’

‘When will the last machines be ready?’ Yggur snapped.

‘Tomorrow morning, at the earliest.’

Yggur scowled. ‘That’s not good enough.’

Nish had had enough. He threw his tools on the ground. ‘If you can do better, you’re welcome to try.’

To his surprise, Yggur merely said, ‘Get it done,’ and disappeared again. Then he ducked his head around the door. ‘Where’s Tiaan?’

‘She’s still not back from her node survey with Malien.’

‘But they knew we needed Malien’s thapter for the offensive. We’ve been planning it for months.’

‘It wasn’t supposed to be for a couple of weeks yet.’

‘Does she have a farspeaker with her?’

‘Yes. Flydd tried to call her again last night. He couldn’t make contact.’

‘Better try again.’

As if Nish didn’t have enough to do. He ran his fingers through his tangled hair. He hadn’t eaten since this time yesterday, nor bathed in a week. Slamming the door of his shed, he headed across the yard. Piles of supplies were stacked wherever space could be found. Dozens of lean-to sheds had been constructed against the walls. Two more thapters were being loaded. Three air-floaters, being much slower, were long gone. People were running everywhere.

Weaving through the yard, Nish was stopped a dozen times by people who needed to be told what to do. He finally climbed the steps with a sigh of relief, but as he went through the doors someone called his name from the other end of the hall. Not recognising the fellow, Nish turned left into a cross-passage that was mercifully empty, then left again to the circular stair that ran up to one of the repaired horned towers.

He was panting by the time he reached the top, a round chamber of naked stone with arrow slits, through which the drizzle-laden wind whistled. Nish pulled his coat around him. The spring weather was the same as winter’s, only wetter.

He peered through a slit that was out of the direct path of the wind. The rain came in waves. Nish shook his head, which felt as though it was full of spiderweb. The farspeaker operator’s bench was between two embrasures, fenced off with flapping walls of canvas that broke the worst of the wind. Merryl was sitting there.

‘Oh,’ said Nish. ‘I was looking for … whatever his name was.’

‘I’ve taken over for the day. Do you want to send a message?’

‘I didn’t know you had the talent.’

‘Neither did I,’ said Merryl cheerfully, ‘though farspeaking doesn’t take much. You could probably do it yourself.’

‘I doubt it. Anyhow, I don’t have time to learn.’

‘My father was a bit of a sensitive, so Yggur had me tested and found I could use the globe, and here I am. The only tricky part is changing the settings.’

‘I was trying to contact Tiaan,’ said Nish. ‘She’s supposed to have been back days ago. We need her thapter; and her field maps.’

‘I tried earlier, but no luck. I’ll change to her settings and have another go.’

Merryl consulted a sheet covered in cryptic symbols. He selected one, took Golias’s globe in his hand, steadied it against the table with his stump, pressed and twisted. The inner globes spun, the light flashing off them in dozens of colours. Merryl squeezed and the layers locked.

He held the globe up, inspecting it minutely. ‘No, that’s not right. Sorry, Nish. It’s a bit tricky.’

‘Take your time,’ said Nish, sitting down in the other chair. ‘I’m glad of the break. I can’t remember when I last had a full night’s sleep.’ He leaned back against the cold wall and closed his eyes, listening to the globes spinning, again and again.

‘That’s better,’ said Merryl. ‘Hello, Tiaan, this is Merryl, calling for Nish. Are you there?’

He repeated his call over and over, until Nish, lulled by the softness of his voice, drifted into sleep.

‘Hoy, Merryl?’ It was Yggur, calling from the stairs. ‘You haven’t seen Nish, have you?’

Nish’s feet struck the floor. ‘He’s here with me,’ Merryl called back after a decent pause. ‘We’re trying to contact Tiaan.’

Yggur entered the room. ‘I assume you’ve had no luck. Nish, half the yard is looking for you and it seems none of them can wait.’

Nish levered himself up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

‘No luck at all with Tiaan,’ said Merryl. ‘Nor anyone else.’

‘I spoke to Klarm earlier, in Strebbit,’ said Yggur.

‘But Klarm has a master farspeaker,’ said Merryl. ‘Tiaan only carries a slave. Master to master goes a lot further.’

‘Keep trying; we need her thapter. And give Klarm another call; find out if he’s rendezvoused with Troist yet.’ Yggur went down the stairs again.

Nish was halfway down too when Merryl called him back. ‘It’s Klarm,’ he said in a dead voice when Nish entered the chamber.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Lyrinx were seen moving north last night, in large numbers, so Klarm rotored straight down to the ambush site.’ Merryl stopped for a deep breath.

Nish knew what he was going to say. ‘The enemy aren’t there any more.’

‘There were plenty of signs of them in the hibernation cavern,’ said Merryl, ‘but it was empty apart from bones. They’ve gone and he doesn’t know where.’

Bootsteps came back up. It was Yggur, with Flydd. ‘From the way Merryl called you back, Nish, I figured it was important,’ said Yggur. ‘Did I hear you say the enemy have fled, Merryl?’

‘Not fled,’ said Merryl. ‘Marched to war. They’ve outflanked Troist’s army and Klarm reckons they’ll be attacking Borgistry within a week. He’s trying to get a better estimate of their numbers.’

‘So what do we do?’ Nish was so tired that he couldn’t think straight.

‘We’ll have to go to Lybing and put our backs to the wall with everyone else,’ said Flydd. ‘Borgistry can’t be allowed to fall. And that’s my big worry.’

‘Why?’ said Nish.

‘It’s too rich, complacent and soft. Borgistry hasn’t been threatened before. It has a big army but not many of its troops have seen combat, and its generals are fat and complacent. We’re going to have to take over.’

‘How will the governor of Borgistry react when you do?’ Nish wondered. ‘I heard the Council was unpopular there.’

‘The old Council was,’ said Flydd, ‘but we’re held in high regard, and we have Klarm to thank for that. He was like a will-o’-the-wisp, fleeting back and forth across Borgistry in the first month of winter, spreading his propaganda about the old Council and bolstering ours. There’s not a soul in Borgistry who hasn’t heard about Fusshte’s dirty little secrets.’

‘I haven’t heard anything about them,’ said Nish.

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I don’t suppose I do.’

‘But do you know the single thing that has legitimised our Council?’ said Flydd, smiling grimly.

‘Thapters,’ said Nish. ‘Or farspeakers.’

‘It was that grisly relic Klarm picked up in the swamp.’

‘What relic?’ said Yggur.

‘Remember how Ghorr was blown out of his skin in the airbag explosion, and we found it hanging in a tree? Klarm had Ghorr’s skin tanned and inflated to make a full-sized balloon of the former chief scrutator.’

‘How revolting,’ said Yggur. ‘Is there no depth to which the little man won’t sink?’

‘Klarm knows how to move the common people,’ said Flydd. ‘He carried Ghorr’s blow-up under his arm to every gathering, setting it up beside him like a saggy, disgusting naked puppet. When the people saw what kind of a man Ghorr had been, or rather how little a man he was, they rallied to us because we’d brought the brute down. There’s nothing quite like ridicule.’

‘I’m prepared to admit that I was wrong about Klarm,’ said Yggur, ‘though he wenches and drinks far more than is proper.’

‘If the tales of this war are ever written, which seems increasingly unlikely, there’ll be a Great Tale in Klarm’s exploits and escapades over the past three months. He’s the bravest man I’ve ever met.’

‘That he is,’ said Yggur. ‘But a libertine nonetheless.’