FORTY-EIGHT

Someone drew a deep, shuddering breath. Nish thought it had been Mira, though she was sitting back and he couldn’t see her. General Orgestre’s mouth opened and closed. For the first time in his life, it appeared, the hard-faced man was directly threatened, and he was terrified. He began buffing his golden medals, as if to find comfort there.

‘Then Borgistry will fall,’ said Nisbeth. ‘We must evacuate to our refuges.’

‘Where we’ll either starve in the drylands, freeze in the mountains or be eaten alive by midges in the stinking bogs of Mirrilladell,’ said Meylea Thrant, the merchant. ‘Had I known I was throwing my money away, I would have paid my military levies rather less cheerfully.’

‘You never handed over a copper grint without shedding a tear,’ General Orgestre said, now desperately polishing his chest ornaments.

‘I’d gladly pay it to an officer who’d earned his commission, rather than bought it,’ said Thrant.

Dead silence. Orgestre swelled up like a red-faced toad. His mouth opened but nothing came out.

‘That’s not helpful,’ said Nisbeth, who was deathly pale. Her husband was supporting her. ‘General Troist, may we hear your view?’

Troist, a neat man, apart from his mass of tangled, sandy curls, stood up. ‘As far as I know, no human army has ever beaten the enemy when the numbers were equal; nor should we expect to. Yet,’ he looked down one side of the table and up the other, ‘the situation is different now.’

‘Go on, General,’ said Nisbeth. ‘Do you have a plan to defend us?’

‘I’m beginning to formulate one. Flydd and Yggur have given us new hope. Farspeakers are going to revolutionise warfare, though we’re still working out how to make the best use of them. And with our thapters, essentially invulnerable to lyrinx attack, we can see the whole of a battlefield – indeed the whole of Borgistry – at once.’

‘They’ll attack in bad weather when you can’t see further than you can throw a spear,’ said Orgestre.

‘Then we’ll know when to expect them,’ said Troist.

‘But not where. Not how many,’ said Orgestre with relentless despair. ‘And both thapters and farspeakers are vulnerable to node-drainers. Only a fool would rely on such untested Arts at a time like this.’

‘We’re overusing the fields,’ said Mancer Crissinton Tybe, who had the narrowest, most angular face Nish had ever seen on a man, and a mouth that gashed it in two as if the back of his head were hinged. ‘It’s as simple as that. We’re abusing the natural forces, and so are the enemy, and there’s got to be a reckoning.’

‘I’m not sure I understand you, Mancer Tybe,’ said Flydd.

‘What he means,’ said Mancer Rodrig, a small, deliberate man, ‘is that one day the fields will let us down when we most need them.’ His skin was starkly white but there were such dark rings around his eyes that he appeared to be wearing goggles. ‘We must wean ourselves off the fields before it’s too late. We’ve seen it in the stars.’

‘The stars!’ said Flydd, unable to contain his derision. ‘Unfortunately, my dear mancers, this war is being fought on solid ground and to give up the fields is to give up existence. While the enemy uses power we have to match it.’

‘Even to the ruin of the world,’ Crissinton Tybe intoned.

‘If the numbers are correct, we’ve lost the battle and the war,’ said Orgestre. His red face was now blotched with ugly purple stains like birthmarks.

‘It would almost be worth it,’ came a low voice from behind the veil, ‘to rid the world of the bloodless warmongers who send our young to die but never hazard their own lives. Have you ever seen active service, Orgestre?’ Nish had never heard such hatred as there was in Mira’s voice.

‘Mira, please,’ said Nisbeth. ‘Would you go on, General Troist?’

‘We have thapters, against which the enemy haven’t yet found a defence. We have farspeakers – which aren’t perfect, I agree – yet in this battle, in the limited compass of Borgistry, they’re worth twenty thousand troops. If the enemy break though in some unexpected place, our captains will know in time to send reinforcements, or withdraw.’

‘They have the numbers to overwhelm us,’ said Orgestre. ‘and they too can communicate over a distance.’

‘Their mindspeaking is of the most primitive sort,’ said Flydd. ‘Only those most powerful in the Art can use it. There’s still hope, since the lyrinx are just out of hibernation. They’ll be lethargic and wouldn’t normally do battle for another week. And they’ll be wasted and hungry when they get here.’

‘They’ll fight all the more fiercely for it,’ said Orgestre. ‘We must withdraw.’

‘They won’t fight as well, or for as long. We must force them into battle before they’re ready, and seize the advantage.’

‘You’ve got to find them first,’ said Orgestre. ‘How are you going to do that?’

‘We’re training animals to sniff them out,’ said Flydd, reluctantly.

‘What kind of animals?’

‘Pigs, as it happens. They can pick lyrinx even further away than dogs, and –’

‘Sniffer pigs! That’s one for the Histories. They’ll still be laughing about it in a thousand years.’

‘Enough, gentlemen,’ said Nisbeth. ‘We’ve got to decide on a plan.’

‘Get rid of this fool before he leads us all to destruction. As Grand Commander –’

‘No, General,’ said Nisbeth. ‘I bow to the Council and Scrutator Flydd’s leadership. Xervish?’

Flydd set his jaw. ‘We fight for Borgistry and the whole world,’ he said flatly. ‘We can do nothing less.’

Nish was out the door the moment the Council finished. He was running away, for he could not bear to see the contempt in Mira’s eyes. He fully expected guards to come for him, and all day he had an itch in the middle of his back, as if a target had been painted there. He desperately needed to talk to someone about it, but Irisis was the only person with whom he could share such a delicate matter and he had no idea when she was going to return.

That afternoon he was summoned to Troist’s rooms. Nish went expecting the worst.

‘Come in,’ Troist said. He was a reserved man and Nish couldn’t read his expression. ‘I didn’t get the chance to congratulate you earlier, so let me do it now. You’ve done great deeds since I last saw you at Gnulp Landing. I wouldn’t have thought any man could have accomplished so much. And now this new miracle: air-floaters built, thapters recovered from Snizort, pilots found and trained, and all unexpected but most timely. There’s no man under my command who could have done it, Cryl-Nish.’

‘It was … everyone worked very hard, surr.’

‘And no one harder or more intelligently than you.’ He gave Nish his hand, and Nish shook it in rather a daze. ‘You’ve given us a chance that even I – and my wife Yara calls me an incurable optimist – never dreamed of having.’

‘Thank you, surr.’ Nish swallowed, still thinking about Mira. For all his bravery on the battlefield, he would never find the courage to face one small woman. ‘I was wondering if I might come with you, surr, when you go to war? I might be more useful at the front than sitting here.’

Troist gave him a keen glance. ‘I’ve need of an aide who can get things done. If Scrutator Flydd has no objection, I’d be delighted to have you. I’ll be leaving in the morning.’

Scrutator Flydd had many objections, which he put strenuously, but Nish would not back down.

‘You’re a curious chap, Nish,’ said Flydd. ‘I recall a time, not so long ago, when you pleaded with me to keep you away from the front-lines. Now you’re begging to go there.’ He surveyed Nish just as keenly as Troist had. ‘Are you sure you’re not running away from something?’

Nish tried to pass it off. ‘Well, I’m a different man now.’

‘You’re a man, not a boy pretending to be one. That’s the difference. Oh, go on then. I dare say Troist needs you more than I do.’

Troist and his retinue of officers were heading for Clew’s Top, east of The Elbow in southern Borgistry, where a small force of his army was stationed, to await the main army now racing back from Strebbit. Nish rode with them in a cramped, bone-jarring clanker. It seemed such an old-fashioned conveyance now, so noisy that he couldn’t think straight, and joltingly uncomfortable.

‘Did you happen to see Mira yesterday?’ Troist said that afternoon.

‘I didn’t get the chance,’ Nish lied.

‘She was looking for you. And so were Yara and my twins.’

‘I was working on the supply records until late.’ Hiding, as it happened.

‘I dare say she’ll find you when we get back.’

If we get back. The lyrinx generally attacked the command centre from the air at night, with massive force, at the beginning of a battle. Just so had Troist gained his command after all the more senior officers were slain.