‘How are we going to attack the next shaft?’ said Irisis the following day, long before they were in sight of the northern city. ‘They’ll be waiting for us, and if they get the chance they’ll close it off or form a living wall over it.’
‘I was wondering about that,’ said Tiaan, who was already feeling anxious. ‘I think we’d better go in as fast as the thapter can fly, and hope to reach it before they can react.’
‘After their success in killing the pilot of the other thapter they’ll be waiting for us. Can you fly in with the hatch closed?’
‘Not in such a tight space, I’ve got to be able to see all around.’
‘How can we drop the spores and protect you at the same time?’ said Nish.
‘I’ll just have to take the risk. You two will be in more danger than I am.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Nish. ‘If they kill one of us, the others can still go ahead. If they kill you they kill us all – and deprive humanity of another priceless thapter.’
‘What’s the site like?’ said Irisis. ‘Have you seen it before?’
Tiaan recalled the maps to mind before answering. ‘The entry tunnels run horizontally off a series of sandstone cliffs. The air vents lie above the tunnels, disguised as caves, and they won’t be easy to get to. They’re sheltered behind a series of pinnacles rising up in front of the cliffs.’
‘How are we going to reach them?’
Tiaan had to think about that too, for she still hadn’t worked out the best means of attack. ‘I think – I think the best approach would be to fly along the face of the cliff at high speed, really close to the rock so we’ll be hard to detect from on high, and come hurtling around the end of the ridge just south of the city. We’ll appear without warning, hopefully, heading directly for the openings. That’ll give them the minimum time to react.’
‘Won’t it be dangerous, flying so close to the cliff?’ said Nish.
‘Very, but I don’t see any other choice.’
‘What if I took one of the curved side panels off and fixed it halfway over the hatch?’ said Nish.
‘What good would that do?’
‘If I angled it up from the back, it’d protect you from crossbow shots from behind and above, and even a bit from the sides, but you could still see. Except directly behind, of course.’
‘You’d have to fix it pretty solidly or the wind would tear it off,’ Tiaan said dubiously.
‘I’ll see what tools are below,’ said Nish. ‘Why don’t you set down?’
Tiaan settled under the trees and Nish went to work. It didn’t take long to remove a piece of metal from the side, shaped like a shield bent into a shallow curve along its long axis. However, it proved impossible to fix tightly in place, and eventually he had to tie it down.
‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ Nish said gloomily as he surveyed his work.
‘If it stays there,’ said Tiaan. ‘When we’re going quickly the wind might tear it away.’
‘We won’t be any worse off,’ said Nish.
‘We will if the wind drives it into the person who’s dumping the spores from the rear platform,’ said Irisis. ‘That’ll be –’
‘Me, of course,’ Nish said hastily.
‘It’ll be me!’ Irisis said. ‘You hit your head, twice.’
‘And you pumped a couple of flagons of blood out of your leg.’
‘It was no more than an eggcup and I’m going up the back.’
‘You’re not!’
Nish and Irisis were glaring at each other.
‘I can’t believe you’re fighting over who’s most likely to be killed,’ said Tiaan. ‘You’re like a pair of children.’
‘We are not!’ they said together, and burst out laughing.
Tiaan found them incomprehensible. How could anyone joke at a time like this? ‘It’s my thapter and I say who does what. Nish, you’ll dump the spores from the back, and you’ll also be under a metal hood. Irisis, you’ve lost too much blood. You might faint at the critical time.’
‘I’ve never fainted in my life!’ Irisis exclaimed.
‘Anyway, I need you in with me. You’ll probably have to hang onto the hood to stop it flying off, and you can do that easier than Nish could, since you’re taller. No, don’t argue. It’s settled.’
Tiaan’s palm was sweating on the controller. The thapter was hurtling along just a span away from the cliff, and maintaining that distance was much harder than she’d imagined. She hadn’t flown along here before and had no mental picture to rely on. The cliff looked smooth from a distance but, close up, ledges, rock outliers, pinnacles and angled trees appeared out of nowhere. She had to react by instinct to avoid them – there simply wasn’t time to think about it. Moreover, it was another sweltering day and the updraughts and eddies along the cliff could hurl the machine in any direction. Thunderheads were already forming in a line along the escarpment.
‘It’s just around the point of this ridge and back about a quarter of a league,’ said Tiaan. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes,’ said Irisis. Her left arm was upstretched, holding the hood, which was jerking up and down in the wind, threatening to tear the ropes away.
‘What about Nish?’
He was lying prone on the rear platform in his rope harness, under a curved sheet of metal taken from the other side of the thapter. Tiaan hoped the enemy wouldn’t realise he was there until he got up and hurled in the barrel of spores. If they did shoot at him, the black metal ought to protect him from a crossbow bolt, even one from a powerful lyrinx bow.
Irisis looked around the side of the hood. ‘He’s ready.’
As Tiaan reached the end of the rocky point she flung the thapter around in a tight turn, bouncing on the eddying updraughts. Irisis made a muffled sound in her throat as the hood was flung upwards and one foot lifted off the floor. She hauled the hood down again.
Something banged at the back. ‘Is he still there?’ Tiaan said.
‘Yes. Threw him around a bit, though.’
‘The main entrances to the city are just around the curve of the cliff to the right. See the caves?’
‘I see them. And that must be the air opening above them, where all the lyrinx are.’
A globe-shaped mass of flying lyrinx were circling around a smaller opening, the second of five in a row, some twenty spans above and a hundred to the right of the main entrances. In front, three jagged rock pinnacles rose up hundreds of spans from an outlier of yellow sandstone. Between cliff and pinnacles the cleft was only ten spans at its widest point, and half that at its narrowest, through which the thapter would have to negotiate at speed. There were lyrinx on the tops of the pinnacles, too, though from here Tiaan couldn’t tell what weapons they might have.
‘I don’t see any bellows,’ said Tiaan.
‘It could be inside the air vent,’ Irisis replied.
‘There’s something wrong.’ Tiaan pushed the levers forward and the thapter rocketed along the cliff face.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
The sphere of lyrinx turned in their direction. ‘They’ve seen us.’
‘Ask Nish if he’s ready,’ Tiaan said, clenching her jaw so tightly that the muscles cramped.
‘I already did.’
‘Ask him again!’ she snapped.
Irisis called out. Tiaan couldn’t hear any answer but Irisis said, ‘He’s ready.’
‘Fifty seconds,’ said Tiaan.
Irisis relayed it to Nish.
An updraught sent them flying towards the yellow cliff, so close that Tiaan was sure they would hit. She corrected, the thapter sheered along the cliff and through a veil of water trickling from above, shaving off ferns growing in crevices on the wet surface.