Tiaan hesitated. She was obedient by nature. But then again … She leapt over the side, slid down the greasy slope and gave Irisis her shoulder. The rain grew heavier, running into her eyes until she could barely see. It had been warm at first but the drops now felt like melted ice.
‘Hop as if the fate of the world depended on it,’ she said, terrified that the thapter would slide away and be lost.
Irisis did so, ignoring the pain, and they slipped and staggered up towards the thapter. Another boulder came crashing down, smaller than the first and not bouncing as high, but all the more dangerous because of that. It followed the path of the other and disappeared.
They reached the side just as there came a rumble of thunder, though there was no lightning. The ground shook. Another crash and it shook again; the thapter moved.
‘That’s one hell of a boulder this time,’ said Irisis, putting her good foot onto the ladder. ‘Sounds like half a pinnacle.’
Tiaan felt a spasm of fear. Thump. She boosted Irisis up and pulled herself up the ladder after her. Thankfully Irisis had the presence of mind not to hesitate at the top. She simply went through the hatch head-first, heedless of her injuries.
Thump-thump. The ground shook so hard that the thapter began to slide.
Tiaan fell in on top of Irisis, who let out a groan as Tiaan landed on her wrenched ankle. Tiaan pulled herself up using the controller.
Thump thump, thump thump. Thump-thump.
She jerked up on the flight knob and the thapter lifted, with agonising slowness. One span, two, three. And then she saw it coming and could not contain herself.
The lyrinx had toppled half of one of the pinnacles, which had broken into two gigantic boulders, bigger than houses, plus a host of smaller, thapter-sized ones. They were thundering down the mountainside, spreading into a fan of devastation hundreds of spans across, smashing trees and rocks to fragments as they came. The thapter was right in their path and from a standing start she couldn’t see how she could get high enough to escape.
Thump. Thump-thump.
Tiaan wiped her eyes with her free hand and tried to see where she could go. The two huge boulders were bouncing twenty or thirty spans high, the smaller ones five or ten. She couldn’t rise above them in time.
The only chance was to fly up the slope, between the biggest boulders, until she gained enough speed to sweep upwards. Tiaan turned that way, knowing that neither the height nor direction of the bounces was predictable. Just as dangerously, the air between the fan of boulders was full of fragments of rock and pieces of shattered wood, a hailstorm of it.
She had to fly on instinct, as she had before. Tiaan went left so as to put herself between the two big boulders, which were roaring towards her. She rose to avoid a pair of trees and corrected again as the right-hand boulder bounced in towards its twin. The next bounce took it out again and for an instant her hand froze on the controller, seeing that it was heading directly for her.
An instinctive wiggle took the thapter sideways; the boulder whistled past, its windstorm buffeting the machine wildly, and smashed off the top half of the tree just below her. She took the machine up and curved away as the smaller boulders, carrying a landslide of rocks, clay and wood with them, rumbled underneath.
The flying lyrinx, who had been hanging back to see the result of their handiwork, now turned towards her in an angry swarm, but it was too late. Tiaan peeled away and fled into the now freezing rain as fast as the battered machine could go.
Ten or fifteen leagues away, out of sight of pursuit, Tiaan set down on the first hill that had a clear view in all directions. She was still shaking.
‘What about Nish?’ she said softly. ‘How did he look?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Irisis, who had overcome her injuries enough to pull herself up onto the side. ‘But he hasn’t moved.’ There was such a stricken look in her eyes that Tiaan had to turn away. She didn’t feel very good either.
‘I’ll go and see. Keep watch.’
‘I’m coming too,’ said Irisis. ‘I’m so afraid. I – I love him, Tiaan. I swore I’d never submit to such a folly. Not me; I was too strong for it. But I do love the little squirt, with every cell of my body, and now I’m terrified that I’ve lost him.’
‘Did … does he know?’
‘Of course not,’ said Irisis. ‘He’s the thickest man on Santhenar. He understands nothing.’
Tiaan smiled at that. Nish understood a great deal. ‘Then perhaps you should spell it out for him.’
‘And perhaps you should mind your own business,’ said Irisis. ‘If you could give me a hand.’
Tiaan wasn’t offended, though once she would have been. She was beginning to understand people too.
She helped Irisis up onto the back platform. The hood was flattened around Nish’s body and head, squashing him face down against the deck, leaving only the top of his head exposed. The hood was deeply dented in four places from crossbow bolts. Moreover, two javelard spears had pinned it in place, one angling in towards his left side, the other between his knees. If either had gone through him he could have bled to death.
Irisis slid a hand under the hood onto Nish’s cheek. ‘He’s icy cold. He’s dead!’
Tiaan eased her out of the way. ‘Of course he’s cold. He’s soaking wet and we’ve been flying fast. It’s lucky he hasn’t got frostbite. Nish?’
He didn’t answer, so she felt his cheek. He was so cold that it was hard to believe that he could be alive. She forced her hand through the narrow space and down to his neck, which proved just as chilly. Tiaan wriggled her fingers underneath his shirt, where his skin was protected from the wind. She found a trace of warmth there. Was that a pulse? She couldn’t be sure.
‘I think he’s alive, Irisis. Talk to him; hold him. I’ll get something to prise the hood off.’
When she returned with a bar, Irisis was crouched down, her hand on Nish’s cheek, her forehead touching the top of his head. Her eyes were screwed shut.
Tiaan began to lever from the side. It was hard work. The black Aachan metal, although thin, was intensely strong and inflexible. It proved impossible to bend out of the way. In the end Tiaan had to whack the spears one way and then the other with the bar until they came free, knowing that if either had gone into Nish she would be greatly aggravating the wound.
The second spear came out. Tiaan tossed it over the side and lifted the sheet of metal, which sprang back to its original shape. Nish gave a groan and turned his head. His nose was running with a mixture of blood and mucus and his lower face was wet with half-frozen saliva.
‘You took your bloody time,’ he said through bruised and swollen lips.
‘Are you all right?’ Irisis said, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘You look disgusting.’
‘Thanks.’
‘If you were all right, why the hell didn’t you say so! I thought you were dead.’
‘I couldn’t move a fingertip. Couldn’t open my mouth, or close it. Do you think you could wipe my nose?’
‘The things I do for your dignity.’ Irisis took off her shirt and began to clean him up with it.
Tiaan walked away across the wet tussock grass and left them to their cheerful bickering.
Once Irisis’s twisted ankle had been immobilised by strapping it to shaped pieces of wood, her wrist bandaged and Nish’s bodylength bruises marvelled over, Tiaan said, ‘What now?’
‘Flydd wants us to check on the cities again, to see what’s happened,’ Nish reminded her. ‘If we go back to Alcifer in three or four days, we should be able to see if the spores have had any effect. In the meantime, let’s find somewhere to hide. With no lyrinx.’
‘Somewhere tranquil,’ said Irisis. ‘With decent food.’
‘And wine,’ said Nish.
‘Neither will be easy to come by,’ said Tiaan, ‘in a land that’s been empty of humans for years. I’ll see what I can find.’