‘It would appear that way,’ said Yggur.
Flydd looked as if he wanted to punch Yggur in the mouth.
‘He demanded that I hand over the stolen relics unconditionally,’ Flydd said. ‘I – I went too far. I threatened to destroy them if he didn’t cooperate. He pointed out that, if we did, we’d have nothing to bargain with, and they would slaughter us to the last man. I suggested that he might get a surprise if he tried, and the next I knew he was gone.’
‘He came to bargain in good faith,’ said Yggur, ‘and you showed him, yet again, that the scrutators have none.’
‘Perhaps I’ve grown too hard, or too desperate,’ said Flydd.
‘Then we’d better get ready to fight,’ said Troist. ‘And I really hope your mind-shockers and your field controller are up to the business, Flydd, because at the moment they’re the only thing between us and destruction.’
The lyrinx attacked two hours later but the defence did not go as expected. Flydd’s field controller had no effect on the enemy’s Arts and devices, though it had been operating perfectly that morning. While Irisis was trying to work out what the matter was, Orgestre and Troist hastily sent out four hundred clankers, each containing one of the mind-shockers tuned to a set of five specially modified master farspeakers, each with its operator, and all under the direction of Klarm. The remaining hundred mind-shockers had been kept for defence. The plan was for the clankers to encircle the enemy on three sides. The master farspeaker operator would send its signal and each mind-shocker would emit a ferocious burst of barbed mindspeech, so painful that all lyrinx nearby would be forced to flee in the only direction left to them – over the cliffs and down to the Dry Sea. There, being uncomfortable in heat and bright light, they would be at a greater disadvantage.
At least, that was the plan. Unfortunately the mind-shockers did not work either. After the first shock was sent the lyrinx fell about laughing, then formed up in their ranks and charged.
‘They were working perfectly this morning!’ Flydd said when the operators reported back. He wasn’t so much shocked as dazed. He couldn’t work out what had gone wrong. ‘We tried it on three captured lyrinx and they nearly shed their skins in agony.’
‘Well, it’s not working here,’ shrilled the operator. ‘They’re coming –’
They heard nothing more from her.
The master farspeaker operators tried again and again as the clankers retreated to the army, but the mind-shockers kept failing. Troist threw together a desperate defence, with eight thousand battle clankers forming a ring of armour around the foot soldiers, though such an overwhelming force of lyrinx would soon breach it. Possibly afraid that the relics would be destroyed, the enemy didn’t launch an all-out attack, but they forced the army around in a sweeping curve until its only line of retreat was towards the cliffs.
Flydd and Irisis held a hurried conference to discover what had gone wrong while Troist stood by in case they made a breakthrough.
‘Their power patterner must be doing it,’ said Flydd, trying to get his head into the complex bowels of the field controller, though Irisis couldn’t imagine what he hoped to see there.
‘Surr,’ said an anxious artisan, terrified that he’d do irreparable damage, ‘if you could be careful –’
He whipped his head out and she leapt backwards out of the way.
‘Their power patterner isn’t stopping our clankers from going,’ said Troist, furious that his men were dying so uselessly.
‘Who knows how they can pattern power?’ mused Flydd. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We go where they drive us,’ said Troist bitterly, for the enemy were closing in all around, leaving open only a steep and rugged track that led down a gully eroded into the cliffs, all the way down to the Dry Sea. The clankers would be lucky to get down it without overturning. ‘They’re doing exactly what we planned on doing to them.’
‘The enemy would appear to have a sense of irony,’ Gilhaelith observed. ‘I’m fascinated to see what you’re going to do now, scrutator.’
Flydd crab-walked away and roared at the rest of the artisans, who came running. ‘Irisis?’ he bellowed. ‘Get this wretched thing fixed or I’ll have all your heads.’
The lyrinx drove them down onto the Dry Sea, where Troist set up camp and ordered his troops to prepare what defences they could. Irisis was barely aware of the desperate day-long flight, or the bloody skirmishes that punctuated it. Eleven artisans and crafters had been shoehorned into a specially modified twelve-legged clanker, the only kind big enough to accommodate them and their apparatuses. They worked all day and through the night, taking the field controller apart and checking every piece. They made a number of modifications that should have improved the device if they ever got it working again, but couldn’t identify any failure.
‘Do you think if we asked Yggur?’ Irisis said tentatively, for Flydd seethed with a cold rage that she’d only seen before on the way to Nennifer. She didn’t know how to deal with it.
‘I’ve asked!’ Flydd said. ‘I’ve begged, pleaded and even humbled myself, but he won’t budge.’
‘Have you … er, given any thought to what he said?’
‘I’ve thought of nothing else, Crafter. I’ve wracked my brains for a solution that doesn’t involve wiping out the enemy. My guts burn like acid, I can’t sleep, I –’
He laid his head against the side of the clanker and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Anyway, that’s my worry, not yours. Let’s go over it one more time.’
‘It’s got to be their power patterner,’ said Irisis blearily, much later, as the sun rose over the salt.
‘Of course it is,’ snapped Flydd, who’d reluctantly come to the same conclusion at the end of the sleepless night. ‘I just don’t see how it can be affecting our field controller. That’s why we put those banks of charged crystals at the heart of it – so it wouldn’t need to draw on the field at all. Otherwise any node-drainer could bring it down.’
‘Maybe that’s the problem,’ said Irisis. ‘I wonder …? What has the field been doing during our flight? Has anyone been watching it?’
‘It’s behaving oddly, Crafter,’ said the youngest artisan, Nouniy, who was only seventeen and wore her blonde hair in a myriad of plaits, in imitation of famous Pilot Kattiloe. ‘It’s been whirling, actually.’
‘Whirling?’ said Irisis.
‘That’s the only way I can describe it.’ Nouniy demonstrated its motion in the air with a fingertip.
‘Curious,’ said Irisis, touching her pliance and taking a look for herself. Pulling the rear hatch open, she knelt down and began scratching a design on the salt with the point of her knife.
‘What are you doing?’ said Flydd, crouching beside her with an audible click of his kneecaps.
‘The cycling field must be inducing a contrary field around your sensing crystals, cancelling them out. So the rest of the field controller is working but, since you can’t sense how the field is changing, you can’t do anything with it. Now, if we were to just add …’
She sketched for five or six minutes, stood up and looked at the design from all sides, then nodded. ‘That’ll work. Let’s get it made.’ Irisis carefully carved the pattern out of the salt and crushed it under her boot, in case of spies or traitors.
An aide ran up with a folded message strip. Flydd unfolded it and handed it back to her. She bowed and withdrew.
‘Better hurry,’ said Flydd. ‘Our entire army is on the salt. Whatever the enemy have in mind, it’s not going to be long in coming. And get someone to call Tiaan again.’
Each time a thapter was heard he ran out and stared up at the sky, but Tiaan didn’t appear.
After the modifications had been made, Irisis successfully tested the field controller and went looking for Flydd to tell him the good news. He was preparing a last-ditch defence. If that failed their only options were a suicidal attack on an enemy that vastly outnumbered them, or a desperate flight into the Dry Sea. And everyone knew how that would end.