‘You weren’t to know that Fusshte would come back,’ said Irisis, running beside him.
‘There was a skeet missing from its cage the other day,’ panted Klarm, who was having trouble keeping up.
‘And you didn’t think to mention it?’ cried Flydd.
‘I thought someone had eaten it.’
‘A spy must have been keeping Fusshte informed,’ said Flydd. ‘Once he realised I wasn’t going to use the amplimet he got his courage back. I should have cut him down like the vermin he is.’
He turned as he ran and Irisis saw a fury in his eyes that was close to insanity.
‘Where’s Malien?’ panted Yggur, limping up to join them.
‘I haven’t seen her all morning,’ Irisis called over her shoulder.
Flydd swore a ghastly oath. ‘We’re going to lose the thapter.’
They turned the rear corner of Nennifer and the first air-dreadnought was just a hundred spans from the ground. Its sides were lined with soldiers, all with crossbows at their shoulders. Javelard operators at front and rear were sliding spears into position.
‘Keep to the shadows,’ said Flydd. ‘They’ll be watching for us.’
‘They’ll be hard pressed to pick us out of four thousand people,’ said Nish.
‘Care to bet your life on it?’ Yggur grated. ‘Fusshte won’t take chances this time. Their orders will be to shoot us on sight.’
‘Can’t you spin an illusion around us?’ said Irisis.
‘Not on the run, out of nothing. I haven’t got the tiniest crystal on me.’
The thapter had been left about three hundred spans away, in an alley between piled rows of timber recovered from the wreckage for firewood. It was covered by a tarpaulin and, since there were canvas shelters all over the place, Irisis hoped that it wouldn’t attract the attackers’ immediate attention.
She edged through the heaps of rubble at the back of Nennifer. The air-dreadnought was hovering, its rotors roaring to keep it in place against the strong wind. A man at the bow – Fusshte himself, the stinking cur – had a speaking trumpet up to his mouth. Oh for a crossbow, Irisis thought, but hers was inside the thapter.
‘Where is the traitor Flydd and his treacherous companions?’ Fusshte shouted. ‘Where is the flying construct? Point them out and you’ll be well rewarded.’
‘We’re finished,’ said Nish.
‘Keep moving,’ hissed Flydd. ‘They don’t know where we are.’
They crept on. The low sun cast deep shadows behind the standing remnants of Nennifer and they took advantage of the cover to get closer.
‘Speak!’ roared Fusshte, ‘or I’ll shoot you down like the treasonous dogs you are.’
Evidently no one had betrayed them, for Fusshte turned to his archers, pointing down inside the walls of the air-dreadnought yard. Judging by the collective roar, they’d fired into the crowd. Fusshte’s signalmen exchanged signals with the other two air-dreadnoughts, hovering above, and they separated. One headed around the far side of Nennifer, the other over the rubble in their general direction. Someone had given away the location of the thapter.
‘See how easy it is to do your duty,’ Fusshte said.
‘Run!’ gasped Flydd.
Irisis put on a final burst, her long legs carrying her ahead. There wasn’t far to go – just down to the far corner of the rubble wall and around to the left, into the firewood alley, then along it for fifty or sixty spans.
Her breasts were thumping up and down painfully. Had she been expecting action she would have bound them. She looked back for Nish, who was labouring along, red in the face, about thirty spans behind.
Irisis didn’t wait, for the nearest air-dreadnought had suddenly altered course, the long airbags wobbling in their rigging as it tried to turn at right-angles. They had been spotted. The soldiers were lined up on the sides, crossbows at the ready. They weren’t within range but the javelards probably were.
Thud-crash. A spear buried itself in the timber just behind her. She raced on, weaving from side to side, risking a quick glance over her shoulder. Javelards weren’t accurate at that distance, but once within crossbow range the craft would turn side-on to fire a fusillade at them. They had a minute to get to safety.
Irisis turned the corner into the firewood alley and stopped in dismay. The canvas cover lay on the ground but the thapter was gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
‘It’s not there,’ Irisis was saying as Nish rounded the corner.
‘Malien must have seen them coming,’ panted Yggur, who had turned grey, ‘and gone looking for us in the thapter.’
‘We’ll be dead before she finds us,’ said Nish.
Irisis was running back along the jumbled windrow of timber, trying to see over it, but it was too high.
‘Keep going, to the other end of the alley,’ gasped Flydd. ‘She can’t be far away.’
Nish set off again, with Irisis, but the brief respite had sapped his stamina. He hadn’t run in a long time and every step felt leaden now. The middle of his back itched as if a javelard was lined up on it.
The leading air-dreadnought had completed its turn and was approaching rapidly. The one that had fired into the crowd was coming their way too. There was nowhere to hide.
‘Malien!’ Irisis screamed, though even if Malien were nearby, she wouldn’t hear over the whine of the thapter. She stopped halfway up the alley where a gap in the heaped timber allowed access into the adjoining alley.
‘No point running any more,’ Irisis gasped.
Nish edged into the gap, which provided some shelter from the attack, and watched the two craft moving in. ‘Malien wouldn’t go looking for us,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t know where to look.’
‘She wouldn’t stay and risk losing the thapter,’ said Yggur.
‘I never thought she’d abandon us,’ said Irisis.
‘She hasn’t,’ said Nish more confidently than he felt. ‘And she wouldn’t leave Tiaan either, after all the time they’ve spent together. That’s probably where she’s gone, to get Tiaan.’
‘She’d better make it snappy,’ said Flydd.
The first air-dreadnought was now inching into a turn against the strong wind, getting ready to fire a crossbow broadside that would cut them to pieces.
‘Can’t you blast them out of the sky?’ cried Nish. ‘Yggur? Flydd? Klarm?’
‘If we had that kind of power we would have used it at Fiz Gorgo,’ said Yggur. ‘There’s nothing we can do to air-dreadnoughts from this distance.’
‘Through here into the next alley,’ said Nish, pointing with his splinted arm. ‘It’ll buy us a minute.’
They scurried through the gap into the next alley. ‘Spread out and keep low,’ said Nish, ‘and press right up against the timber. They’re having trouble staying steady in the wind. Make their shots as difficult as you can.’
‘What’s that?’ hissed Irisis, cupping her ear.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Nish. With the whistling wind, the clatter of rotors and the cries of refugees, it was a wonder that anyone could.
‘It’s the thapter coming back,’ said Irisis.
‘Which way?’ snapped Flydd.
‘I can’t tell,’ Irisis wailed.
‘They’ll cut us down before we can get to it,’ said Flydd.
Without a word, Flangers leapt to his feet and scrambled up the timber pile.
‘What does the bloody fool think he’s doing?’ said Flydd. ‘They’ll shoot him –’
It was the atonement Flangers had been searching for ever since he’d shot down Klarm’s air-floater at Snizort. ‘No, Flangers,’ Irisis screamed. ‘Get down!’
‘I see it,’ Flangers shouted. ‘Three alleys across. Malien!’ He roared out her name, leaping in the air and waving his arms. ‘She’s –’
The impact of several crossbow bolts threw him onto his back. Irisis cried out and covered her face. Nish pulled her in under the tangle of timber. The others had taken what shelter they could. Bolts thudded into the firewood all around them and whined off the paving stones. A javelard spear smashed into a beam above his head, snapping it in half.