Nish whacked it out with his hands and they moved further away, staring at the flames which were roaring up past them. The three bolts of silk on the floor began to burn.
He tried to drag one out of the way but it was already well ablaze and the silk would be ruined.
‘Can we get up the stairs?’ called Slann, who was furthest from the door.
‘Not a chance. Nor down.’
‘If we close the door it’ll keep the fire out.’
‘For a while,’ said Nish, who already suspected they were doomed.
They kicked the blazing silk down the stairs and dragged the door closed. It was solid wood and would take a while to catch, but burn it would. Nish sat down on the pile of silk rolls. The others took seats as well.
‘Seems a stupid thing to do,’ said Vim. ‘Setting fire to the stairs.’
‘The fire would go up before it went down,’ Nish said wearily. ‘They’d have plenty of time to get away.’
‘But it’s their home.’
‘Plenty more warehouses in Thurkad.’
‘That old man Welmi killed must have been an important fellow.’
‘Must have been.’
‘Any chance the fire will just go out?’ said the soldier who had fired last.
‘These old buildings are dry as tinder,’ Slann replied. ‘If there’s a decent wind it could burn half the city down.’
‘Good riddance. Thurkad always was a stinking place.’
‘The outside of this building is stone,’ said Nish.
‘Makes no difference,’ said Slann. ‘Everything else will burn and the stone will fall down.’
‘Any chance we can break through the outside walls?’ Nish said a while later. The floor was growing hot and smoke had begun to wisp up through cracks in the boards.
Vim inspected the stone. ‘Not a hope.’
‘So we’re going to burn to death?’ said Vim.
‘Looks like it,’ Slann replied.
‘Never thought I’d be going this way.’
The conversation petered out.
FORTY -THREE
Nish and the soldiers had been a long time. Tiaan’s eyelids were drooping when she heard a cry from below.
‘We’ve found it.’
She peered over the side of the thapter and saw lamplight through the hole. One of the soldiers had come up the rope with the hand winch slung over his shoulder. Another rope trailed down through the hole in the roof onto the ceiling. Climbing onto the side of the thapter, he attached the winch to the carrying racks that had been mounted at the back, pulled the rope through, tied it and began to wind.
‘Heavy work,’ he said conversationally.
‘Looks like it,’ said Tiaan, who’d never been good at idle talk.
‘Could you bring the flier round a bit, d’ye think? The way the rope’s hanging, we’re likely to catch the silk on the hole in the roof.’
She rotated the thapter into position. ‘How’s that?’
‘Perfect.’
‘Did you find enough silk?’
‘Plenty,’ he grunted, winding slowly and panting with each circle of the handle.
The rolls came up, two lashed together and hanging vertically. The soldier pulled the top ends onto the racks, took a bight around the lower ends and slowly hauled them on.
‘I’d help you if I could,’ said Tiaan, ‘but I can’t leave the controller.’ She didn’t want him to think she was a shirker.
‘I’m used to it. I don’t know why the others are taking so long.’
He tied the bundle on, threw the end of the rope down through the hole and shortly began to heave the second bundle up, three bolts this time. No sooner had he finished, and was binding it to the racks, than the second soldier came hand over hand up the rope, roaring at the top of his voice.
‘What’s he saying?’ said Tiaan.
‘Fire!’
‘Where?’
The second soldier pulled himself onto the racks, gasping. ‘There were people living in the warehouse. There was a fight. Welmi’s dead, and some of the natives, and now they’ve set fire to the building.’
‘Where are Nish and the rest of the soldiers?’ said Tiaan.
‘Three floors down. Fire’s coming up the stairs and they’re trapped on the silk floor.’
‘And there’s no other way out?’
‘Warehouses don’t have windows.’
The horror of their situation made her bowels tighten. To be burned alive … ‘I don’t see what we can do,’ Tiaan said reluctantly. Yggur and Flydd had made her duty plain to her before she left. Firstly, and at all costs, she must bring back the thapter – it meant the difference between survival (if only for a time) and ruinous defeat. And it was their only hope of victory, faint though that seemed.
Secondly, Tiaan had been instructed to protect herself even at the cost of the lives of any or all the others, because her talent was irreplaceable. Doing so went against her feelings, but she would follow orders. Thirdly, she had to ensure that whatever silk they found got back to Fiz Gorgo. And finally, lowest in importance, she must do her best to protect the lives of her crew, including Nish.
Nish, her nemesis. And yet, how could she think of him, or any of them, trapped by the inferno and knowing that they were going to be burned to death? Tiaan couldn’t allow that to happen, even to her enemy, if there was any safe way to prevent it. She came to a decision.
‘Get the silk inside!’ she rapped. ‘Quick as you can.’
They obeyed, squeezing the rolls through the small lower hatch and dragging them below, and went back for the winch.
‘Where are the breaking tools?’ she said.
‘Below, on the ceiling.’
‘Get in.’
They climbed through the hatch. Tiaan pulled it down and latched it. Taking hold of the controller, she allowed the thapter to fall onto the roof.
Smashed tiles flew everywhere and the roof timbers emitted a wrenching groan, but didn’t break. She hadn’t hit them hard enough. Lifting the thapter again, she went a little higher and dropped the machine onto the same place.
More flying tiles; torn timbers flashed across her view, then part of the roof gave way and they were through, still falling. She brought the machine to rest just above the ceiling beams in a rain of splinters and tiles.
‘Pick up the tools and get back in.’ She eyed the ceiling timbers. They were not heavy ones.
Using the same approach, Tiaan dropped the thapter through the ceiling. It gave way easily, ceiling joists being lighter than roof beams. The room below was wreathed in smoke and the thapter struck the floor before she realised how close she was. The impact shook the building but the floor held. These were much stronger timbers and she didn’t dare try to crash the thapter through them. It was solidly built but not indestructible.
‘Get out,’ she yelled. ‘Chop holes in the floor on either side of that joist – there where the line of nails runs. Hack into the joist as well, and the next one.’
The soldiers threw themselves out and began chopping furiously. Tiaan went below and rifled through one of the compartments, looking for a steel towing cable with an eye on each end, which she had seen previously. She threw it down.
‘Put one end through the first hole and bring it up through the second. Pass the second eye through the first and put it over the hook at the back of the thapter. Then stand clear.’
When that was done Tiaan took the thapter up hard. The cable twanged tight, the floorboards bowed. She had hoped to pull the floor joist out from the stone at the wall end, but it held. She reached out for the field, took more power; the joist bent then snapped in a fountain of broken floorboards, exposing the joists to either side.
‘Chop through the joists,’ she ordered. ‘Quick!’
They cut them halfway, but even then it needed several thumps to break through the floor. She put the machine down on the floor below and the soldiers got to work with their axes. Tiaan climbed out and inspected the thapter with a lantern. The metal skin was bent and buckled in several places, gouged and scratched in others, but no serious damage had been done. She silently thanked the Aachim for their workmanship. Clankers were strongly built but this kind of treatment would have wrecked one.