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.
‘That was close,’ said Irisis, seemingly unperturbed.
Tiaan’s knees had gone weak. ‘Thirty seconds.’ You trust me more than I trust myself, she thought.
She lined up with the cleft between the cliff and the pinnacles. At this speed there was no room for error or, hopefully, for a successful counterattack. Two lyrinx on the pinnacles had rocks above their heads, the third a javelard. The sphere of lyrinx in the air were armed with crossbows or other weapons.
‘Ten seconds.’ Irisis relayed it to Nish at the same moment, then counted them down.
‘Five, four, three, two –’
‘No!’ Tiaan screamed, pulling the thapter up so hard that her stomach churned. ‘No, Nish, don’t throw the spores.’
She flicked a glance at the openings as she passed. With an almighty crash, a boulder struck the left flank of the machine, which lurched sideways towards the cliff. There was a lyrinx right in front of her, aiming a crossbow. No time to turn or climb; the thapter ploughed straight into the creature as it fired. Purple blood streaked the screen but Tiaan had no idea where the bolt had gone. A clatter-clatter at the back told her that the machine had been hit several times. She prayed that they hadn’t got Nish.
She shot through the circle of lyrinx, up and over the cliff, streaking away, wavering because her hand was shaking so much.
‘Report!’ she said roughly.
‘I’m all right,’ said Irisis. ‘And I think Nish is, though his hood was hit by crossbow bolts a couple of times.’
‘Did he throw out the dust?’
‘No. What was the matter?’
‘I knew something was wrong,’ said Tiaan. ‘It was a decoy. They were waiting outside a shaft they’d already closed off.’
‘It’s going to be mighty hard to make a second attempt,’ said Irisis.
FIFTY-FIVE
They set down in the mountains a few leagues away to discuss tactics. Nish was unharmed, though a crossbow bolt had dented the metal above the back of his head.
‘If your head had been touching the metal it probably would have killed you,’ said Irisis, hugging Nish. The dent was half the depth of her thumb.
‘If Tiaan hadn’t insisted on the hood you’d be scraping my brains off the platform now,’ said Nish. ‘So which opening was it?’
‘The fourth – I could see all the way in. The others were blocked off.’
‘Do you think it’s possible to make a second attempt?’
‘Let’s think it through. We’ll give it a while. They’ve probably closed that opening off as well, in case we come straight back, but they can’t close all the openings off for long. If the others have been closed since the attack yesterday the air will be getting bad by now.’
They had something to eat and drink, washed their sweaty faces and hands, and sat down to plan.
‘There’s just one chance left,’ said Tiaan, looking up at the sky. The thunderheads were joining up to form a continuous mass of storms, just east of the escarpment, with lightning flickering inside them. ‘We drop out of one of those clouds and fly at the cliff head-on, then swerve between the pinnacles, straight into the air vent and chuck out the spores.’
‘It’d better be big enough,’ said Nish.
‘It should be, and a little to spare, but there won’t be any room for error.’
‘Or another rock that knocks us out of line,’ said Irisis. ‘Anything short of dead centre and the thapter will be wrecked.’
‘And we’ll be killed,’ said Nish.
‘And then what?’ said Irisis to Tiaan.
‘Straight out again, backwards, and try to get away.’
‘Be surprised if we can.’
‘We don’t have to have another go,’ said Irisis. ‘Flydd doesn’t expect us to commit suicide. More importantly, he won’t want to lose another thapter.’
‘I think we can do it,’ said Tiaan.
Nish and Irisis looked at one another. ‘If you think so, that’s good enough for me,’ said Irisis.
‘And me.’
Tiaan went south and lifted up into the clouds, flying in and out of their black and chilly tops so she could see where she was going. She looked at Irisis, who nodded. ‘Nish’s ready too.’
Tiaan gulped. ‘If the air currents don’t move us too far out of line we’ll burst out of the cloud about five hundred spans above the opening and the same distance from the cliff. I’ll line up and head for it as fast as I can possibly go, slowing only as we approach the pinnacles. They won’t have much time to get ready for us, but it’ll be enough. They’ll hit us with everything they’ve got. I’ll try to dart through between the pinnacles but, the more I think about it …’