‘Gilhaelith,’ Irisis said as pleasantly as she could, ‘where’s Nish?’
‘I left him behind when we snatched the relics,’ Gilhaelith said, as if Nish were of no significance.
‘What do you mean, left him behind?’ She took him by the coat and lifted him to his toes. Gilhaelith was a good head taller, but he looked alarmed.
‘Dozens of lyrinx were just seconds away and the soldiers on the ground were dead. I couldn’t wait for Nish to get aboard, so I went without him.’ He shrugged.
Irisis let him go, turned away, then swung back and brought a ferocious right hook out of nowhere to crash into his jaw. It drove him against the wall, and as he crumpled to the floor she said, ‘If Nish is dead, so are you.’
She stumbled down the ladder, blinking tears out of her eyes, and threw herself on the floor between Merryl and one of the soldiers. Merryl gripped her shoulder.
‘I think I’ve cracked a knuckle on the bastard,’ she muttered.
Irisis was making last-minute checks of the field controller, her knuckles bound in a yellow rag, when a pair of lyrinx flew towards the command area, a blue truce flag fluttering behind them. She hastily threw a cloth over the device and went out of the tent. Flydd, Troist and Orgestre conferred, then Flydd ordered a blue flag to be raised, indicating that they would allow the parley. The lyrinx flew away, shortly returning with the flag and another lyrinx, an enormous black, golden-crested male.
He landed by the command tents and went forward to where Flydd stood with but a single attendant, as required in the truce parley. The escort waited with the flag while the black lyrinx spoke briefly with them. After a minute or two he began flashing the most violent patterns of reds and blacks Irisis had ever seen. The black lyrinx abruptly turned to the flagpole, wrenched it out of the ground and snapped it across his knee. He tore the truce flag into two, trampled it into the dust and climbed into the sky so rapidly that his escort, still holding the other flag, was left far behind.
‘He didn’t like your attitude?’ Irisis said after they’d gone.
Yggur followed her over, with Troist.
‘He demanded to know why Gilhaelith hadn’t kept his word,’ said Flydd, visibly shaken. ‘I explained the new situation and demanded that he hand over the power patterner, sue for peace and enter into a pact of eternal friendship, after which we’d consider returning the relics. Perhaps I overplayed my hand.’
‘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.’