By now she had the measure of these Weavers. They were young and clumsy and arrogant, making foolish mistakes which she exploited. The ships were lining up with one another, excruciatingly slow in Weave-time. Soon they would be level, and firing would commence.
It was time to abandon caution. She sent an instruction to her Sisters, and the Weave erupted in response, a blizzard of threads lashing everywhere, random and impossible to follow. The Weavers recoiled, having never encountered this tactic before, unsure of how it might harm them.
But it was not meant to harm; it was meant to distract. Quick and subtle as a blade, Kaiku slid towards them. 'Enemy to port!' hollered the lookout, as the hulking ship emerged from the mist. It was coming in at a distance, too far away to allow boarding, its flanks bristling with sculpted fire-cannon like gaping metal demons. It hove alongside, approaching from the opposite direction, a rapid succession of portholes and shadowy figures holding rifles. Waiting, like the sailors of the Empire, for the moment when all cannons would be face-on to their enemy.
'Fire!' came the cry from the Weaver ship, at the same time as it did from the captain of the junk; and at that moment, the entire port side of the enemy craft exploded. It heeled drastically, its cannons blasting into the water and passing beneath the keel of Kaiku's junk. The sailors slid howling over the gunwale and into the sea. And now its unarmoured deck was presented to the junk's artillery, which smashed it to ruin in a blitz of smoke and fire and sawdust.
It was all over so quickly that those aboard ship could barely believe they had escaped unscathed. The Tkiurathi rifles had not fired. They watched as the wrecked boat plunged into the water, sucking down those who had survived the initial assault, and like the other two boats they had seen in ruin it slid away from them and was masked once more by the murk.
Kaiku blinked, looked about the deck and met Tsata's gaze with her crimson eyes.
'You?' he asked.
'They should be have been more careful where they stored their ammunition,' she said.
And the ship sailed on, while the mist thinned around them and finally broke to a clear winter's day. The open sea was all around, sparkling under the gaze of Nuki's eye, and the ships of Lalyara were there, twelve of them, sailing at a swift clip towards the horizon.
TWENTY-FIVE
The Lord Protector Avun and the Weave-lord Kakre stood together on a balcony on the south face of the Imperial Keep. They were looking over the city to where the Jabaza and Kerryn met to form the Zan, in a place called the Rush. Once, on the hexagonal island in the centre, there had stood an enormous statue of Isisya, facing towards the Keep, but no more. In other times, Avun might have been glad of its loss, for he could not easily bear its accusing gaze. Today, though, he felt that it would not have troubled him. His spirits were high, and all was well.
Even Kakre seemed pleased with him. The sight of the Weavers' many mechanised barges gathering along the rivers of the city was an impressive one indeed, as was the horde of Aberrants that were being brought from their pens underground and herded on board by the black-robed Nexuses. And this represented only the tail of the undertaking: most had already departed eastward, upstream along the Kerryn and down the Rahn. From there, the troops would skirt the Xarana Fault and loop west of Lake Azlea, and then south into the enemy's territory, towards Saraku. The feya-kori would join them en route, six of them in total, including the two that had assaulted Lalyara several weeks ago. Those two were hardier now; they needed less time to recuperate in their pall-pits. The blight demons, it seemed, got stronger with age.
The prelude was done. The forces of the Empire, rocked by defeats at Juraka and Zila and Lalyara, did not know where the next strike would come from. Their armies would be spread in an attempt to cover the greatest amount of ground. Avun would cut through them like a sword and strike into their heart. By the time they could get their troops to Saraku it would be too late: the Weavers would hold the line of the River Ju, cutting off the marshland cities of Yotta and Fos to be despatched by their forces in Juraka. And after a short recuperation during which they could easily hold a city like Saraku, they would strike west, and nothing the Empire had could stand against them. At best, they could scatter into guerrilla armies, dogging the Weavers' efforts; but the Weavers would have the harvest, and the armies would be starved out and hunted down until nothing remained of them.
It would be over then. The desert lands could not stand alone. Their fall would swiftly follow.
Even the Weave-lord seemed happy today; or at least as happy as it was possible for such a creature to be. He was satisfied at Avun's progress now that action he deemed worthy was being taken. He had always been impatient with Avun's tactics, and had wanted to go in for the kill as soon as the feya-kori were first brought under their control. Avun allowed himself a wry smile. Idiots. If not for him, they would have been in a much worse situation by now.
Thoughts of that made him consider his encounter with Kakre, when he had convinced the Weave-lord of his worth. Kakre appeared to have forgotten about it, or was pretending to. It didn't matter. Kakre had been outmanoeuvred. Removing Avun would cause him far too much trouble, and it was trouble he could ill afford with time growing so short.
But more pleasing even than this to Avun was the behaviour of his wife. Since that day of her frankly miraculous recovery from sickness, she had seemed a different person. In public she was as quiet and meek as ever, but when they were alone she was no longer so demure. There was passion in her now, and after years of showing no interest whatsoever in him sexually she was suddenly, while not exactly wild, at least far more voracious than she used to be. In its absence, Avun had convinced himself that he did not need bedplay. He had always possessed torpid sexual appetites: he was slow to rouse and indifferent to the lures of a woman. But he had found, after so long, that the pleasures his wife's body might provide were immensely attractive again. He was loth to admit it to himself, but he felt more of a man for it.
Tomorrow he would depart, along with Kakre, to join the Weavers' army as their general. But first he had something else to look forward to. Until recently, he had all but needed to command Muraki to join him for meals; now, to his delight, she had asked him to come to one. She had something to celebrate, and when she told him he felt like celebrating too.
At long last, she had finished her book. The wind whipped through the Tchamil Mountains, chasing itself among the barren peaks and valleys that formed the spine of Saramyr. The men of the desert had kept to the lower altitudes, for in winter there were snow and blizzards in the high passes; but still the ground was frosted and bitter, and they huddled in thick furs around their fires and listened anxiously to the dark. The land was cool and sharp as well-polished steel beneath the combined glow of Iridima and Aurus, and the sky was thick with pinpricks of starlight.
The desert army were seven thousand strong, all told, and they spread down the mountainside in a great clot of tents and lanterns. They had lost perhaps five hundred so far, all of them to Aberrant attacks. The cries of the beasts echoed across the peaks even now, some identifiable as ghauregs or latchjaws, others entirely unfamiliar. It was hard going to take an army through this kind of terrain, but the folk of Tchom Rin prided themselves on their endurance, and they travelled light and wore little armour. Rivalries between soldiers sworn to different families had dissipated out of the need for unity and cooperation in this hostile place, and they had made good progress. But the Aberrants' attacks were becoming more and more coordinated now, and by day gristle-crows wheeled overhead, cawing hoarsely.