Ghorr raised a clenched fist, took one step forward, then stopped.
Tiaan trembled in Vithis's arms, but the scrutators could not find the courage to attack him. With a sneer of contempt, Vithis turned his back and headed for the Aachim camp.
Six
Nish had made a terrible blunder and this time the whole world had been there to see it. Whatever had possessed him to think that the fellow was carrying Tiaan off? He pushed himself to his knees.
'Don't get up,' said Chief Scrutator Ghorr, pressing him down with a shiny boot. 'Lie in the dirt while we judge you, worm. Who are you, who has so betrayed humanity?'
Beside Ghorr stood Jal-Nish. Though he was greatly changed, and Nish had not seen him with the mask, he knew it was his father. What could be seen of Jal-Nish's face was white, but his one eye was blood red.
'The worm, surr/ ground out Jal-Nish, 'is my own son, Cryl-Nish Hlar. I have long thought that he was dead. Now I wish he had never been born.'
'So do I, Acting Scrutator Hlar. But since he is your son, and you crave elevation to the Council of Scrutators, I require you to prove that you are worthy. Devise a fitting punishment for the creature.' Ghorr's eyes showed his doubt.
Jal-Nish cast a wild glance at his son. Nish could not meet his eye; he was too ashamed. What would happen to him now? A fitting punishment. That could mean anything from the front ranks of the army to a death sentence. But blood was blood, after all. Surely his father would not 'Cryl-Nish Hlar,' Jal-Nish said. 'You have failed as an artificer as you failed as a prober, a diplomat, and at every other task you've ever been set. You are a liar, a cheat and, as has now been proven before my very eyes, a vicious traitor. The tragedy we face today stems from your initial betrayal, with Crafter Irisis, of Artisan Tiaan at your manufactory. Had you not conspired against Tiaan she would not have fled, nor fallen into the hands of the lyrinx, nor been ensnared by the Aachim. She would not have opened the gate that brought them here, with their invincible fleet of constructs. Had we still the use of her talent, and the precious amplimet, we might have gained the upper hand over the lvrinx. Alas, we've lost both, and the secret of flight, and now our alliance with the Aachim is sundered. And it's all down to you, boy'.'
I don't ask why you ensured that Artisan Tiaan, and this most precious of all secrets, should fall into Aachim hands. No doubt you've had vour bloodstained pay already.' No, Father!' cried Nish. 'I never —’
'Be silent!' Jal-Nish thundered. 'The entire Council of Scrutators saw you betray us. Your guilt has been proven beyond doubt. Cryl-Nish Hlar, you are no longer my son. You will be erased, expunged, obliterated from the Histories of the Hlar family.'
'Father,' Nish whispered. 'You can't take my Histories from me.'
'I can and I will, before this day is over.' 'But — what am I to do?'
'You should suffer the ultimate penalty, as all traitors must. But,' Jal-Nish said inexorably, 'we are in sore need of labour to haul our clankers to the nearest node. Therefore, Slave Nish, you will be harnessed into a team of criminals and slaves. You will be teamed with the treacherous Slave Flydd, and every time he incurs a whipping, so will you. You will haul clankers without respite until your heart bursts, and then you will be buried in the road, face upwards, that the meanest citizens in the world will tread you down. They will walk over you, Slave Nish, until there's not a fragment of flesh or bone or sinew left. And ever after, an obelisk at that point shall name your crimes and their punishment. Such is the penalty for high treason.'
Even the chief scrutator looked shocked, though not, Nish thought, displeased.
Jal-Nish turned away, struggling to contain himself, but after a few steps he doubled over and vomited into the grass. Shortly he returned, pulling the mask back into place. A single tear glistened in the corner of his eye, then the iron control was back.
'It is done,' Jal-Nish said to the Council. Take Slave Nish to his doom!'
'You have proven your worth over the past year Scrutator Jal-Nish,' Ghorr said softly. 'Should you save our clankers, and defeat the lyrinx in battle, a place on the Council will be yours. We have need of men such as you.' Taking Jal-Nish's arm, Ghorr led him up the hill.
A pair of white-faced soldiers stepped in beside Nish. 'I won't resist,' he said numbly, but they seized him anyway. One went through his pockets and removed everything of value. The other patted him down for weapons. Finding none, they lifted him between them and carried him away.
As Nish looked back, the crowd dispersed, except for two people. Tirior, who had been watching the proceedings from behind, walked slowly back to the Aachim lines. The other person was the one-handed man, Merryl, who had helped Tiaan. He stared after Nish, then began to trudge around the curve of the hill, away from the command post.
After a sleepless night in a solitary slave pen, Nish was hurled into the bloody slush of the battlefield. A clanker stood just a few steps away, its thick metal legs half-buried in mud. Wooden skids had been fitted underneath. To his left a group of people, slaves like him, were being harnessed together. They looked as despairing as he felt. Behind them were other slave teams, as well as teams of horses, oxen, donkeys and buffalo, soldiers and camp followers, women and even children. Every kind of beast had been harnessed to the impossible, heart-bursting task.
Nish was numb with horror. His own father had cursed him, had sentenced him to a bestial death. Even in this war, which had produced mountains of corpses, in which the whole fabric of human society had been torn apart, that was impossible to comprehend.
Crack' Pain flowered in Nish's ear. He put a filthy hand up and brought it back covered in blood. It felt as if something had bitten a piece out of his earlobe.
Crack! The other ear exploded with agony. Scrambling to his feet, Nish saw a grinning overseer coiling his whip, a good ten paces away.
'What the hell do you -?' Nish roared, driven careless by despair.
The whip lashed out again, catching him on the chest through the gape of his shirt. Muffling a cry, Nish looked around frantically. What was the brute trying to tell him?
He scrambled towards the head of the team, slipping and sliding in the muck, and every time he went to his knees the lash fell on his back or buttocks, or coiled around his waist to nip at his belly. The overseer was a monster, a sadist, and he, Slave Nish, the lowest worm in all of Santhenar, could do nothing about it.
Fumbling with the straps of the harness, Nish took several more lashes before he was fixed in place like a beast of burden. Go away! he prayed. Go and flog someone else.
Eventually the overseer did, the cries and wails of the whipped echoing down the line. Nish could feel no pity for them, though some of their groans were soul-wrenching. All that mattered was that the lash fall on another.
The man beside him at the head of the team, on his knees in the muck, was a scrawny old fellow whose back and meagre legs were crisscrossed with scars. He must have been a slave for a long time. It did not look as though he had much life in him.
'Just what I need,' Nish said to himself. 'Useless old coot will never pull his weight. He'll die in the muck and I'll be whipped for that too.'
The slave turned his emaciated, mud-coated head. Nish did not recognise him, nor even recall Jal-Nish's words, until the man spoke.
'How quickly they forget,' said Xervish Flydd, looking him in the eye.