‘Come!’ Ullii hissed through her teeth. ‘Quickly.’ Going hand over hand up the cable, more like a monkey than a human being, she hung on with one hand and began to pull at Nish’s arm.
With the last of his strength, his screaming muscles managed to move him up another half-span, more or less.
Someone began shouting up above, a creepy, sibilant voice that had to be the vile Scrutator Fusshte. Nish couldn’t make out what he’d said but shortly he heard the whiny voice again, calling, ‘No, bring her back, lads’.
After a pause he went on, barely audible over the sighing of the wind through the cables, ‘The scrutators bid me execute the greatest criminal and traitor first, in case the enemy should attack. Ex-Scrutator Xervish Flydd,’ he said in tones that were almost respectful, ‘if you would be so kind as to step into the flensing trough.’
‘I’m just in time,’ Nish said to himself. ‘I will get there. I must.’ He hauled himself up another half-span and hung on, panting so loudly that he couldn’t believe the people above wouldn’t hear him.
Ullii fixed his hooks, went down and slid the clamp up the cable. Nish rested on it, trying to still his breathing so he could hear what was going on. Someone was talking in a deep rumble, though Nish couldn’t make out what he was saying.
There came a muffled wail, cut off abruptly as if by a hand clapped over a mouth, or a fist thrust into it. The prisoners were cracking up and he still had to climb two spans – the equivalent of four paces on the ground.
And then Irisis spoke and the sound of her voice, defiant to the last, brought tears to his eyes. ‘Take heart, Xervish. It’ll be over more quickly than you think.’
Flydd laughed, though there was no humour in it. ‘Somehow, that’s not nearly as comforting as when I said it to you.’
‘Begin, Master Flenser!’ Chief Scrutator Ghorr roared like an actor on a stage. ‘I’ll double your fee if you can take this scoundrel’s skin off in one piece – I’ve a special use for it.’
This galvanised Nish’s trembling muscles and he went up half a span, then three-quarters before grinding to a halt. Another man spoke, inaudibly. Perhaps he was talking to himself as he prepared to peel the skin off the living flesh.
Nish kept moving. Only one span to go. His muscles felt as though they were melting and oozing down his arms. He laid his head against the cable, despair washing over him. He was going to be too late to save Flydd.
‘Hold just a moment!’ cried Scrutator Fusshte. ‘There’s something wrong.’
Nish only caught part of what the other man, the whiny one, said. ‘I’ve done everything … in the rituals.’
Nish’s skin crawled, and every hair on his body stood up. He knew what Fusshte was going to say.
Fusshte snarled, ‘I’m not talking to you!’ Nish heard his feet pound across the canvas. ‘One of the greatest villains of all is missing. Where the devil is the arch-traitor, Artificer Cryl-Nish Hlar?’
SEVEN
Above them there was shouting, yelling and the sound of running feet. Ghorr said in low and deadly tones, ‘You bloody fool, Fusshte, why didn’t you check? You begged to be put in charge of the minors.’
‘It’s not my fault. I told Voine to go through the list…’
‘Don’t give me excuses!’ Ghorr hissed. ‘What’s the good of my creating this great spectacle if your incompetence is going to ruin it? Morale is a fragile plant, scrutator. Get your men down there and find him instantly. I won’t have a single blot on this victorious day. Not a smear. Fail and you’ll join the prisoners, scrutator or no!’
Ullii’s mouth opened and she almost lost her grip. Nish reached out to steady her. She wiped her face and climbed higher. Looping her arm around the cable, she dragged up his left hook, slammed it into the strands, and then moved the right.
Above them, orders were roared. Feet pounded across the canvas. ‘What do we do?’ Nish whispered. His mind had gone blank.
‘Up!’ she mouthed. ‘Under!’
He reached up with his weak left arm and forced its hook into the rope. He twisted out the other hook and tried to go again but the left hook pulled out. Nish slipped, clutched at the cable but his sweaty hands couldn’t get a grip. Ullii shinned down to him, grabbed his swinging arm and expertly slid the hook in between the strands of the cable. After doing the same with the other hand she went down and tightened the clamp.
Nish clung there, shaking. ‘I thought I was gone,’ he whispered. ‘I thought everything was lost.’
She touched her cheek to his, repaying him in kind, and it made all the difference. She pointed up underneath the canvas and began to climb to the knots where the horizontal stay ropes were fastened to the vertical cable. He followed carefully, the near-death experience bringing him a little strength. He slid his clamp around a stay rope that ran towards the centre of the deck and tightened it so it could slide along but not pull off. Nish went wearily, hook over hook, along the stay until he was five or six spans in from the edge and not so readily visible in the gloom.
‘You’d better tie on, Ullii, just in case.’
Ullii fashioned a rope harness around her chest, tied it to the stay rope and hung from it while Nish caught his breath.
Shortly, some thirty or forty spans to their left, a series of rope baskets were lowered over the edge, each containing about a dozen soldiers. The baskets were lowered swiftly to the yard. Nish counted them. Nine – more than a hundred soldiers, just for him, and any one of them could take him. It was enough to make him smile and, thinking about what Fusshte had said, he gave a wry chuckle. So they considered him a great villain. He’d better not disappoint them.
‘Don’t move,’ Nish mouthed. ‘If they look this way …’
Ullii scowled. She didn’t need to be told. It was dark under the canvas, but not so dark that an alert eye couldn’t pick them out. And the scrutators’ guards were very alert.
They waited until the grounded baskets had emptied and most of the soldiers had disappeared inside Fiz Gorgo. The remainder spread out through the yard and began to search the sheds and barracks.
‘Now,’ Nish whispered. ‘We don’t have much time.’
He reached back and lifted the flagon of naphtha over his shoulder. With it banging against his chest, he hooked his way towards the edge of the deck, where the horizontal ropes were tied to the cable in a series of complicated knots the size of melons, and carefully poured a measured dose of the clear, pungent liquid over the knots. The fumes made his eyes water. The liquid was quickly absorbed into the fibres, wetting the cable below for a span and wicking up for half that distance.
‘We have to do this to the next three cable knots.’ Nish pointed to each of them so she’d not be in any doubt. ‘Then I’ll set fire to them with flaming crossbow bolts.’ He drew a handful of rags from his pocket, poked them in through the mouth of the flagon until they were soaked, squeezed the excess naphtha back into the flagon then put the rags back in his pocket. ‘As soon as that’s done we go down the ropes as fast as we can, if we get the chance.’
‘What if we don’t?’
‘We die with everyone else.’ He expected Ullii to shrivel, for she’d always had the keenest sense of self-preservation, but she didn’t react.
‘I’m ready to die,’ she said. ‘Give me the flagon.’
Nish saw the sense in that. He couldn’t swing from rope to rope without her help, while she didn’t need his.
‘If there’s any left, reach up and pour it onto the rope that runs around the outside of the deck.’
Ullii nodded, stoppered the flagon, put it over her shoulder and then she was off, swinging hand over hand along the rope, her safety rope dangling below her, unfastened. Nish could hardly bear to watch. One slip, one oily piece of rope or even a place where she couldn’t reach far enough up under the tight canvas to get a grip, and she would fall to her death. He moved along his stay rope towards the centre of the deck, so he’d have a good angle for each shot.