Ullii screamed. Ky-Ara did too. Nish put his arms over his head and went with it. They rolled three times before landing upside down with a bone-shaking crash that pushed the front half of the roof in. The clanker rocked back and forth, metal plates squealing, then came to rest. Loose objects rained down, including Ullii's goggles, which smashed.
Ky-Ara hung from his straps, making the most ghastly keening sound Nish had ever heard, like a rabbit being dismembered by an owl. Blood trickled from his left nostril. The clanker was wrecked and the operator would never get another one. 'Incompetent fool!' Nish said, trying to ignore his own contribution to the disaster.
Up the back, Ullii lay curled up in the corner, still screaming. She had lost her mask and earmuffs. Crawling across, Nish put his hand over her mouth and nose. After several deep breaths she stopped screaming. Placing the earmuffs and mask on her, he pushed at the hatch. It was jammed; he had to kick it. He and Ullii scrambled out.
The machine had crashed onto a boulder, crushing javelard and catapult. Pur-Did lay further up the slope, a bloody smear against the rocks. The machine had come down on top of him.
Tiaan and the lyrinx had disappeared around the bend. Nish was furious with Ky-Ara, and with himself for pressuring him. The whole manufactory had slaved for a month just to produce this clanker. His feelings for Tiaan seemed to have vanished. Screams came from inside the crashed clanker, unnervingly high-pitched and shrill. It did not sound like a soldier.
Tiaan ran past, turned the next bend and there in front of them, extending well out over the abyss, was a wooden platform decked with round timbers that rattled in the wind. A curving walkway ran to it. Besant stood on the edge, beside a strange structure shaped like a bird's wing. The pack strapped to her chest surely contained the precious crystal.
Tiaan ran forward with a glad cry but had just set foot on the walkway when a catapult ball shattered the timbers to splinters. Ryll dragged her to safety. Whatever Besant had planned, they could no longer reach her.
A second clanker had come over the slope to their right, firing across the outcrops and boulder fields along the edge of the plateau. The shooter trained his javelard on the lyrinx while the operator worked furiously to place another ball in the catapult. She knew them both, Rahnd and Simmo.
'Go!' Ryll roared. 'Fly, Besant!' He pointed further along the cliff.
She made an arm gesture Tiaan could not interpret, held the wing out and, as a spear shivered through the platform, dived off.
Tiaan held her breath as the wing curved around, caught an updraft and lifted. Besant's great wings unfurled and she rose above it. Tiaan felt a fizzing sensation behind her temples, like sherbet dissolving on the tongue. Though she had never experienced it before she knew what it had to be. Besant was using her own strange version of the Secret Art to keep her massive weight aloft.
She spiralled around, the wing flier trailing below on ropes. The clanker struggled to train its catapult on her. Besant pointed with one arm to a flat place further along the escarpment.
Ryll set off at the fastest limp he could manage, with Tiaan dragging behind. He kept to the shelter of the boulders and she lost sight of the clanker. She saw Gi-Had's tormented face again. He was a decent man. Had he really ordered this force to kill her, or had she just imagined it? Tiaan felt guilty, ashamed. She wanted to run to the machine, give herself up and take the consequences. She tried to pull free.
The lyrinx held her effortlessly. 'Besant has your crystal. If you don't come you'll never see it again.'
As they reached the flat spot the clanker fired. The spear carved an arc across the sky, passing between Besant and the wing. Tiaan breathed again. Besant turned, heading toward them on a long, sweeping trajectory.
'As she comes by,' said Ryll, 'jump for the harness hanging below the wing. Fasten the straps around you.' He gripped the bolt buried in his shoulder and with a groan and a furious flickering of skin colours, wrenched it out.
'Yes,' she said. Wherever the amplimet went she had to follow. Without it she would go insane. She stared at Ryll's haggard face. 'What about you?'
He studied the bloody bolt. 'I stay behind to defend you.'
'To die!'
'To do my duty, that others more worthy may live.'
Besant came streaming in. Tiaan tensed but as the flier approached an updraft hurled the wing upwards, away from the cliff.
'Ready?' Ryll said.
'My hands are numb.' She felt numb all over. Only an acrobat could make such a leap.
He slashed the bonds at her wrists. Tiaan flexed her fingers but could not feel anything.
'Jump!' cried Ryll as the wing rushed past.
'I can't. I'll miss!' That was certain – it was too far out. And was the fate that awaited her in the lyrinx lair any better than at the hands of her own people?
T HIRTY -E IGHT
Nish wrested his sword free. If the beast got away with Tiaan, he was dead, and it would be his own stupid fault. He raced after them, the masked seeker stumbling and wailing behind. He should have left her in the clanker but could not abandon her to the dead man and the mad one. Her screams had gone right through him.
He ploughed around another bend and ahead was nothing but open sky – the precipice. Tiaan and the lyrinx were just ahead. Further off, on a cantilevered platform built out over nothing, stood a larger lyrinx.
'Stay here, Ullii,' he said, letting go of her hand. 'The edge of the precipice is just over there.'
'I can see it.'
Nish ran and knew he would be too late. The large lyrinx, a green-crested female, opened her mighty wings to carry Tiaan away. He shouted and waved his sword uselessly.
Tiaan had just put her foot on the walkway when it exploded into splinters. Simmo's clanker was rattling down the slope with several people hanging onto the outside. Nish could have wept with relief.
The big lyrinx dived off the platform and Ullii screamed so loudly that he ran back. 'What's the matter?'
She rolled into a protective ball, hugging her head with her arms. As she seemed safe enough, and well away from the cliff, Nish left her there.
Rahnd, Simmo's shooter, fired the javelard and missed. Tiaan and the wingless lyrinx ran along the cliff. Rahnd fired the catapult. The ball went so close that it rippled one wing of the flying lyrinx.
'Fire at the wingless one!' Nish screamed.
Rahnd, a dark, burly man with no front teeth and one leg noticeably shorter than the other, held up empty hands. He'd spent all his missiles. The clanker groaned to a stop some hundred paces up the slope, where boulders and outcrops prevented further movement.
The passengers jumped off. Jal-Nish was among them, along with Fyn-Mah, Tuniz and red-headed Rustina, whose shoulder and side were covered in blood. Seeing no sign of Irisis, Nish caught his breath. Rahnd sprang off, attacking a rock with hammer and chisel.
'Ky-Ara's clanker is wrecked back in the gully,' Nish shouted, pointing. 'It still has spears.'
Rahnd set off with a lopsided, lurching stride. Nish went to meet the others. 'Where's Irisis?' he gasped. 'Is she…?'
Rustina pointed over her shoulder. Irisis, just levering herself through the back hatch, had a bandage wrapped around her thigh. Her garments were rent down the side, the left sleeve of her coat hanging by a few threads. Jal-Nish was grim of face but unharmed.
'We've got them!' Nish exulted, pointing to the lyrinx hobbling along the cliff, still holding Tiaan.
'We'll crow when we have them in our hands,' said Jal-Nish wearily. 'And considering there's two lyrinx, and we… Ah, I'm mortally weary. Let's get it over.'
Irisis limped down. 'Where's the crystal?'
'I presume Tiaan has it,' said Nish.
'She hasn't! I searched her pack at the ice house.' Irisis was very pale.
Jal-Nish's head whipped around. He gave Irisis a smouldering stare.