They buried Pur-Did in the gravel and put Ky-Ara in the good machine, but as soon as they clattered away he began to scream and wail, and had to be held to keep him from leaping out.
'I can still see the clanker,' said Ullii.
'Of course you…' Nish began, trudging beside her, before realising that she had her mask on. Besides, she was looking the other way. They had left the controller behind.
He ran back for it and, reaching in through the back hatch, passed the controller to Irisis. 'Give him this.'
Cradling the controller in his arms, Ky-Ara fell silent. The bond between operator and clanker went through the controller, which was specifically attuned to both. A clanker whose operator was dead was just scrap metal until another controller could be fitted, or a new operator trained to use the old one.
It was a major handicap in battle, though better than the alternative, which would have allowed the enemy to turn a captured clanker on its own troops. Ullii began to scream as soon as they crested the hill, even before they set sight on the dreadful scene at the snilau. 'Waves through the body!' she kept saying. 'Waves of flesh.'
There they found carnage such as Nish had never seen before. More than forty human bodies lay strewn all around, clawed and rent worse than any Hurn bear would have done, as well as a dozen of the enemy. Fyn-Mah called Nish down to help check that all the lyrinx were dead, and to see if any of their troops remained alive.
'Wait!' cried a weak voice. Rustina climbed shakily out of the hatch.
'I don't think…' Nish began.
'They are my troops, artificer.'
There was no arguing with that. They checked the bodies one by one. Rustina called out the details of each, including the way they had died, Fyn-Mah wrote it down and they collected any valuables for the families. All the troops were dead and all their sergeants except for Rustina. The operators and shooters of the other clankers had also been slain. Gi-Had lay behind a low wall of ice blocks, where he had been defending a group of injured soldiers. As overseer, the man had been such a powerful presence. Now he lay lifeless on the red-stained snow and Nish was startled to realise what a small man Gi-Had had been, not much larger than Nish himself. Nish closed the half-frozen eyes and stood with head bowed, profoundly sorry. Despite the whipping, the overseer had been the best of men, in his way.
As he walked off, all Nish could think of was the parting scene at the manufactory: the pale wife, the five girls in a line, and the littlest one, with the red ribbons, crying. Daddy was not coming home.
Several soldiers had died recently, as much of the cold as their injuries. Arple, though suffering a dozen wounds, could not have been dead more than a few minutes. He had dragged himself to one of his troops, leaving a bloody trail, and his body was still warm. The most decorated soldier in Glynninar had met his match.
'What were the lyrinx doing here?' Nish said when the work was done and all the enemy bodies had been checked, warily.
Fyn-Mah looked around, lowered her voice and said, 'We don't know, but…'
'Yes?' Nish prompted.
'It's not the first time we've come across small groups inhabiting the most hostile places. Locations with no strategic value whatsoever, though usually at a powerful node.'
'And it's a most strange node here.'
'Indeed. A double. We think…' She broke off and walked rapidly toward the largest snilau, a multi-chambered one around which the others spiralled like the whorl of a snail shell. The side and roof of the main chamber had fallen in. They went through the hole, Nish with his sword at the ready as Fyn-Mah searched through the debris of ice blocks.
They found nothing in the larger chambers except rugs and furs, some laid over blocks of ice to form rude benches, chunks of frozen meat (not human), several leather buckets and a few other tools. However, in side rooms the querist discovered a series of cages. Some were empty; others contained small, unearthly-looking creatures. All appeared to be dead, yet Fyn-Mah inspected and described every one with meticulous care.
In a cage at the back they found a live creature the size of a mouse, though shaped like no animal Nish had ever seen. It had a long slanted head with protruding sabre teeth, a spined backbone and a clubbed tail. As they approached, it pushed itself up on spindly legs, let out a mewling cry then fell down again.
'What are these beasts?' Nish asked.
Fyn-Mah kept writing. 'Finish that, would you.'
Putting his sword in through the bars, Nish crushed the creature.
'They've been flesh-formed,' Fyn-Mah said. 'Certain lyrinx have the talent to force small creatures to grow differently, to a pattern they make in their minds. But it can only be done in certain places; at nodes. That's all we know. Why do they do it? Is it for food, or culture, or worship? Are they toys, or art? We know so little about the lyrinx. But it may also be – '
Flesh-formers! Nish shuddered. 'That's what Ullii was trying to tell us. "Waves through the body," she said.' He felt his own flesh crawling. 'Or maybe,' he mused, teasing the logic together, 'they're trying to create a weapon. One we'll have no defence against.'
'Maybe they are, artificer. We would very much like to know.'
He came to an instantaneous decision. 'I'd like to find out.'
She looked surprised, the first time he'd seen such a reaction from her. 'Are you man enough for it?'
'Probably not.' A rare admission, for him. 'Though I know languages, and people, and machines. Flesh-forming may have similarities to metal-working.'
'And many differences too.'
'I've grown up with examiners and perquisitors. I'm as qualified as most people.'
'You lack what may be the most important qualification of all,' she said. 'You have no talent for the Secret Art.'
'But I have been working with the seeker, and she can sense out the Art.'
'Not the same thing at all.'
'And there is Irisis.'
'A fraud,' said Fyn-Mah, 'without the talent of the artisan she pretends to be.'
Nish turned away so she would not see his shock. Was there no secret the querist did not know?
'She is brilliant at getting her people to work together and bringing out of them more than they know. She is already a master crafter. She had to become one, to survive.'
'Whatever!' Fyn-Mah said disinterestedly. 'Your own capacity for hard work is undoubted, artificer. And your intelligence. Your judgment can be faulty, however, and there is a question-mark over your integrity. Do you have the guts to keep going, whatever it takes?'
'Did you see what they did to my father?' he said in an almost inaudible voice. 'If Jal-Nish does not die, he will never be a whole man again. For all our differences, he is still my father. He has many faults, as do I, but lack of loyalty is not one of them. I will make up for this affront to him, whatever it takes.'
The querist looked him in the eye. 'I believe you will, Cryl-Nish. Very well, as leader of this force, you have my warrant to follow this question through. You have three months. After that, it will be at the discretion of Jal-Nish's replacement as perquisitor – or of your father, if he recovers.'
With a last look around at the devastation she headed back to the clanker. Nish studied the small corpses, and the cages, wondering what he had let himself in for. Then, thinking about what lay ahead, he doubted if it would matter. Such a small, battered force as they now were might not get the clanker down the cliff. And if they did not, they would all die.
F ORTY
Tiaan and Ryll soon left the plateau far behind. With Besant's great wings thudding rhythmically above, in less than an hour they had cleared the mountains and were gliding over a hummocky land, largely treeless, which contained one enormous lake after another. Burlahp, she knew the place to be, though only as a name. Beyond the southern end of the lake was a city. Comparing its location with a map in her head, she deduced it to be Nox.