The day was fading. Darkness could not come too soon. The lyrinx kept going. She had to admire Ryll’s courage. They went over a second rise and the expanse of the river stretched before them. With a guttural cry Ryll skidded to a stop.
Below, on the ice at the other side of the river, stood a fourth clanker and ten more soldiers, five in a curving line on either side. The loaded catapult was aimed directly at them. Suddenly the ball was not there. Something whined over their heads to embed itself behind them. A cloud of snow drifted on the breeze.
Ryll sprang onto the terminus of an avalanche. Bounding recklessly from one ice-covered boulder to the next, he let out wild roars of defiance. One false step meant the end. She could sense the thrill of peril, of him pitting his strength against them all.
He took four great leaps, one after another, skidding, claws scrabbling for a grip, teetering, steadying, the great thigh muscles driving him on. Three times Tiaan thought he was going to fall and crush her. Three times he just made it. Across the river the soldiers were frantically regrouping. With a last bound he made it down off the toe of the avalanche and raced toward the river.
Ryll almost got across. He would have, had not one of the following clankers hurtled down the slope just as recklessly, and found a clear passage to the river well downstream. Ignoring Arple’s instruction, it was already ploughing across the snow-covered ice.
Emitting a deafening war cry, Ryll ran onto the ice. The surface was slippery; wind had blown the loose snow away. The clankers were not so encumbered. They converged from four directions, blocking any escape. Making a superhuman effort, Ryll gained the middle of the ice. It was not enough. They were surrounded.
The clanker bounced and jerked on uneven ground. Their headlong passage slowed. ‘Can you still see them?’ cried Nish.
‘Just now and then,’ Irisis replied. ‘The lyrinx is weaving through the boulders. We’ll have to go round. Ah, it’s a bad place for an ambush. I can’t see the beast. There it is – it’s out the other side – it’s got her under its arm. The lyrinx is really flying now. It’s going down a track between the avalanches – too narrow for us.’
Nish was practically jumping up and down. ‘Let me see, you selfish tart!’
Irisis held him away. ‘Stop it! You’re upsetting the operator.’ She turned back to the porthole. Her voice had gone flat. ‘It’s getting away. It’s up on the avalanche, bounding from rock to rock. It’s like a mountain goat,’ she said with a trace of admiration. ‘The only chance is to get it with a spear.’
‘Our shooter is loading one now,’ said Nish. ‘I can hear the ratchet going.’ He knew the sound intimately; one of his principal jobs as artificer was to adjust and repair the javelard, which could shoot a heavy spear a third of a league. It was deadly accurate in the hands of a skilled operator, though not from a moving clanker. Especially not on uneven ground.
A bell rang in front of the operator. The clanker stopped. The sighting mechanism creaked above them. Crack! Again the clanker jerked, though not as hard as when the catapult had fired. They moved off again. It was snowing. The wind intensified, whirling the flakes about. The weather was turning bad.
‘Any luck?’ cried Nish.
‘No. We’re too late; it’s nearly to the ice …’
Her voice trailed away. Perhaps she was thinking through the consequences of failure, for them. Nish certainly was.
‘It’s on the river. The ice must be thin; I can see patches of water. Arple will never risk the clankers out there.’
‘We’ve lost,’ Nish said dully.
‘Oh!’ Irisis exclaimed. ‘Brilliant. Your father did have a trump after all. Oh, yes!’
‘What?’ he said frantically.
‘There’s another clanker coming down the far side of the river, with a squad of soldiers. He must have sent them out secretly, before the blizzard, just in case.’
‘A lucky guess!’ Nish felt miffed that, after all, the success would be his father’s.
‘Maybe. The lyrinx would have had to cross this river somewhere. From a high place they could have seen our flares in the night. Plenty of time to get into position.’
‘The beast has stopped,’ Irisis continued in a low voice. ‘It knows it can’t get away.’
The clanker stopped too. ‘Are we close?’ Nish was practically screaming with frustration.
‘Just at the edge of the river.’
Pulling the hatch up, he leapt out. Ullii, who had been silent during the long chase, let out a wailing cry and snatched at his hand, but too late. Irisis went after him. Ullii crept out too. The light was fading; snow began to fall more heavily. Jal-Nish was making hand-signals to the fourth clanker.
‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ said Irisis, stumbling on blocky ice.
‘It’s a lousy one.’ Nish kept going. ‘But I’m not going to cower inside after all we’ve been through. I want to see it taken.’
‘Tiaan isn’t even running,’ said Irisis. ‘Maybe she was the spy after all.’
‘I’ll have none of that talk,’ grated Gi-Had, peering through his spyglass. ‘Her hands are tied!’
‘She’s more afraid of us than of it.’ A rare interjection from Ullii, beside Nish.
Only Nish heard, but he was too distracted to notice. The wind drifted clouds of snow across the ice. Nish could hear it howling through the rods and wires of the javelard. He shivered. It was going to be a miserable night, whatever happened.
In a movement too fast to see, the lyrinx pulled Tiaan up before its chest. Gi-Had called out to it to surrender. It did not move.
‘What are we going to do?’ said Nish. ‘If we fire, Tiaan will surely die.’
‘I want her alive,’ grated Jal-Nish. He called Fyn-Mah over. ‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘Not at this distance,’ the querist said. ‘Besides, there’s people watching. The Secret …’
‘Damn the rules! Try!’
The querist shrugged then made a circle of her fingers and sighted through it. She whistled between her teeth, her black hair stood up and a globe of mist condensed in the air several paces in front of her.
Ullii screamed as there came a clap like two shields being struck together. A cloud of loose snow was kicked up to the right of the lyrinx. A roar echoed back and, as if hit by a fist of compressed air, Fyn-Mah was tossed off her feet.
Nish helped her up. The querist’s lip was bleeding. ‘It’s too strong,’ she mumbled, cross-eyed. ‘Reflected it back.’
Irisis was staring at her pliance, which momentarily glowed a baleful green before fading.
‘What is it?’ Nish said.
‘I have no idea, but something just activated my pliance and I saw the field as clear as day, streaming out in all directions.’
‘Was it the beast or Tiaan’s crystal?’ Jal-Nish demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ said Fyn-Mah, ‘but the lyrinx is strong in the Art. Too strong for me.’
Irisis was pleased at the admission. The snooty querist was not as capable as she made out. ‘We want the crystal too,’ Irisis reminded them.
Jal-Nish gave her a considered glance. ‘Indeed we do, but we want Tiaan more. I’ll have the head of anyone that harms her. If the beast doesn’t surrender, Arple, fire when I say the word. For its legs.’
‘What if you hit Tiaan?’ said Gi-Had.
‘She doesn’t need legs to be an artisan.’