Ryll stopped midway between two beads of clear water. The ice was thinner here. Tiaan felt it bow beneath their weight.
‘Release the prisoner, lyrinx!’ screamed Gi-Had. ‘Hold your arms high.’
Ryll clutched Tiaan to his chest. She could feel his muscles quivering. ‘Shoot me and she dies,’ he roared back.
Tiaan looked from one clanker to another. Their javelards seemed to be pointing directly at her. But surely … surely they were not shooting at her.
‘Fire!’ snapped Jal-Nish.
The revelation struck her. If they could not get her back, they would kill her rather than allow her talents to be used by the enemy.
The clankers fired. They were trying to kill her. Ryll moved so fast that she had no idea what had happened. They went head first into the water. The shock was so great that Tiaan felt her heart stop beating. Her lungs went into spasm. It was as if she had been buried in ice.
THIRTY-ONE
As the lyrinx dived through the hole in the ice, Irisis let out an involuntary cry of anguish. The clankers fired, one first, followed by the other three together. Two javelards went through the hole. A third whistled over the heads of Jal-Nish and Gi-Had, to plough into the toe of an avalanche mound. The fourth hit to one side of the hole and went skidding across the river. Its bladed tip carved the ice with an ear-piercing shriek, it curved around in an arc, sending up a spray of ice like a turning skier, and slammed into the front foot of the fourth clanker.
‘Stop!’ roared Arple, waving his arms. ‘You’ll kill somebody!’ He ran to the ragged hole, which was about the size of a clanker. The other troops followed. ‘Careful. It’s thin here!’
It was getting dark. The snow fell thickly now. Jal-Nish was beside himself. His face had gone purple. ‘If it’s got away with her,’ he choked, ‘if the crystal is lost, I’ll have every man whipped to within an ell of his life.’
The soldiers went still in their ranks. Arple stalked to the nearest troop and ordered them to be silent. He turned back to the perquisitor. ‘I’d be careful of making threats out here, all alone,’ he said quietly.
‘Are you threatening me?’ cried Jal-Nish.
‘I’m a loyal soldier, surr.’ Arple touched his helm. ‘I’m trying to protect you. My troops have done their best ever since we left. We followed your orders, surr. Had we been able to fire at will we would have had the beast.’
Jal-Nish spun the other way, his round belly quivering. He looked as if he was going to burst.
Nish went to him, stepping carefully on the ice. ‘Are you all right, father?’
‘If she’s lost …’ Jal-Nish began. His purple face went soggy. For one horrified moment Nish thought his father was going to burst into tears. ‘Aah, Cryl-Nish! She could have made me.’
‘She could still be alive, father. There’s still a chance.’
Jal-Nish waved him away. Nish hurried towards the hole. ‘Did you see blood in the water?’ he asked Arple.
‘No, but doesn’t mean we didn’t hit the beast. The water is really racing under the ice.’
Jal-Nish stalked toward them, holding his face rigid. ‘The artisan must be found, sergeant, and her crystal. I …’ He hesitated. ‘She has secrets. She is vital to the war.’
Arple snapped to attention. ‘The war!’ He began shouting orders. One clanker headed downstream. ‘Troops, fall into pairs. Tar up stakes, light them and go down the river as far as the bend. Check every patch of water; be very careful. Nix and Thurne, head upstream. I doubt that a lyrinx could swim that way – they’re hopeless in the water – but we’ll take no chances. Stay in pairs. Move carefully. Beware of the ice. And if the weather closes in, follow the edge of the river until you see our flares. We’ll camp here.’ He indicated the jumbled rocks by the river bank.
‘Lyrinx are much tougher than we are,’ Arple continued. ‘Never think that one is dead until you see its corpse, preferably with the head well severed from the body. And even then, give it another ten minutes. Many a soldier has seen his guts spilled on the ground from a dead lyrinx’s last reflex.’ The soldiers hurried off, their flares disappearing in the whirling snow.
He turned away. ‘We must set the camp up while there’s light, perquisitor.’
‘Damn the camp, I want every man …’ Jal-Nish broke off, as if realising how foolish he sounded.
‘It’s got to be done now, surr,’ Arple insisted. ‘For our own survival. And if the artisan is found we’ll need fire and hot food to save her.’
He gave orders to search the avalanche mounds for firewood. The remaining soldiers went about the set-up efficiently, slinging tents in the shelter of the boulders, making a latrine around the back, fetching water and erecting the pitch-burning cooking stoves. The clankers were drawn up side by side. The fourth was a different design from the others, shorter but more bulbous and with lengths of rod bound to the top. Nish wondered what they were for. Its troops, in white uniforms, were led by a tall, stern-looking sergeant, Rustina, a young woman with long red hair. That was unusual – only rarely were women of child-bearing age permitted to become soldiers. No one knew anything about her and Rustina’s troops were close-mouthed.
‘What are your orders, perquisitor?’ Arple asked when everything was organised.
‘Search all night!’ Jal-Nish said curtly. ‘Tiaan must be found. And if we can take the beast alive, so much the better. If it has survived, it will be weak.’
‘No one could survive in that water, surr.’
‘I still have to see the bodies. The scrutator will expect no less.’
‘They would be a league downstream by now, under the ice.’
‘Would you like to explain that to the scrutator?’ Jal-Nish hissed.
‘No,’ said Arple calmly. ‘I would not.’
‘And neither would I. We’ll search every hole, and the banks around.’
Irisis joined a search detail. Nish went with one of the clankers up the slope to a gully where earlier they’d seen a stand of straggly pines. An axeman soon brought down a dead tree and the clanker dragged it back to the camp, where it was cut into fuel for the night. The soldiers gathered cones and kindling, not wanting to use the precious pitch stores unless they had nothing else. They could be trapped in a blizzard for days up here, even in autumn.
Irisis returned alone from the search as the fire blazed up. She looked depressed. ‘No sign of either of them,’ she said to Jal-Nish, who grunted and walked off.
‘Where’s Ullii?’ Nish asked.
‘How should I know?’ Irisis snapped.
They found her among the boulders, close to exposure, wearing only her spider-silk undergarments. ‘What are you doing out here dressed like that?’ Irisis scolded. ‘Have you no sense at all?’ Taking off her coat, she wrapped it around the small woman and carried her back to the fire. Ullii was too listless to protest.
‘He was coming after me,’ she whispered. ‘He wanted to hurt me.’
‘Who?’ said Irisis, head snapping up. ‘The lyrinx?’
‘The man inside. He was picking at the lattice, trying to get into my hidey-hole.’
‘What is he doing now?’
‘I can’t see him,’ she whimpered.
Nish and Irisis went to the clanker, wondering. They found only the body of Dhirr, tormented mouth open, fingers hooked as if he had been trying to get at the seeker, though no doubt it was only a death spasm.
‘He’s dead!’ Irisis said soothingly. ‘He can’t hurt you now, Ullii. Hop in; it’s warmer than outside.’
Ullii would not go into the machine, even after they’d carried the body out and left it with Arple for burying. They dressed Ullii, who squatted between the boulders on the far side of the fire, mask well down over her eyes.