Ryll’s hand went across Tiaan’s mouth. He dragged her the other way.
‘Where is my crystal?’ she mumbled. Without it, her dreams were nothing.
‘Gone with Besant. It is safe with her. You’ll see it again, soon.’
The withdrawal eased at once. Tiaan looked around. Purple blood ran in a thin stream from his shoulder. Behind them the wind blew a clear passage through the snow clouds.
‘There they go!’ someone roared.
Something flashed between the two furthest snilau. Nish squinted against the snow.
‘Hey! It’s Tiaan. The beast is getting away with her. Get moving, Ky-Ara.’
Pur-Did thumped on the roof and the clanker began to move, sluggishly and with much groaning of the drive trains. He tried to aim the javelard but the pair had disappeared. Nish opened the top hatch.
‘What’s the matter?’ he yelled down.
‘Oil has gone cold. I can’t go any faster until it warms up.’
‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘Not a thing!’ Ky-Ara was manipulating the knobs in jerky motions that betrayed his anxiety. ‘Not a damn thing!’
Ullii huddled up against the back corner, shaking. Any kind of violence was unbearable to her. Nish wondered what had happened to Irisis. He’d not seen her since the skirmish started. She could well be dead.
The clanker ground around in a great circle before Pur-Did picked up tracks heading toward the edge of the plateau, which was not far away.
‘Follow them!’ Nish shouted, unnecessarily. The shooter smiled at his naive enthusiasm.
Ky-Ara called up through the hatch. He sounded uneasy. ‘I must let the sergeant –’
‘No time!’ Nish yelled. ‘If the wind comes up we’ll lose them. They’ll be over the edge, and by the time we get the clankers down they’ll have gone into the mountains where we can’t follow.’
If there’s anyone left to follow, he thought. The carnage had been terrible. They might run their quarry down only to find themselves alone. And then, barring a lucky shot from the javelard, they would also die. How quickly the advantage had been lost.
The clanker turned onto the tracks, bumping lethargically along. Nish cursed their slow pace. The lyrinx had seemed to be limping but must be going faster than this.
Up ahead, the footprints descended into a gully, ploughed through deep snow, and up onto the side where the cover was thin. The operator kept going straight.
Nish swung inside, ignoring Ullii cowering in the corner. ‘Down there!’ he cried, pointing. ‘Can’t you see?’
‘Deep drifts that way,’ said Ky-Ara. ‘We’ll never get through them. It’s quicker along the rim.’
The clanker did seem to be speeding up. They tracked along the edge, a shorter distance than the winding gully bottom.
‘I can see them!’ Nish roared. He stuck his head out the back. ‘Fire! Fire, damn you!’
The man did not fire. ‘Bloody fool!’ said Nish, climbing onto the top. ‘What’s the matter?’
Pur-Did said patiently, ‘I can’t train the javelard that low.’
Nish threw himself back in, issuing instructions. ‘Down there! He’s got to have the front pointed down or the spear will go over their heads.’
‘We know our jobs, artificer,’ Ky-Ara said coldly. ‘Keep out of our way and let us do them.’
He slowed, turned and tipped the front over the edge. The mechanical legs pounded. The lyrinx came into view, running down the valley, hauling Tiaan by one arm. The beast was limping badly. Oh, for a crossbow!
Fire! Nish said to himself. Now; now!
The shooter did not fire. The angle was still not right. Nish felt like kicking him off his seat and using the javelard himself.
‘Just not low enough,’ Pur-Did called through the hole, picking icicles from his warty nostrils. ‘Try a bit further down, Ky-Ara.’
Ky-Ara reversed the machine, its iron footpads squealing as they cut through snow to stone beneath. Gravel showered down the side of the gully, the clanker turned and, moving much faster now, clattered along the rim. A few hundred paces on they tried again. Here the rim was benched, allowing the clanker to get further down. Ky-Ara moved it into position. They waited.
Tiaan and the lyrinx appeared. Her hands were bound, though surely she could have outdistanced the hobbling creature had she chosen to. Was she a traitor after all?
Agonising seconds passed but still the shooter did not fire. ‘Go!’ Nish roared, pounding on the roof.
‘Damn thing’s jammed.’
Soon it would be too late. The lyrinx had only checked for an instant. As it continued, Nish noticed something strange about this one. It had no wings.
‘Free!’ yelled the shooter. ‘Turn around, Ky-Ara. If we can’t get it coming, we’ll get it going.’
‘Blasted shooters!’ cursed Ky-Ara. ‘Useless clowns.’ He turned, backed, turned again. Nish kept his eye to the porthole. The fleeing pair ran right below them. A pang struck Nish’s heart. He did not want her to die.
‘A bit further down at the front,’ Pur-Did yelled.
Ky-Ara hesitated. ‘We’re too close to the edge.’
Nish’s fury boiled over. Was he the only one who wanted to catch them? ‘If you don’t want to be a clanker operator, just say so!’ he said in a deadly voice. ‘I’m sure my father the perquisitor can replace you.’
Ky-Ara choked, looked around wildly, and then edged the machine forward, sideways and forward again. His teeth began to chatter as he waited for the call, ‘Enough!’
It did not come, because rock beneath the right-hand side crumbled and they slipped sideways. A whole slab gave; the clanker tilted over. Ky-Ara moaned, frantically working to right the machine, but it was too late. The clanker rolled, crashed onto its roof and kept rolling.
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.