‘Well, that’s that!’ said Irisis. ‘I’ve a mind to roll off the cliff.’
Nish clutched her hand.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ve already failed at that. We’ll face our fate together, Cryl-Nish.’
He followed the specks, dwindling into the infinite sky. ‘By this time tomorrow Tiaan will be a hundred leagues away and not even Ullii will be able to find her. What a disaster!’
Irisis eased her leg, letting out a pained grunt.
‘How is it?’ he said.
‘Kind of you to ask. The broken bone hurts so much I can’t even feel the other wound.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Break the other leg, why don’t you? It might take away the pain of the first.’
‘Sometimes I just don’t understand you,’ Nish said.
‘Good!’
‘Let’s get you away from the edge of the cliff. It makes me nervous.’
‘’I’m happy where I am,’ Irisis protested, but he took her under the arms and hauled her up the slope, her feet dragging over the bumpy ground. There were tears in her eyes by the time he got her there. ‘I don’t much care for your bedside manner, Nish.’
Nish hardly noticed. Guilt was eating him up. Staring distractedly around him, he began to shiver. It was bitterly cold now that the action had finished.
‘Better see to your father. He’s a lot worse than I am.’
Nish looked across and away, terrified of what he would find there. ‘I’ll send back to the ice houses for help.’ He waved at the clanker.
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Irisis replied. ‘There won’t be anyone coming.’
He spun around, mouth hanging open.
‘That’s right, Nish. The rest were wiped out at the ice houses. Every man!’
‘And the lyrinx?’
‘All dead.’
More than forty people brutally slain! Nish could not take it in. He’d known them all; had shared a joke with most of them over the past week or two. How could so much life have been lost, so quickly?
His father began to wail shrilly. He was still alive, at least. Nish ran to him, bent over and froze. Jal-Nish, his handsome father, was a ruined man. His face had been torn open. One pulped eyeball dangled from its socket and most of his nose had gone. The left cheek had been peeled back from ear to mouth in three separate rents. Nish could not bear to look at him.
Jal-Nish fell back into unconsciousness. There were deep gouges across his chest and his arm was terribly shattered and torn. Nish looked around for help. The only survivors were Simmo, Rahnd, Rustina, Tuniz the artificer, and Irisis. No, the querist was alive as well, staggering out from the rocks where she’d fallen. Tuniz was unharmed. Rustina had broken bones in her arm, a swollen right wrist, a wobbly jaw and many bruises, but at least she could stand up. Irisis was being carried up the hill on a stretcher. And then there was Ullii, huddled up behind a rock, but she was no use at all. Her eyes had turned inward. She was incapable of speaking.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Fyn-Mah, sitting down abruptly.
‘She began screaming when the lyrinx first took off,’ Nish said. ‘I suppose the Art was burning her. Is anyone a healer?’
‘I know a little field medicine,’ Rustina whispered. Tuniz had to help her to her knees beside the perquisitor, and then to hold her up.
‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’
‘I’d say so,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Though I’ve seen men recover from worse.’ She took Jal-Nish’s wrist with her left hand. ‘Well, the pulse is strong. Maybe he has a chance …’
‘I’ll do anything.’ Nish was only now realising how much his arrogant, demanding father meant to him.
‘The arm will have to go,’ said Rustina. ‘The upper bone is smashed to pieces and no one could fix it.’ She looked up as if gauging his courage. ‘You’ll have to do it.’
Nish imagined hacking his father’s arm off at the shoulder, like a butcher carving through a joint. ‘I can’t …’
‘We all must do …’ Rustina began.
‘He can’t do it, sergeant!’ snapped Irisis.
‘Then the perquisitor will die, and it’s probably best. If he did survive, he’d be in torment for the rest of his life, and a horror to look at. Would he want to live?’
‘My father can’t die!’ cried Nish. ‘Give me the knife.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Irisis. They all stared at her. ‘It’s the leg that’s broken, not my arm. I have a steady hand and a good eye.’
Those who had seen her coolly take the shard from Nish’s neck knew that. And her metal work was the best anyone had ever seen. Half the women of the manufactory wore jewellery Irisis had made in her spare time.
She had to perform the operation sitting, with her splinted leg out straight before her. It was rather awkward. Nish knelt on the other side, holding his father still, for even in his unconscious state Jal-Nish jerked and twitched.
It took surprisingly little time to remove the arm at the shoulder. Rahnd cauterised the wound with a metal plate off the clanker, heated over a fire of scrub branches. The smell was horrible. Worse, the searing shocked Jal-Nish back to consciousness. His screams could have been heard across the plateau, especially when Irisis began to sew his face back together. Three people had to hold him down.
‘Let me die!’ he kept shouting, his one eye staring at them, unblinking.
Finally the ghastly operation was done, the wounds painted with warm tar and bound up. They put Jal-Nish in the clanker with Irisis and Rustina, who had collapsed, moaning and holding her belly.
‘The beast struck her in the middle,’ said Nish. ‘Maybe it’s burst her belly.’ He pulled her clothes up and went still.
‘What is it?’ said Irisis.
Rustina was unmarked but for a set of old scars that carved all the way across her midriff. ‘Lyrinx claws. How did she ever survive? She must have been torn right open.’
‘She was only a child when it happened,’ said Fyn-Mah. ‘There was no possibility of her having children so she was allowed to join the army. All she’s ever wanted since was to kill the enemy.’
Ullii was still crouched behind her rock. Nish could get no response out of her, no matter what he did. He carried her to the clanker, whereupon she came to life and sprang out again.
‘He’s screaming!’ she moaned, though Jal-Nish, sedated with a heavy dose of nigah, was silent.
Nish let her go. He had no energy left for her.
On the way back they managed to right the crashed clanker, but the flywheels had torn from their mountings and the machine had to be abandoned. Ky-Ara sat beside it, weeping silently. The death of Pur-Did seemed a far lesser tragedy than the loss of his machine. Clanker operators rarely bonded with their shooters.
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 Hürn 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.