They stood there in slack-jawed silence. Clearly, they did not want to think about it.
“We know,” said the woman Radl had shaken by the throat. “Lyf has issued the death warrant. The enemy will slaughter them all.”
“Every Pale in Cython will die,” said Radl. “All your wives and husbands, all your children.”
“Your families can’t help themselves; the Empound has been sealed off,” said Tali. “If you don’t save them, they die. Down the back there are crates of death-lashes, bombasts, grenadoes and fire-flitters — ”
Radl thrust her aside. “Arm yourselves and get ready to fight. Hurry — if we can get up the ramp quickly enough, we can take them by surprise.”
Hundreds of Pale stormed down to the back to the weapons shelves. Others gathered heatstones from around the retorts and stills, or wrenched iron bars and other implements off the alchymical equipment, taking anything that could be used as a weapon. Tali returned to Holm, who was leaning against the wall, holding his head.
“Have you seen Tobry?”
“No,” said Holm.
“I have. He’d turned shifter and was going berserker.”
“Then I dare say they’ve cut him down by now,” Holm said quietly. He put a bloody arm around her shoulders.
Tali glanced across to the ramp and her heart missed a beat. Lyf was halfway down it, a host of troops at his back. She pulled free. “They’re coming!”
“Attack!” bellowed Lyf.
Three hundred enemy charged down the ramp. Though they were greatly outnumbered by the Pale, the Cythonians wore chest armour and carried oval shields, and their first charge drove thirty yards across the chymical level before the Pale stopped them, fighting desperately with chuck-lashes and grenadoes, swords and knives, and drove them back to the foot of the ramp.
“Attack from a distance with your grenadoes,” Radl shouted. “Don’t let them get close.”
Enemy reinforcements appeared around the curve of the ramp, another couple of hundred. The company at the bottom assembled in ranks and charged again, and this time the Pale could not drive them all the way back. Their only advantage was in numbers and it was rapidly being neutralised. They were no match for the enemy in size, weaponry, armour or training, and if the Cythonians gained a foothold in the chymical level, the battle and the rebellion were lost.
As Tali ran, she fumbled a couple of grenadoes out of her pack. Her breath was rasping in her throat and her legs were giving out. Thirty yards from the foot of the ramp she propped and hurled the first missile.
“Like this!” she yelled.
It went off at the feet of the enemy, taking down half a dozen of them. She hurled the second grenado but it slipped in her sweaty hand and fell short, exploding and blasting white stone everywhere, and leaving a foot-wide hole in the floor.
The fighting was furious now, the bodies of Cythonians and Pale piled in heaps all around the base of the ramp and scattered across the floor for a hundred feet. There was so much blood that the fighters were slipping in it.
It was Tali’s first close experience of a major battle, and it was horrible. People lay maimed and dying everywhere, screaming in agony, begging for help or to be put down, gasping farewell to loved ones or bitterly regretting that they had joined the failing rebellion. A few were cursing Tali’s name and all her ancestors.
“Attack!” said Lyf, who was hovering twenty feet up, not far from the cube of heatstone blocks.
The enemy re-formed their ranks and charged, driving through the front ranks of the Pale. Tali scrabbled frantically for another grenado, but the fighting was hand-to-hand now and she could not use it without endangering her own people. She hurled it up at Lyf instead. It burst on the wall next to him, showering him in chips of white stone. He zoomed away, bleeding from half a dozen small cuts, and she lost sight of him.
The Pale were being driven back when a vast animal howl rang down the ramp. Suddenly the enemy were screaming and shouting and scrambling out of the way as a seven-foot caitsthe stormed through them, its claws tearing through leather armour into flesh and flinging bodies to left and right.
“Stand firm,” said a burly sergeant. He put himself in the path of the beast and thrust out a javelin.
The caitsthe smashed the shaft to pieces with a contemptuous backhander. Its next blow lifted the sergeant off his feet and drove him into the wall, breaking his neck. As it came raging down the ramp, the rest of the Cythonians scattered. It reached the floor, slipped in blood, then turned towards the nearest group of Pale, who stood there, mesmerised.
The beast — Tali could not think of it as Tobry, for there was no more humanity in its eyes than when he had attacked her after her disastrous attempt to heal him — would tear them apart.
“Emergency potion!” hissed Holm.
Tali felt in her pack for the little bottle. Where had she put it? Her fingers closed on a bundle deep down and she heaved it out, praying that the bottle hadn’t been broken in all the fighting.
“Hurry!” said Holm, running out and putting himself between the caitsthe and the Pale.
Her injured wrist throbbed. It was a struggle to get the bottle out, and then she could not open it. Holm ducked around the caitsthe and caught it from behind but it whirled and hurled him ten feet across the floor.
The caitsthe bounded after the Pale. Tali leapt between it and them. “Tobry, stop!”
It gave no hint of recognition. Tali could not open the tightly sealed bottle so she flung it into the caitsthe’s gaping mouth. Broken glass could do no lasting harm to a shifter that could heal any injury in minutes.
It crunched up the bottle, the thick grey contents oozing out and mixing with its blood. It grabbed Tali and drew her towards the great maw that could tear her arm off in a single snap. She screamed and tried to pull free but it was many times as strong as she was.
“Stop it!” roared Holm, thumping the caitsthe over the back of the head with a heatstone brick.
It turned slowly, extending its claws, then fell to its knees. The potion was working. Its claws were retreating back into its fingers, the cat jaw slowly changing to a man’s.
Tobry’s eyes looked out of the caitsthe’s yellow eyes. They met hers and recognised her. Tali saw a deep shame in his eyes, and a flush passed up his downy cheeks.
“Thanks,” he said in a thick, growling voice, and fell on his face.
“But for what?” she said quietly.
Holm dragged Tobry away from the arena of battle, which now resumed.
There was a colossal boom behind her. She looked around as the great glass still toppled. It looked as though someone had thrown a grenado at it. Behind it, one of those large flasks of quicksilver had been broken by a projectile and the silvery metal was creeping across the floor. And quicksilver was poisonous to breathe.
“More grenadoes!” she yelled. “Drive them back.”
“It’s not working,” said Holm. “Their reinforcements are still coming down.” He surveyed the battle. “And I can see them at the drive now. We’ve got nowhere to go, and they can attack us from both sides. It’ll all be over in ten minutes… Unless…”
“What?” said Tali.
“The time has come for you to make the final choice about your magery.”
A brick descended into the pit of her stomach. You can be a destroyer or a healer, but not both.
CHAPTER 102
Had Tali acted more quickly to attack the gauntlings at Tirnan Twil, its people and its treasures might have survived. Now she faced the choice again. Her life was going around in circles.
Tobry was on his feet, though he was grey and exhausted. His skin had gone baggy and he looked shrunken, for the caitsthe state burned energy at a staggering rate. His eyes were still yellow and he was covered in down — this time he hadn’t turned all the way back.