And then she snuffed them out.
‘If you knew how much money I’ve spent on that pirate Howlish,’ Maskelyne said, ‘then you wouldn’t have sold yourselves so cheaply.’
The gunnery captain shrugged. He put his arm around the young Haurstaf telepath. ‘I think we got a bargain, Mr Maskelyne.’
Maskelyne eyed them both. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen, and him eighteen. If he was smart enough to attain his rank at that age, then he was smart enough to know he could have taken Maskelyne for much more. Which meant his reasons for helping them had to be personal. Or was she the one with the reasons? The two of them looked on as Mellor and his men cut through the last of the cannon’s securing bolts.
‘You know Ianthe?’ Maskelyne said to the girl.
The telepath hung her head.
‘You don’t need to know why we’re doing this, Mr Maskelyne,’ the captain said. ‘The money is enough to give us a fresh start.’
Maskelyne grunted.
Mellor switched off his gas torch. ‘That’s us, sir.’
‘Good. Now hitch up the horses.’
The men brought the two horses round and used the wagon hitch to secure them to one side of the cannon. Mellor grabbed the reins and pulled, urging the heavy beasts forward. Nothing happened at first, but then a low scraping sound came from the base of the gun. Slowly, the whole cannon revolved on its vertical axis. When it was more or less facing in the opposite direction, Maskelyne walked around the weapon, checking the new trajectory with a compass.
‘That will do nicely, Mr Mellor,’ he said. From his jacket pocket he took out a map, heavily marked with pencilled circles, lines and crosses. He studied it while the men unhitched the horses and steered them away. Then he made an adjustment to the cannon’s elevation by turning a brass wheel in the side of the gun carriage. The barrel dropped gradually lower.
‘How do you intend to get her out?’ the telepath said.
‘Brute force,’ Maskelyne admitted. ‘It’s the only way to deal with the Haurstaf, present company excluded.’
‘But what if you hurt her?’
‘That’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’
The captain held his girlfriend closer. ‘He knows exactly where they’re keeping her, Regina.’
She didn’t seem convinced.
Mellor handed one of the gem lanterns to Maskelyne, who opened it up and made a small adjustment to the mechanism inside. Then he pulled out his pocket watch and noted the time. Mellor loaded the lantern into the cannon.
‘You know the demands?’ Maskelyne said to the girl.
She nodded.
‘Word for word?’
‘Word for word.’
Maskelyne covered his ears. ‘Fire.’
Mellor pulled the lanyard, and the cannon barrel retracted with a sudden, violent boom. A flare of light shot skywards, arced over the trees covering the hillside above them and disappeared from sight. Maskelyne turned to Mellor’s men and nodded. They set off at once in the direction of the road.
‘I was expecting more of a bang,’ the gunnery captain said.
At that moment, the skies above them erupted with fire. The ensuing blast wave ripped the tops from hundreds of trees, blowing tons of debris far over their heads as a thunderous concussion shook the valley. Maskelyne, Mellor and the young couple dived for the ground. The whole mountain continued to shake for several heartbeats, and then finally settled. Scraps of burning forest drifted down past them.
‘Send the demands, please,’ Maskelyne said to the girl.
She got to her feet shakily, then took a deep breath. After a moment, she said, ‘It’s done.’
‘Any response?’
‘Give them a minute.’
They waited.
The telepath suddenly blew through her teeth. ‘They say…’ She paused and shook her head. ‘They say no, they say…’
‘Word for word.’
‘There’s a lot of it. A lot of argument, hold on…’ She raised her hand. ‘They want you to stop…’
‘Word for word.’
‘You will halt your attack immediately. The Haurstaf do not negotiate with terrorists. They’re… They’re bombarding me with questions, about you, about our location.’
‘That’s to be expected.’
‘They don’t know where the shell came from.’
Maskelyne turned to Mellor, who began to reload the cannon immediately. ‘Tell them the next shell destroys the mountain above the palace,’ he said to the girl.
‘But what about Ianthe?’
‘Do as I say.’
She paused a moment. ‘Wait. They’re willing to talk. They’ve offered to meet you.’ She shook her head again. ‘There’s a lot of confusion. Something strange is going on in there. I’m losing contact everywhere.’
Maskelyne snarled, ‘They’re shutting me out.’
‘No…’
He picked up another gem lantern, set the feedback mechanism and tossed it over to Mellor. ‘Five degrees lower. They’ve had their warning.’
‘What are you doing?’ the telepath cried.
The captain grabbed his arm. ‘This isn’t what we arranged.’
‘It’s in the tube now,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Tick, tock.’
Mellor pulled the lanyard, and the second shell blasted into the air, tracing a fiery arc across the blue sky. This time gunfire crackled on the hillside to the south.
‘They’re on to our position, sir,’ Mellor said.
A second concussion tore across the roof of the world, its flash illuminating the snow-clad mountain peaks. The sound of impact was much heavier than before. The ground shuddered under their feet.
‘That was rock,’ Maskelyne said.
A great grey cloud of ash rose over the forest ridge. Moments later, a hail of small stones pinged against the outcrop all around them. Maskelyne stood where he was, listening intently. ‘They’re still firing,’ he said. ‘Why are they still firing?’
He could hear it more clearly now that the echo of the gem lantern explosion had diminished – the constant rat-a-rat of small-arms fire, accompanied now and then by the distant booming of cannons.
He turned and looked out across the valley. And there he spotted a tiny craft glinting in the sunshine high above the valley floor. It dodged and weaved between puffs of smoke. The Guild military were trying to bring it down. It was an Unmer chariot, and it was heading this way.
Ianthe drifted through the dark spaces of the palace, no longer as a lost and frightened ghost, but as a harbinger of death. While her body lay broken in the torturer’s cell, her mind remained free to travel wherever she wished. And she used it now to wreak destruction. She moved from room to room, possessing Haurstaf minds and shattering them. Their perceptions vanished in her wake, leaving only swathes of darkness.
From the kitchens to the banquet hall she flitted, through floors and walls, snuffing out lives like candle flames. She watched girls fleeing, screaming as their companions fell around them. Hundreds of them fought to get out of the palace. But they were as slow as they were vulnerable and she tore through them like a gale. Their minds were windows they couldn’t close. They could not keep her out and they could not hide.
The palace grew darker as its corridors filled with the dead. Soon the only lights came from the dungeons where the Unmer dwelt, and the scattered human servants who still wandered among their masters’ corpses. Ianthe became weary. She allowed the survivors to leave unimpeded. And then her attention returned to the torturer’s cell.
The torturer’s accomplice was sharpening a knife.
Blasts shook the flying machine as Granger tried to steer it past another Guild compound. The view screens flickered and then settled down again, still focused on a single artillery position at the northern end of a long ridge. Maskelyne had rotated the cannon 180 degrees, so that it now aimed towards the Haurstaf stronghold. Its last shot had brought down half the mountainside. If he lowered the barrel again, his next shot would obliterate the palace itself.