The struggle continued. Irisis could only imagine the hell the battlefield must be. The black, stinking smoke, now rising along half a dozen curving lines, provided perfect cover and allowed the lyrinx to fight the way they preferred – from ambush. Being able to hold their breath for five minutes or more, they could take better advantage of it. The human casualties were mounting.
Late in the afternoon, Tham ordered three gigantic catapults to be wheeled up. Teams of brawny men loaded each with a boulder the size of a donkey, then turned capstans as big as cartwheels until the entire structure creaked with tension. The catapult master signalled to the command post. General Tham conferred with Flydd, who nodded. They signalled back.
The first catapult fired. The rock went only a hundred paces to slam into the side of a clanker and knock it onto its roof. The mechanical legs went back and forth in the air. Flydd cursed.
The catapult master ordered the second firer to take up the tension. The capstan was wound another turn but before the catapult could be fired the ropes snapped, scything through the soldiers like a sickle through wheat stalks.
‘Order the last catapult to release the tension,’ snapped Flydd. ‘I thought you’d tested them,’ he roared at General Tham.
Too late. The catapult had already fired, its gigantic ball soaring through the air right over the wall of Snizort, to slam into the ground inside. A few seconds later the ground shook, and sometime after that a ragged cheer was heard from the field.
‘That’s better,’ said Flydd, ‘but pull them right back for the night.’
As expected, the lyrinx attacked fiercely in the night, though the armies had also made use of fire. The bonfires surrounding their positions made it easy to pick out the enemy. The attack petered out some hours later and the rest of the night was quiet, though few people were able to sleep.
‘It’s almost as if they’re playing for time,’ said Flydd the next morning. ‘They’re not fighting hard at all, just keeping us away from the walls. I wonder what they’re up to?’
It could not be called a battle yet. Periodically the ground shook from the impact of the giant missiles. The catapults could no longer get close enough to the walls to aim accurately, yet two lucky shots had broken through. Moreover, the field was constantly fluctuating, one minute allowing the clankers to move at near top speed, the next reducing them to a crawl.
‘Is this their doing?’ said Flydd, ‘or are so many machines taking too much from the field.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Irisis said. It was another worry.
On the third day of the siege the catapults began to use tar-coated missiles, hoping to set fire to the tar mires and pits inside the walls. It was hard to tell if they had succeeded, for there was smoke everywhere, but from the air Flydd’s spotters had seen smoke issuing from one of the smaller pits. Flydd was busy in his tent and would not allow anyone in, though Irisis heard cursing from time to time.
Late in the afternoon of the fourth day, Irisis focussed on a convoy of clankers creeping along between the lines of blazing tar. A formation of soldiers, at least a thousand strong, marched behind.
‘We’re getting through!’ she exulted.
The convoy approached an area of bare earth between the lines. The single file of clankers spread out, accelerating toward the waiting lyrinx.
‘Now we’ll see some action.’ General Tham had come up behind them. Flydd was watching from his tent.
The racing clankers had gone out six abreast, firing their javelards in salvo. The lyrinx did not move. The pair of clankers in the middle stopped suddenly, front down as if they had run into a bog. The flanking ones now did the same. The clankers behind swung right and left to avoid them.
‘What is it?’ cried Tham. ‘Spyglass, adjutant!’
He ran out with it. Tham snapped it open.
‘Save yourself the trouble, Tham,’ said Flydd wearily. ‘It’s a hidden tar bog covered up with earth. The clankers will never get out. The enemy will fire it, next.’
They watched the clankers’ hopeless struggle to extricate themselves. The operators soon gave up, abandoning their machines and climbing back over them in desperate attempts to reach secure ground. Some made it. Many went into sticky tar and became as mired as their machines.
Behind them the rest of the force churned the dry soil to powder as they battled to escape the trap. The lyrinx rained missiles on them with catapults. Less than half the force escaped back into the smoke-wreathed lines.
Tham stalked away, grim-faced. Soon a messenger came running. ‘Field’s dropped suddenly, surr.’ He passed Flydd a sealed packet. ‘And there’s this from Eiryn Muss.’
‘I can see that,’ Flydd said gloomily. ‘They’ve divided and demoralised us, made us fear the solid ground beneath our feet. What now? All-out attack, or more of the same?’
‘Depends what they want,’ said Irisis, handing around mugs of black, sweet tea.
Flydd read the message, then drank the hot tea in a single gulp. ‘According to Muss, they are determined to complete their secret project and then annihilate this army so they can move on all the eastern lands.’ Flydd thrust the message into a nearby brazier. ‘It’s no good. They’re taking too much from the field. Our clankers can barely go half-pace.’
‘Even so, with the support of the Aachim …’
He spat on the ground. ‘Vithis is only making a token effort, though his constructs have all the power they need. And I suspect …’
‘What?’
‘Once we look like losing he’ll make a strategic withdrawal, unscathed, and still demand his share of the bargain. By then we really will be powerless to stop him. I’ve got to act now.’
‘How?’
‘It’s all or nothing.’
‘So you’re saying –’
‘We’re going in to block the node-drainer. Tonight.’
‘I thought you said there was no way to get in, secretly?’
‘Muss has found one.’ His meagre lips were compressed to purple. ‘Through the front door, you might say. It requires a particular kind of scrutator magic.’
‘I’m delighted to hear of it.’
‘You shouldn’t be.’
‘Why not?’
‘I haven’t discovered any way of getting back out.’
‘What did you mean, we? You can’t be spared, Xervish.’
‘The Council ordered me to. Besides, no one else could get you in there. We’re going as soon as it’s dark.’
He scribbled a new set of orders and sent them off.
Irisis, Ullii and the scrutator were in the air-floater, hanging silently well above the thorn-covered southern wall of Snizort. It was a dark night with a heavy overcast. The new moon might bring some light when it rose, after midnight. They’d gone up at dusk. The army was supposed to make a diversion but it was nearly midnight and they were still waiting for it.
‘I wish they’d get on with it,’ said Irisis, looking over the side at the lines of tar fires, and camp fires beyond them.
‘You won’t once we begin.’
‘You keep making these gloomy pronouncements. It quite puts me off my adventuring.’
‘I won’t dignify that with a response.’
‘You used to be fun, Flydd. In a dark, twisted sort of a way.’
‘There’s no fun left in the world.’
Irisis gave up.
The onslaught began on the eastern side, evidenced by flares and screams. Ullii pressed in her earplugs and covered her eyes, but her face was screwed up in torment.
Irisis stirred. Not yet! Another battle began on the western perimeter. Still Flydd did not give the word. He was waiting for the third. Now it came with a cluster of blazing missiles arcing across the sky from the north.
‘That’s it,’ whispered Irisis. ‘And already people are dying to ease our way in.’
‘A lot more will die if we fail.’ He uttered words of power, scrutator magic she had no comprehension of. The air-floater and everything in it faded until just the faintest edge-shimmer betrayed it. In fog or mist, which they hoped for near to the ground, even that would be invisible.