‘Remember our leaky floater-gas.’
‘I’ve finished.’ She hauled herself out. ‘Well, of course I’m not finished. I could spend a year here.’
‘Can you make one like it?’
‘Probably not. Some of the innards are sealed and I have no idea what’s inside, and we’d not master such fine metal-working as this –’ she slapped the smoothly curving side, ‘in a hundred years. Still, I’ve learned a thing or two.’
The scrutator left it at that. M’lainte was the best mechanician in the south-east, and did not make promises she could not keep. It was better than nothing.
‘Malien’s not coming,’ Flydd said dispiritedly. ‘Come on.’
The air-floater took off as soon as they climbed in, heading east. There were no enemy in sight. It was something over two hundred leagues back to the manufactory and they would probably have to rotor all the way.
They had taken on rock ballast at Tirthrax so as to fly extra low, for at high altitudes, strong winds blew directly against them. They floated along the line of the mountains, enjoying the magnificent vista of peaks and glaciers. Below and south as far as they could see lay a flat landscape, a monotonous vista of snow-clad plains, swamps and ragged lakes, many still frozen. The forests were straggles of spindly, impoverished pines.
The trip was slow but uneventful. Night fell. They continued, and late in the morning, at a place where the Great Mountains were less high and they could see across the range to another in the distance, the air-floater dropped its ballast and turned northeast to make the crossing.
‘We should reach the manufactory within the hour,’ said M’lainte in the mid-afternoon, trying to consult her map as the air-floater lurched and bounced.
‘I’ll be glad to see it,’ the scrutator replied curtly. He had paced all night and was not in the best of humours, and the rough flight made his head spin.
‘At least the air-floater has worked well,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Don’t jinx it!’ he snapped.
M’lainte went up the other end, to stare over the rope rail. Flydd inspected his scarred and gnarled hands, trying not to think of the events that had made them that way. The knot in his stomach was painful.
‘How is the seeker?’ he called to the soldier on duty inside.
‘Still sleeping, last I checked.’
‘Check again.’
The man ducked away, then came back. ‘She’s stirring. Should I give her another dose of poppy?’
‘Of course not! Keep an eye on her. Bloody idiot,’ the scrutator said, more out of habit than annoyance. His mind was on other matters.
They floated over the last range and saw smoke everywhere. ‘What’s going on?’ cried Flydd. ‘We’ve only been gone four days.’
‘It’s early in the season for a forest fire.’ M’lainte had come up to the rail beside him.
‘Far too early. That’s Tiksi; the city is burning. Circle round,’ he roared to the man at the helm. ‘See what’s going on. Hurry!’
They veered left, sliding through smoke clouds all the way. The air-floater bucked and rolled in the updraughts. Flydd choked back on nausea uncomfortably similar to seasickness.
The air-floater broke out of the smoke. Tiksi lay dead ahead. The city wall was broken in three places, the eastern quarter ablaze. On the plain outside the main gates a battle raged, four clankers against dozens of lyrinx. Dead lay everywhere, and Flydd counted fifteen broken clankers. Behind the clankers a small force of troops stood together, shields up, spears out.
They circled, weighing the damage. Flydd’s escort stood by with their heavy crossbows, in case of an attack, though there were no lyrinx in the air. Flydd allowed half the soldiers to fire on the enemy. Several lyrinx fell. The others retreated, but not far.
‘It’s not as bad as I first thought,’ said the scrutator. ‘They would have beaten the enemy off without us. There’s no fighting inside the walls.’
‘But bad enough!’ It was his sergeant, Ruvix, a short, broad man who was a solid slab of muscle. ‘Those are storehouses burning.’
‘Still, the damage can be repaired.’
‘As long as they don’t come back in force. It’ll take a week to fix the wall breaches, and with only four clankers left …’ Ruvix muttered oaths.
‘Do you want to go lower?’ called the woman at the helm.
‘I’ve seen enough. Wait.’ The scrutator pulled out a piece of paper and began scribbling. ‘Take us over the master’s palace.’
They hovered over the magnificent building, which was unscathed apart from minor damage from catapult balls. Flydd finished writing, stamped his seal at the bottom of the paper and snapped his fingers. A soldier came running with a leather envelope.
Another shouted to the crowd gathered below. The soldier dropped the envelope, someone caught it and ran inside.
‘To the manufactory,’ said the scrutator. ‘And don’t muck about.’
The manufactory had also been attacked though it was not badly damaged. The air-floater landed on the gravelled area outside the front gates, disgorged its passengers and took off to replenish the floater-gas. Scrutator and mechanician watched it away, then went inside, where Flydd called Overseer Tuniz, all eleven foremen, Captain Gir-Dan and Crafter Irisis to a meeting.
‘Your reports, if you please,’ said the scrutator. ‘Captain?’
Captain Gir-Dan had recently arrived from one of the coast garrisons. A handsome man, dark-haired and broad-shouldered, he had set many hearts aflutter since his arrival. Scurrilous rumour, however, put a question mark over his behaviour on the battle lines, and said that he had been sent here ‘for evaluation’, as the quisitors put it.
‘One attack, surr.’ Gir-Dan was not a loquacious man. ‘Two days back, it were. Five of the beasts, with a single ’pult. We did three of them with the javelards mounted on the wall. The others fled.’
‘Very good.’ The scrutator swung around to face Tuniz, a tall, dark-skinned woman with wiry brown hair and filed teeth. A native of Crandor, a steamy land in the subtropical north, she stood out among the smaller, honey-skinned and black-haired natives of this region. ‘Overseer, what news from below?’
The captain scowled, for military matters were his province and to be passed over in this way was a deliberate slap in the face. Knowing better than to show it, Gir-Dan composed his features. The scrutator was not a forgiving man.
Tuniz smiled. Her filed teeth made the gesture threatening though she was, by nature, cheerful and friendly.
‘The enemy have come out of the ranges all along the coast, surr. As you may have seen, Tiksi has been attacked and badly damaged.’
‘We’ve been down there,’ Flydd said flatly. ‘It’s bad, but they’re holding out.’
‘Then your news is more recent than mine, surr. There have been attacks on most cities between here and Gosport. Maksmord is likely to fall; Guffeons is sorely pressed. We don’t know as much as I’d like; the enemy are targeting skeets now and some messages have not come through. I have the despatches here.’ She held out a leather wallet. ‘Some are for your eyes only.’
The scrutator took out the papers, riffled through them and sorted them into two piles. He began to read the pile at his right hand. No one spoke for the ten minutes it took him to finish.
Flydd cleared his throat. ‘It is worse than I thought. The enemy now hold most of the lands about the Dry Sea, save for Crandor. The mountains of Faranda are theirs, though not the lowlands, and some of the arid lands north of the Great Mountains. And of course Meldorin fell last year, save for the southern peninsula. Thurkad was a crippling loss. We still hold the east coast, the fount of our wealth, central Lauralin and everything south of the Great Mountains. But the east coast is in peril now, and with the Aachim flooding across Lauralin … Well, we shall see about them in due course.’