The wall seemed to explode. The roar was deafening. Shattered bars fell clanging to the floor. Dust billowed up through the grating. As the dust cleared, all the watchers on the roof could see that where Sholto had been standing there was nothing but a vast, dark, crumbling hole.
Bones threw back his head and howled in misery. Bird’s people groaned. Dirk and Rye looked at one another, and ran for the flap in the grating.
‘No, Spy! Giant, come back!’ Bird shouted after them. ‘He’s gone! There’s no hope!’
But Rye and Dirk knew there was. They knew their brother. Already Rye was through the grating. Already Dirk was lying with his head and shoulders in the gap, peering after him.
And so it was that they both saw a thin figure edging rapidly along the bars towards them through a haze of smoke and dust. And they both saw what was behind him—what was crawling into the testing hall from the darkness beyond the ruined wall.
The monstrous bird spread its wings. It moved them stiffly at first, then more strongly, beating away the smoke that clouded its view. The spines on the back of its long neck rose. It opened its terrible beak and screeched its fury, its defiance to any order, its ravenous hunger. Then its glassy eye fell on Kyte.
Kyte staggered back, trying to fire, forgetting that her weapon was empty. In terror she leaped for the stairway. It was her last act. The bird plucked her out of the air, and in an instant she was gone.
Rye heard Kyte scream, but mercifully did not see her horrible death. The moment the giant bird struck, he had launched himself at Sholto, caught him around the waist and swept him up to where Dirk was waiting.
Only when all three of them were safely together on the roof and the grating was sealed once more did Rye look down. And what he saw made him understand what had been in Sholto’s mind when he taunted Kyte into firing at the damaged wall with such fury that the charges had blasted a hole in the cage behind it.
The giant bird had found new prey. And so had the skimmers—or that was what they seemed to think at first. The battle raging in the air of the testing hall was ferocious. The skimmers were many, and used to attacking creatures larger than themselves. But never had they faced a foe like this—a foe with fangs and talons far bigger than their own, wings that crushed bone, and spines like blades.
They were being slaughtered. The sight was ghastly. But what Rye saw when he lifted his eyes to Brand’s balcony was worse.
The grey-faced supervisor had gone. The third skimmer cage had been removed. Controller Brand was standing alone, his face pressed to the transparent shield. His body was rigid, lifeless. His eyes were staring, blank and dead. His mouth gaped in a soundless scream. The black box was still gripped in his hands. But now the hands were nothing but sooty, smoking bone.
Shuddering, Rye lifted his head. He discovered Sonia awake and standing beside him, her face expressionless.
‘The Master was not happy with the test results, it seems,’ she said.
Rye looked wordlessly at his brothers.
Dirk swallowed. He was very pale.
‘Well, that is the best we can do for now, I think,’ Sholto murmured, turning away. ‘Shall we go?’
They left the Harbour in a long, linked line, running like the wind thanks to the magic of the speed ring.
‘Hand in hand we goes, like the wizard kings in the old tales!’ carolled Bones, his wild white hair blowing back in the breeze. ‘Ah, this is a day indeed, lords an’ lady! This is a day!’
Even he had no breath to say much more. So fast did they make their escape, so anxious were they to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Harbour, that there was little chance for talk or explanations.
As they sped past the Diggings, some of the questions seething in Rye’s mind were answered, at least. The hood of concealment had blown back from his head, but while the Diggings guards sullenly watched from behind the locked gates, they did not come out to block the way or offer a challenge.
“Twas the same last evening,’ panted Bones, looking back over his shoulder. ‘Bones comes a-running by with Giant feeble as a newborn babe on his arm, an’ ol’ guards they stand like Saltings stones an’ don’t stir to stop us! “Ho!” Bones says to hisself. “That’s what magic ones can do!”’
Not magic, Bones, but fear of Kyte, Rye thought, suddenly remembering the slave-hunter’s last order to the Diggings guards.
‘An’ there’s ol’ Four-Eyes, too,’ Bones went on. ‘Cheating, lying Four-Eyes, fast sleeping in his steamer wagon outside the gate, an’ he don’t stir neither!’
‘The trader?’ Sholto said, jolted out of his silence. ‘He sold me Vrett’s coat—Vrett’s identity badge was in the pocket, but Four-Eyes had no idea what it was. And he gave me a ride to the Diggings, where Kyte found me. I owe a lot to him!’
‘He got what he wanted out of you, brother,’ Dirk said dryly. ‘Your lantern.’
‘And a fine painted sign for his wagon,’ Rye put in.
Sholto raised his eyebrows, and nodded.
‘Snaffle is still in my pocket,’ Sonia panted. ‘She is asleep, I think. She ate all the hoji nuts. What will we do about her?’
‘Leave her with us, lady!’ Bones laughed. ‘Ol’ Four-Eyes, he’ll be back to the Den soon enough, an’ won’t he be happy when we hand clink over, good as gold?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Mind you, Cap’ll hide other riches well an’ truly,’ he added. ‘Cap won’t trust trader too far, no indeed.’
What Bones meant by that was a mystery until, seeing some sign beside the track that no one else could spot, he stopped dead and uncovered his sled. It proved to be heaped with the first goods Chub and Itch had thrown from the trader’s wagon.
‘Cap, he took ducks afore,’ Bones chattered as he slid between the sled’s shafts. ‘Cap hears Bones go to find you, lords an’ lady. So Cap follows. But all Bones finds is Giant, waking giddy with myrmon, an’ food galore a-lying all about. An’ Cap comes up an’ he says Bones can hide sled an’ take Giant on, like Giant says he must. But ducks can’t be buried without harm, an’ ducks is great treasure from the olden days. So Cap, he carried them back to the Den.’
After that, the group ran a little more slowly, with Bones panting along behind. Despite their fears there had been no pursuit from the Harbour—not really surprising, thought Rye, with Kyte and her guards dead, and Brand dead too.
And in time they could run no further, for a cart drawn by six rangy black goats was coming straight for them, flanked by marching lines of stocky people. The battered sign on the cart’s side read:
‘Bell!’ screamed Bird, waving wildly.
‘Ho there!’ a voice yelled from the cart. ‘So you saved yourselves, did you? Bless my heart, if I’d known I’d have stayed home and got some sleep!’
As the small people around him cheered, and ran to meet the cart, memories of FitzFee again stabbed at Rye. What was FitzFee doing now? How were he and his family faring?
‘It is tempting to stay here,’ Dirk muttered, glancing at Sholto and Rye. ‘These people would hide us at the farm, I am sure. And now we know that this place is the source of the skimmers. We know the Master is the Enemy of Weld. We could speak to Cap, make plans to raise a rebellion—’
‘No! We must go back to Weld first, and tell what we have seen,’ Sholto broke in impatiently. ‘We destroyed most of the daylight skimmers, and that will delay the Master’s plans. Only for a time, but it will give us a breathing space—time to talk to Tallus, to convince the Warden—’
‘You are mad if you think you will convince the Warden of anything that will make him uncomfortable,’ Sonia said flatly.