‘Then why don’t they say so?’

‘It’s a … it’s the way of their culture; if you force them to an answer they’ll say yes because they don’t like to be the bearer of bad news. But it still won’t get us up there.’

‘Damn fool culture! If they’d told me that in the first place …’

‘They are telling you, but you’re not listening.’

‘You tell me, then! Where?’

Gi-Had rubbed his jaw. ‘Perhaps over there.’ He indicated behind them, where the outcrop was notched. ‘Try there!’ he called.

The operators moved their machines backwards, which looked even more ridiculous than the clankers’ forward motion. With their overlapping, curving plates of armour they were like eight-legged armadillos. Down the beaten track of their passage they thudded, then turned diagonally up the slope.

Nish slogged through the snow up to the notch. He was sweating by the time he reached it.

‘I don’t know,’ Gi-Had frowned. ‘It’ll be a pinch, even if we can get up to the gap. The first bit’s too steep, and with the weak field here …’

‘What if we built a ramp of snow along here?’ said Irisis.

‘Good idea!’

It took hours, even with thirty soldiers labouring with their camp shovels, but finally a ramp of compacted snow was constructed up to the outcrop.

‘It’s still pretty steep,’ said Gi-Had. ‘What do you think?’ he asked the huddled operators.

Again they muttered among themselves. ‘What now?’ Jal-Nish exclaimed, practically tearing his hair out. ‘We’ll lose Tiaan!’ He pounded the side of the clanker. The operators turned as one, glaring. Ky-Ara clenched his fist. Jal-Nish snatched his hand away.

‘What’s it matter?’ Nish interjected. ‘The seeker can always find her again.’

‘That’s the attitude that got you in your present trouble, boy!’ Jal-Nish grated. ‘It matters, idiot son of mine, because the country beyond those peaks is a great plateau. You would have known that, had you bothered to consult a map before we left. Up there we can run them down. Not even a lyrinx has the endurance of a clanker, and it must stop to rest. But beyond the plateau lies Nyst, a land of crags, canyons and crevasses. A lyrinx can go places where no clanker, indeed no soldier, can follow. That’s why we’ve got to catch them. If we don’t do it in the next few days we never will. And if the beast finds his friends …’ The perquisitor broke off, staring at the snow bank. His round chest, which merged indistinguishably into the swell of his belly, was heaving. ‘Just get up there!’ he spat at the operators.

They scurried back to their machines, the metal feet began to compress the snow and Simmo’s clanker crept up the steep slope. Two-thirds of the way along, the front feet began to slip. They pounded on the spot, digging potholes beneath each foot, then stopped. Gi-Had gestured to Arple. The sergeant roared orders. Six soldiers trotted up behind, put their shoulders to the clanker, and Gi-Had shouted ‘Go!’

Again the feet skidded. ‘Heave!’ cried Arple and the soldiers heaved. The clanker inched upwards. ‘Heave! Heave!’

With each heave it went a little further but it did not take long to exhaust the soldiers. They held it while another gang took their place, and shortly they had it up and over, onto the gentler slope above.

‘Next one won’t be so easy,’ Gi-Had observed laconically. ‘It’s pounded the track to ice.’

‘Run a cable from the first,’ said Tuniz the artificer, scratching her spiky head. ‘It can pull the others up.’

‘Don’t know about that,’ said Gi-Had, but gave the orders.

The two clankers started. The first was going slowly, buried to the belly in soft snow. Ky-Ara’s machine began to catch up to the first as it approached the icy section. The rope sagged down to the ground.

‘Shit!’ cried Gi-Had, waving his arms at the operator. ‘Slow down! You’ve got to keep the rope taut.’

Ky-Ara’s clanker hit the icy patch, travelling fast. The legs thrashed, sending stinging chips of ice everywhere, but could not get a purchase. The machine began to slide backwards.

‘Hold it!’ roared Jal-Nish.

Two soldiers ran and put their shoulders to the rear of the machine. Arple screamed, ‘Get back! No! No! Get out of the way!’

The soldiers looked from one to the other, not knowing which order to obey.

‘Jump clear!’ roared Arple, but it was too late. The tow rope twanged tight and as smoothly as a pendulum the clanker slid sideways across the ramp, sweeping one soldier off the edge. The other tripped and the pounding metal feet went over him. He gave a single horrible scream. The clanker toppled off the edge of the ramp, hanging from the cable, to thump into the steep slope. Ky-Ara shrieked in anguish, the sound like a saw blade on glass.

Simmo cried out as the weight pulled his machine backwards to the brink. Nish could not bear to think what the strain must be doing to the mechanisms. For a long minute it seemed the first clanker would come down on the second, but Arple sent another troop running and they heaved a rock behind the legs just in time.

When the clanker had been stabilised the sergeant came storming across, smoking with rage. He lifted Jal-Nish by the front of the coat, a considerable feat. ‘If you ever, ever give an order to my troops again,’ he said savagely, ‘I’ll make you wish you’d been smothered at birth, perquisitor or not. You give your orders to me. No one else! Is that understood?’

‘Yes,’ squeaked Jal-Nish.

‘Let it be so!’ Arple dropped him in the snow and ran to his fallen. The soldier who had been swept off the ramp had suffered only bruises and a sprained wrist, but the other had broken every bone between his thighs and the lower ribs. The sergeant hacked his pants open. Blood trickled from the soldier’s bowel.

Arple, who looked the toughest and most unfeeling sergeant Nish had ever met, squatted down beside the soldier and took his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Dhirr,’ he said. ‘I can’t do anything for you. You’re going to die.’

Dhirr gave a gasp that wracked his long face to the roots of his receding hair. ‘My wife is pregnant. Our third! What is she going to do?’

‘She is doing great service for our country,’ said Arple. ‘And so have you done. She will be well taken care of.’

‘But my children …’ he jerked, groaned and fell sideways.

Arple listened at Dhirr’s chest. ‘He breathes, for the moment. Put him on a stretcher. He can go in the clanker once we get it up.’

Ky-Ara was hysterical and had to be consoled by Simmo. The two men stood with their arms around each other, Ky-Ara weeping enough to frost his coat.

‘There’ll be trouble with that fellow before we get back,’ said Gi-Had to Irisis, who was standing next to him.

‘He’s an emotional man, even by the standards of operators,’ she agreed. ‘After his controller failed last month he bawled for a week.’

They spent all morning recovering the second clanker and lifting it onto the ramp with pulleys and ropes carefully anchored. Everything was done in consultation with Gi-Had, Arple and Artificer Tuniz, who was years ahead of Nish in her trade and proved unexpectedly useful in this task. Nish was glad they did not consult him, for he had no idea what to do.

While that was going on, the soldiers cut a path through the soft snow for the first clanker, pounding the surface down hard. Other soldiers dug corrugations across the icy patch for the iron feet to grip on.

The clanker was not much damaged, fortunately, just a connecting rod bent and one of the armoured panels dented and scraping with every movement. Tuniz and Nish had the repairs done by the time the third clanker was heaved up. The accident had cost them five hours.

The perquisitor had not spoken since his encounter with Arple, but there was a thunderous look on his round face that boded ill for the sergeant if ever Jal-Nish had the advantage of him. He was not a man who could easily come to terms with humiliation, to say nothing of the challenge to his authority. But for now it would be put aside. The pursuit must go on.