A blow in the back, a crushing grip around her waist, then she was flying through the air under Ryll’s injured arm. Their trajectories converged. The wind lifted the harness dangling below the gliding wing. She could never have reached it but Ryll’s upstretched fingers closed around a loop of leather. Tiaan caught a trailing rope and wrapped it around her wrist.

The wing stalled under their weight and began spiralling like a leaf on the tow ropes. Tiaan was torn from Ryll’s grip. She fell, was brought up by the rope and felt a gruesome pain in her shoulder, as if it had been pulled from its socket.

The shock almost folded Besant’s wings up. She flapped harder and the fizzing boiled over in Tiaan’s head as the lyrinx expended more and more of the Art in her effort to stay in the air. Below, Tiaan heard those terrible screams again.

Ryll hauled her up. ‘What’s the matter?’ He held her tightly as they carved a figure-eight through the air.

‘My arm …’ She fought tears which the wind froze on her cheeks.

He muttered something in his own tongue, pulled himself into the crutch loops of the harness and let go of his rope. Buckling himself in one-handed, he lashed her to his chest then made frantic hand-signals to Besant, who was barely in control. The wing was still whirling, dragging her down. They swung around in an arc on the end of the ropes, drifting directly towards the clanker. Rahnd was back in his seat, tracking them with the javelard. From this distance he could not miss.

Suddenly another lyrinx stood up on the rocks, one leg drenched in blood. It was the sentry that had been wounded before the attack began. It sprang but fell short. Simmo lurched the machine forward, trying to run the beast down. The lyrinx caught the side plates and flipped itself up on top. The machine bucked and hopped as Simmo tried to shake the attacker off. The lyrinx slipped in its own blood but managed to catch hold of the spear in the javelard. As it dangled there, Rahnd fired. The spear carried the lyrinx down among the boulders.

The clanker clumped around and Tiaan saw Rahnd wrench the loaded catapult onto their path as they swept inland. She held her breath. Ryll, holding her against his chest, made a helpless choking sound.

The injured lyrinx came out of the rocks, hurling the bent javelin. Rahnd ducked. Springing up on the front of the clanker, the lyrinx threw itself directly at the catapult. The ball went straight through the creature and its remains spun into the snow.

Ryll gave a muffled cry of grief. Tiaan let out her breath and gasped another. They shot straight over the clanker as Rahnd frantically tried to reload the javelard. It was too late. They were away.

Ryll took the control ropes and brought the front of the wing down slightly. The wing lifted – it was flying! It seemed miraculous to Tiaan. The strain went off the tow ropes; the fizzing in Tiaan’s brain died away. Besant did two great circles and turned towards the south-west, to Kalissin, wherever or whatever that was.

THIRTY-NINE

Rahnd kept firing until Tiaan was well beyond range. ‘Enough!’ Nish collapsed on the rocky ground beside Irisis, feeling incredibly cold, weak and helpless. Despite everything, Tiaan was lost, and the crystal too. If only he had not pressured Ky-Ara. With two clankers, the lyrinx could not have escaped. You fool! Nish thought. You absolute, bloody fool.

The expedition had been a catastrophic failure and someone would have to pay for it. Most had already, including his father. Back a little way, he lay among the rocks like a bloody pile of rags. Nish could not bear to look.

‘Well, that’s that!’ said Irisis. ‘I’ve a mind to roll off the cliff.’

Nish clutched her hand.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ve already failed at that. We’ll face our fate together, Cryl-Nish.’

He followed the specks, dwindling into the infinite sky. ‘By this time tomorrow Tiaan will be a hundred leagues away and not even Ullii will be able to find her. What a disaster!’

Irisis eased her leg, letting out a pained grunt.

‘How is it?’ he said.

‘Kind of you to ask. The broken bone hurts so much I can’t even feel the other wound.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Break the other leg, why don’t you? It might take away the pain of the first.’

‘Sometimes I just don’t understand you,’ Nish said.

‘Good!’

‘Let’s get you away from the edge of the cliff. It makes me nervous.’

‘’I’m happy where I am,’ Irisis protested, but he took her under the arms and hauled her up the slope, her feet dragging over the bumpy ground. There were tears in her eyes by the time he got her there. ‘I don’t much care for your bedside manner, Nish.’

Nish hardly noticed. Guilt was eating him up. Staring distractedly around him, he began to shiver. It was bitterly cold now that the action had finished.

‘Better see to your father. He’s a lot worse than I am.’

Nish looked across and away, terrified of what he would find there. ‘I’ll send back to the ice houses for help.’ He waved at the clanker.

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Irisis replied. ‘There won’t be anyone coming.’

He spun around, mouth hanging open.

‘That’s right, Nish. The rest were wiped out at the ice houses. Every man!’

‘And the lyrinx?’

‘All dead.’

More than forty people brutally slain! Nish could not take it in. He’d known them all; had shared a joke with most of them over the past week or two. How could so much life have been lost, so quickly?

His father began to wail shrilly. He was still alive, at least. Nish ran to him, bent over and froze. Jal-Nish, his handsome father, was a ruined man. His face had been torn open. One pulped eyeball dangled from its socket and most of his nose had gone. The left cheek had been peeled back from ear to mouth in three separate rents. Nish could not bear to look at him.

Jal-Nish fell back into unconsciousness. There were deep gouges across his chest and his arm was terribly shattered and torn. Nish looked around for help. The only survivors were Simmo, Rahnd, Rustina, Tuniz the artificer, and Irisis. No, the querist was alive as well, staggering out from the rocks where she’d fallen. Tuniz was unharmed. Rustina had broken bones in her arm, a swollen right wrist, a wobbly jaw and many bruises, but at least she could stand up. Irisis was being carried up the hill on a stretcher. And then there was Ullii, huddled up behind a rock, but she was no use at all. Her eyes had turned inward. She was incapable of speaking.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Fyn-Mah, sitting down abruptly.

‘She began screaming when the lyrinx first took off,’ Nish said. ‘I suppose the Art was burning her. Is anyone a healer?’

‘I know a little field medicine,’ Rustina whispered. Tuniz had to help her to her knees beside the perquisitor, and then to hold her up.

‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’

‘I’d say so,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Though I’ve seen men recover from worse.’ She took Jal-Nish’s wrist with her left hand. ‘Well, the pulse is strong. Maybe he has a chance …’

‘I’ll do anything.’ Nish was only now realising how much his arrogant, demanding father meant to him.

‘The arm will have to go,’ said Rustina. ‘The upper bone is smashed to pieces and no one could fix it.’ She looked up as if gauging his courage. ‘You’ll have to do it.’

Nish imagined hacking his father’s arm off at the shoulder, like a butcher carving through a joint. ‘I can’t …’

‘We all must do …’ Rustina began.

‘He can’t do it, sergeant!’ snapped Irisis.

‘Then the perquisitor will die, and it’s probably best. If he did survive, he’d be in torment for the rest of his life, and a horror to look at. Would he want to live?’

‘My father can’t die!’ cried Nish. ‘Give me the knife.’