Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (43 page)

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.

J
al-Nish drove them hard for what remained of the day and most of the night. The field was strong here but the country unknown, so they crept along under the light of a single flare. That was risky but Jal-Nish dared not stop. The clanker operators were issued with spicy nigah leaf, to keep them awake. The army sometimes used the drug to combat cold and fatigue. Everyone was on edge, knowing how vulnerable they were. Half a dozen lyrinx, attacking from the darkness, could slaughter them all.

Just after dawn, most of the way across a domed plateau, the hunt again came upon tracks in the snow.

‘It’s them!’ shouted one of the soldiers.

‘I can’t see anything.’ Gi-Had was up on the shooter’s platform, staring through a spyglass, when Nish and Irisis scrambled out.

Jal-Nish squatted to examine the smaller prints. ‘It’s Tiaan’s boot all right. I don’t understand it. It’s as if she’s going willingly.’

Arple inspected the evidence, stroking his scarred lip. ‘If you can tell that from a bootprint you’re a damn sight better tracker than I’ll ever be.’

‘She hasn’t run away!’ Jal-Nish said.

‘Would you run from a creature three times as big and twice as fast? If I were her, I’d do exactly as it told me.’

‘That’s why you’re a sergeant in the Tiksi garrison rather than a general at the front,’ Jal-Nish sneered.

Arple reared up before him. ‘Have you ever fought a lyrinx, perquisitor?’

‘No.’ Jal-Nish drew back.

‘Then shut up before you make a fool of yourself. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and if there’s one thing I despise it’s the ass that flaps his mouth from the safety of an armchair. I’ve seen hundreds of my boys dead at the hands of lyrinx,
perquisitor
. Dead and eaten! Better men than you’ll ever be, just fighting for their families and their country. Don’t talk to me about lyrinx. Don’t tell me my job. And don’t sneer at my courage until you’ve proven your own.’ He stalked away, head held high.

Gi-Had said quietly, ‘He may be only a sergeant, surr, but Arple’s been up north fighting lyrinx for fifteen years. He’s killed five of the beasts, two all by himself, and that makes him as tough a man as you’ll ever meet.’

The column moved off at a faster pace, following the marks in the snow. The soldiers had skis on now, since the way ahead was flat. Irisis chuckled.

‘What’s so funny?’ Nish asked.

‘It’s good to see someone get the better of your father. He’s such a hypocrite.’

Nish had enjoyed the sight too, though family loyalty would not allow him to show it. ‘It remains to be seen if Arple
has
got the better of him. My father is a ferocious enemy.’

Up the front, metal screamed and the machine shuddered to a stop. ‘That doesn’t sound good,’ said Irisis.

Nish got out. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked Pur-Did, who was squatting by the front leg.

‘Rod’s jammed, I’d say. You’ll have to pull it down.’

Nish cursed. It would be a hideous job in the freezing conditions and he would not be able to wear gloves.

Tuniz and Nish spent an hour and a half taking the leg apart. It proved the very devil of a job and when it was stripped down they could find nothing the matter with it. Tuniz sat back on her haunches, sucking a skinned knuckle. ‘Well, this is a puzzle,’ she grinned.

Nish repaid it with a scowl. ‘You’re awfully cheerful about it, senior artificer.’

‘Tuniz, please. I hate titles. Things generally go easier if you can have a laugh.’

Nish found that he liked working with her. ‘You’re from Crandor, aren’t you? How did you end up so far from home?’ She had been at the manufactory for nearly a year but he knew nothing about her.

‘Let’s put the leg back together, eh?’ She talked as she worked. ‘Yes, I’m from Roros, one of the biggest cities of Crandor. My man was an artificer with the navy. I hadn’t seen him in three years, and the children …’ She broke off, wrestling with a rod that did not want to go into its socket.

Nish steadied the mechanism. ‘How many children do you have?’

She bit her lip. ‘Two boys and a girl: seven, five and four years old. News came that my man was lost. His ship ran aground, down the coast from Tiksi. Then I heard he wasn’t lost, but captured by the enemy. The army wasn’t going to do anything, so I came after him.’

‘How did you get permission?’ Nish asked.

‘I … didn’t. I left the children with their grandparents and stowed away.’ Her brown eyes met his. ‘I was too late. My man had been eaten. I tried to get home, but with the war, and no papers …’ She paused. ‘I had to turn myself in, and this manufactory needed a senior artificer, so I was sent here.’

‘You must miss your children.’

‘I never stop thinking about them. Or my man.’ All the cheer was gone. ‘Let’s get this finished.’

The reassembled leg worked and they continued. Nish’s frozen hands had lost skin in a dozen places.

‘I hate being an artificer at times like this,’ he said to Irisis, just as his father walked by.

‘It might be different if you put a bit of effort into it,’ Jal-Nish said frigidly.

They kept on going, faster than before. As the clanker hit a bump, a gasp escaped from the injured Dhirr. His eyes fluttered open then closed. Irisis nudged Nish in the ribs. He looked around. ‘What?’

Ullii was staring at Dhirr, her back arched like a cat confronting a snake.

‘What is it, Ullii?’ said Nish.

She backed away from the injured man until her elbow struck the metal side of the clanker. Looking around wildly, she lifted the earmuffs and forced in her wax plugs. Taking the goggles off, she stared at Dhirr. With undue haste she put the mask on over the goggles and reached blindly for Nish’s hand. He put it in hers. She pressed it hard against her nose, which appeared to calm her.