The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (32 page)

‘Damn you,’ Chissmoul was muttering as she tossed the
air-sled this way and that. ‘Damn you, damn you, damn –’

She had just put it nose-up when there came an almighty
crash, the craft jumped in the air and the hardened point and steel shaft of a
heavy spear burst up through the deck beside the pennant pole, tearing the
metal around its mounting socket. The pole was knocked out and toppled towards
Chissmoul, who was too busy to protect herself.

Flangers threw himself sideways and tried to take the blow
on his shoulder, but he was too far off-balance to stop the heavy pole. It
drove him down, struck Chissmoul on the right arm and knocked her sideways off
her chair.

She managed to hang onto her controller but lost control of
the air-sled, which tilted over and plunged towards the centre of the square at
frightening speed. Chissmoul shook her arm, crying, ‘It’s gone numb. Can’t feel
a thing.’

‘Use the controller,’ cried Flydd, staring at the rapidly
approaching paving.

She kept shaking her right arm uselessly. The fingers of her
left hand were moving inside the wires but it was not enough to take back
control.

Nish sprang over Flangers, who was still lying on the deck
with the pole across his back, caught Chissmoul’s right hand and thrust it into
the wires. The air-sled dipped momentarily, then continued its plunge.

‘I can’t
see
,’ she
cried.

‘I can,’ said Nish, for his clearsight was suddenly there,
as it sometimes was in an emergency. He could not work the controller –
he would never have that gift – but he could tell where Chissmoul’s
fingers were supposed to be because five of the spaces between the wires were
outlined with faint white light. Pulling her right hand out, he reinserted her
fingers one by one into the outlined spaces and rubbed her elbow. As the
numbness faded, the fingers of her right hand began to move.

But they were very close to the ground now. Too close.

‘Look out!’ Flydd cried, covering his head with his arms.

Nish did too, for he was sure that they were going to smash into
the pavement. Chissmoul shouldered him out of the way and the air-sled’s dive
began to ease, though not quickly enough to stop them hitting at high speed.

They were about to when the spear shaft embedded in the keel
screeched across the paving stones, pushing the prow up slightly and creating a
trailing wake of sparks before it broke off.

The keel hit hard, making a colossal bang and another flurry
of sparks, bounced, and Chissmoul gained a measure of control. The prow slammed
into the God-Emperor’s throne and table, demolishing them. Wooden shards and
splinters went everywhere. She curved around and shot along the front of one of
the mansions, between the columns and the front wall, and zoomed up again.

Nish lifted the pole off Flangers, who wasn’t injured, laid
it on the deck and tied it down.

‘Well done,’ said Flydd in a shaky voice. ‘But they’re
bringing up more javelards,’ he added quietly to Nish, ‘and if we can’t get out
of the square, sooner or later they’re going to score a direct hit on our pilot.’

‘No one could aim a javelard so accurately as to bring
Chissmoul down with a single spear. Not even the scriers could train a javelard
that accurately on a rapidly moving target.’

‘A lucky shot kills you just as dead as a well-aimed one
–’ Flydd’s head whipped around. ‘What the blazes is that?’

Something blurred and unidentifiable was coming at them with
frightening speed, making an unnerving humming whistle. Nish had heard that
sound once before, but where?

‘Down!’ he roared. ‘Flat on the deck,’ and dropped prone as
the sound grew ever louder.

The missile hissed just overhead,
splat-whack
. Warm, sticky fluid was flung in all directions, and
then it was gone.

‘The scum are using chain-shot,’ Nish said, coming to hands
and knees and shuddering at how close it had been. It could have killed them
all. He wiped spatters of blood off his face. ‘I never thought my father would
sink so low.’

‘Lengths of heavy chain, fired from a special javelard with
colossal force,’ said Flydd, glancing towards the bloody mess down the back.
Most of the militia had got down in time, but two had not. ‘It spins through
the air and can scythe every man off the deck of a ship in a single pass. It
simply smashes them to pieces.’

Chissmoul, back in her seat, hurled the air-sled one way and
then another. At the rear, bloody-faced and bloody-handed militiamen were
pushing the ragged remnants of their two comrades off the back. Someone was
weeping; Aimee was swearing, the same word over and over.

Twenty-three able-bodied militiamen left, Nish thought, and
how long have they got? ‘With chain-shot, you don’t have to be accurate. What
are we going to do?’

‘Get out of the square, Pilot,’ said Flydd.

‘I can’t,’ said Chissmoul.

‘Then climb above their firing range.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Nish. ‘Their other wisp-watchers and
loop-listeners are linked to Gatherer, so presumably the ones on the javelards
are as well.’

‘Almost certainly,’ said Flydd.

‘And both Klarm and Father used Gatherer to direct and
control the air-sled when they had it …’

‘That was my understanding.’

‘But what was Gatherer actually controlling?’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘What makes the air-sled go?’ said Nish.

‘A device the God-Emperor had built for the purpose, though
I haven’t got the faintest idea what it is, and I’m not sure Chissmoul does,
either. Wait a minute – are you saying that Gatherer could still be
linked to the air-sled?’

‘If it is,
and it’s
also linked to the wisp-watchers
, it would explain how the scriers know
which way she’s going to turn. As soon as her controller signals to the device
that makes the air-sled go, Gatherer knows it, and it tells the scrier.’

‘How does one sever a link to Gatherer?’ mused Flydd.

Another length of chain-shot came howling towards them but
this time Chissmoul was ready and evaded it easily.

‘I don’t know – wait!’ said Nish. ‘Maelys did it
once.’

‘Really?’ breathed Flydd. ‘How?’

‘It was just after she rescued me from Mazurhize. I was in
bad shape; I don’t remember it well, but we were on the flappeter, Rurr-shyve
–’

‘I remember Rurr-shyve,’ Flydd said. ‘We escaped from the
inn at Plogg on the beast a few weeks ago –’

‘So I’ve heard.’ Nish managed a grin.

‘Until the wretched thing went into a mating ritual with a
male flappeter in mid-air.’

‘I gather it wasn’t the only mating ritual that night.’ Nish
laughed aloud.

‘It had been a very long time,’ Flydd muttered. ‘Can we get
back to your point, before we die?’

Nish’s smile faded. ‘Seneschal Vomix was trying to take
control of Rurr-shyve via its flesh-formed speck-speaker, but Maelys was so
afraid that she hacked the speck-speaker off, and the link to Vomix was lost
instantly.’

‘There must be a similar device inside the air-sled, between
the deck and the keel, linked to Gatherer. Unfortunately, without a way of
cutting solid metal, there’s no way to open it.’

‘You’d better think of one –’

‘Down flat,
now
!’
roared Flangers.

The militia hit the deck. This time the missile consisted of
two heavy chains linked by an iron bar, spinning like a propeller and making a
whoomph-whoomph
sound as it came.
Everyone was prone save Chissmoul, who remained slumped in the canvas chair,
unmoving, her face strained. The air-sled dropped suddenly; the chain-shot thundered
over her head, and she sat up and wiped the sweat off her brow.

‘When I say
down
,’
snapped Flydd, ‘I mean
everyone
. If
you die, we all die and the war is lost – maybe the world.’

‘Sorry, surr,’ said Chissmoul. She looked exhausted, and her
movements were slower now. ‘I – I went blank for a moment. The scriers
must be getting to me.’

‘Then we’d better find the mechanism, fast. Where do you
think it would be, Pilot?’

‘What?’ said Chissmoul dully.

‘The mechanism that makes the air-sled go.’

‘Oh, that! Below deck, directly behind me. But there’s no
way to get into the deck.’

‘Maybe there is,’ said Nish thoughtfully, picking up his
serpent staff. ‘This served me well up on the ridge … when it wanted me to
succeed with the avalanche.’

‘But it failed you at other times,’ said Flydd, who had
heard Nish’s tale on the way to Taranta.

‘When it was going to help me it felt hot and heavy, as if
it was churning with power. At other times it just felt warm, but empty.’

‘How does it feel now?’

‘As though something is boiling inside it.’ Nish weighed it
in his hand.

‘Then get on with it,’ said Flydd.

As Nish hefted the staff, Chissmoul flung the air-sled
around violently then dropped it about five spans, and he went sliding towards
the side. Flangers caught him by the collar and Nish was bracing himself when
there came a shattering boom from overhead, where they had been mere seconds
ago, and an umbrella of fire formed from a thousand blazing fragments exploding
outwards and falling all around them. Dark smoke drifted in the air, shaping a
sickle whose curve surrounded them on three sides.

‘What uncanny Art is he using now?’ cried Flangers.

The militia were cowering on the rear deck, sick with
terror.

‘No Art,’ said Flydd. ‘That looked like something the
scrutators’ alchymists came up with many years ago – an exploding powder
set off by a fuse, inside a brittle shell filled with tar. The tar is ignited
by the explosion and sticks to everything it touches; you can’t get it off.’

‘That’s horrible,’ said Nish, who was rapidly revising his
earlier thoughts about one swift means of death being much the same as another.
He watched the falling fire until it hit the ground and formed a blazing ring
in the centre of the square.

‘It was one of many weapons considered during the lyrinx
war,’ said Flydd. ‘I dare say that’s where your father got the idea, but it was
deemed too barbaric by the scrutators. Even Chief Scrutator Ghorr – may
he lie rotting in the most infested depths of the shadow realm – said no.
Are you going to stand there all day?’

Nish aimed the base of his serpent staff at the deck behind
Chissmoul’s chair.

‘I suggest you do it to one side,’ said Flydd with a wry
smile. ‘It wouldn’t do to destroy the mechanism that keeps us in the air.’

Nish slammed the tip of the staff against the deck and, the
moment it struck, knew it was going to go through. The staff hissed like a
red-hot poker pushed into a chunk of ice, the metal deck around it took on an
orange glow, then droplets of molten metal were flung out in a corona, burning
pits in his military boots.

He shook the droplets off and pressed harder on the staff.
More droplets were flung out then it dropped sharply. He was through.

‘Drag the staff around in a circle,’ said Flydd.

Nish pushed the staff tip sideways and, though neither the
Art nor the power that was cutting the thick metal could possibly be coming
from him, it was hard, draining work. Before he’d completed a semicircle his
knees began to wobble and he felt vacant in the head, as if he’d gone days
without food. He clenched his jaw and forced the staff the rest of the way to complete
the cut.

The fuming circle of deck fell inside and he pushed it away
with the tip of the staff, which felt lighter now, cooler, and as lifeless as
any ordinary length of metal. Going down on his knees, he peered inside and saw
a complicated, knee-high structure below and behind Chissmoul’s chair, where
she’d said it would be.

‘Can you see anything that looks like a speck-speaker?’ said
Flydd.

‘No. You’d better go in. You know all about such things.’

‘I’ve never seen one before. I spent nine years trapped at
the top of Mistmurk Mountain, remember?’

And I spent ten years in prison, damn you! Nish thought. He
was shaking with exhaustion, and as he lowered himself into the hole Chissmoul
wrenched the air-sled sideways to avoid another flight of spears, flinging him
against the hot metal. A fierce pain shot across his back at kidney height; he
smelt burning cloth and the whiff of charred skin.

It was not a serious injury, though it was damnably painful.
Doing his best to ignore it, Nish slipped into the shallow space between the
deck and the keel and crawled across to the shadowy mechanism.

‘Down flat!’ yelled Flangers.

People thumped to the deck all around and he heard the
whoomph-whoomph
of more chain-shot; the
craft wiggled left and right, then shot away in a steep climbing turn. He held
on until it levelled out, his skin crawling. It was bad enough being under fire
on the deck; being trapped down here in the dark, unable to see what was going
on outside, made it so much worse.

It did not take long to find the little device he was
looking for. It was mounted on top of the air-sled’s mechanism and resembled
the speck-speaker Maelys had cut from Rurr-shyve, save that it was made of
metal and glass. A brain-shaped protrusion was topped by a luminous yellow
noose filled with little dark specks.

The air-sled changed course abruptly and momentarily the
specks glittered like cold fire, then dulled. Chissmoul changed course again;
again they glittered. It had to be the device that was linked to Gatherer.

But what if it also relayed Chissmoul’s movements to the
mechanism? If it did, and he destroyed it, the air-sled would fall from a great
height.

‘Get a move on,’ growled Flydd.

‘I’m afraid of doing the wrong thing and killing us all.’

‘If you don’t do it now, we’ll all be dead anyway.’

Nish had left the staff on the deck, but the thick circle of
metal lay nearby, and it had cooled just enough to pick up. He slammed the
circle into the speck-speaker’s stalk. The device flicked back and forth at
great speed, showering dark and bright specks everywhere, but the moment it
went still they reappeared in the noose.