The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (25 page)

Maelys had slid out of her seat as the beast rolled and was
now hanging in mid-air by her line, one arm swinging. Rurr-shyve was humping
and jerking spasmodically, and would soon slam into the mountainside hard
enough to break every bone in their bodies.

It rolled to the left. Nish clung on with his legs and,
below, glimpsed the stream curving around the mountainside. Could he direct the
flappeter into it? He pulled himself upright and, with exhausting heaves of the
tail discs this way and that, tried to turn the beast towards the water. Down
and down they plunged, falling too steeply now. They were going to overshoot.

He corrected the other way, overshot again, then Rurr-shyve’s
head jerked up. The feather-rotors spun furiously, stopping it in mid-air with
a jerk that pulled Nish’s stomach down painfully, then it began to hover about
twenty spans above the ground.

Nish was just thinking that they might survive after all
when the beast let out a shrill cry, the injured rotor blade dislocated above
his head and the flappeter plummeted towards the rocks. Nish heaved desperately
on the tail discs, managed to point the flappeter towards the stream, and they
hit the water a few spans from the bank.

Rurr-shyve plunged all the way to the bottom, carrying them
with it, then rolled onto its side and began to drift downstream with the
current. The feather-rotors were still feebly trying to turn, churning the
water to brown foam and moving the flappeter this way and that. Nish struggled
free between their beats, kicked well away and reached the surface.

He couldn’t see Maelys anywhere. She must be trapped
underneath, still tethered by her line, unconscious. And she couldn’t swim. He
cursed, took a deep breath and plunged under, feeling his way down the long
body. Something struck him on the cheek, hard enough to cut the skin. It was
one of those giant lice, and there were others all around, abandoning their
dying host, whose breathing tubes were sucking and squelching as it tried to
breathe.

Rurr-shyve bobbed to the surface momentarily but the
breathing tubes on its left side were still under the surface and it was
sucking in water with each intake. He couldn’t see Maelys and now Rurr-shyve
was sinking again.

He dived and swam along its trunk. A convulsive thrash of
the dislocated rotor blade whacked him on the back of the head. Nish kept going
and made her out in the murky water, tangled among the twitching sets of legs.
She was conscious now but couldn’t free herself. Bubbles trailed from the
corners of her mouth and one clenched fist was feebly beating at the legs.

Nish found where her line was caught around one of the
thorny protrusions and slipped it over. He couldn’t free her from it; there
wasn’t time to untie the knots. He yanked on the buckle that held down the
front saddle and pulled it off. It began to float up, buoyed by air trapped in
the saddlebags. Nish kicked away from Rurr-shyve, now rolling onto its back,
and dragged Maelys up to the surface.

‘Can’t swim,’ she gasped.

‘It’s all right,’ he said soothingly. ‘I’m a brilliant
swimmer.’

‘Liar,’ she murmured.

Rurr-shyve, who was floating upside-down twenty spans
upstream, gave a convulsive heave then went still. Maelys cried out and sagged
in his arms. He hoped she’d just fainted; that Rurr-shyve’s death hadn’t killed
her too.

Nish supported her with the buoyancy of the saddlebags while
he scanned the sky. The flappeters were circling, still keeping their distance
from the mountaintop. Their riders were urging them down but they kept shying
away.

The water swirled around a fallen tree. Nish kicked hard to
avoid becoming tangled in its roots. They were drifting downstream towards a
set of jagged rocks, gathering speed. Nish was thankful for the saddlebags; he
couldn’t have supported Maelys without them. He wasn’t sure he could have saved
himself. He felt terribly weak.

He was towing Maelys towards the shore when he realised they
were on the wrong side of the river. If they were to have a hope of reaching
the dubious safety of the village they’d have to cross the water. He began to
kick outwards, though not very effectively.

Bubbles gushed from the saddlebags, which were losing
buoyancy and tugging Maelys down. He felt around her waist but the knots had
pulled tight under the constant jerking and he didn’t have a knife.

He whipped the little taphloid out, flipped open its secret
catch as he’d seen her do and began to saw at the rope with the metal edge. It
wasn’t an effective blade but he eroded the strands enough to snap the rope
with a jerk. He dropped the taphloid’s chain over Maelys’s head, heaved her
away from the sinking saddlebags and began to tow her towards the centre of the
stream.

The current was stronger here, and boiling with eddies that
tried to pull them under. Nish, never far from panic in the water, had to talk
himself into staying calm. An eddy whirled them around then shot them out on
the other side, fortunately closer to the far bank. Scooping desperately with
his free arm, he managed to drag Maelys into the slower water and from there to
the bank.

He couldn’t rest now or he’d never get going again. Nish
hauled her out, gasping. Her forearm was still bleeding, though it wasn’t a
dangerous injury, so he left it and scanned the sky. Two more flappeters were
flying up from the south. They were larger and carried what looked like baskets
suspended beneath them – troop carriers. Behind them, its brass fittings
shining in the sun, was an object he hadn’t seen for ten years, and it raised
such ambivalent memories that for a moment he couldn’t breathe.

It was an air-floater – no, this craft deserved a
grander title, so baroque was its extravagance of shining brass, polished ebony
and tar-sealed silk – an air-dreadnought; a flying vessel suspended from
three gigantic ovoid balloons filled with explosively deadly floater gas, and
propelled by three spinning rotors at the stern. Air-dreadnoughts had been
common in the last years of the war, and Nish was responsible in a minor way,
for he’d had the idea for hot air floaters in the first place.

According to the gossip of the guards at Mazurhize, only
Jal-Nish and his most trusted lieutenants had air-dreadnoughts now, and they
were only used to strike fear into the cowering populace.

This one certainly struck fear into Nish, for an
air-dreadnought could carry fifty heavily armed troops. Creatures like
flappeters, which depended on the Art, and even mancers might be afraid to
approach the uncanny mountaintop, but his crack troops feared nothing save the
displeasure of their master.

Maelys stirred and pink water dribbled from her mouth. Nish
helped her to her feet. ‘Come on. They’re after us.’ She swayed; caught at his
arm. ‘Can you walk, Maelys?’

She clenched the taphloid so tightly that her knuckles stood
out. ‘I think so.’ Her voice was hoarse, reedy; her eyes unfocussed.

The first of the battle flappeters rotored towards them, and
if it crossed the stream there was no hope of escape. It attempted to do so,
but as it approached the stream its feather-rotors slowed almost to nothing and
it turned away sharply, coming to ground further down. The other flap-peter
tracked it. Now the air-dreadnought was sailing up majestically, brightly
armoured troops leaning over the sides, eager to hunt down the prize. Nish held
his breath. Nothing could stop it now.

Then, a bare hundred spans out from the river its triple
rotors stopped with a shriek of torn metal. The suspended troop vessel swung
forwards on its cables, then jerked sideways as the wind caught the airbags.
The craft lost way suddenly and was driven downslope by the wind. The pilot
pulled the emergency floater gas release; the air-dreadnought dropped sharply
and crunched into the rocks below the stream, hurling several men overboard.
The remaining troops piled over the side.

‘We’d better get a move on.’ Nish took her hand and began to
run, though before he’d gone fifty paces he was out of breath. Running up the
mountain was beyond him, and Maelys, still dazed and in pain, could only manage
a stumble.

Troops from the first flappeter were pounding along the far
side of the river. Two went to their knees, pointing wickedly ornate crossbows
at Nish and Maelys, while the others headed downstream towards the rocks where
they might cross.

A bolt struck sparks off a boulder just above Maelys. Nish
jerked her around in front of him, shielding her, and pushed her forwards.

‘Stop or we’ll shoot,’ boomed a bemedalled officer.

Maelys froze. ‘What are you doing, Nish?’

‘They won’t harm me, but they’ll kill you. Keep going.’

There were at least seventy troops on the ground now, all
clad in the iridescent, beetle-shell armour of his father’s Imperial Militia,
and the leaders were starting to cross.

On he laboured, and up. Crossbow bolts spanged off the rocks
to either side; arrows whistled over their heads. None came too near, save
when, after some ten minutes of desperate, scrambling flight, Maelys tripped
and fell sideways out of Nish’s shelter. A bolt slammed into a boulder between
her clutching fingers, shards of stone cutting little crescent shaped gashes there.
An ell either way and it would have taken a finger off.

Nish hastily hauled her in front of him, though he knew that
a skilled archer, if prepared to take the risk, could go out to one side and
pick her off. Behind them, he heard the officer shouting again.

They’d gained a few hundred paces while the soldiers slipped
and skidded across the stream over the half-submerged rocks, though once they
reached the other side they began to gain rapidly. There was still a steep
climb to the low wall encircling the village, which surely couldn’t hold these
soldiers out long. The leading troops were going three steps to his one and
would be on them within minutes.

He forced himself through the pain and ran harder, pushing
Maelys ahead of him, but his wasted muscles were giving out and she couldn’t
keep it up either. Ahead, a house-sized boulder offered temporary shelter. They
rounded it and stopped abruptly.

Before them stood a tall, imposing man whose long black hair
hung down past his shoulders. He had black eyes and a thin, hooked nose and,
though only in early middle-age, the weathered skin of his face and neck looked
as though someone had taken a wood rasp to it, for it was as corrugated as the
bark of an old tree. He looked as solid as a tree, too, and utterly implacable.

‘Go back!’ he said in a deep, hypnotic voice. ‘Whoever you
are, you have no business here.’

‘Sanctuary!’ gasped Nish, staggering forwards.

‘Go back!’ The man thrust out his right arm and the loose
sleeve of his robe slid up. His hands and arms were clad in skin-tight tan
gloves made of leather so fine that it was almost transparent, extending up
past his elbows. Nish felt a surge of power from the man’s hand and his hair
rose up, as it had once years ago when he’d been close to a stroke of lightning.

‘This is Cryl-Nish Hlar.
Nish!
’
panted Maelys. ‘He’s the man who will become the Deliverer. You’ve got to help
him!’

The tall man went very still, then stooped, put one gloved
hand under Nish’s chin and turned his face upwards. Nish didn’t know what to
say.

‘Cryl-Nish!’ the man said, wonderingly. ‘Many men have
claimed to be him, but all have been fools or liars in the service of the
God-Emperor. Betrayers!’ he spat. ‘But there is a test.’

Behind them, boots scrabbled on rocks and a pair of soldiers
burst into view. ‘Step away, old fellow,’ one shouted, ‘or you’ll taste the
steel of the God-Emperor.’

The tall man raised his right hand again, then pointed it at
the soldiers. Nish saw nothing, but a shrill wailing hurt his ears and the
troops fell down, blood pouring from their mouths and noses. ‘Come,’ he said.
‘My name is Monkshart. The God-Emperor’s power does not extend into Tifferfyte,
but the steel of his soldiers’ swords bites as hard here as anywhere.’

 
PART TWO – THE PIT OF POSSIBILITIES

EIGHTEEN

Maelys mistrusted Monkshart from the moment she set
eyes on him, though she couldn’t have said why. It might have been the arrogant
way he carried himself, for he was extremely tall, yet moved so as to make
himself seem even taller. He walked stiffly, on just the balls of his feet,
with his head tilted back to look down his long arched nose at her.

Or perhaps it was the fall of black hair, as carefully
tended and glossy as any maiden’s, that contrasted so sharply with the rugose
skin of his face. The men of her land wore their hair close-cropped, save for
highwaymen and other dubious characters, and she couldn’t bring herself to
trust a longhair.

It definitely had something to do with the look in his black
and piercing eyes; eyes that seemed to shine when he turned them her way, and
especially when he spoke. Not with lust for her, she felt sure. That was not
his vice, but he spoke with a fervour that was maniacal in its intensity.
Monkshart was a charismatic zealot whose people would follow him anywhere, but
a dangerous man too, for once set on a path he would follow it unswervingly, no
matter what or who got in his way.

Yet perhaps, despite her personal feelings, that made him
the right man to lead the Defiance. And turn Nish into the Deliverer.

As they climbed up to the village, more troops appeared
around the rock below them, followed by an officer wearing a plumed helmet. He
inspected the bodies, studied the layout of the village then watched until
Monkshart, Nish and Maelys crossed the wall. Why didn’t he send his troops
after them? Was he afraid of Monkshart, or had they been called back by
Jal-Nish?