Alchymist (2 page)

Flydd
and Irisis, aided by the seeker, Ullii, had stolen into the underground maze of
Snizort. Ullii had led them through the tar saturated tunnels to the uncanny
chamber of the node-drainer, and Flydd had succeeded in destroying it.
Unfortunately that had caused the destruction of the node itself, in a
catastrophic explosion. All the fields, weak as well as strong, had vanished,
rendering clankers and constructs useless, and leaving the army of sixty
thousand men, plus twenty thousand Aachim, unprotected.

Such
a force should have been a match for twenty-five thousand lyrinx on an open
battlefield, but Snizort was surrounded by a maze of tar bogs, mine pits,
windrows made from cleared woodland, traps and ancient tar runs that the enemy
had set alight. And when the lyrinx emerged from their underground labyrinth
they were far more numerous than expected — near to thirty-five thousand. The
soldiers, lacking the armour of the clankers, had been slaughtered.

Flangers
stood guard outside the command tent as Flydd and Tham went in. Irisis stalked
the rim of the hill, looking down at the battlefields but seeing nothing. After
all their work, and all their agony down in the tar pits, the result was worse
than if they had done nothing.

Yet
she'd had a personal triumph in Snizort. Under extreme duress, and with Ullii's
help, Irisis had recovered the talent that had been hidden, or suppressed,
since her fourth birthday. Her ability to draw power from the field was back.
Irisis was no longer a fraud, but a true crafter at last.

All
her life she'd obsessed about getting her talent back but, now she had it, it
gave her no joy. Why was that? Was she incapable of taking pleasure in her own
achievements? Or was it that nothing would ever come of it?

A
shiver passed up her spine. Her life's dream, after the war was over, was to be
a jeweller. Irisis had a rare gift for that craft and had been making jewellery
in her spare time since she was a child. Once the war ended, and controller
artisans were no longer required, she planned to follow her dream. However,
from the moment they'd escaped the tar pits, Irisis had been troubled by
intimations of mortality. She felt doomed.

Despite
her earlier talk, today or tomorrow must see the end of them. Not even the
scrutator, wily dog that he undoubtedly was, could get them out of this fiasco.
There was no hope of escape in the air-floater, for it had been damaged in the
explosion of the node and would take days to repair, assuming it had survived
the battle at all.

Discovering
that she had returned to her starting point, Irisis sat down on the edge of the
hill, to the rear of the tents, trying to get a picture of what was going on.
Everywhere she looked, desperate men fought and died. A lyrinx could take on
two human soldiers at once and win, and often, three or four.

There
were few enemy in the air, though that was not surprising. Many lyrinx could
fly, but on this heavy world they had to supplement their wings by using the
Secret Art, if they had a talent for it. Even then, flight took so much out of
them that they could do little else at the same time. But to fly here, they
would have to draw on a distant node, and only the most powerful mancers of all
could do that.

Irisis
saw a pair directly above, riding the noonday thermals, conserving their
strength. They were watching the formations on the battlefield and relaying
simple messages to their brethren on the ground.

Scanning
the sky, Irisis caught sight of an oddly-shaped speck just above the eastern
horizon. It did not look like a lyrinx. Another speck appeared to the left of
the first, and a third to the right. The air was hazy; she could not quite make
them out. Squinting until her eyes watered, she saw that the specks were
slightly elongated, with a smaller mark beneath each.

More
specks appeared, until there were a dozen. Irisis ran to the command tent.
'Scrutator! Scrutator!'

He
looked up from the map table where he and Tham were moving pointers, planning
the retreat. Scribes were taking down the orders and passing them to a stream
of messengers outside.

'Go
away, Crafter' he snapped. 'This can't wait for anything.'

'Come
outside, quickly! You won't believe it.'

Flydd
peered at her from beneath an eyebrow that snaked from one side of his forehead
to the other. At the look on her face he dropped his marker and hurried, in
that crab-lurch of his, to the entrance.

She
drew him around the back of the tent. 'Look!' Irisis threw out her arm.

The
shapes were unmistakable now. 'Air-floaters!' said Flydd. 'Twelve of them, and
coming fast. So that's what the Council was up to.'

'Any
reinforcement is welcome,' said Tham, pushing between them, 'though a dozen
air-floaters can do precious little to help us now.'

'Let's
wait and see,' said Flydd. 'Can you rustle up some breakfast, Irisis?'

In
twenty minutes the air-floaters were overhead, flying in perfect formation,
four wide and three high. They made a circle over the top of the battlefield
and the fighting broke off as humans, Aachim and lyrinx stood by to see what
their intentions were. Being so light, air-floaters could be driven by a
distant field.

'They
seem to be working to a plan,' said Irisis, wolfing down a gritty hunk of black
bread. It was tasteless army fare, but she was too hungry to care.

The
machines had maintained formation all the way around the circuit. 'It's almost
. . . It's as if they're all controlled by one mind.' Flydd carved slivers off
a distinctly green cheese and popped them into his mouth, two at a time.
'Though I know that's not possible.'

Flangers
came up beside them, one hand resting on the hilt of his sheathed sword.
'They'd better look out!'

The
two lyrinx sentries were now converging on the ranked air-floaters. One
corkscrewed down to the left side, the other plummeted directly towards the
top-right machine. The attack was co-ordinated so they would reach their
targets at the same time. And air-floaters were vulnerable. One slash of a
lyrinx's claws could tear the gasbag right open. Moreover, an attack from
directly above was difficult to defend against.

The
air-floaters shifted slightly out of line. Just before the higher lyrinx
reached its target there came a flash that lit up the creature. Its wings
folded up and it fell out of the air. Rotating slowly, it disappeared behind a
boulder-topped hill. 'What was that?' said Irisis. 'I don't know,' the
scrutator replied.

The
corkscrewing lynnx beat its great wings, coming out of the dive right beside
the gasbag of the air-floater. It gave a measured slash but, before its claws
could part the fabric, it too was hit by a flash of light. The lyrinx's wings
churned, it somersaulted backwards and fell, upside down. Halfway to the ground
it seemed to recover, flapped several times and almost broke its fall, but lost
it and plunged into the bloody mud of the battlefield at a speed that must have
pulverised every bone in its great body.

'I
don't sense the Art,' said Flydd, puzzled. 'What are the scrutators up to?'

The
battle had not resumed. The air-floaters pulled back into that perfect
formation, now hanging motionless above the battlefield, their rotors turning
just enough to counteract the gentle motion of the air.

'I
wonder . . .?' said Flydd. 'Who on the Council has the boldness for this kind
of venture, and the foresight to know that it would be needed?'

Irisis
had a fair idea, but she would just wait and see. From the topmost middle
air-floater, rods extended to either side, all the way to the neighbouring
machines, which latched on. A roll of shimmering fabric fell, was caught as it
passed in front of the middle row of machines, and again at the bottom.

'What
on earth are they doing?' said Tham.

No
one answered. The air-floaters moved ever so slightly this way and that,
bending the rods and pulling the fabric into a gentle concavity. It took a long
time, for the slightest change in the breeze tended to drift the machines
apart, and much manoeuvring was required to get them aligned again.

'It's
a mirror,' said Irisis. But what is it for?'

'They're
not using the An at all' Flydd replied. They simply hit the flying lyrinx with
a dazzling beam. Lyrinx have poorer eyesight than we do, and their eyes are
sensitive to bright light. They only fight in the middle of the day if they
have to. The beam disrupted the An they were using to keep aloft, and they were
too close to the ground to recover.'

'They're
moving,' said Flangers.

The
twelve air-floaters wheeled in perfect formation. The sun flashed off the
mirror, the beam lighting up a strip of ground some twenty spans long.

The
beam crept across the battlefield, to play on a group of lyrinx attacking a
line of soldiers. Irisis focussed on the scene with a spyglass. The lyrinx
threw up their arms, trying to shield themselves from the boiling glare, then
broke and ran, staggering from side to side. One bold soldier attacked from
behind, felling his quarry with a sword thrust between the back plates, but the
others escaped.

The
beam stepped to another group of lyrinx, who broke like the first. As it
tracked across the ground, the mud began to steam gently. The next detachment,
some fifty lyrinx, resisted longer than the others, but within a minute they
too had fled.

'With
a lens, anyone can focus the sun's rays so as to set paper or cloth alight,'
said Irisis, 'though I don't think that's their aim here.'

'The
beam isn't tightly focussed,' said Flydd, putting down his spyglass, 'but it's
enough to dazzle and confuse. And blind too, should you look directly at it.'

The
general had a calculating look in his eye. 'Shall I order the counterattack,
surr?'

'Wait,'
said Flydd. 'If the mirror tears in the wind, or the lyrinx make a determined
attack on it, we'll be more exposed than we are now.'

The
enemy now attacked desperately, but the beam stopped each onslaught. Within an
hour the lyrinx began to fall back en masse, whereupon the beam moved towards
the ranks of enemy surrounding the walled perimeter of Snizort.

Suddenly
half a dozen lyrinx took to the air, well apart, rising into the path of the
air-floaters. This'll be interesting,' said Tham. "They'll never move the
mirror quickly enough.'

The
air-floaters did not attempt to. The first lyrinx to approach took many
crossbow bolts to the head and chest. It tumbled over and over, wings cracking
in the wind, before slamming into the ground down the slope behind the command
tent. The second suffered a similar fate, for the air-floaters were packed with
archers. The other lyrinx flapped away. In the air they were too vulnerable. The
mirror beam continued its inexorable progress.

'Something's
happening,' said Irisis in the early afternoon. She was watching enemy
movements inside the southern wall of Snizort. Lyrinx were running backwards
and forwards through the drifting smoke. 'Looks like they're sending out
reinforcements.'

'I
don't think so,' said the scrutator.

Flangers
said quietly, 'They're carrying boxes and bags.'

'Where's
my spyglass?' Flydd demanded.

'You
left it by the tent,' Irisis replied, passing him her glass. He focussed it and
said, 'You've got good eyes, soldier.’

'That's
why I was chosen as shooter.'

'What
are they doing?' Irisis and Tham asked together.

'A
group of .., perhaps one hundred have formed up behind the southern wall,' said
Flydd. 'They've all got big packs on, which is unusual, and they're carrying
what appear to be boxes, or cases. Or coffins!'

'The
same thing happened yesterday morning,' said a sentry standing nearby. 'Even
before the node exploded their fliers were heading south-west, carrying huge
packages.'

'Is
that so?' said Flydd. 'How odd.'

"The
tar's burning underground,' said Irisis, 'and it would be the very devil to put
out. They'd have to abandon Snizort, whatever the result of the battle.'

'I
wonder if those cases contain flesh-formed creatures?' Flydd gave Irisis a keen
glance. 'If we could only . . .'

'I
hope I'm wrong about what you're thinking' said Irisis.

'Regretfully,'
said Flydd, 'you're not. They're weapons we don't know how to deal with, but if
we had one or two little ones to study, we might be able to find a defence
against them.'

The
mirror beam now carved across the eastern wall, towards the enemy ranks on the
other side. It was not causing as much confusion as before, but the lyrinx were
still retreating from it.

Fighting
broke out near the northern wall. A band of some twenty lyrinx had advanced in
a rush that took them right through a line of human soldiers. The beam did not
shift to counter this new threat, but kept moving back and forth across the
ranks of the enemy, on the far side of Snizort.

'That
was just a diversion,' cried Irisis. 'They're retreating.'