Ian Irvine - Rebellion

“Half an hour is a long time to be unconscious in the middle of a battle,” Tali said pointedly. “It only takes a slave ten seconds to cut a throat.”

He blanched. “Anyway, heatstone doesn’t have the same effect.”

“But sunstone does,” said Tali.

She hurled her heatstone brick up at the centre of the huge sunstone above the acidulator and ran for her very life, towards a cube-shaped iron furnace ten yards away.

The heatstone burst against the lower side of the sunstone, crump , imploding with a hot flash of light and causing a sharp pain behind her ears. She looked back. The sunstone seemed to be undamaged. No, cracks were radiating out from the centre. Get to shelter, quick!

She dived over the left side of the furnace and threw herself into shelter behind it. From the corner of an eye she saw Lyf streaking away, covering his face. Tali covered hers with her arms, put her head between her knees and -

The sunstone implosion occurred in absolute silence but with a light so bright that she could see it even with her arms over her eyes. The pain was so bad that she screamed. Heat washed over her — a torrid incandescence that would have turned her to char in an instant had she been in its direct path; just as the unfortunate guards in the sunstone shaft had been carbonised that day.

Then it was gone, still in silence. Now a hissing whistle began behind her and rose up the register until it was so banshee-shrill that her teeth began to ache. A dreadful fear struck her as she realised what was happening. Most of that burst of radiant heat had passed directly down onto the acidulator, superheating the acids inside to steam, and when the glass could take no more pressure -

She leapt up and ran. Nothing mattered now save getting as far away as possible, and keeping as much heavy apparatus between her and the acidulator as she could.

She had just passed behind the platina still when the acidulator went off with a shattering blast that hurled glass and fuming green fluids halfway across the chymical level. Green fumes boiled out and up — the same deadly, blistering fumes that had killed dozens of Pale after the accident last year. Tali covered her face with her hands and prepared to die.

Glynnie bent to pick something up, then scuttled around behind the cistern, into the shadows. Grandys reeled up the yard into the darkness as several dozen troops stormed through the gates. Rix assumed they were the men who had marched off to join the chancellor’s army. He lowered himself into the water until they passed, then scrabbled helplessly at the edge.

“Here,” whispered Glynnie, who had crept around the side of the cistern and was sliding one end of her bloodstained length of timber in.

With his failing strength, Rix dragged himself onto it and clung there, panting. It was all he could do.

“Give me your hand,” said Glynnie.

He reached up. She caught his left hand, and with Glynnie pulling and Rix heaving, he reached the rim and toppled off onto the cobblestones.

“So cold.” He wrapped his arms around himself, shuddering violently.

“Wait here,” said Glynnie, looking around. “Won’t be long.” She darted up towards the fire.

“What — you doing?” said Rix. “If he comes back — ’

Neither Grandys nor the other Heroes were anywhere to be seen, though Rix could hear fighting not far away. His teeth chattered.

“Glynnie?” he said hoarsely.

Never before had he felt so afraid. Even in Grandys’ drunken state he was a ferocious enemy. He could well rally his troops and defeat the attackers, and the moment he did he would be back, intent on bloody vengeance against the woman who had struck him down.

Rix crawled across to the dead men, found the heaviest sword and used it to push himself to his feet. A cold wind gusted in through the gates, striking through his wet clothes to the bone, for it was well below freezing now. Without dry gear he would soon collapse. Rix began to strip the biggest of the dead men, though it was slow work one-handed; his good fingers were as numb as the dead ones.

Glynnie came running back, carrying a chunk of roast rump the size of a pumpkin and dragging a sack. She wrenched the coat and pants off the man who had the arrow through his neck, and threw them into the sack.

“Horses, quick!” said Glynnie. “Where are the stables?”

“Don’t know,” said Rix.

“Hold this.” Glynnie thrust the roast into his hands. She must have taken it from a spit because it was still gloriously hot. She looked around. “Down there. Come on.”

He held it against his chest. The warmth helped. He staggered after her, his boots squelching with every step. The horses had been unsaddled and fed, and were in their stalls.

Glynnie chose a bay mare with dark brown ears, Lirriam’s mount. Rix looked around for the biggest. Grandys was constantly riding his horses to death and his latest mount, down the far end, was a wild-eyed black stallion some eighteen hands high.

Rix stuffed the piece of beef in one of Grandys’ saddlebags, calmed the horse with his hands, then heaved the saddle on and tightened the straps. It was all he could do to mount the beast via the side of the stall. Glynnie was waiting near the doors. She took a blanket from the sack, cut a hole through the middle and threw it to him. He put his head through the hole and gathered the blanket around him.

“How are you doing?” she said anxiously.

“Better.”

“How long can you ride without getting warmed up?” She studied him in the light slanting in through the doorway. “You saved me when we were in the lake, remember? I know how bad it gets.”

“Death from hypothermia is a risk I’ll have to take. If Grandys catches us — ”

“I know. How long?”

He got out the hot slab of beef and held it against his chest, under the blanket.

“Can probably manage an hour.”

“Which way?” said Glynnie. “I don’t know this country.”

“North,” said Rix.

“Which way is that?”

“Keep the moon on your right. The deeper we go into Lakeland, the more little lakes there are, and the harder it’ll be to trace us.”

They rode quietly away, and only when they were out of sight over the hill did they spur their horses to a trot, the fastest pace that was safe over rough ground in darkness. It was a clear night lit by a half moon, but windy and miserably cold, and the quicker they went the more it penetrated Rix’s damp blanket. Finally, when they were five or six miles away, some time after midnight and in broken country with hundreds of little lakes and pools, he signed to her to stop.

“Can’t go — any further.”

She went ahead, riding around the edge of a lake until she found a protected spot against a north-facing cliff, where it would be safe to light a fire. They dismounted and Glynnie kindled a little blaze, then held a blanket up to break the breeze while Rix stripped, dried himself and put on the dry clothes taken from the dead man. He donned two coats, wrapped the blanket around himself and sat by the fire.

“You smell like roast beef,” said Glynnie, kneeling before him with a little pot of a Herovian ointment she must have stolen from Bastion Cowly.

“Feel like frozen beef.”

She dug her fingers into the ointment and began to smooth it across his battered face. He winced.

“You’re going to look a mess in the morning,” said Glynnie.

“Least — there’ll be — a morning.”

“Don’t talk. It wastes warmth.”

Glynnie laid a spare blanket on the ground between the fire and the cliff, sat down and began to cut pieces off the slab of beef. It was still steaming in the middle. Rix slumped opposite her.