Ian Irvine - Rebellion

The fighting was furious now, the bodies of Cythonians and Pale piled in heaps all around the base of the ramp and scattered across the floor for a hundred feet. There was so much blood that the fighters were slipping in it.

It was Tali’s first close experience of a major battle, and it was horrible. People lay maimed and dying everywhere, screaming in agony, begging for help or to be put down, gasping farewell to loved ones or bitterly regretting that they had joined the failing rebellion. A few were cursing Tali’s name and all her ancestors.

“Attack!” said Lyf, who was hovering twenty feet up, not far from the cube of heatstone blocks.

The enemy re-formed their ranks and charged, driving through the front ranks of the Pale. Tali scrabbled frantically for another grenado, but the fighting was hand-to-hand now and she could not use it without endangering her own people. She hurled it up at Lyf instead. It burst on the wall next to him, showering him in chips of white stone. He zoomed away, bleeding from half a dozen small cuts, and she lost sight of him.

The Pale were being driven back when a vast animal howl rang down the ramp. Suddenly the enemy were screaming and shouting and scrambling out of the way as a seven-foot caitsthe stormed through them, its claws tearing through leather armour into flesh and flinging bodies to left and right.

“Stand firm,” said a burly sergeant. He put himself in the path of the beast and thrust out a javelin.

The caitsthe smashed the shaft to pieces with a contemptuous backhander. Its next blow lifted the sergeant off his feet and drove him into the wall, breaking his neck. As it came raging down the ramp, the rest of the Cythonians scattered. It reached the floor, slipped in blood, then turned towards the nearest group of Pale, who stood there, mesmerised.

The beast — Tali could not think of it as Tobry, for there was no more humanity in its eyes than when he had attacked her after her disastrous attempt to heal him — would tear them apart.

“Emergency potion!” hissed Holm.

Tali felt in her pack for the little bottle. Where had she put it? Her fingers closed on a bundle deep down and she heaved it out, praying that the bottle hadn’t been broken in all the fighting.

“Hurry!” said Holm, running out and putting himself between the caitsthe and the Pale.

Her injured wrist throbbed. It was a struggle to get the bottle out, and then she could not open it. Holm ducked around the caitsthe and caught it from behind but it whirled and hurled him ten feet across the floor.

The caitsthe bounded after the Pale. Tali leapt between it and them. “Tobry, stop!”

It gave no hint of recognition. Tali could not open the tightly sealed bottle so she flung it into the caitsthe’s gaping mouth. Broken glass could do no lasting harm to a shifter that could heal any injury in minutes.

It crunched up the bottle, the thick grey contents oozing out and mixing with its blood. It grabbed Tali and drew her towards the great maw that could tear her arm off in a single snap. She screamed and tried to pull free but it was many times as strong as she was.

“Stop it!” roared Holm, thumping the caitsthe over the back of the head with a heatstone brick.

It turned slowly, extending its claws, then fell to its knees. The potion was working. Its claws were retreating back into its fingers, the cat jaw slowly changing to a man’s.

Tobry’s eyes looked out of the caitsthe’s yellow eyes. They met hers and recognised her. Tali saw a deep shame in his eyes, and a flush passed up his downy cheeks.

“Thanks,” he said in a thick, growling voice, and fell on his face.

“But for what?” she said quietly.

Holm dragged Tobry away from the arena of battle, which now resumed.

There was a colossal boom behind her. She looked around as the great glass still toppled. It looked as though someone had thrown a grenado at it. Behind it, one of those large flasks of quicksilver had been broken by a projectile and the silvery metal was creeping across the floor. And quicksilver was poisonous to breathe.

“More grenadoes!” she yelled. “Drive them back.”

“It’s not working,” said Holm. “Their reinforcements are still coming down.” He surveyed the battle. “And I can see them at the drive now. We’ve got nowhere to go, and they can attack us from both sides. It’ll all be over in ten minutes… Unless…”

“What?” said Tali.

“The time has come for you to make the final choice about your magery.”

A brick descended into the pit of her stomach. You can be a destroyer or a healer, but not both.

Had Tali acted more quickly to attack the gauntlings at Tirnan Twil, its people and its treasures might have survived. Now she faced the choice again. Her life was going around in circles.

Tobry was on his feet, though he was grey and exhausted. His skin had gone baggy and he looked shrunken, for the caitsthe state burned energy at a staggering rate. His eyes were still yellow and he was covered in down — this time he hadn’t turned all the way back.

The only hope for him, and that a tiny one, was healing magery, which would definitely be a great healing , if it could be done at all. But the chance of success was tiny, and the risk enormous. Could she justify it?

She looked around at the dying Pale and knew that she could not. If she used her gift on a healing, she would not just be condemning these Pale here, but the others as well — all eighty-five thousand of them.

“I’m sorry, Tobry,” she said. “I can’t choose healing.”

“I never wanted you to,” said Tobry. “Saving your people is the only thing to do.”

That did not make it any easier.

“All right.” Tali looked across at the base of the ramp, where the fighting was again furious. “Holm, what do you want me to do?”

“Can you even the odds a little?”

She studied the lines of pillars arcing across the chymical level. “There are two ways to even the odds — by reducing their numbers, or increasing ours.”

“Yes,” said Holm.

“And I’m thinking that those pillars aren’t far from the entrance to the Empound…”

“How can you be sure?” said Tobry.

“Remember that green mist I mentioned earlier? It burst through into the wax-nut grottoes last year, and they’re around to the left from the Empound. And that acidulator is where the mist came from.” She indicated its shattered ruins.

“Might be an idea to check your map first.”

“I don’t have it.” She had dropped it when Wil attacked. There wasn’t time to go looking for it.

“If I can bring down those pillars,” Tali continued, indicating two beyond the apparatus, “it might crack open the entrance to the Empound and free all the Pale. With luck…”

“Better hurry,” said Tobry, glancing across the bloody battlefield.

“Is your magery strong enough to bring down those columns?” said Holm. “They’re massive.”

“No, it isn’t. I was thinking about heatstone.”

Holm shook his head. “It works all right on cracked rock, but doesn’t do much to the solid stuff.”

“What if we stacked half a dozen bombasts around one of the pillars and set them off?”

“Too powerful,” said Holm. “It’d probably kill everyone here.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” said Tali.

“Better think, fast.”

“I need time,” she snapped. “Create a diversion!”

“I’m not sure…”

“Find a way to distract them from me — and make it big !”

Holm ran across to the nearest melee, then led dozens of Pale to the rear of the chymical level. Shortly a signal rocket soared across the ceiling, struck the wall near the ramp and exploded with a shower of pyrotechnic sparks and clouds of red smoke.