Ian Irvine - Chimaera

Irisis glanced casually to her right, fingering the coil of barbed rope, her only weapon. ‘I can’t see anything. Keep going. You’ve hardly made an impression at all.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ he grunted.

‘Put the sword down and step away from the cable.’

The voice, which was vaguely familiar, came out of the mist. Nish was trying to work out who it could be when a very short man appeared, a handsome dwarf with a leonine mane of dark hair. His short cloak dragged on the deck and he walked with the lurching gait of a drunken sailor, for his left leg was supported by metal calipers. The dwarf’s hand was held out before him, the fist partly concealing a small brass object.

‘Scrutator Klarm,’ said Nish, giving a last hack before allowing the sword to fall to his side.

‘I have a knoblaggie in my hand,’ said Klarm. ‘I’d prefer not to waste it, but I will if you force me to. You’d never cut it anyway. Come with me, please. You too, Irisis Stirm,’ he said as she backed into the mist. ‘If you run, I’ll make Nish suffer for it.’

‘Run anyway,’ said Nish, casting a frantic glance at her. Irisis stayed put, as he’d known she would.

‘You know what they’ll do to us, Scrutator Klarm,’ said Nish. The dwarf scrutator was reputed to be a fair man.

‘The law is the law and you are traitors,’ said Klarm, ‘tried and convicted under the code of the scrutators. We can’t afford to be merciful, no matter how much we might wish it. And I do – you’re a brave man, Nish; a legend in the making. As for you, Irisis Stirm –’ he bowed in her direction and Klarm had such presence that it didn’t seem a ridiculous gesture ‘– I acknowledge both your courage and your loyalty. And I’ve always admired Xervish, but division at such a time must be fatal.’

‘Flydd cleaved to his oath even after the Council had cast him out and condemned him to slavery,’ said Nish. ‘Do you know what finally caused him to rebel?’

‘There’s no time – very well, be quick.’

‘It happened at Snizort, after my colossal stupidity put Tiaan into the hands of Vithis the Aachim. Ghorr demanded that my father prove his worthiness to be a scrutator by passing sentence on me for my folly. Or, as Ghorr saw it, my treachery. And father did. Jal-Nish condemned me to a brutal, shameful death, not to mention the knowledge that I would be expunged from our family Histories. Scrutator Ghorr was so pleased that he made my father a full scrutator on the spot.’

Nish met the dwarf’s eyes and went on. ‘When Flydd heard what he had done – and I remember his very words, for I’ve never seen him so shocked and disillusioned – Flydd said, For the chief of scrutators to encourage such a deed, to demand it as proof of worth to become scrutator, shows that the Council is corrupt to the core . At that very moment, Flydd repudiated his oath and swore that Ghorr had to be brought down, and the Council with him. And that he, Xervish Flydd, would devote the rest of his life to doing so. It was a moment I will never forget.’

It shook Klarm too. Nish saw it in his face. ‘Surely you knew that, surr?’ he went on.

‘I wasn’t there,’ said Klarm. ‘I knew only what I was told. I’m not a member of the Council, and the Council does not publicise its doings.’

‘But you do believe me?’

Klarm let out an age-weary sigh. ‘I can read men, Cryl-Nish. I know truth when I hear it. Nonetheless, this is the only council we have and the world can’t survive without it. Put down your blade, untether yourselves and come with me.’

Nish could no longer see the knoblaggie concealed in Klarm’s hand, and didn’t want to find out what it could do to them. Klarm might well be an honest man but he was as hard as any of the scrutators, and they didn’t bluff.

‘Pull me up now ! You’ll pay for this, you fools.’ Ghorr’s voice was perfectly clear this time.

They all looked up but Yggur’s mist had come in again and Nish could only see the cables disappearing into brown.

‘That’s Ghorr!’ said Irisis. ‘I’ll never forget that voice if I live to be a hundred. It echoes in my nightmares.’

‘What congress have you had with the chief scrutator?’ said Klarm.

‘Not the kind you’re thinking of,’ she snapped. ‘He beat me black and bloody in Nennifer, a dozen times at least.’

‘Ghorr beat you?’ Klarm said incredulously.

‘He was too clever to let it show, but after each visit I couldn’t stand up for a day, or sit down. He inflicted all manner of excruciations on me and enjoyed every moment of them.’

Klarm frowned. ‘I –’

The mist parted up above as if Yggur had blown it away and Nish saw the remaining air-dreadnoughts straining at their cables like party balloons in a gale. They were swinging back and forth in the wind, their multiple airbags bouncing against each other and the rigging in mortal danger of tangling. Their motions jerked the cables and rippled the deck, and sent the ropes of the hanging chairs and baskets swinging in wild arcs.

‘There’s Ghorr,’ said Irisis. ‘They’re finally pulling him up.’ The chief scrutator was swaying in the air halfway between his air-dreadnought and the deck.

‘I wonder what the matter is?’ said Nish. ‘They started hauling him up ages ago.’

‘Get on with it, you fools!’ screamed Ghorr, his face purple with rage.

‘The windlass has jammed,’ said Irisis, who had exceptionally keen eyes. ‘Or broken. Looks as if they’re trying to move his rope to a hand winch.’

‘Surely they’d have to lower him first,’ said Nish, whose artificer training had taught him that much. He tried to see across to where Flangers was cutting the other cable but mist still clung to the deck.

‘You’d think so,’ said Klarm. The rope dropped sharply, whereupon Ghorr screamed at the operators. ‘But … he’s afraid !’

‘Afraid?’ Nish glanced down at the dwarf scrutator. There was a strange light in his eye. Revelation? Could they sway Klarm in so little time?

‘The chief scrutator has failed in front of the witnesses he was trying to impress.’ Klarm shook his head in disgust. ‘This whole spectacle – the attack on Fiz Gorgo, this marvellous amphitheatre, the trial and punishment – was designed for one purpose. To impress the artists, recorders, tale-tellers and witnesses with Ghorr’s power, reach and implacable resolve to extinguish all opposition. But he overreached himself and the failure only reveals his folly.’

‘The air-dreadnoughts had to be close together to hold up the amphitheatre,’ said Nish.

‘Which shows what a vainglorious notion it was. The Council advised him against the scheme,’ Klarm said quietly. ‘I suggested a less extravagant trial, but Ghorr had spent too long planning this spectacle and would not be dissuaded.’

‘Why didn’t he take us back to Nennifer or Lybing, for public trial?’

‘I cannot say. I –’ Klarm broke off as something else occurred to him. ‘Can Ghorr have been afraid of Flydd?’

‘Perhaps he was,’ said Irisis.

‘And now he’s failed in front of his own witnesses,’ Nish added. ‘And he knows the penalty for failing the Council.’

‘Not to mention losing his carefully constructed place in the Histories,’ said Irisis.

‘There’s nothing he can do about that,’ said Klarm.

‘Unless …’ Nish looked Klarm in the eye and knew that he’d reached the same conclusion. ‘Unless Ghorr should be the only one of the Council to return.’

‘He wouldn’t go that far,’ Klarm said unconvincingly. ‘Ghorr is a man who knows his duty.’

‘All the witnesses would have to die as well,’ said Nish.