Ian Irvine - Alchymist

There was no sign of Ullii. They continued north and west in silence. It was like being a slave all over again, only that Nish was pushing himself to the limit of his endurance. He'd hoped that exhausting mind and body might keep the nightmares at bay, but even in his most agonising moments, when the blisters on his feet had burst and he drove himself on raw, weeping flesh, the dead faces were there.

They began before dawn each morning and walked long into the evening. In this flat country they must have been making four or five leagues every exhausting day. Flydd matched Nish stride for stride for the next few days, despite the infection. Nish lost track of time, so long had the days been, and so full of torment.

The scrutator now took them on a westward path, towards the sea, not wanting to get too far from Jal-Nish's army. Outlandish though it was, he still intended to try and stop him. Flydd never gave up, no matter how hopeless things became, and that was a lesson to Nish.

However, when they had wandered more than forty leagues and seen not a soul, one day Flydd began to fall behind. Around dusk, Nish turned to say something to him, only to discover that the scrutator was just a dot on the horizon.

Nish sat down to wait for him, but resting was too pleasant. There was no pain in it. He drove himself back to the ailing figure.

'What's the matter?'

'My leg,' Flydd gritted. 'I can barely lift it.' In a few hours his left thigh had swollen to twice the size of the right, and the wound had become an inflamed, weeping sore.

The dust cloud was moving in a south-westerly direction.

The spyglass resolved it into a large column of soldiers, set to pass a league or two north of him. He made signals with his coat until his eyes were raw, and eventually a small group broke away from the column, heading in his direction.

Nish watched the riders with a feeling of mounting terror. If the army belonged to the scrutators they would torture him publicly, to serve as a lesson to others. For malefactors in every profession or trade, an ironic and appropriate death had been prescribed, and each victim's fate was subsequently written into the Histories, so that all would know that justice had taken its merciless course.

Nish could not forget poor Ky-Ara, the clanker operator who had gone mad with grief at the loss of his machine. He had killed another operator then run renegade with the man's clanker. Flydd had ordered the clanker dismantled before Ky-Ara's eyes and every part of it fed into the furnaces. Ky-Ara had been forced to destroy the controller hedron himself, but instead had called so much power into the crystal that it had burned him from the inside out.

Nish was used to death, in all its forms and horrible finality. He hoped he could face his with dignity intact; he had to, though it would not redeem him. The Histories would describe his folly and inglorious end for as long as they endured. He would be a cautionary tale for the children of the next twenty generations. The only consolation would be that he had done his best.

A horseman trailing a blue banner galloped towards the foot of the hill. Three others followed. Nish waved the coat and trudged down to meet them.

'Did you put out the fire?' Flydd rasped as Nish passed by.

'It's an army. I signalled them and riders will be here shortly.'

'If you're wrong you won't have to worry about the scrutators. I'll kill you myself!'

Nish avoided Flydd's eye and kept going. At the base of the hill he stood on a fallen tree trunk, waving as the soldier with the banner raced up. Nish vaguely recognised the fellow, a pitch-black, good-looking man with a halo of frizzy hair and a nose as hooked as a parrot's beak. What was the name? Tchlrrr, of course. He'd accompanied Nish on that humiliating embassy from General Trout to the Aachim Nish felt his face grow hot at the thought of it.

Tchlrrr grounded his pole. Two soldiers trotted forward, followed by an officer in a cockaded hat, and another pair of soldiers. The uniforms were familiar.

'Who are you?' called the first soldier. 'Why did you signal us?'

Nish took a deep breath. 'I'm Cryl-Nish Hlar. My travelling companion is Scrutator Xervish Flydd, and he is sorely wounded. Without the service of a healer he may die.'

'C-Cryl-Nish Hlar!' stammered the officer in the middle. 'I've often w-wondered what happened to you. Come down.'

Nish practically fell off his rock. The officer was Prandie, one of the lieutenants of General Troist. Nish had saved Troist's twin daughters, Liliwen and Meriwen, from ruffians near Nilkerrand, a hundred and fifty leagues to the north, and subsequently rescued them from a collapsing underground ruin. The army must be Troist's, which meant that, for the moment, he was safe.

'Lieutenant Prandie,' he said. 'I'm so very glad to see you.'

No questions were asked. The soldiers rigged a litter between their horses to convey a weak but querulous Flydd back to the main force. Nish rode behind Tchlrrr, keeping well out of the scrutator's way, and within the hour they had joined the column. Flydd was placed in a wagon pulled by one of the clankers, and Troist's personal healer called to attend him. Healing was a mancer's Art these days and had advanced rapidly during the war, so Nish had hopes that she could save him.

Nish was taken into another clanker, where he lay on the floor and tried to sleep, though that was hardly possible with the bone-jarring shudder of the machine, and the squeals, rattles and groans of its metal plates against each other. Clankers lived up to their name. However, he did doze, to be shaken awake in the late afternoon. Finding good water, the convoy had stopped for the night.

'General Troist wishes to see you, surr,' said an aide.

Nish got out the rear hatch and looked around, rubbing his eyes and feeling more than a little anxious. Shortly General Troist appeared, a stocky, capable man. His sandy curls were longer than before, and tousled as though he'd been running his hands through them all day. His blue eyes were bloodshot, his uniform the worse for wear, but the soldiers saluted him smartly. Troist drove his troops hard, but not as hard as himself, and he took care of the least of his men before attending to his own needs. They loved him for it.

'It's good to see you again, Cryl-Nish,' Troist said. 'Come this way.'

Nish followed, sweating. True, he had saved Troist and Yara's daughters, twice, but there had also been that unpleasant scene at Morgadis with Yara's sister. Mira, and the fiasco of his embassy to the Aachim camp. Every success was matched by a failure. And no doubt Troist already knew of Flydd's fall, if not Nish's own.

They went up the line to Troist's command clanker, a great twelve-legged mechanical monstrosity the size of a small house, with a catapult and two javelards mounted on the shooter's platform. Nish had never seen one like it. Troist offered him a seat, an oval of slotted metal with an embroidered cover depicting a vase of bluebells, cheerfully but amateurishly sewn. The work of his daughters, no doubt. Troist was a methodical general, but a sentimental father.

'What are you doing here, Cryl-Nish?' Troist asked, holding out a leather flask of ale.

Nish took a careful sip, not sure what to say. The general knew his duty and, if that required him to give Nish up, he must do so whatever his personal feelings. I was sure you'd know all about it,' he said obliquely.

Troist frowned. 'Know what? Tell me straight, Cryl-Nish, I don't have time for foolery.'

So he hadn't heard. Nish saw a chance to save himself, and Flydd, if he could just put things the right way. 'The great battle at Snizort, weeks ago.'

'I knew there was going to be one, but I've not heard how it went. There's been no news from the south in a month, so I brought my army this way to find out.'