Ian Irvine - Geomancer

They scurried back to their machines, the metal feet began to compress the snow and Simmo’s clanker crept up the steep slope. Two-thirds of the way along, the front feet began to slip. They pounded on the spot, digging potholes beneath each foot, then stopped. Gi-Had gestured to Arple. The sergeant roared orders. Six soldiers trotted up behind, put their shoulders to the clanker, and Gi-Had shouted ‘Go!’

Again the feet skidded. ‘Heave!’ cried Arple and the soldiers heaved. The clanker inched upwards. ‘Heave! Heave!’

With each heave it went a little further but it did not take long to exhaust the soldiers. They held it while another gang took their place, and shortly they had it up and over, onto the gentler slope above.

‘Next one won’t be so easy,’ Gi-Had observed laconically. ‘It’s pounded the track to ice.’

‘Run a cable from the first,’ said Tuniz the artificer, scratching her spiky head. ‘It can pull the others up.’

‘Don’t know about that,’ said Gi-Had, but gave the orders.

The two clankers started. The first was going slowly, buried to the belly in soft snow. Ky-Ara’s machine began to catch up to the first as it approached the icy section. The rope sagged down to the ground.

‘Shit!’ cried Gi-Had, waving his arms at the operator. ‘Slow down! You’ve got to keep the rope taut.’

Ky-Ara’s clanker hit the icy patch, travelling fast. The legs thrashed, sending stinging chips of ice everywhere, but could not get a purchase. The machine began to slide backwards.

‘Hold it!’ roared Jal-Nish.

Two soldiers ran and put their shoulders to the rear of the machine. Arple screamed, ‘Get back! No! No! Get out of the way!’

The soldiers looked from one to the other, not knowing which order to obey.

‘Jump clear!’ roared Arple, but it was too late. The tow rope twanged tight and as smoothly as a pendulum the clanker slid sideways across the ramp, sweeping one soldier off the edge. The other tripped and the pounding metal feet went over him. He gave a single horrible scream. The clanker toppled off the edge of the ramp, hanging from the cable, to thump into the steep slope. Ky-Ara shrieked in anguish, the sound like a saw blade on glass.

Simmo cried out as the weight pulled his machine backwards to the brink. Nish could not bear to think what the strain must be doing to the mechanisms. For a long minute it seemed the first clanker would come down on the second, but Arple sent another troop running and they heaved a rock behind the legs just in time.

When the clanker had been stabilised the sergeant came storming across, smoking with rage. He lifted Jal-Nish by the front of the coat, a considerable feat. ‘If you ever, ever give an order to my troops again,’ he said savagely, ‘I’ll make you wish you’d been smothered at birth, perquisitor or not. You give your orders to me. No one else! Is that understood?’

‘Yes,’ squeaked Jal-Nish.

‘Let it be so!’ Arple dropped him in the snow and ran to his fallen. The soldier who had been swept off the ramp had suffered only bruises and a sprained wrist, but the other had broken every bone between his thighs and the lower ribs. The sergeant hacked his pants open. Blood trickled from the soldier’s bowel.

Arple, who looked the toughest and most unfeeling sergeant Nish had ever met, squatted down beside the soldier and took his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Dhirr,’ he said. ‘I can’t do anything for you. You’re going to die.’

Dhirr gave a gasp that wracked his long face to the roots of his receding hair. ‘My wife is pregnant. Our third! What is she going to do?’

‘She is doing great service for our country,’ said Arple. ‘And so have you done. She will be well taken care of.’

‘But my children …’ he jerked, groaned and fell sideways.

Arple listened at Dhirr’s chest. ‘He breathes, for the moment. Put him on a stretcher. He can go in the clanker once we get it up.’

Ky-Ara was hysterical and had to be consoled by Simmo. The two men stood with their arms around each other, Ky-Ara weeping enough to frost his coat.

‘There’ll be trouble with that fellow before we get back,’ said Gi-Had to Irisis, who was standing next to him.

‘He’s an emotional man, even by the standards of operators,’ she agreed. ‘After his controller failed last month he bawled for a week.’

They spent all morning recovering the second clanker and lifting it onto the ramp with pulleys and ropes carefully anchored. Everything was done in consultation with Gi-Had, Arple and Artificer Tuniz, who was years ahead of Nish in her trade and proved unexpectedly useful in this task. Nish was glad they did not consult him, for he had no idea what to do.

While that was going on, the soldiers cut a path through the soft snow for the first clanker, pounding the surface down hard. Other soldiers dug corrugations across the icy patch for the iron feet to grip on.

The clanker was not much damaged, fortunately, just a connecting rod bent and one of the armoured panels dented and scraping with every movement. Tuniz and Nish had the repairs done by the time the third clanker was heaved up. The accident had cost them five hours.

The perquisitor had not spoken since his encounter with Arple, but there was a thunderous look on his round face that boded ill for the sergeant if ever Jal-Nish had the advantage of him. He was not a man who could easily come to terms with humiliation, to say nothing of the challenge to his authority. But for now it would be put aside. The pursuit must go on.

Jal-Nish drove them hard for what remained of the day and most of the night. The field was strong here but the country unknown, so they crept along under the light of a single flare. That was risky but Jal-Nish dared not stop. The clanker operators were issued with spicy nigah leaf, to keep them awake. The army sometimes used the drug to combat cold and fatigue. Everyone was on edge, knowing how vulnerable they were. Half a dozen lyrinx, attacking from the darkness, could slaughter them all.

Just after dawn, most of the way across a domed plateau, the hunt again came upon tracks in the snow.

‘It’s them!’ shouted one of the soldiers.

‘I can’t see anything.’ Gi-Had was up on the shooter’s platform, staring through a spyglass, when Nish and Irisis scrambled out.

Jal-Nish squatted to examine the smaller prints. ‘It’s Tiaan’s boot all right. I don’t understand it. It’s as if she’s going willingly.’

Arple inspected the evidence, stroking his scarred lip. ‘If you can tell that from a bootprint you’re a damn sight better tracker than I’ll ever be.’

‘She hasn’t run away!’ Jal-Nish said.

‘Would you run from a creature three times as big and twice as fast? If I were her, I’d do exactly as it told me.’

‘That’s why you’re a sergeant in the Tiksi garrison rather than a general at the front,’ Jal-Nish sneered.

Arple reared up before him. ‘Have you ever fought a lyrinx, perquisitor?’

‘No.’ Jal-Nish drew back.

‘Then shut up before you make a fool of yourself. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and if there’s one thing I despise it’s the ass that flaps his mouth from the safety of an armchair. I’ve seen hundreds of my boys dead at the hands of lyrinx, perquisitor . Dead and eaten! Better men than you’ll ever be, just fighting for their families and their country. Don’t talk to me about lyrinx. Don’t tell me my job. And don’t sneer at my courage until you’ve proven your own.’ He stalked away, head held high.

Gi-Had said quietly, ‘He may be only a sergeant, surr, but Arple’s been up north fighting lyrinx for fifteen years. He’s killed five of the beasts, two all by himself, and that makes him as tough a man as you’ll ever meet.’