Chimaera (57 page)

‘Any chance we can break through the outside walls?’ Nish said a while later. The floor was growing hot and smoke had begun to wisp up through cracks in the boards.

Vim inspected the stone. ‘Not a hope.’

‘So we’re going to burn to death?’ said Vim.

‘Looks like it,’ Slann replied.

‘Never thought I’d be going this way.’

The conversation petered out.

N
ish and the soldiers had been a long time. Tiaan’s eyelids were drooping when she heard a cry from below.

‘We’ve found it.’

She peered over the side of the thapter and saw lamplight through the hole. One of the soldiers had come up the rope with the hand winch slung over his shoulder. Another rope trailed down through the hole in the roof onto the ceiling. Climbing onto the side of the thapter, he attached the winch to the carrying racks that had been mounted at the back, pulled the rope through, tied it and began to wind.

‘Heavy work,’ he said conversationally.

‘Looks like it,’ said Tiaan, who’d never been good at idle talk.

‘Could you bring the flier round a bit, d’ye think? The way the rope’s hanging, we’re likely to catch the silk on the hole in the roof.’

She rotated the thapter into position. ‘How’s that?’

‘Perfect.’

‘Did you find enough silk?’

‘Plenty,’ he grunted, winding slowly and panting with each circle of the handle.

The rolls came up, two lashed together and hanging vertically. The soldier pulled the top ends onto the racks, took a bight around the lower ends and slowly hauled them on.

‘I’d help you if I could,’ said Tiaan, ‘but I can’t leave the controller.’ She didn’t want him to think she was a shirker.

‘I’m used to it. I don’t know why the others are taking so long.’

He tied the bundle on, threw the end of the rope down through the hole and shortly began to heave the second bundle up, three bolts this time. No sooner had he finished, and was binding it to the racks, than the second soldier came hand over hand up the rope, roaring at the top of his voice.

‘What’s he saying?’ said Tiaan.

‘Fire!’

‘Where?’

The second soldier pulled himself onto the racks, gasping. ‘There were people living in the warehouse. There was a fight. Welmi’s dead, and some of the natives, and now they’ve set fire to the building.’

‘Where are Nish and the rest of the soldiers?’ said Tiaan.

‘Three floors down. Fire’s coming up the stairs and they’re trapped on the silk floor.’

‘And there’s no other way out?’

‘Warehouses don’t have windows.’

The horror of their situation made her bowels tighten. To be burned alive … ‘I don’t see what we can do,’ Tiaan said reluctantly. Yggur and Flydd had made her duty plain to her before she left. Firstly, and at all costs, she must bring back the thapter – it meant the difference between survival (if only for a time) and ruinous defeat. And it was their only hope of victory, faint though that seemed.

Secondly, Tiaan had been instructed to protect herself even at the cost of the lives of any or all the others, because her talent was irreplaceable. Doing so went against her feelings, but she would follow orders. Thirdly, she had to ensure that whatever silk they found got back to Fiz Gorgo. And finally, lowest in importance, she must do her best to protect the lives of her crew, including Nish.

Nish, her nemesis. And yet, how could she think of him, or any of them, trapped by the inferno and knowing that they were going to be burned to death? Tiaan couldn’t allow that to happen, even to her enemy, if there was any safe way to prevent it. She came to a decision.

‘Get the silk inside!’ she rapped. ‘Quick as you can.’

They obeyed, squeezing the rolls through the small lower hatch and dragging them below, and went back for the winch.

‘Where are the breaking tools?’ she said.

‘Below, on the ceiling.’

‘Get in.’

They climbed through the hatch. Tiaan pulled it down and latched it. Taking hold of the controller, she allowed the thapter to fall onto the roof.

Smashed tiles flew everywhere and the roof timbers emitted a wrenching groan, but didn’t break. She hadn’t hit them hard enough. Lifting the thapter again, she went a little higher and dropped the machine onto the same place.

More flying tiles; torn timbers flashed across her view, then part of the roof gave way and they were through, still falling. She brought the machine to rest just above the ceiling beams in a rain of splinters and tiles.

‘Pick up the tools and get back in.’ She eyed the ceiling timbers. They were not heavy ones.

Using the same approach, Tiaan dropped the thapter through the ceiling. It gave way easily, ceiling joists being lighter than roof beams. The room below was wreathed in smoke and the thapter struck the floor before she realised how close she was. The impact shook the building but the floor held. These were much stronger timbers and she didn’t dare try to crash the thapter through them. It was solidly built but not indestructible.

‘Get out,’ she yelled. ‘Chop holes in the floor on either side of that joist – there where the line of nails runs. Hack into the joist as well, and the next one.’

The soldiers threw themselves out and began chopping furiously. Tiaan went below and rifled through one of the compartments, looking for a steel towing cable with an eye on each end, which she had seen previously. She threw it down.

‘Put one end through the first hole and bring it up through the second. Pass the second eye through the first and put it over the hook at the back of the thapter. Then stand clear.’

When that was done Tiaan took the thapter up hard. The cable twanged tight, the floorboards bowed. She had hoped to pull the floor joist out from the stone at the wall end, but it held. She reached out for the field, took more power; the joist bent then snapped in a fountain of broken floorboards, exposing the joists to either side.

‘Chop through the joists,’ she ordered. ‘Quick!’

They cut them halfway, but even then it needed several thumps to break through the floor. She put the machine down on the floor below and the soldiers got to work with their axes. Tiaan climbed out and inspected the thapter with a lantern. The metal skin was bent and buckled in several places, gouged and scratched in others, but no serious damage had been done. She silently thanked the Aachim for their workmanship. Clankers were strongly built but this kind of treatment would have wrecked one.

This room was even smokier and Tiaan didn’t see how anyone could have survived further down. She wadded up her sleeve and tried to breathe through it. Her eyes were stinging.

‘Is there any point us going on?’ she said to the furiously chopping soldiers. ‘Surely they’ll be dead by now.’

The taller of them, a dark-haired man with a circle of hairy moles on his chin, laid down his axe to wipe streaming eyes. A fit of coughing doubled him over.

‘I’d imagine so. But if they’re not, they’ll be real pleased to see us.’

They broke through. The other soldier put his head down one hole. ‘Hoy?’

There was no answer. ‘That’s bad,’ he said.

Tiaan checked the other hole. ‘The smoke isn’t much worse than here and I can’t see any fire.’

‘Smoke can kill just as quickly.’

‘Maybe they didn’t hear us over the noise of the fire,’ said Tiaan. ‘They could be right down the other end of the floor.’

‘Could be,’ said the dark-haired soldier. ‘That’s where the entrance is.’

Tiaan used her cable again, but this time, as soon as the strain went on it, it snapped. She cursed and dropped the thapter hard onto the floor. The building shook but the beams hardly moved.

‘These floors are built to carry a heavy load,’ said one of the soldiers.

It was past time to give up. She’d already gone further than she should have. Flames were visible through cracks in the far door and the smoke oozing in was black and choking. But having come this far, Tiaan did not want to give up until she knew that they were dead. ‘Is either of you game to go down through the hole?’

‘I will,’ said the shorter of the two. ‘Nish is a good man. I know he’d do the same for me.’ He looked Tiaan in the eye and his were moist, though perhaps it was the smoke. ‘You should hear the stories about him.’

Again it made her stop and think. In the past, she’d deliberately absented herself whenever people had talked about Nish’s deeds, not wanting to hear anything that would change her ill opinion of him.

The soldier tied the rope, threw it over, wrapped rags around his hands and slid down. As he reached the floor below, the building shuddered. The floor timbers squealed, and a crack zigzagged its way up the stone wall beside the thapter.

Tiaan felt cold inside. The building was going to collapse. She scrambled back into the thapter.

‘Where are you going,’ cried the soldier holding the rope.

She could see the whites of his eyes. He thought she was going to abandon them. ‘I’ve got to be ready. Can you see them?’

He put his head down the hole. ‘Not a thing.’

‘Give your friend a shout. We can’t wait any longer.’

‘Hoy, Plymes. Come on! The bloody building’s gonna fall down.’

He listened at the hole. ‘I can hear him! He’s coming up.’

‘Is there anyone with him?’

‘Can’t see. I don’t think so. Yes! Yes there is. There’s Vim and Slann.’

‘What about Nish, and the other soldier?’

‘Can’t see them.’

Again the building shuddered and the wall beside Tiaan seemed to move fractionally outward. This was madness. She lifted the thapter off the floor, one eye on the hole that she’d have to rise through, if she could find it in the thickening smoke, the other on the rope.

Again that white-eyed look from the soldier – and then he screamed, ‘They’re coming! Don’t go, they’re coming.’

Not nearly fast enough. She rotated the machine in the air, watching the cracks enlarging in the wall, the quivering of the floor above. If either collapsed on them, not even a thapter could get out. She’d been unforgivably stupid. She should never have come down.

Heads appeared through the hole: Vim and Slann, another soldier, then Nish. They scrambled through.

‘Get in,’ she screeched, waving her arms at them. ‘I’ve already disobeyed my orders. I can’t wait any longer.’

Vim and Slann took over the rope. The others climbed onto the racks. ‘In,’ she screamed. ‘If you’re not inside when we go up, you’ll be scraped off like muck from a boot.’

They fell through the hatch, crowding the cockpit, gasping for breath. Nish came last and his eyes silently thanked her, but she had no time for that.

‘Go below! You’re in the way.’ Tiaan revolved the thapter around the holes. ‘What’s the matter?’ she yelled to Slann.

‘Plymes has fallen off the rope. I’m going down.’

‘I can’t wait, Slann.’

He went anyway but stopped, just below the hole. Tiaan could still see his bald head. There came a tremendous roar as though something had collapsed below him, flames shot up through the hole and the floor buckled. Again the wall seemed to move outwards. Slann’s clothes caught fire, then the rope. He stared up at them, his face riven with agony as he tried to climb the burning rope. As it flamed up over his hands, he had to let go.

‘Vim! Come on!’

Vim was staring at the hole. He shook his head and leapt for the side of the thapter, catching hold of the racks. Tiaan, looking up, saw the floor above them move.

‘Hang on,’ she yelled. ‘The upper floor’s going to come down.’

She spun the thapter around and headed up towards the hole, which was moving. That meant the whole floor was slipping. There was no time to pull the hatch down. She manoeuvred through the belching smoke. The floor below suddenly collapsed and flames swirled towards them and over Vim, now clinging desperately to the racks.

She zigzagged the thapter up through the hole as the upper floor fell. Something struck the side of the thapter, making it lurch sharply. The smoke was even thicker on the next level and Tiaan hit the wall without realising it. Where was the ceiling hole? She had to go back and forth three times before she found it. Her lungs were burning. She shot up though it, up again and out through the roof to safety.

Hovering above the roof, she looked for a place to set down so Vim could come inside. The adjacent roof had a low pitch. She drifted across to it, settled down and put her head through the hatch.

The whole area was illuminated by the flames, which had ignited the timber wall of the neighbouring building. The racks were empty.

‘Vim?’ she yelled.

‘Where is he?’ said a soldier beside her.

‘He must have fallen off when we struck the wall,’ said Tiaan.

They looked back at the roof. Flames were coming up though the hole.

‘He’s dead,’ said Nish beside her. ‘They’re all dead. Let’s go home.’

He looked ghastly – soot-streaked, eyes running, a tremble in one arm. ‘I led them to their deaths,’ he said. ‘It’s not right that I got out and they didn’t. I failed them.’

For the first time, Tiaan saw the man inside Nish and pitied him. She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We all did our best, Nish. There’s no more that anyone could have done.’