Rebellion

CHAPTER 96

The rebellion was going to end in a massacre. Tali had to come up with a new plan, fast.

“Holm?” she yelled. “Radl?”

They did not answer, and she had no idea where to look for them.

“Balun?”

He was gone too.

She had to know how the battle was going and where the fighting was. Tali got out the mage glass, held it over the map, put her eye to the lens and twisted the ring to focus it. The map went out of focus and an image grew in its place, as though she were looking down from the ceiling at the empty assembly area outside the subsistery. The floor was littered with dead and dying but the battle had moved on.

She moved the mage glass back and forth. The view was slightly blurred now and she could not make it any clearer, but in a broad grey tunnel several hundred yards away she made out a band of about forty Cythonians, fighting a couple of hundred Pale. And the Cythonians had the advantage.

They were forcing the Pale backwards, using their superior height and weight. The Pale could not use their far greater numbers because the passage was only wide enough for a dozen people to fight side by side. Even if they had outnumbered the enemy ten to one it would not have availed them.

She checked a nearby passage, then another. The story was the same everywhere — the Pale were either in fighting retreat, or bloody rout. Nowhere could she see them winning.

Where was Radl? Given the reckless way she fought, she was probably dead by now. Where were Tobry and Holm? She could not pick them out anywhere. What if they were dead as well, and she were all alone, leading a battle that was already lost?

Another band of Pale ran her way. Many had bloody wounds, and most had lost their weapons. “Don’t give up!” Tali yelled. “We’ve got heatstone and the enemy are afraid of it. We can still win.”

They took no notice.

“Holm, Holm?” she yelled.

“Here!” He forced his way through the Pale, who were milling about aimlessly. Holm was thickly coated in dust, even his eyelashes.

“I brought the roof down,” she said, “but they’ll come at us from another direction. Our only hope is to go down.”

“Where to?”

“The next level — the chymical level.”

“What’s it like?” said Holm.

“No idea; no Pale has ever been allowed in. But it’ll give us other options. And other weapons too.”

“How do we get down?”

“This way.” She pointed down past the entrance to the toadstool grottoes, where she had laboured for many years with Mia. It felt like a lifetime ago. “Not far. They started cutting a drift down before I escaped. I imagine it was finished a long time ago, but it’ll be blocked off.”

“What do you want from me?” said Holm.

“Bring a dozen helpers — people with initiative, if you can find any — and heatstone, as much as they can carry. If you see Radl, tell her to come here.”

He nodded and ran off.

Shortly Radl appeared with a dozen Pale behind her. Tali’s heart skipped a beat. “Are they… all that’s left?”

Radl’s full lip curled. “Do you truly think so little of your people? They’ve fought bravely, and we’ve won a skirmish or two.”

“It’s not enough and we both know it.”

“What do you want?”

“Teach them how to use heatstone properly. They’re letting the enemy get too close. They’ve got to use it from a distance, and if they can hurl it in a volley, all the better. But not at the enemy — if it hits them it won’t go off. It needs to land at their feet.”

“I’ll get onto it,” said Radl. “What’s your new plan?” She wasn’t so arrogant now that her own plan had failed so badly.

“Holm is going to break a way down to the chymical level. He needs sl — ” Tali had almost said slaves. “He needs people with initiative, and heatstone, plenty of it. Can you — ?”

“Damn right,” said Radl, raising a bloody sword. She wore an enemy’s belt over her loincloth, with a dozen red chuck-lashes dangling from it. She gestured to her followers. “Come on!”

“Then round everyone up and bring them here,” Tali yelled after her.

She picked up a small crate of heatstone pieces in her good hand, using her gift to try and block the pain that speared through her head. She was heading past the toadstool grottoes when she caught a whiff of its heavy, cloying smell, a mixture of earthy, fishy, fetid and foul odours. Dozens of kinds of edible toadstools were cultured there, plus some of the dangerous ones.

In an instant she was back in the grottoes, reliving her years of slavery with Mia. Poor, hapless Mia. She had been a good friend, better than Tali had deserved, and her own recklessness had led to Mia’s death.

She balanced the box on her knee, wiped her eyes with her free hand and hurried on. Past the breeze-room where she had hidden the day of Mia’s death, and where she had first met Rannilt. Tali could hear the water-driven box fans ticking, pumping fresh air down to the lower levels. She continued along to the sloping drive, twenty feet wide and nine feet high, that ran down to the chymical level.

The floor of the drive was scored with paired wheel grooves where hundreds of laden wagons had been hauled up the slope by teams of Pale women. Tali assumed the wagons had been laden with chymical weapons for the war. As she had expected, the drive was now closed off a third of the way down by a wall of stone. There was an iron door in the left-hand side but it was locked.

Holm was already at the wall with two other Pale, a thin man with his arm in a sling made from a yellow loincloth, and a white-haired young woman. Under his direction they were attaching clusters of heatstone pieces to the wall with eel glue. Tali could smell it from here. Holm was fitting together a small clockwork device.

Radl ran by, carrying a large crate on her shoulder. Tali stumbled after, her breasts bouncing painfully with each movement. Her feet hurt, too. It was months since she had gone barefoot and her soles had lost their former toughness. She stumbled, fell forwards and dropped her crate with a crash.

Radl spun around. So did Holm. They were staring at the crate. How much force did it take to set off a piece of heatstone? Some burst easily when thrown, others not at all. And if one piece went off, would it detonate all the others? Was that what Holm was relying on here?

The crate did not go off. Radl shook her head pityingly and ran back the way she had come.

“Try not to do that again,” said Holm. He tightened three nuts, then wound his mechanism with a brass key, clack, clack. “Not sure my old heart can take it.”

“Sorry. Where’s Tobry? I haven’t seen him since we armed the Pale.”

“No idea.”

Tali could hear distant shouting and the sound of sword on sword, but it was impossible to tell which direction the racket was coming from. She had a bad feeling, though.

She checked with the mage glass. Fighting was now going in so many places that she could not keep the whole battle in her head. The Pale were advancing in a couple of small tunnels, but retreating everywhere else.

“What do you know about the chymical level?” said Holm.

“Only rumours. It’s secret, because it’s where they make a lot of their weapons — chuck-lashes, shriek-arrows, bombasts, grenadoes, and so on. I’ve heard they have great retorts there, and furnaces, kilns, distilling apparatuses…”

“Anything useful to us?” Holm fitted his apparatus in the middle of the central heatstone cluster.

“I don’t know. The only time we heard anything about the chymical level was after accidents. Last year an explosion at one of the acidulators sent a green mist gushing up into our level. Burned out the lungs of dozens of Pale; some of the enemy too.”

“Sounds unpleasant.”

“People are always dying in horrible accidents here. There was one at the elixerater just before I escaped. A woman had her thigh eaten through from spilled alkoyl… I saw it. Her leg just… fell off.” She shuddered. “Why do you ask?”

“If this bang smashes something nasty on the chymical level, it could make it awkward.” Holm stood up, his knees cracking, and rubbed his back. “Why am I doing this, at my age? I should be tucked safely in my bed.”

“Hoy, old man!” It was Radl, at the top of the drive. “Make it quick. They’re breaking through.”

Holm flicked off a latch. His mechanism made a series of clicking sounds, each louder than the previous one.

“Go!” he said to the two Pale who had been helping him.

They ran up the slope. Tali and Holm followed hastily.

“Around the corner, I think,” he said. “You never know…”

They turned the corner. Tali could hear fighting coming from both directions. She checked the map with her mage glass, and wished she hadn’t.

“I hate this thing,” she muttered.

“And I went to so much trouble to make it,” he said, mock sorrowfully.

“It shows me how the battle is going, and tells me every bit of bad news, but I can’t do anything about any of it. Like here, for instance.”

She focused on the main tunnel up near the subsistery. “A hundred enemy are finishing off a small band of Pale. In the next tunnel, I can see hundreds of armed Pale who could come to the rescue — if only they knew help was needed. But they don’t and I’ve no way of telling them.”

“Send a messenger.”

“He’d be cut down before he got there. I need more people, Holm. I need the ones who stayed behind in the Empound, but I can’t get to them either.”

“Didn’t you say there were eighty-five thousand Pale?” said Holm.

“Counting children and mothers with young children. Maybe thirty thousand could fight, though only a tenth of those followed us.”

“And the rest will die anyway.” He shook his head. “Poor fools.”

Tali shivered. It did not bear thinking about, but she could not stop herself. “If there was a way to get them out…”

She checked with the mage glass, and swore. “The enemy have blocked the Empound off with an iron gate.”

Thousands of slaves had gathered on the Empound side of the gate. They would be able to hear the fighting but they could not get out.

Holm didn’t answer. “It’s been too long,” he said, frowning. “It should have gone off minutes ago.”

As he put his head around the corner of the drive, the clusters of heatstone went off in a series of shattering blasts. Holm reeled backwards, his arms outspread, then landed on his back.

Tali ran to him. Blood was pouring from a triangular gash on his forehead and it brought back bad memories of the time he’d been struck down on the south coast. She studied the wound, put her hand on his forehead and tried to heal it.

A series of small thumping bangs shook the tunnel behind her. It sounded as though the Pale were using heatstone more effectively now. The blasts must have temporarily stopped the enemy advance, for a host of Pale surged past. Many had bloody, untended wounds but there was nothing Tali could do for them. Holm had to take precedence.

Another group appeared, sent by Radl, then another. There were more blasts in the other direction and more Pale appeared, wild-eyed and desperate.

“We’re the last,” said a hairy, bloody-chested man. “Ah! So many dead.”

Tali tried to estimate how many Pale had passed. Surely less than two thousand. So few. How could they hope to win now? Or had they already failed?

Holm wasn’t responding. She lifted her hand, checked the wound in case she had missed something, and began the healing again.

Radl stopped beside her, covered in sweat and gasping. “Damage won’t hold the enemy back for long. Is the way open?”

Tali peered through the whirling dust. “Looks like it’s still blocked. You might have to blast it again.”

“I’ll get onto it.” Radl looked down at Holm. “Leave him. He’s finished.”

Radl checked the tunnel behind her, then took a red chuck-lash from her belt and hurled it up to the left. Someone shrieked.

“I can’t leave him,” said Tali. “Help me.”

“Do you know how many of my people I’ve had to abandon to die alone?” Radl said furiously.

For a moment, Tali thought Radl was going to stab her. “Holm understands the enemy’s devices and traps,” she said hastily. “Without him, we can’t get out the exit.”

“How the hell are we going to get out if we go down to the chymical level?”

“Have you got a better idea?”

“No.”

Tali gnawed her lower lip. “Where’s Tobry?”

“No idea.”

“I’ve got to find him. We need his magery more than ever now.”

Radl heaved Holm over her shoulder and carried him down towards the wall, which was cracked in several places but not broken through. The biggest Pale began attacking it with sledgehammers.

Tali went the other way. “Anyone seen Tobry?”

No answer.

She heard shouting from up the drive, then the clashing of weapons and the screams of the dying. A band of some twenty Pale, mostly women, ran down. Two thin, leathery men followed, looking as though they had been baked in the heatstone mines, like Tali’s poor father.

They were so dazed that she did not think they recognised her. She picked up a fragment of heatstone and held it in her fist, waiting for the pursuing enemy. There they were, half a dozen of them. She hurled the fragment to land at their feet. Two soldiers fell and the rest retreated.

Using the mage glass, she scanned the tunnels for Tobry and saw him at once. He was several hundred yards away, and this time the image was absolutely clear. He was backing along the passage, bleeding from both upper arms and the right shoulder, and shaking badly.

And, she noted with alarm, there was a downy growth on his cheeks, between the four days’ growth of beard. Was he turning?

“Tali?” he said, his voice the barest croak. “Need my potion, now.”

If he could not take it in the next few minutes, he would have a full-blown attack of shifter madness. And she had it in her pack.

Tali checked on the map to make sure of the quickest route, then turned and ran, along the main tunnel and around a corner. Three passages opened up before her. She took the left one and was racing along it when she realised that she had never been this way before; this passage had not been here when she was a slave. But the floor was worn, and there was dust on the wall carvings, so it wasn’t newly built, either.

She stopped. This wasn’t right. Many parts of Cython were forbidden to the Pale, but how had she got into one? As she turned back, a door slid across ahead of her, sealing the passage. She turned again and her nemesis stood there.

“You fell into my trap,” said Lyf.