For a moment it looked as though the craft would come down on the precipice and tumble into the Desolation Sink, but the pilot corrected in time and the great craft lumbered towards the collapsed front of Nennifer.
Nish held his breath but she managed to turn it and the keel slammed into the ground with just ells to spare. The pilot didn’t get out. She had collapsed at her controller arm.
‘It’s the air-dreadnought that was shaken free in the earth tremblers,’ said Irisis. ‘The pilot must have been asleep on board at the time. It looks like it was blown halfway across the mountains before she could turn it.’
‘Then she’s the greatest pilot I’ve ever come across,’ said Klarm, ‘to bring that wreckage back without a crew, and no rest in a day and a half.’
‘Flangers, gather a work gang and get it tied down,’ Flydd shouted, hobbling towards the craft.
He lifted the collapsed pilot out and kissed her on the cheeks, left and right, to her bemusement. ‘Thank you, pilot. You’ll make a big difference. Nish, run and find the air-dreadnought artificers. I want this craft repaired by midnight, ready to fly east with as many of the survivors as we can cram into it. We won’t beat Fusshte to Lybing with the news, but we’ll spread it north and south as far as we can. His lies won’t stand up in the face of so many witnesses. And see what other craft were being built, and get them finished. There are a lot of people to be moved and little time.
‘Klarm, would you find all the pilots here who still have their controllers? I’ll round up the surviving chroniclers, artists and tale-tellers. There’s a new order in the world and we’ve got to get the word out right away.’
‘And as soon as we’re beyond the corrupted influence of the Nennifer node,’ said Yggur, ‘we must join forces to drive this baleful amplimet back to the state from which it woke.’
‘We have the amplimet and we have Tiaan,’ said Flydd. ‘And the Council has been overthrown. Now the long fight-back can begin.’
PART THREE
FARSPEAKER
THIRTY-FOUR
Irisis was surprised at how smoothly the transition had gone. The occupants of Nennifer were so cowed by the long rule of Ghorr’s council, and Fusshte’s brief reign of terror, that they accepted the orders of the new council unquestioningly. Flydd and Klarm were well known to them as hard, uncompromising men, but fair ones.
The air-dreadnought was sent east to Fadd, the closest city to Nennifer. It carried three pilots so as to travel non-stop, and a contingent of artists and tale-tellers whose task it was to broadcast news of the fall of the old Council, and the succession of the new one, all along the rugged east coast from Einunar to tropical Taranta. Flydd sent a guard with them, and plenty of the Council’s gold to buy their passages. With fast ships and the wind behind them, the whole of the populous and wealthy east coast could be alerted in a few weeks.
Nish spent his days helping to retrieve survivors and supplies from the rubble. He wasn’t much use with a broken arm but working was better than sitting around in the cold. It was freezing, dirty and ultimately thankless work, for after the second day they uncovered only dead. He saw little of Flydd and Klarm, who had gone back into Nennifer time and again, recovering what they could of the old Council’s most precious devices and secrets, and destroying the rest. A large number of crates were loaded into the thapter and dirigible, which were guarded night and day.
Irisis was frantically busy, digging with teams of labourers into the workshops and storerooms to recover air-floater controllers, floater-gas generators and all manner of other crystals, devices and tools that would be needed for the fight-back.
About a week after Fusshte fled, they’d done all they could do. Flydd climbed onto a platform built from firewood to address the multitude in the rear yard.
‘The air-dreadnought is expected back from Fadd at any time,’ he told the four thousand survivors, who were still camped around their meagre fires. They’d recovered plenty of firewood but it would have to last for months. ‘It will begin ferrying you to Fadd, the closest place we can send you, but it’s going to take a long time. Even if we can pack one hundred into the air-dreadnought, it’ll take forty trips to carry everyone to safety, and the evacuation won’t be completed