‘Hoy, Merryl?’ It was Yggur, calling from the stairs. ‘You haven’t seen Nish, have you?’
Nish’s feet struck the floor. ‘He’s here with me,’ Merryl called back after a decent pause. ‘We’re trying to contact Tiaan.’
Yggur entered the room. ‘I assume you’ve had no luck. Nish, half the yard is looking for you and it seems none of them can wait.’
Nish levered himself up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
‘No luck at all with Tiaan,’ said Merryl. ‘Nor anyone else.’
‘I spoke to Klarm earlier, in Strebbit,’ said Yggur.
‘But Klarm has a master farspeaker,’ said Merryl. ‘Tiaan only carries a slave. Master to master goes a lot further.’
‘Keep trying; we need her thapter. And give Klarm another call; find out if he’s rendezvoused with Troist yet.’ Yggur went down the stairs again.
Nish was halfway down too when Merryl called him back. ‘It’s Klarm,’ he said in a dead voice when Nish entered the chamber.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Lyrinx were seen moving north last night, in large numbers, so Klarm rotored straight down to the ambush site.’ Merryl stopped for a deep breath.
Nish knew what he was going to say. ‘The enemy aren’t there any more.’
‘There were plenty of signs of them in the hibernation cavern,’ said Merryl, ‘but it was empty apart from bones. They’ve gone and he doesn’t know where.’
Bootsteps came back up. It was Yggur, with Flydd. ‘From the way Merryl called you back, Nish, I figured it was important,’ said Yggur. ‘Did I hear you say the enemy have fled, Merryl?’
‘Not fled,’ said Merryl. ‘Marched to war. They’ve outflanked Troist’s army and Klarm reckons they’ll be attacking Borgistry within a week. He’s trying to get a better estimate of their numbers.’
‘So what do we do?’ Nish was so tired that he couldn’t think straight.
‘We’ll have to go to Lybing and put our backs to the wall with everyone else,’ said Flydd. ‘Borgistry can’t be allowed to fall. And that’s my big worry.’
‘Why?’ said Nish.
‘It’s too rich, complacent and soft. Borgistry hasn’t been threatened before. It has a big army but not many of its troops have seen combat, and its generals are fat and complacent. We’re going to have to take over.’
‘How will the governor of Borgistry react when you do?’ Nish wondered. ‘I heard the Council was unpopular there.’
‘The old Council was,’ said Flydd, ‘but we’re held in high regard, and we have Klarm to thank for that. He was like a will-o’-the-wisp, fleeting back and forth across Borgistry in the first month of winter, spreading his propaganda about the old Council and bolstering ours. There’s not a soul in Borgistry who hasn’t heard about Fusshte’s dirty little secrets.’
‘I haven’t heard anything about them,’ said Nish.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘I don’t suppose I do.’
‘But do you know the single thing that has legitimised our Council?’ said Flydd, smiling grimly.
‘Thapters,’ said Nish. ‘Or farspeakers.’
‘It was that grisly relic Klarm picked up in the swamp.’
‘What relic?’ said Yggur.
‘Remember how Ghorr was blown out of his skin in the airbag explosion, and we found it hanging in a tree? Klarm had Ghorr’s skin tanned and inflated to make a full-sized balloon of the former chief scrutator.’
‘How revolting,’ said Yggur. ‘Is there no depth to which the little man won’t sink?’
‘Klarm knows how to move the common people,’ said Flydd. ‘He carried Ghorr’s blow-up under his arm to every gathering, setting it up beside him like a saggy, disgusting naked puppet. When the people saw what kind of a man Ghorr had been, or rather how little a man he was, they rallied to us because we’d brought the brute down. There’s nothing quite like ridicule.’
‘I’m prepared to admit that I was wrong about Klarm,’ said Yggur, ‘though he wenches and drinks far more than is proper.’
‘If the tales of this war are ever written, which seems increasingly unlikely, there’ll be a Great Tale in Klarm’s exploits and escapades over the past three months. He’s the bravest man I’ve ever met.’
‘That he is,’ said Yggur. ‘But a libertine nonetheless.’
FORTY-SEVEN
Lybing, from the air, was a fairytale city built at the confluence of three rivers. The old, walled town spread across five hills that surrounded the confluence like the points of a squashed star. Water formed the heart and arteries of the city, and its citizens had built no less than nineteen bridges, each beautiful, each different, across the rivers. Nish had counted them as the air-floater flew in.