Nish raised his head. There was no one in sight. Voices echoed down from the amphitheatre, though he couldn’t tell what was being said. Slight depressions in the taut canvas marked points where groups of people were standing to witness the trials. Unfortunately, he couldn’t establish the positions of individuals.
Nish crept to the nearest vertical cable, reached up as far as he could and heaved. He managed to pull himself up a couple of body lengths before his fingers slipped and he slid down again, burning his hands. The cable was thick, taut and smooth, and damp as well; he couldn’t grip it tightly enough to hold his weight. He’d never climb it this way.
He went down the inner stairs of the wall to the yard, thence to one of the equipment sheds for an axe. The edge hadn’t been sharpened for a while but he couldn’t hone it on the wheel without making a racket. It would have to do.
Up on the wall again Nish judged his mark, drew the axe back over his shoulder and swung it with all his strength. The blade bounced off – the cable was as taut as stretched wire. Besides, he realised belatedly, chopping one cable wouldn’t make any difference, since the amphitheatre was held up by fifteen of them, each solidly braced with cross-stays.
If he could collapse one side of the amphitheatre, his friends would fall to a merciful death, though that would require the simultaneous failure of at least three adjacent vertical cables. Once that happened the highly tensioned ropes would spring back, tearing the canvas deck apart or forming a slope too steep to stand on. Quick-thinking people near the edges might survive if they caught hold of the remaining ropes, but all those in the centre would fall to the ground or the roofs of the fortress. Not a pleasant way to die, and it wouldn’t just be the prisoners, either. Hundreds of soldiers and witnesses might be killed as well.
Nish couldn’t dwell on that or he’d never be able to do it. This was war, and there were always casualties. It was the only way to save his friends from their barbaric fate, and at least it would be quick. Neither could he worry about the scrutators being wiped out, leaving the world leaderless at this critical stage of the war. Ghorr left nothing to chance; he’d always have a way out.
How to put his plan into effect? He couldn’t do it from the wall – the instant he hacked through the first cable, the soldiers would shoot him down. In any case, cutting the cables down here wouldn’t collapse this side of the amphitheatre. Since the cables ran up from the deck to the air-dreadnoughts, they would float up, lifting this side of the deck.
It had to be done just below the deck. If he could climb up, soak three or four cables and their accompanying cross-stays with oil, then set fire to them simultaneously, it could work. If the blazes were big enough, the cables might burn through before the guards could put out the fires.
If, if, if. The plan was outlandish and couldn’t succeed. It also left unanswered one vital question – how was he to get away afterwards? Nish gave no further thought to that either. After such a crime, it seemed fitting that he’d given himself no way out.
There was a great roar from above and the amphitheatre deck shook as though hundreds of people were stamping their feet. Were the trials over? Were they torturing Flydd already – or flaying Irisis alive?
Nish forced himself to stay calm, to ignore what was happening up there. All that mattered was what he did down here, and only cool thinking could deliver his friends now.
He ran down to Yggur’s great coolrooms and larders, where the provisions for Fiz Gorgo were kept. In the second pantry, he discovered what he was looking for: a set of meat hooks hanging from a rail. He selected two that looked suitable, then hacked a slab off a ham and tore at it like a savage while he headed for his room. There he strapped a knife to his belt, his crossbow to his back and filled a deep pocket with quarrels. A flint and steel went in as well.
Tearing a bedsheet into strips he thrust them into another pocket, a pair of leather straps in after, then went down to the lower storerooms where the barrels of whale oil and naphtha were stacked. Though Yggur was capable of making glowing globes powered by the Art, the lamps in Fiz Gorgo generally burned oil. Nish filled a silver wine flagon with distilled naphtha which had probably come all the way from the tar pits of Snizort. After stoppering it carefully, he slipped it into a basket made of woven leather and threw it over his shoulder. Lastly he rummaged in the tool room until he found a clamp shaped like a thumbscrew for a giant. Nish spun the screw out and gauged the space. It was just large enough to fit over one of the vertical cables. He tied it to his belt with a length of cord.
Feeling like a wandering tinker with his load, Nish returned to the wall, laid out his meat hooks and straps and considered how best to bind them on.
‘What are you doing, Nish?’
Nish jumped. He’d thought Ullii was still up in the cupola, but her voice came from right behind him. He explained.
Ullii’s eyes, which were still unmasked, grew large. She put her hand over her mouth. ‘You’ll be killed.’
‘I expect so,’ he said more calmly than he felt. ‘But all my friends, save you, are up there. Even if it costs me my life, I won’t let Ghorr torture them to death.’
She looked up at the amphitheatre and the colourless hair stirred on her head, as if she could see right through the deck to what the scrutators were doing there. Nish imagined that she could feel the anguish of the prisoners – Ullii had always been sensitive to that kind of thing.
‘I’ll help you,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ he said, astounded by the offer, so uncharacteristic of her. ‘Though I don’t see how you can.’
‘I can climb the cable without hooks.’
Since Ullii never exaggerated, he believed her. ‘Could you give me a hand with these?’
She strapped the hooks to his wrists more securely than he could have done himself. He took a deep breath and turned to the cable.
Reaching up as high as he could, Nish dug the hook on his right wrist into the strands of the cable. He had to force it in. He put all his weight on the hook and it held. He pulled himself up, which made his gashed arms throb, and stabbed the other hook at the cable, half an arm’s length higher. It skated off the taut fibres. He tried again, carefully judging the angle, and this time the hook dug in. Already his muscles were aching and he’d only gone half a span. Twenty-nine and a half to go.
He would never do it. Just hanging by the arms was exhausting and willpower was not going to be enough. He simply didn’t have the strength to climb all that way. Yet, how could he not go on?
With his free hand Nish fumbled at the clamp, tried to get it over the cable, and dropped it. He hauled it up again, wound the screw out as far as it would go and forced it over. One-handed, he tightened the screw and climbed onto the shank, relieving the strain on his wrist at last. Sweat was dripping into his eyes.
Ullii came up the other side of the cable until she was level with him, moving easily. Her eyes met his.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said, fighting back tears of frustration. ‘I simply can’t do it, Ullii.’
Ullii was holding the cable between her thighs and feet, and pulling herself up with her hands. She didn’t seem to be under any strain. She was so slight that he could carry her with one arm, but Ullii was remarkably dextrous.
’I said I’d help you, Nish.’
He couldn’t have climbed halfway without her but, with Ullii’s help to embed his hooks into the ropes while he rested on the clamp, and then to slide the clamp up and hold it while he screwed it tight, Nish managed to inch his way up the cable, span by span. Even then, when they had but five spans to go and twenty-five extended below them, Nish didn’t think he would ever make it. He made the mistake of looking down, whereupon his head spun and his stomach heaved. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights but this was different. He lost his grip and hung by the grace of the right hook while he vomited all down the cable.