Last to Rise(44)

“I might have a little plan for that. Could help all round.”



Perak shot me a look. I didn’t really like the way he leapt on my idea – I’ve never been known as an ideas man, and for him to jump on it so quick meant he was out of plans himself.



“Tell me.”



So I did, while his eyebrows shot up into his hairline and kept on going as I outlined it.



“We don’t have enough men to take them on as it stands, right? You’ve got guards down there, and Specials, and… it won’t be enough, and you say the cardinals won’t take anyone else if they’re armed. Lise needs more raw materials too. I think…” Again, I could not believe I was saying this. Usually I’m out of the room before anyone even thinks of asking for me to help, but this time I was dropping myself in it. “I think we can solve both in one go. If we’re careful.”



I had their attention.



“The machine further away, up in the valley. It’s still covering the gate area, which leaves us hamstrung. Anyone trying to move out of the inner gates will be mincemeat. We need to take it out. Permanently. Maybe… maybe move it, or some of it. Rearrange it to where we can cannibalise it for metal.”



Perak said nothing but went to the telescope again, training it on the mass of Storad now camped between two sets of gates, then up to the valley where the machine sat silent and brooding for now.



“You really think you could manage it?” Pasha asked.



“Probably not the whole thing. But enough of it that it won’t work plus Lise will have some metal to play with. The engine perhaps? She could see how it functions. I’ll need to get close though.” And someone to help me out afterwards, because I’d be thoroughly screwed. Rearranging really takes it out of me, and I was pretty screwed to start with.



“It’s risky,” Perak muttered without taking his eye from the telescope. “Too risky.”



“What else can we do?”



Perak stood straight with a sigh. “I don’t know. But if we lose you, then what about the Glow? It’s hard enough now, even with Lise’s generator. Too few mages. If we lose one… That’s what the archdeacon in me says. The brother in me says I lost you for long enough years. I’m not losing you for good if there’s another way.”



Jake’s thoughtful glance my way, and my stupid need not to look like a complete coward in front of her, put a stop to any back-pedalling on my part. “Name me this other way then.” I consoled myself with the meagre thought that if it all went wrong, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the cardinals’ men grabbing me and taking me to the Storad, because I’d already be there.



It took a lot more than that, of course, but I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say that, with so few guns available, with so few Specials and the small amount of guards we had, and them not keen on doing the guarding that was suddenly necessary, with the cardinals that hadn’t run away in full voice about no one else getting any guns because who knew whom any Under man might shoot but it’d probably be cardinals, we didn’t have much choice.



I say “we”. What I mean is “I”.





Chapter Twelve





I managed a doze while Perak and his advisers, Guinto, Jake, Malaki and a couple of the better bishops, talked logistics. I should have tried to stay awake, I suppose, but that kind of thing makes me sleepy at the best of times, and it certainly wasn’t that. I was going to need my strength too, so I dozed and tried not to dream, which is harder than it sounds.



By the time they’d finished, the grey clouds massing over Top of the World had a nasty bruised look to them and had started a short test run of finely powdered snow blowing about on the knife-edge wind. Early in the season, maybe to our advantage. We might be short of food, but we weren’t camping out. Or trying to bring in men and supplies over a high mountain pass. A spiteful thought – a sudden white-out entombing the Storad in drifts of snow, not to be found till spring, when they’d turn up like frozen rocks when the snow melted. Unlikely, more’s the pity, but the early harsh weather could work our way. It was maybe the only thing that would.



Perak and the rest seemed to have come up with a plan of sorts. Malaki was of the opinion that it was a stupid risk but, as he couldn’t think of anything better, we were on. Perak had a few provisos though – he said they were because he wasn’t taking any chances with the two mages who put out the most, almost the only, Glow.



“Most of the Storad have moved down from the valley into the compound between the gates,” he said. “Malaki here will get some of his Specials to start sniping them – Lise has managed to get some extra range on a few of the guns. Enough to keep everyone busy, hopefully. At least get them looking at the gates and not where you’re going to be.”