Empire in Black and Gold

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Report,’ Varmen got out.

  The surgeon looked up resentfully, and Varmen spared a brief moment, only a brief one, to acknowledge that a good eight more men were wounded or dead around them, victims to the Commonwealer arrows.

  ‘He lives,’ the surgeon said. ‘But whether he’ll live much longer—’

  ‘Make him live,’ Varmen snapped, further endearing himself by spitting out, ‘He’s worth ten of the others.’ And I need Pellrec around to stop me saying things like that.

  ‘No guarantees.’ The little Fly-kinden seemed to be watching the steam dial of Varmen’s temper, knowing how essential his skills were. ‘I need to find how deep it’s gone. Then I need to take it out.’ Pellrec’s eyes were staring, unfocused. Varmen guessed the surgeon had already forced something on him to strip the pain away. The wounded man’s breathing was skipping, ragged. There was a scream there, waiting for its moment.

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘No guarantees.’

  ‘Do it! If he—’ dies I’ll kill every last one of you midget bastards . . . But he managed to bite down on that comment. ‘What can be done to help?’

  The surgeon shook his head disgustedly, glanced sidelong at Tserro, beside him. The sergeant of scouts had a clumsily tied bandage about his forehead, a narrow line of blood seeping through it.

  Varmen stalked over to them. ‘If he lives, then nobody cares how Landren died,’ he promised.

  The surgeon’s eyes were haunted. ‘Listen, Sergeant, I will do all I can, but men die easy from wounds like this. Ain’t nothing you could do, unless you reckon you could talk the Commonwealers into pissing off just to give me some quiet.’

  ‘Right,’ Varmen said, and walked back to the other sentinels. They were awaiting him patiently, looking only outwards towards the hidden enemy.

  ‘What’s going on, Sergeant?’ The worried tones were Arken’s, the infantryman now stepping up behind him.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Varmen. He glanced out at the trees, at the waiting Commonwealers watching their every move. ‘Sometimes I do some pretty stupid things, soldier,’ he explained. ‘Only normally, see, there’s Pellrec telling me not to, to keep me in line. You’d think it’d be the other way, what with me a sergeant and him not, but that’s just the way it turned out.’

  Arken looked back to where the surgeon was stripping off Pellrec’s breastplate. ‘Sergeant . . . ?’

  ‘I’m going to do a stupid thing now,’ Varmen announced, loud enough for the sentinels to hear as well. ‘You’ve got a good enough head on you. If this goes arseupwards you’re in charge. Do what you can with what I’ve left you, and just hope the Sixth pulls its finger out before it’s too late.’

  Arken’s look was bleak, but he said nothing. Varmen shouldered past the sentinel line, now only three men and one of them wounded. Nothing’s going to change anything at this point, he knew, but at the same time a voice was hammering inside his head: Pellrec can’t die; not now, not ever! Too many years together, under the mail. There was a sick, horrified feeling inside him, waiting for him to indulge it, but a soldier’s habits meant he could leave it down there unrequited.

  ‘Sergeant,’ one of the other sentinels murmured, and Varmen strode out into the open and waited, drawing his sword.

  He expected a few arrows on the instant, just Dragonfly-kinden reflexes at work, but none came. Perhaps he had startled them as much as he had alarmed his own men. He waited, letting the weight of his armour settle comfortably about him.

  They should kill him, he knew. He was a perfect target. One of their archers could be sighting carefully on his eyeslit, the fine mail at his throat. He just kept on standing there, as though daring them to do it.

  There was movement now, amongst the trees. Suddenly seeing the part of the plan he had missed, Varmen snapped out, ‘Hold your shot! Nobody so much as sneezes!’ That was to stop his own followers killing his idea stone dead.

  One of the Commonwealers was coming out to him, just one. It was the woman, of course. She had her long recurved bow strung, an arrow nocked and half drawn back, picking her way towards him uncertainly. It must take courage, he decided, but he already knew she had that. To him she looked very young, but he assumed she must be one of their nobility, or some prince’s by-blow.

  ‘Are you surrendering?’ She had stopped well out of sword reach.

  ‘No,’ he called back.

  ‘Are you . . . ?’ She slackened tension on the bowstring, just a bit. ‘What are you doing? Are you asking for permission to relieve yourself? It must be hard, in all that metal.’

  The soldier’s joke, coming from her, surprised a laugh out of him. ‘You have no idea,’ he told her. He had forgotten just how pleasant her voice sounded. ‘I’m challenging you.’

  ‘You’re what?’ She was staring at him with a faint smile, as though he was quite mad, but in a mildly entertaining way.

  ‘I heard,’ he said, trying to dredge up precisely what he had heard, and from whom, ‘that your lot do duels and single combats and that.’

  ‘We’re at war,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s a little late for that.’

  ‘Come on, now.’ Trying to gently cajole her into it, with Pellrec being cut open somewhere behind him, felt unreal. ‘Me against your champion. If we win, you go home.’

  ‘We are home,’ she said, and left the words hanging there for a moment before adding, ‘You may have noticed a large movement of soldiers from your lands onto ours. We call that an invasion.’

  And she’s probably lost family, and she’s certainly lost followers, even today, and she’s still out here talking to me, despite that, and she’s interested and . . .

  ‘And what would we get, if we won?’ she threw in. ‘Your men will throw down their weapons and bare their throats? I don’t think so.’

  ‘You get me dead,’ Varmen said. ‘You’ve seen me fight. Take me out of the line, you’ll win that much sooner. Don’t think the Sixth’s going to take for ever to find us.’

  She looked at him for a long time, and eventually he thought he saw something like sympathy in her dark eyes. ‘I have more recent news than you, Wasp, whatever your name is.’ He could see that the rudeness of her forthcoming comment bothered her, even here between enemies. Such a delicate lot, these . . .

  ‘Varmen, Sergeant of Sentinels, Imperial Sixth Army, known as “The Cutters”,’ he said automatically. ‘And you, soldier?’

  ‘Princess-Minor Felipe Daless,’ she told him. He did not know enough about the Commonweal hierarchy to say whether ‘princess-minor’ was a great deal, or just fine words. ‘Sergeant Varmen, word has come back that our Grand Army has scattered your people, killed a great many. They are hunting the survivors even now. Our little conflict here is being repeated a dozen times, just a few miles away. So the army that will find us here will not be flying the black and yellow.’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got nothing to lose then,’ he said. She was caught unawares by it, staring.

  ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ she pressed.

  Pellrec is dying. Even now he may be dying. ‘Not my command, Princess Daless. This is my command. Your man going to fight me or not?’

  ‘We can’t let you go,’ she said. He sieved for genuine regret and found it there. ‘I’m sorry. We are at war.’

  ‘What can you give me?’ he asked, using honesty as a weapon, taking advantage of a better nature he knew was in there. And if this were reversed? No imperial officer would think twice before killing anyone pulling this kind of trick.

  ‘A day’s grace,’ she said. ‘After all, our numbers will only increase. I shall take your challenge, Sergeant Var-men. You are an extraordinary man of your kinden.’

  It tasted like victory, even if it was nothing of the sort. The fact that Pellrec, that all of them, would die in any event, win or lose, did not impact on him. Instead he just knew that the surgeon would still have time.

  ‘Bring it on,’ he said.

  ‘You have called out a formal challen
ge, have you not?’ she asked him. ‘Do you not wish to prepare yourself before the duel?’

  He almost said no, before realizing that she was allowing him time for free. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How long?’

  ‘An hour would be fitting.’ She was still trying to work him out, no doubt seeing wheels within wheels when all that faced her was a simple soldier with an injured friend. At last she put a hand out to him, open and empty. He dropped halfway into his fighting stance, bringing his shield up, before he overrode the instinct. Clasping hands, that’s right. Forgot they did that. He levered his helmet off, feeling the cold air on his face.

  ‘Human after all,’ she said. ‘How easy it is to forget.’ Her hand was still out, and he clasped, wrist to wrist, awkwardly.

  ‘Amongst my people, an open hand means you’re about to kill someone,’ he explained, meaning the energy of the Wasp sting that could sear out from the palm. Her hand, on the wrist of the gauntlet, was unfelt, weighing nothing.

  ‘How sad,’ she said, and stepped back. ‘One hour, Sergeant Varmen.’

  Just Varmen, Princess. He felt a lot of things, just then: his anguish for Pellrec; his knowledge that he was extorting a grace from the Commonwealers that he was in no way entitled to; and his utter, earthy admiration of Felipe Daless.

  He returned to his men, and Arken’s questioning look. ‘Going to be about an hour,’ Varmen told him. ‘Then you and the lads will get some entertainment.’

  ‘You know what you’re doing, Sergeant,’ Arken said, not quite making it a question.

  An hour. He had not considered what he would do with himself for that hour. A glance told him the surgeon was still at work. He could not watch that because, in a small but keen way, he was a squeamish man. He could not watch butchers at their trade, even had it not been a friend under the knife. He took some scant comfort from the fact the surgeon was still working.

  There was a sound, a choking gurgle. Herbs are wearing off. Varmen turned away, his stomach twitching. His gaze passed across the mutinous Fly-kinden, Arken’s dispirited medium infantry, the remaining sentinels still at their post.

  ‘Stand down, lads,’ he told the armoured men. ‘Take a rest.’ He found he trusted Felipe Daless instinctively, which he really should not do. ‘Be easy.’

  ‘Hold him! More sedative!’ the surgeon snapped, and Pellrec groaned, with a raw edge to the sound. Varmen shuddered and stepped out into the open again.

  Nothing to do but wait. How was the princess-minor spending her time? Some mindless ritual, no doubt. They were a superstitious lot, these Commonwealers. They believed in all sorts of nonsense and magic, but it had proved no answer for good battle order, automotives and artillery. He wondered now if it helped them in some other way. Just now he would subscribe to anything that simply helped calm the mind.

  He carefully lowered himself to his knees. He could not sit in the armour, but it was padded out to let him kneel indefinitely. He thrust his sword into the earth. He would wait for her like that, and try not to hear the increasingly agonized sounds from behind him. He took up his helm, looking at the curve of his reflection in it. Ugly-looking bastard. Wouldn’t lend him a tin bar piece.

  A succession of bitter thoughts occupied his mind then: the argument with his father the last time he had returned to the family farm; a girl he had left in Volena; the time he had been in a rage, and killed an elderly slave with one blow – not something a Wasp should regret, but he had always felt it ignoble.

  What time had gone by he could not have said, but when he looked up she was standing before him: Felipe Daless. She had an open-faced helm on now, and a breastplate, moulded in three bands that could slide over one another: breasts, ribs, navel. She had bracers and greaves. Little of it was metal: these Commonwealers were good with it, but sparing. Their armour was lacquered and shaped chitin, mostly, over horse leather. They had a knack, though, to shine it up until the best pieces glowed with colour like mother-of-pearl. Her armour was like that, brilliant and shimmering. Varmen had seen such armour throw back the fire of a Wasp’s sting without the wearer even feeling the warmth of it.

  Against swords, however, it could not compare to imperial steel.

  ‘Time, is it?’ he asked. She nodded.

  ‘Go send for your champion then,’ he said, with faint hope.

  ‘She stands before you,’ Daless told him.

  ‘Thought she might.’ Varmen levered himself to his feet. I knew it would be – surely I did. Not my fault that we’re the only kinden sane enough to keep our women from war. How’re you going to get next year’s soldiers, with this year’s women all dead, sword in hand? It was a strength of the Empire, of course, and a weakness shared by almost all its enemies, but he had never regretted it more than when Felipe Daless stood before him now in her gleaming mail.

  To his eyes, a veteran’s eyes, she looked small and young and brave.

  ‘You are not like the rest of your kinden,’ she observed.

  ‘Nothing special, me,’ he countered.

  Pellrec screamed, a full-throated shriek of agony, erupting from nothing. Varmen did not flinch, just raised his helm to don it. In the moment before his world shrank to a slot, he saw her expression. She knew. In that instant she understood everything about him, why he was doing what he did, what he sought to gain.

  She had only sympathy and understanding for him as she drew her blade. It was one of the good old Commonwealer swords that their best people carried: four feet long, slender and arrow-straight, but half of the length was hilt, making it almost something like a spear. She gripped it with both hands, but he knew it would be light enough to swing with one, if she needed.

  He shrugged, settling his pauldrons properly, took up shield and sword, and nodded.

  She was at him, and Pellrec screamed again at the same time, so that it seemed the sound came from her mouth as she leapt. Her wings flashed and flared from her back, feet leaving the ground even as her blade came for him. He swayed slightly, letting the tip draw a line in the paint of his breastplate. His mind followed the arc of her flight even if his eyes could not. His shield took the next blow, raised sightlessly to shadow her, and the third struck his shoulder as he turned, glancing off the metal. His sword was already lunging for where he guessed she’d be, but he had misjudged that. She was a flicker of movement off to his left, getting under his guard. He heard her real voice then, a triumphant yell as her blade scythed at his head.

  It struck. There was no way he could have ducked it. All he had time for was to hunch his shoulders and cant his helm away from the blow. He felt the impact like a punch in the head, but the cutting edge of her blade slid from the curve of his helmet, clipped the top and was clear.

  He took two steps back and found her again. She was staring, wide-eyed. She has never fought a sentinel before. He felt sorry for her then, as though he was cheating somehow. Not just armour, girl, not the waste-of-time tinpot stuff the light airborne wear; not even the plate and chain that Arken’s people slog about in. This is padding under leather under fine-link four-way chain under double-thickness plate that the best Beetle-kinden smiths forged to my every measurement, and nobody who’s not trained for it could even walk in it.

  He went for her. He had to, cutting in under his own shield to gut her. It helped her get over her surprise. Her wings flashed her back, ten feet out of reach. He could wait. It wasn’t as though she was going anywhere.

  She should have started running rings just then, making him turn, taking advantage of his narrow view, but she could not see the world as he saw it. She attacked head on. Her wings opened again, a brief sheen in the air that launched her at him. Her sword was a blur in both hands. He braced behind his shield.

  He did not see the blows, just felt the impact. The shield, moved to his best guess, took two. One slammed him in the side, denting breast and back where they came together. A fourth struck the plates of his upper arm, barely hard enough to make a mark. The strikes told him where she was as well
as eyes could have done. His sword was swifter than she thought, not quite as swift as she was. Dragonfly-kinden were fast like that. He felt the faintest scrape where he had nicked some part of her own mail and even as she fell back her blade scored a fifth strike on him, bounding back from one of his greaves. He stepped back again and let his eye-slit find her.

  Her face was set firm. She had appreciated the rules of the game now. Not first hit, Princess, not first blood even. You have to hit me until this skin of steel gives way.

  Varmen was a strong man made stronger by the weight of metal he had lived with these ten years. He would only have to hit her once.

  Her wings fluttered, shimmers of light and motion, there for a moment, now gone. She had not moved. She kept her sword between them but would not come to him. Fair enough. My turn, I reckon.

  He set himself to motion. There was an art to fighting in full mail that was every bit as hard-learned as all her duelling fancy. It was a study in momentum and inertia, and Varmen had spent years mastering it. He was slow when he started moving, and her wings fluttered again, sword held out towards him, but then he was hitting his speed, and she saw that he would slam straight through any parry she put up. He drove in with sword and shield, always leading with the blade, great cleaving strokes that never stopped, just curved on into more and more blows at her. Oh, it was no difficulty for her to step or fly out of the way, but he made her move. He drove her back and forth like a wind playing with a leaf. Each small move of his birthed a greater move of hers. He was a miracle of economy. She attacked back sometimes, saw where his strike was going and laid her sword on him, on the shoulder, on the side, on his shield as it met her ripostes even as she made them. He could see it in her face, though. He did not need to dance. She could not cut through his steel. He would run her, and run her, until she had no more run left in her. Already she was backing against the trees. He was driving her like an animal.