What a rabble, though. Most had fought the Vekken Ant-kinden, but the frantic defence of a walled city against one’s neighbours was not a field battle against a mighty Empire. He was amazed that there were so many ordinary citizens signed up, and still signing. The people of Collegium were not like Ant-kinden to be so slavishly selfless, nor were they fools either. They were stepping straight into the fires with their eyes open, in full knowledge of what they would face.
The very thought brought a lump into his throat. It brought back moments of the fight against the Vekken, especially after they had breached the walls. He was no Collegiate man himself, but he felt a stubborn knot of pride in the way these shopkeepers and artisans had proved they would fight. Their military skills were suspect, their equipment untested, but their hearts were the hearts of heroes, one and all.
He eventually found himself back at his own carriage, where Parops opened one eye on hearing his approach.
‘Everyone tucked in?’ the Tarkesh asked.
‘Going to have to kick them all awake soon enough,’ Balkus replied. ‘We can’t be far from the city, now.’
‘I could tell that from your enthusiasm,’ said Parops drily.
Balkus nodded again, heavy of heart. He sat down wearily, staring out of the window. Not being a man much accustomed to examining his feelings he could not have said whether this sudden despondency was due to the imminent return to his long-abandoned home city or the prospect of leading so many untried soldiers into battle.
I should have stayed simple, he reflected. Ambition was the root of this. He might not even be on this troop-train if he had not pushed his way to the front when they were calling for officers. I’m not commander material. I know it. But the men of Collegium had instantly seized upon him in the sure knowledge that Ants like him all knew their business when it came to war.
And here he was in the small hours, the train pulling closer towards Sarn, with both a responsibility and a reconciliation that he never wanted.
The feel of the engine, thrumming through the wooden floor beneath his feet, changed noticeably: the train was slowing. Throughout the carriages, soldiers would be rousing on feeling this change of pace, or their officers would be shouting them awake.
‘Will you look at that,’ Parops exclaimed, from the seat opposite in what was nominally the officers’ carriage. ‘It looks like the place is already under siege.’
Balkus leant out of the window, seeing hundreds of fires and, beyond them, the dark heights of the walls of Sarn. ‘What in the wastes . . . ?’ he murmured. The train was swiftly passing them now, all those little campfires, and the tents and makeshift shacks that sprouted around them. ‘This lot wasn’t here when you and Sten came?’
‘All new to me,’ Parops confirmed.
Balkus tried to get a clearer impression of the people huddled about those fires, aided by the train’s slowing pace. They were a ragged lot – he saw the pattern quickly because he had expected it: lots of children, old people, few men or women of any fit age to bear a sword.
‘Refugees,’ he decided.
‘From where?’ Parops asked him.
Balkus looked out again, recognizing Beetle-kinden, Flies, many others. ‘Everywhere that lies east of here, I’d guess,’ the big Ant decided, the thought of such displacement settling on him heavily. ‘Where are they supposed to go when the Wasps get here?’
The train rolled on, seemingly heedless, passing inside the city walls and coasting to a slow halt at the Sarnesh rail depot. Balkus stood up, feeling a hollowness inside, a gap into which the idle thoughts of his kin everywhere around were already leaking. It all looked so painfully familiar to him: the gas lamps glowing throughout the squat, square buildings of Sarn proper, whilst on the other side of the train gleamed the disparate lights and lanterns and torches of the Foreigners’ Quarter. There were soldiers everywhere: he saw them up on the walls, installing new artillery, or waiting by the train to load and unload, or just marching and drilling, making ready.
‘The last time I saw so many Ant-kinden under arms,’ he said, ‘they were trying to kill me.’
‘You realize everyone expects you to do the talking, I hope,’ Parops said.
‘Why me?’ Balkus stared at him. ‘No, anyone but me.’
‘Your fellow commanders are all Beetle-kinden,’ the Tarkesh pointed out, ‘which in their eyes makes you the logical choice, because you at least can overhear what the Sarnesh are saying to one another.’
‘It’s been a long time,’ Balkus replied slowly. He could indeed feel the hum and buzz of Ant-kinden conversation from outside the train. He had been actively fighting to blot it out. It had been such a very long time. But we now need to know if my former countrymen will deal honestly with us.
‘Pox,’ he spat, ‘you’re right.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Parops reassured him. ‘As the leader of Free Tark, I’ll be right there beside you. They’ll love that.’
* * *
It should have been a bleak and blustery day suitable for their departure, but the mocking sun was bright in a cloudless sky, beating down on the Collegium airfield as if a summer day had been imported early.
Stenwold had spent the last two days arguing bitterly with – it seemed – almost everyone. Lineo Thadspar had done everything in his power to persuade Stenwold not to go at all. Stenwold had done everything he could to persuade Tynisa to go with him, instead of just casting herself into the void by going in search of her father.
‘Tisamon can look after himself,’ he had insisted.
‘Tisamon will go looking for a fight,’ she had told him. ‘And if that one doesn’t kill him, he’ll go looking for another, just like he did after Myna. Oh, he’s good at it – I have never seen anyone fight as well as Tisamon – but that doesn’t mean he’s immortal. I need to find him before he goes into one fight too far.’
And she had been right, of course, and Tisamon himself was not so young any more. We none of us are.
Amidst a scatter of larger airships, the Buoyant Maiden seemed makeshift and dowdy. Jons Allanbridge had been more than happy to renew his contract with Stenwold and, based on Tynisa’s recommendation, Stenwold had been more than happy to offer it. Destrachis had been right, they would need to travel by air, and Allanbridge seemed to be a good man for slipping something as large as an airship into places with a minimum of fuss.
The Spider himself was already at the rail of the gondola, gazing back at Collegium without expression. The Lowlands were full of odd homeless types, hiring out their skills wherever the road took them. Tisamon has rejoined that brotherhood now. Destrachis, too, was on that path, but Stenwold wondered whether he secretly hoped the Commonweal would take him back.
Standing at the Spider’s shoulder was the cloaked form of Felise Mienn. She had said nothing yet to Stenwold, who did not know what to say to her. The bulk of her shrouded form showed that she wore her armour again. He guessed it provided a protection that was more than the mere physical. She would be a difficult travelling companion, he thought.
‘Are we ready for the off?’ Arianna asked, at his elbow.
He gave her a weak smile. ‘Not you,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘Sten—’
‘I have done my thinking. I would have argued it out with you before, save that everyone else has claimed my time in other arguments. Not you this time, Arianna.’
Her look was pure hurt. ‘After all we’ve done, you don’t trust me?’
‘No! Hammer and tongs, no! Of course I trust you, Arianna, and I love you. You have brought to me . . . such joy as no man in my place deserves.’ He gripped her by the arms. ‘And it could have been you, you must have known, that the cursed Sarnesh had stretched out on their rack. You instead of poor Sperra. No, Arianna, you stay here.’
‘Oh, Che’s already told me how much you like to keep people safe—’
‘Well, this time I’m bloody well going to succeed at it,’ he said.
‘And it coul
d have been you on that rack, too,’ she pointed out. ‘And then what would I have done? Sten, you can’t—’
‘This is my war,’ he said simply. ‘I was fighting this war when you were – hah, when you were still a child.’
‘But you need me.’
‘Yes, yes I do.’ The utter sincerity in his voice finally got through to her. ‘Yes, I need you. And because of that you must stay here. You’ll not be idle, either. You’ll be running my agents while I’m away, taking in the intelligence of the Wasp advance, liaising with the Assembly – and I’m sure you’ll charm those old men and women far better than I ever could. But this is a mad journey, and a long one, and I . . .’ He found he was trembling. ‘I realized at Sarn that if anything happened to you, it would break me, it would destroy me. I do not know the Commonweal. No Lowlander does. This voyage is a necessary madness and I do not want to draw you into it.’
There were tears in her eyes, tears beyond any Spider pretence. ‘This isn’t fair.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But it’s the only way I can do this. I’m sorry.’
He held her for a long time, aware and careless of Allanbridge and the others watching and waiting for him.
But even after Arianna had fled the airfield they would wait longer, for here was Tynisa now with her pack slung over her shoulder. No airship for her, though: she would be making her own way, tracking any news of a lone Mantis duellist whose passage, like enough, would be written in bodies.
Stenwold started over towards her, and she regarded him cautiously, as though she thought he might suddenly order her to be placed under lock and key just to keep her here. He had ceded that battlefield to her, though. He merely held out his hand, offered like the hand of a soldier, and they clasped as comrades.
‘Good luck,’ he said softly. ‘The world around us is about to fall apart at the seams, and I suppose a father is a better reason than many for casting yourself out into the storm.’ In his heart, he had no belief she would ever find Tisamon – or that the Mantis would welcome her if ever she did.
‘And good luck to you,’ Tynisa responded. ‘Do you have even a clue what the Commonweal is going to be like?’
‘No, but I know who does. If I’m lucky I’ll encounter Salma in time for a recommendation on the way.’
‘Give him my love,’ she said, her voice sounding oddly flat. Stenwold knew that she had been fond of the Dragonfly prince once, and that the intervention of Grief in Chains – or whatever the Butterfly-kinden was now calling herself – had thrown her badly. She had been used, at the College, to having her own way in such relationships. And let us hope it is just that, and that she will not take after her father in matters of the heart.
‘Maker, we have the wind! Let’s move!’ called the impatient Allanbridge from the rail of the Buoyant Maiden. Stenwold spared Tynisa one last nod, then he was hurrying for the rope-ladder, clambering hand-over-hand up into the air even as Allanbridge cast off. Tynisa watched the nimble airship rise and tack, its engines directing it north, towards the distant Barrier Ridge that marked the Lowlands border with the mysterious Commonweal beyond.
‘Well, he’s gone,’ she then called. ‘You can come out now.’
Che made her way warily on to the airfield, looking up at the diminishing globe of the Maiden’s airbag. ‘I couldn’t face him,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘He’d have forbidden it.’
‘Che, if I had any say, I’d forbid it, too,’ Tynisa remarked bleakly. She watched as a pair of white-robed College men carried the stretcher towards the clumsy-looking flier that Che had piloted back from Solarno. ‘My offer is still open.’
‘You have your own path to follow,’ Che told her firmly. She now looked so very serious, all of her awkward youth burnt off her.
‘But this is all my fault . . .’
Che shook her head. ‘You just find Tisamon and talk some sense into him. Achaeos needs me. But he needs his people too, so they and I will have to get along as best we can. And, anyway, I won’t be alone.’
Tynisa made a disgusted noise and, right on cue, the fair-haired, square-jawed Wasp-kinden came to join them, wearing now his own imperial armour, just as if he had never turned his coat.
‘Thalric,’ Tynisa acknowledged his arrival coldly.
The Wasp looked at her, his smile devoid of love or humour. ‘How good of you to see me off.’ He held up a hand to forestall her. ‘Can we take all your oaths of vengeance as already said: if I betray you, if I harm Che, so on and so forth, I’m sure all the venom and vengeance of Spider and Mantis will descend on my head.’
Tynisa stared at him levelly. ‘Remember those words when we next meet, Thalric,’ but her voice rang hollow, because if he now chose to make Che the latest in his history of betrayals, there would be nothing she could do about it.
It was a grim flight from Collegium for those on the Buoyant Maiden. Felise was bitter as ice, locked entirely in her own pain. She had nothing to spare for Stenwold and he was grateful for that. He had no way to intrude on her, or to help her, so he left her to herself. Destrachis hung about near her like a shabby ghost, bringing her meals but never venturing to speak. It was plain to Stenwold that the Spider had found the limits of his own expertise and was simply hoping that she would reach out to him.
Is that what he seeks there in the Commonweal: no more than a familiar landscape to console her? But Stenwold suspected the Commonweal would bring no fond memories for Felise Mienn.
Stenwold himself spent his time with Jons Allanbridge, occupying his mind with whatever small mechanical tasks the aviator found him fit for. It was almost like being a student again, serving anew as an apprentice. It was oddly comforting to leave their journey in Allanbridge’s hands, and to shoulder none of the responsibility.
At last they came down beside Sarn. Stenwold had earlier sent a messenger ahead by rail, with no certainty that word would reach Salma in time, or at all. As it turned out, though, there was a blue-grey-skinned Mynan Beetle-kinden waiting for them, riding with two others, and a string of horses and riding insects. They had been in Sarn when the message arrived, and so had waited the extra day for Stenwold’s appearance. The Mynan left his mounts in the care of a subordinate, and joined them in the Maiden, directing Allanbridge east away from Sarn. Towards the Wasp army, Stenwold thought. Salma would face his own ordeal, there, and soon.
They were guided to a camp, and then to another camp, widely spaced, and Stenwold guessed that Salma must be living a mobile life. In the third they finally found him, sitting in a tent and making plans. Whilst the others waited outside, Stenwold himself was allowed in to speak to him.
Amid the gloom of the tent the Dragonfly prince stood marking notes and arrows on a map he had tacked to a board held in his offhand. It was impossible to know how much attention he was paying to his visitor. ‘It’s been a while, Sten,’ he remarked.
‘How is your position?’
‘Fluid. So tell me about Che,’ Salma said. ‘How is she?’
Stenwold watched him. With no more reaction to go on than he could glean from the Dragonfly’s back, he explained Achaeos’ circumstances, described Che sitting distraught at his sickbed.
Salma nodded. ‘I recently dreamt of her passing into darkness. Of course, to the Moths that would be a dream of good omen.’ Outside the tent there were hundreds of armed men and women busying about. They had none of the uniformity of soldiers, but they were clearly fighters, composed of a dozen kinden and all now engaged in packing up their camp and preparing to move. The Buoyant Maiden had tied up in the midst of this chaos of dissolution.
‘And Tynisa?’ Salma asked. He handed the map to a Fly-kinden woman and turned round. As Stenwold recounted Tynisa’s burden and present mission, he re-evaluated the Dragonfly before him.
Salma looked every part the brigand chief. The armour had changed since Stenwold last saw him, presumably the pick of whatever equipment they had liberated from the Wasps. Now it was a cuirass of layered leather with bronze stu
ds over a suit of silk, all of it meticulous Spider work. The sword at his belt was slender and long-hilted, not true Commonweal but of no manufacture Stenwold could identify. About his forehead he wore a gold-inlaid leather band, complete with cheek-guards.
‘You have arrived at a difficult time, Sten,’ Salma said at last, ‘and apparently travelling to see my people, no less.’
‘You think they won’t help?’
‘I cannot say, save that they will do whatever they do for their own reasons only.’ Salma tacked another blank sheet to his writing board and began to scribe on it. ‘Don’t assume they’ll sit like Beetles and listen to hours of argument. Just ask and then accept whatever answer they give.’
‘I’ll remember that.’ Stenwold flinched as something dragged at the side of the tent. A moment later daylight cut in, as the heavy fabric was rolled up around them, a gang of huge men taking the tent apart with care, without effort, even as he and Salma were still inside. He started back from them, for they towered over him, pitch-skinned giants, either with shaved heads or else mops of white hair.
‘Mole Crickets,’ he identified them.
‘Two score of them,’ Salma agreed. ‘Together with half a hundred Grasshopper-kinden from Sho El, which I understand is somewhere as far east as you can go without leaving the Empire. They are Auxillian deserters.’
‘I didn’t think the Imperial Army was that easy to desert from.’
‘Normally there are reprisals against their families, back home. Here, though, we make a practice of not leaving any enemy bodies if we can help it. Whole scouting parties have vanished completely, and the Auxillians along with them. The Wasps cannot then know who has died and who has deserted. And of course some Auxillians themselves realize the potential of this practice – and that here, of all places, there is someone who will take them in. Morleyr and his people came to me of their own will.’
One of the great Mole Cricket-kinden turned and nodded at that, regarding Stenwold suspiciously.
‘Go to Suon Ren,’ Salma said, as he unpinned the paper and passed it to Stenwold. ‘Prince Felipe Shah may yet be holding his winter court there. He will remember me still, I hope, so this shall serve as your introduction.’
Salute the Dark Page 6
