Salute the Dark

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The elders – the Loquae of the hold of Felyal – met together, but there was little to plan. The Mantis-kinden had no use for formations, vanguards, rearguards or shield-walls. That was their strength: individually there was not a warrior to match them in all of the Lowlands, in all the world. The Wasps and their slaves could not stand against them, with blade or bow. This was their heritage, and they believed in it with an iron-shod faith.

  Parents bid their children be strong in their absence, brother and sister parted company: the older and more skilled on their way, the younger staying at home. The very oldest watched their entire families step out into the dark and head off to war.

  The armed might of the Felyal arose along with the dusk, and then hurled itself against an enemy twenty times its size. They came out of the trees in a sudden rush at twilight, unnumbered and unheralded. They were savage and brave, swift and skilled: the warriors of the Felyal, Mantis-kinden fierce and free.

  The first line of warriors swept on in silence, wings hurling high them into the air as they neared the makeshift walls. Their arrows took their marks, sentries falling from the ramparts or dropping where they stood. The Wasps had precious little warning before the Mantids were upon their ramparts, shooting down at the men below.

  The angles of the walls were planned against just such an assault, though. They bellied to halfway up, then drew in, and slots in the upper half allowed the men below to loose their stings and weapons upwards into the attackers. It took only the first sentry’s death-cry to set the camp in motion.

  The Wasps had learnt bitter lessons from the demise of the Fourth. Their progress from Merro had been slowed by assembling their travelling fort each evening, and General Tynan himself had been surprised to reach so near to the forest before this assault came.

  A full third of the Imperial Army was on night-shift. As soon as the call came they were scrambling from their tents, already fully armoured and armed. All the while, the Mantids were vaulting to the wall, driving their arrows into every target in the half-light that the Wasps’ eyes could not pierce. For a moment the Wasps could not form a line. Men were dropping even as they took up position, and there were Mantis warriors everywhere within the camp, their blades bloody. The balance teetered in the favour of the ancient ways of war.

  All through this, engineers were at work. They did not rush forth as soldiers would, and the Mantids did not mark them, perceiving no threat in them. Even when the great engine within the ring of towers grumbled to life they were not hindered. They threw their levers and the generators whirred into motion, and abruptly there was light. The apex of each tower had burst into a blinding white flame that left the inside of the camp – and a hundred yards beyond – as bright as day. The shock of it brought the Mantis influx to a halt, the attackers reeling back, launching into the air, covering their eyes.

  Wasp stings and Wasp crossbowmen now loosed at will. The new snapbows, hundreds of them shipped from Helleron and Sonn, cracked and spat their bolts, too swift and small to be cut aside or dodged. The Mantids were too widely spread for volley fire and so each of the Wasp soldiers picked a target and loosed on his own volition, and the real slaughter started.

  The Mantids did not understand, and with speed and fury they kept mounting the wall and launching themselves into that steel rain of shot, and dying. They died and died. It should have been the end of them, but such was their swiftness that twice more they swept over the inside of the camp once again, lashing and stabbing indiscriminately, reaping whole blocks of Wasp soldiers with their blades. Their steel claws rent flesh and dug around armour, a spinning, lashing dance of blood that carried death to all within their reach. Their archers loosed arrows at the snapbowmen, each shot deadly, but it was like spitting into the storm. Their beasts, the terrible forest mantids, lashed out their killing arms, crushing and severing limbs or taking up whole screaming soldiers and snapping them, their knife-blade mandibles rending steel effortlessly. The Mantis war host fell on the Wasp lines with their spears, their swords and their antique armour that could not protect them.

  There were too few, in the end. Against that scythe of shot, too few ever came together within the walls to break the Wasps, but they tried over and over, until the bodies of their warriors were scattered like wheat after a storm. Their armoured beasts lay still with the fletching of snap-bow bolts riddling their carapaces, eyes dull and barbed limbs stilled. The Mantids shouted their defiance of the invader, each one of them honed to a degree of skill that no Wasp soldier could ever know, masters of a fighting art a thousand years old and more. The snapbows and the crossbows did not care: they found their mark, automatic as machines. And the Mantids charged and died, and charged and died, until even their spirits failed, their proud hearts broke, and they could come no more.

  The flower of the Felyal had fallen that night, and in the morning there were over 1,700 Mantis dead. Despite their technical advantages and their weapons, the imperial slain numbered 173 men more.

  The next day the Felyal was burning. Mantis holds that had stood for a thousand years were going up in flames. Tens of thousands of soldiers and machines, artillery and firethrowers were working their way through the Felyal, torching everyone and everything they came across. The Mantis-kinden still fought back, and every Mantis that died within those trees had already shed the blood of many Wasps, but there were always more Wasps. The burning only stopped when the survivors at last turned and fled, leaving their homes, their lives and their history beneath the Wasp boots. They fled west – where else? They fled towards Collegium, or maybe to Sarn. They had no other choice available.

  In his study in Seldis, Teornis of the Aldanrael perused the news almost dispassionately. The Mantids had served their purpose, and now they were gone. It was a small loss, at least one that no Spider would be sad about. If the war was won, then perhaps they would re-establish themselves, or perhaps not.

  He had been arguing for almost a tenday now. He had been arguing with men of other families, with the women of his own. The time was right to strike and suddenly they were turning away from war. The Wasp force garrisoned north of Seldis, now comprising most of the Eighth Army, made them uneasy.

  ‘Now is the time, only now!’ he had urged them. His agents were ready to ignite Solarno. The Sarnesh were marching. Collegium was bristling with siege engines. The Empire was fighting on all its borders. ‘Now!’ he had repeated.

  They had not seen his ‘now’. The matter was still being wrangled over, their endless circular arguments merely a blind for the political manoeuvres behind the scenes. Everyone wanted to be sure who would be on top, come the end of this.

  Teornis looked again at the news he had received, the grievous blow to his chances and his future.

  The Ants of Kes, that unassailable island city, were not sallying out to strike the Wasp supply lines, so as to do their bit for the salvation of the Lowlands, and the reason for the Imperial Second bypassing them was now clear. The Ants of Kes, after thorough consideration, had signed a mutual non-aggression pact with the Empire, and betrayed the Lowlands to the sword.

  ‘Now!’ he insisted still, but ‘now’ was fading into the past. If he could not capitalize on all he had worked for, then he would be lost, and so, he suspected, would everything else.

  Two days later and he was regretting it all. He had grasped the nettle and got stung. His kinden always placed such stock on self-control, and yet now his hands would not stop shaking. Teornis of the Aldanrael, Lord-Martial and warmonger, had been granted his wish.

  On this bright morning, before the sun’s heat became oppressive, the combined forces of seven of Seldis’ great families had marched north from the city’s walls with the aim of destroying the Wasp Empire’s holding force and severing the supply lines that were all that kept the Imperial Second on track towards Collegium. In this bold stroke, the Spiderlands would secure the entire southern coast against the Wasps, and from there it would be up to Collegium and Sarn to themselves defeat G
eneral Malkan and the Seventh Army. Even this strike had taken all of Teornis’ considerable powers of persuasion, all of the Aldanrael family’s political influence, and a great mass of Spider-kinden self-interest to produce.

  The Seldis force had been levied from a dozen different satrapies within the Spiderlands. As well as a core of Spider-kinden light infantry, drawn from the lesser families or the unfriended and the impoverished, it boasted a host of other kinden: Beetle artificers and heavy infantry with leadshotters and battle-automotives; red-skinned Fire-Ant crossbowmen in copperweave chainmail marching beside hulking Scorpion mercenaries who were bare-chested and carried great swords and axes over their shoulders; flights of Dragonfly-kinden glittering and dancing constantly in the still air. There were Fly-kinden archers and scouts by the hundred, Ant-infantry from far southern cities barely contemplated by the Lowlands, desert-dwelling Grass-hopper-kinden with spears and small circular shields, hairy and uncouth Tarantula-kinden that were supposedly the Spiders’ primitive cousins. This was a mighty host for any Spider Aristos to command. Intelligence informed them that they outnumbered the Wasp force waiting for them by almost three to one.

  While the army was settling into its blocks and ranks, Teornis had conference with his co-commanders. This was the price of war: his sovereignty was usurped. A half-dozen Spider-kinden and their aides eyed each other suspiciously and made endless suggestions about how the army should dispose itself.

  Teornis grew impatient. He had engineered this war and he therefore felt that it should be his to order. He himself argued for a swift attack, light infantry and cavalry on both wings sweeping forward whilst the heavy centre rumbled in to smash whatever defences the Wasps might put forth. They were cautious, and he was argued down. Their kinden was more suited to lying in wait, not charging forth. Teornis was putting his case for the third time, when a Fly messenger came hurtling into the tent.

  The Wasps were on the move. The Wasps were attacking.

  The Spiders could not believe their luck. Agreement suddenly flowered. Orders went out to the archery companies, the artillery, the airborne. The advancing Wasps would be destroyed by massed missile shot, then driven into the Dryclaw desert. Perhaps no foot-soldier would even need to bloody his blade.

  This was not my plan, was all Teornis could think now. He had wanted to attack: he could not be blamed for this. He clung to that excuse, for the scant good it could do him. Even now he was trying to rally his personal guard to retreat from the field, while retreat was still an option.

  It was that cursed weapon of Stenwold Maker’s. Teornis had tried to explain. He had even armed a company of his own Fire Ant-kinden with it, and they were now making a bloody accounting of themselves. The Wasps, though, possessed thousands of the things, whole airborne companies armed with them.

  The battle had begun at long range, as his peers had planned. Specifically it had begun at twenty yards further than the Spiderlands bows or crossbows could reach. As the artillery of both armies had traded shot with slogging patience, the snapbow bolts, fired from shoulder to shoulder, two-deep formations of Wasp infantry, simply flayed the front ranks of the Spider army, leaving them dead in their tracks. For what must have been less than a minute, but had seemed like forever, the Spider commanders had watched the vanguard of their soldiers disintegrate, an alchemical translation of soldiers into corpses that no magician could have matched.

  They were no fools, for all their division, and their orders had gone out as fast as the Fly-kinden could carry them. The Dragonfly airborne had launched into the air, either on their own wings or on the giant beasts they rode. The light archers and crossbowmen had been rushed forwards into range. The spider cavalry had scuttled into action with lance and fang while the automotives had thundered forth. The artillery had perfected its elevation and begun finding the ranges on the close-ranked Wasp lines.

  The Wasps were doing just the same thing, though: their own light airborne rose to meet the Dragonflies while their artillery had begun landing stones and leadshot and explosive grenades with devastating effect amidst the Seldis army. Their snapbowmen, though, had simply shot and shot again and, even when the Spiders denied them a massed target by sending their archers out in loose-knit skirmishing order, the Wasps had found their victims. Less than one in three of the Spiderlands archers even got into range before they died.

  There were still some parts of Teornis’ army holding, and he could not decide whether they were far more loyal than he deserved, or whether they simply did not realize how badly things were going. The Fire Ants had dug in with snapbows and repeating crossbows, and there were still some Dragonflies in the air. Meanwhile the Scorpions had actually got into close fighting, their monstrous swords and axes hacking a bloody wedge into the enemy. Despite all this, Teornis was tactician enough to see that the day was lost.

  ‘Get me to the coast,’ he urged his men. No Seldis for him, because Seldis was where the Wasps would go next and, besides, his own people would hardly be glad to see him right now.

  Still, where can we sail to? The reports received, in all their veiled language, had been plain enough. With the fires of the Felyal behind them, the Wasp army was tearing up the coast towards Collegium, not stopping for anything but travelling as fast as its motorized siege train would let it.

  Something snapped in him, just for a moment, and Teornis whipped his rapier from its scabbard and slashed it across all the papers and reports and maps he had been living with for the last two tendays, scattering them through the air like whirling insects, like cinders. His cry of rage and frustration brought his people running, but instantly he was composed again, his face making no admission that anything had happened.

  We will lose Collegium. Everything was for nothing if that Beetle city fell. The Lowlands would open to the Wasps like a virgin slave.

  Seventeen

  The guards came rushing out at him straight away, but Thalric had caught them just as much by surprise as he had General Reiner. Thalric knew his trade and had spotted the sections of wall they would manhandle away and come bursting through, almost falling over themselves in their shock. They were not Rekef, so had expected threats, justifications, a warning from him. If he had not started killing them as soon as they exposed themselves they would not have known what to do with him.

  He let his sting speak for him, striking them down even as they tried to pile into the room. He expected that they would kill him despite his efforts, but there were only four of them in the end. He had been a four-guard threat, in Reiner’s eyes. A moment later the other two from outside had crashed in, too late again, alerted only by the shouts of the first four. He killed them too before they quite understood.

  He fled to the balcony and paused there, waiting. He himself would have had guards posted either side of the balcony doorway, but Reiner had positioned himself there instead. Thalric’s exit was clear.

  There were no running footsteps, no shouts, no alarm.

  With the utmost care he stepped back into the room, eyes roving dispassionately between Reiner’s corpse and those of his guards. It was over so very quickly that no word had spread. Had nobody even heard? Where were the staff and soldiers of this palace, to come running at the sound of seven murders?

  The servants would normally be locals, so perhaps Reiner did not trust them. Perhaps he was right not to, given the reports Thalric had read in Tharn. As for the soldiers and other imperial officials who should be thronging up here, they were either off trying to crush a resistance that was already too great for them to get their fingers around or had already fallen victim to imperial politics. Looking down at the general’s thin face Thalric wondered whether Reiner had gone a little mad, at the end, backed into a self-made corner by mounting paranoia.

  There was a knock on the door and, motivated by a foreknowledge of who this would be, Thalric called, ‘Come in.’

  In came Colonel Latvoc, mouth already open to speak when he saw the wreckage. Thalric had a palm directed towards
him but Latvoc made no move against him, just stared and stared. Something was melting behind his face, and it was his own future. The ship he had invested everything in, whose fortunes he had backed beyond all else and which he had clung to in the storm, was now sunk.

  He fell to his knees and a noise came from him: not a word, or anything that Thalric had ever heard uttered by anyone before – just a small, thin noise of pure grief. It seemed to Thalric that, in that same moment, Colonel Latvoc suffered more over the loss of his general than did Felise Mienn over the deaths of her children.

  Thalric felt no sympathy, finding again that he was a Rekef officer at heart. In the end he cared only for the Empire, and the Empire’s worst enemy, right now, was itself. It was men like Reiner and Latvoc here, yes, and Maxin and all the other conniving generals and colonels and governors who were tearing out pieces of the Empire for their own fiefdoms, behaving no better than the criminal gangs of Helleron. Even the Emperor himself, if he tolerated or encouraged such practices, was no longer exempt from Thalric’s contempt. Such a weight was suddenly lifted from his shoulders with that thought, for he had done something truly good for the Empire at last.

  He hardly even had to make the decision. His hand seemed to flash fire of its own accord, searing into Latvoc’s slack face and smashing him to the floor.

  Now he could go, his work here done. He went to the balcony and looked out across Myna, a city on the brink of uprising. In the circumstances, what should the good officer do?

  Or what should the turncoat Lowlands agent do? Or the sometime companion of Che Maker?