Salute the Dark

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The logistics, though! Ten thousand men in the dark of a clouded night, but each one with an absolute knowledge of where his neighbours were and where his feet were going, so that not an elbow jostled, not a foot was trodden on. They had muddied their armour, smeared lampblack on their blades. For a vast mass of heavy infantry they moved absurdly quietly, not a word spoken or needed, just the gentle clink of mail.

  In advance of them, in the air and on the ground, went their screen of skirmishers: scores of Mantis warriors from the Ancient League, Moth-kinden archers, Flies, men and women to whom the dark was no barrier, sent ahead to find and silence the Wasp scouts and pickets. They were utterly silent, invisible by skill and Art and the cloak of night. They were merciless, killing by arrow or blade without warning, without fail. General Malkan had not stinted on his scouts, supplementing his own people’s poor eyes with the keener vision of Fly-kinden and fielding enough watchmen to give him every warning of raid or ambush, and not one of them lived to report to him.

  And then there was Balkus and the other allies who were here, but whom nobody knew what to do with. After plans were laid, the tacticians had found themselves with three commanders that had no obvious place in their scheme, but whose numbers were such that it would be imprudent to leave them out. They had in the end given the right flank to Balkus: the trailing right flank that straggled back behind the main line of advance in case some Beetle loudly fell over his neighbour. Here were Parops’ Tarkesh expatriates and the little contingent of Tseni that Plius had called for. Here were the Collegium merchant companies, with their snapbows at the ready, and nailbowmen interspersed throughout in case the Wasps got too close.

  The Collegium contingent did not have a mindlink to keep them together and, as they drew closer, Balkus could not risk shouting at them the way an officer of such a rabble would normally need to. He was uncomfortably aware that they were getting strung out, unable to match the brisk pace that the Sarnesh had set, but there was nothing he could do about it. He would just have to trust that not too many of them would get lost. At least, back here, they were not likely to sound any alarms.

  In Balkus’ own head were the Sarnesh officers. He had tried to block them out, but it was a constant rattle of orders and reports, relaying information he needed to know. It had been a long time since he had counted himself a son of Sarn but the wider family had closed about him seamlessly. He was dragged along with their advance, hearing the tacticians convey out their orders to adjust the facing of the line, to increase the pace, and hearing the reports come back from the officers at the front – enemy scouts down, the lights of the camp now in sight.

  When the word came to charge, Balkus found that his pace picked up instantly and without question, so that he almost left the men under his command behind in the dark. Those nearest him hurried to catch up, and so the unspoken order to run was passed back simply through people finding themselves being outdistanced by those in front of them. Out there in the dark thousands of swords had been unsheathed, while crossbows were cocked on the run.

  He sensed the precise moment that the Wasp camp, as an organism, became aware of the attack, seeing a sudden, vast and unheralded rush of movement in the torchlight, the sentries already falling to arrow-shot. It was as though, for just a second, the Wasps themselves partook of the great Sarnesh mind, if only to register a brief surprise.

  Then the Sarnesh line thundered into the Wasp encampment, braving the first scatter of sting-shot, breaking the fragile shell formed by the sentries to get at the meat within.

  ‘All right let’s go!’ Balkus yelled to his people, to Parops and Plius, his whole ragged command. ‘Form an archery line on me!’ And with that he was off, running and not waiting for them. They would have to catch up with him, and already he was sending a thought out – Where do you want us? – abandoning himself to the greater mind.

  The general was shouting desperately at the nearest Wasp soldiers as they rushed by, trying to re-establish his authority. Salma rushed him just as another member of the dusty rabble did – a stocky Beetle-kinden woman wielding a simple workshop hammer. Malkan rounded on her furiously, swayed aside from the heavy stroke, and then loosed a sting-shot into her face, blasting her backwards. Salma drove his sword into the general’s side, but the man’s heavy mail turned the blow. Reeling from the force of it, Malkan was spun half-around, but then his blade came lashing back at Salma, trying to gain room.

  Salma kept with him, almost inside the reach of their swords, knowing that if he fell back then Malkan would scorch him. He managed a glancing gash across the man’s face with one thumb, and jabbed up with his sword, though too close to put any force into it. The tip dug between Malkan’s armour plates but there was chainmail beneath to catch it. Salma caught a glimpse of the Wasp’s expression, twisted in fury with blood smeared across it. Then the general’s shoulder slammed into Salma’s chest, knocking him backwards. He expected the lash of the man’s sting, but instead Malkan was coming at him sword-first, the short, swift blade dancing and swooping in the gap between them. Salma fell back before the first three swings, and then caught the next on his own weapon, trying a riposte that Malkan instantly turned back on him. The Wasp kept his attack going, for a moment forgetting both his army and his rank, becoming just one duellist intent on the death of another. Salma picked up the rhythm: it had been a long time since he had fought one-on-one like this. Malkan’s offence was savage, leaving almost no gap for Salma to get a blade through.

  He’s good, he’s good. Salma flung himself up, wings flaring, arcing overhead and coming down behind the man, sword striking backwards to take him as he turned. Malkan was faster, catching the blow but not strongly enough to counterattack. Salma took the lead now, lunging and cutting, always moving his feet, darting left and right or flicking up with a moment’s rush of his wings. Malkan’s armour, which had turned so many blows, now slowed him down. He could not match Salma for speed. Even defending, he still kept his poise, slowly turning the tide, letting Salma wear himself out against Malkan’s immaculate parries until he had an opening to strike. Salma’s blade pierced his guard once, to dent his pauldron and bound away, and Malkan took this opening smoothly. His blade lanced narrowly past Salma as the Dragonfly threw himself aside, and then Malkan’s offhand blazed with golden fire.

  The bolt was badly aimed, hurried. It seared across Salma’s shoulder and side rather than smashing into his chest, but it was enough to make him reel, stumbling over the corpse of the Beetle-kinden woman, and Malkan drove forwards with a snarl of triumph.

  His sword blazed with white fire, the night around them as bright as noon. The blade drove beneath Salma’s ribs with all the force that Malkan could give it.

  She had gone by many names already. It was the custom of her kind to don a new name as easily as a new garment, to suit fresh circumstance. She had been Free of Lilies and Soaring Fire. She had been Grief in Chains and Aagen’s Joy. And most recently she had been Prized of Dragons, and the lover of Prince Minor Salme Dien.

  Her kind were strange and few, living in remote places, secluded glades throughout the Commonweal and beyond. They lived off the sun’s own light, and had no needs or cares save when others found them. They were coveted, taken, forced, enslaved. They were the bright cousins of the Moth-kinden, too shining and beautiful for others to contemplate without wanting to possess them. When they were enslaved, though, they brought a trail of ruin, being passed from hand to hand, stolen, bought in blood, becoming the cause of fights and murders and the sundering of friends and brothers. It was only from other kinden, and their small and greedy minds, that they learnt of such things as sadness.

  Salma had been different. Salma had been an island in the raging sea of anger and fear and lust. Salma had brought back to her an awareness of the nobility of his people, the one people that the Butterfly-kinden consented to live amongst. But Salma had a flaw, in that his nobility had driven him to a desperate, violent course.

  She had known it
would end like this, but she had led Morleyr and the others here anyway, desperate to find him in time to snatch him from the claws of the Empire, to rescue him as she had rescued him before the walls of Tark. Freed now from the earth, from the tunnel that Morleyr had crafted with his own hands; freed from the general’s tent and rising with flaming wings above the fighting that spread out from it, she saw him.

  He had fallen to his knees just then, and the Wasp was dragging the blade out, and she felt, in her own soul, the life that was Salme Dien wink out – cut to the heart, dead on the instant – and beyond even her powers to bring back.

  She had already learnt many terrible things from the Empire and its subject peoples. She had learnt of betrayal and need and contempt, bigotry and vice. She had learnt hate and rage, but never until now had she experienced these emotions herself. There came surging through her something monstrous, roaring and screeching. There was a voice in her mind and it was crying out for something her kind had never known before.

  Vengeance! it screamed, and she was powerless against it, battered by the storm of feeling that was now blowing her from the sky down towards General Malkan.

  She saw him look up, shielding his eyes. Beyond him, the Wasp soldiers were no longer rushing frenziedly backwards and forwards, but instead were staring only at her. She was used to that, to attracting such attention. The massed eyes of 500 men were no obstacle to her. Her attention was on Malkan only.

  She saw him take a step away, stumbling, the sword becoming loose in his hands, falling from his grip.

  She screamed, and let her Art fly from her, all of it, using Art that no other kinden could know. So the Empire had taught her how to hate, at last, and she would teach them something in turn.

  Balkus took his men forwards another twenty yards, and by now they dutifully formed their two ranks of archery line around him without needing to be told. The battle was going raggedly, messily, for not even the Sarnesh mindlink could force this pre-dawn fight to run smoothly. The Wasps had rallied swiftly along the far edge of the line, and now there was a solid block of soldiers opposing the centre, composed of imperial sentinels and heavy infantry with a circling screen of the light airborne. The Sarnesh advance had ground to a halt.

  Losing our advantage. The surprise and momentum that had carried them this far was fast disappearing. The attackers’ losses were mounting and Balkus was acutely aware that his detachment was due for a hammering if the Wasps actually threw a counterattack his way. Parops’ Tarkesh soldiers were keeping a line of shields braced against the stings and flagging snapbow bolts that arced over, thus giving cover to Balkus’ snapbowmen. However the Wasp line was growing longer by the minute, as more of their men ran to the front. Now, Balkus had Plius’ men making a line down his formation’s right flank, taking up where Parops’ shields left off and watching the imperial lines extend ever further to flank them. The Tseni agent, squeezed into hastily refitted armour, was white-faced and sweating. He had been a long time as a civilian in Sarn.

  Balkus shook his head, whilst around him the snapbowmen of Collegium loosed their shots, scattering the Wasp line as it tried to form up. The Mantis warband that had been on his far right had been scythed down almost to a man by an enemy snapbow volley, and a moment earlier he had felt in his mind the sudden flare and silence that had signified a leadshot ball ploughing through twenty ranks of Sarnesh soldiers.

  But where in the wastes is their real artillery? Apart from the leadshotter, and a lone catapult somewhere towards the rear of the enemy’s camp, there had been nothing so far, not even war-automotives. Does that mean Salma actually pulled it off?

  The order came just then. Commander Balkus, your men to loose on the Wasp centre.

  What about our flank? Balkus demanded, but then realized that the thought had remained in his head. He could not question the order. Obedience was too deeply bred in him. The Wasps across from him were already finding the range, so that Parops’ men were taking a battering. Balkus turned his attention to the solid mass of heavy infantry at the centre, and saw that they were about to press forwards.

  We are dead, he realized – another thought he was keeping to himself – and then he shouted, ‘With me!’ and rushed to get in range of the Wasps, taking advantage of the space that opened up between Parops and the Sarnesh main force.

  A snapbow bolt, at the limit of its range, jammed into his mail with a spark of pain but he ignored it, knowing that his men were following him, and that enough of them were bright enough to know what a bad idea this was. The Wasp left flank, which had been trading shot with his men, suddenly began to pull together, to seize the opportunity. Without being asked, Plius’ contingent moved their shield-wall to take the brunt of them as they came.

  ‘Throw everything you’ve got into those lads!’ Balkus shouted out in a real battlefield bellow. The men and women of Collegium fell into place around him as though they were professionals, and not just a rabble of tradesmen, merchants and adventurers. Their expressions, Beetle and Fly and Ant and many others, were fixed and blank, concentrating on the task in hand while blotting out the carnage around them. It was only their second battle, and this time they had no walls to stand behind.

  The Wasp centre surged forwards, and Balkus’ snapbowmen opened up almost as one. The closest corner of the Wasp formation crumpled instantly, sending a shock from man to man, so that the far side was still moving, but out of step, and the near side was at a standstill. In this second of confusion, the Sarnesh began charging them, thundering forward shield to shield, whilst the men of the second rank loosed their crossbows and snapbows directly into the faces of the enemy line.

  ‘They’re coming!’ Plius bellowed, drawing his blade for the first time. The Wasp left wing, heedless of what was happening at their centre, was rushing them, both on the ground and in the air. Balkus watched his own people reloading all around him, and knew they would be in time for one more round.

  ‘And loose!’ and they did, raking through the spread formation of light airborne and infantry. The Tseni soldiers braced themselves, with shields overlapping, and the Wasps struck them head on. Between Balkus and the Tseni, Parops’ men were ready waiting, cutting into place like the blades of shears to trap the Wasps between their shields and those of Plius’ contingent. To Parops’ left, there were only the Collegium irregulars to hold the line.

  ‘Nailbows!’ Balkus roared, and took his own up from its strap, emptying it rapidly into the charging Wasps. The roar of the weapons from all around him told him that his order had been heard, and for a moment the Wasp charge was down to nothing, as though a great fist had struck them still. Then they were coming on again, and Balkus had his sword drawn whilst his band of militia were taking up their shields and maces, axes and spears, with the pikes thrusting in from the second and third ranks. The Tseni line buckled abruptly, no longer enough of them left to hold. The shock of impact recoiled into Parops’ shield-wall, as the Wasps drove a wedge between him and Balkus’ men. Plius died without ever striking a blow.

  From behind the Wasps, from within their camp, came a sudden, soundless explosion.

  It was light only, with no force: a monstrous wash of white light. Balkus reeled back, covering his eyes, hearing a few sounds of metal on metal, the scream of a man wounded. The Wasps had meanwhile faltered, scattering within feet of their targets, pulling back. Balkus, still blinking, saw them looking around, their officers trying to find out what had just happened.

  Something was burning within the Wasp camp – no, not burning, something was alight. Hanging in the air was a human shape, but one so bright that it hurt the eyes. The Wasps closer to it had all turned towards it, but were now pushing away. The light was so bright that Balkus could see every detail beneath it. This was not bright like day. No day had ever been so harshly radiant.

  There was a figure directly before that light, and Balkus swore in awe and fear because the man standing there was burning, flaming incandescent. His very armour was glowing wh
ite-hot with the focus of that terrible light. This was Art, Balkus realized, but Art that he had never seen before, and never wanted to see again. The man was staggering, flailing, and yet he still faced the searing, glowing creature before him, the light so excruciating that he could not draw himself away from it, even as his armour melted on his boiling skin.

  And there was a flare, another tidal wave of light ripping through the Wasp army, so that those closest to the fire, those that had turned to see what it was, screamed and clutched at their eyes and fell to the ground.

  And it was gone, and the torches and lanterns of the Wasp camp barely touched the utter dark, but the Sarnesh were in one another’s minds and they rammed home their attack into the suddenly disarrayed Wasps. Then Balkus gave the order to shoot at an enemy he knew was there, only yards before him, unseen and unseeing, and the snapbows of Collegium shattered the Wasp left and broke them apart.

  Twenty-Six

  The rebellion in Myna had broken out all at once and yet without any unification. The news of General Reiner’s death was the spark that had sent every cell of resistance fighters into the streets, but it spread faster than Kymene could control it. Whilst many bands heeded her order to wait and attack in unison, others had simply struck at whatever local target the Imperials might provide.

  The imperial garrison already had its men out in force in the city. The first reaction to the deaths of both Reiner and Latvoc, neither of whom had been men to willingly share their plans with subordinates, was to round up known troublemakers and attempt to continue Reiner’s iron-fisted bludgeoning of the populace. In many cases the soldiers thus despatched ran straight into the local resistance as it, too, sallied forth. There was a score of separate skirmishes within the first hour of the rebellion, and, in most of the fights, sheer numbers overwhelmed the small punitive forces the Empire had sent out. Where they had expected to find at worst a rabble of malcontents armed with stones, knives and clubs, the imperial soldiers ran headlong into Myna’s military heritage.