I had a decision then, to push on as per orders, or to fall back and bare my throat for Old Mercy’s knife. I ordered the advance, such as it was, to continue. I was not one of my more inspired moments, but I was only a lieutenant, and more used to relaying tactical decisions than actually originating them.
Things went to pieces pretty soon after that. Our line was broken up courtesy of some precise strikes by parties of Commonwealers, mostly Mantis-kinden, appearing from the trees and getting to blade range before anyone was the wiser. The arrows followed hard on them, once the Beetles’ shields were in disarray. I sent messengers up and down the line with instructions to keep it together, but the Commonwealers had a habit of picking the messengers off, and the entire advance turned into a series of skirmishes, with most isolated groups independently deciding to pull back out of the forest. Goes to show that soldiers have more sense than their officers, sometimes.
I was with the Wasp heavies when they came in for their battering. There was a feint at us by a half dozen Mantis-kinden with spears and swords, whilst a larger force assailed the Beetles down the line. Then it turned out that was the feint, while we were suddenly up to our ears in Mantis-kinden. The enemy were unarmoured but swift and very good. The heavies did their best, but they were beset from all sides. I ordered the retreat and we began to back out, hoping that we’d run into some of the Auxillians we might have outstripped. Then I got an arrow through the leg and went down.
I lay there, expecting to find a Mantis about to cut my throat at any moment – don’t believe all that rot you hear about their vaunted bloody honour, they’ll gut you without a second thought, any chance they get. Either they had followed up the retreating heavies or they were off fighting someone else. I was left with a few corpses for company and a long shaft gone right through my thigh.
I couldn’t muster my wings at all. Having a shaft through you like that will play hob with your Art. I tried crawling, but the arrow stuck out too far both ways, and each time I snagged it on something I nearly passed out. The same applied when I tried to snap the head off, which is what you’re supposed to do, I’ve heard. Also, there was surprisingly little blood, and pulling the arrow out might change that in radical and unwelcome ways. I lay there, feeling my life creep slowly out from what, on a properly ordered battlefield, would not be a serious injury. The night was coming on, I knew, and Commonweal nights are cold.
I would like to say that I took this all very philosophically, knowing that it was my own failure as an officer that had got me in that predicament, but frankly I was cursing Old Mercy every which way. If you ever needed to prove to some Moth or Commonwealer that all that magic stuff doesn’t work, then take me as evidence. If it was even slightly possible to put a curse on someone then Old Mercy would have burned up on the spot with the fire I was spitting about him inside my head.
Then there was someone stepping very near me and I stopped even those thoughts, as if they might somehow have betrayed me, led an enemy to me. I looked about, but for a moment I saw nobody. Then I realised that the nobody I saw was Cari. She was crouching right by me, festooned with greenery, blending in with skill and Art. Within the cocoon of her stolen foliage I saw her crossbow. She was scanning the trees around us.
“What are you doing here, soldier?” I got out, though my voice (so fierce in my head when I was biting at Old Mercy) was just a croak.
“When you didn’t come back, sir, I thought I’d see if I could find your body. Didn’t want them to, you know...” She made a chopping motion with her off hand.
“Get me out of here,” I rasped at her.
She considered me dubiously. “Dark now, sir, and you can bet they’ll be hunting. Bastards for the dark, Mantis-kinden. No way I could keep quiet with you over my shoulder. Besides...” I thought I saw her grin, “Don’t reckon you’d survive my carrying you anywhere. Now, come morning the other pioneers are going to come out and look for me, and we’ll get you out of the woods. I reckon you and I’d better keep company here ’til then.” After a pointed pause she added, “Sir.”
I wanted to be angry with her, and to assert an officer’s authority, but I was cold and weak and probably the first person in the Empire’s history who’s actually been glad to see a Thorn Bug. I said – I could not stop myself – “You’ll stay with me.” It was a wretched, whining thing to say, and said in a whining way.
“As much as I can, sir,” she said softly.
I kept losing her in the dark, with nothing of the human in her outline. Then she was kneeling right by me, close enough that a couple of her spikes grated on my armour. “Got something for you to drink, sir. It’ll take the pain off a bit.”
Of course, as an officer you never drink anything a soldier offers you, whatever their kinden. Notwithstanding, I gulped it down and, true enough, everything seemed a great deal less urgent shortly thereafter. Lying there in the forest, surrounded by dead soldiers and with a nightmare vision as my ministering guardian, suddenly felt almost idyllic.
I muttered something to that effect, but Cari was busying herself about my let, and taking long enough that eventually I propped myself up on my elbows to have a look. The moon was up by then, and fighting its way through the trees with as much difficulty as we had done in the daytime. She had snapped the arrowhead off – because I could see it lying beside my leg – and as I watched she yanked the shaft free. No amount of numbing potion could quite cover that, and I yelped. Instantly she was still, her crossbow back to hand, waiting and watching. After a long pause she set to bandaging, and I stared at the spectacle, utterly absorbed by it. I had never seen anyone make such hard work of the task, nor had I seen Cari quite so awkward at anything. The simply act of wrapping a bandage three times about my leg and then tying it took her forever, as the cloth continually snagged and caught on her. I had a feeling that she must have left a fair few scratches on my hide, too, but it didn’t seem of pressing concern just then.
“Must make life awkward, all those spikes,” I told her, finding the words slightly hard to get out. “Must be all sorts of things you can’t do.”
She went still, but not in the same way as before. It was like a flinch, that stillness. Something retreated inside her, where all those sharp points could keep it safe.
“Mind you,” I went on, because the words, once started, seemed to have a life of their own, “you’ve got it worse, you’ve got that, whatever-it-is you’ve got. I’ve seen you. Some kind of disease of the spikies. All of them gone wrong, eh? Sorry, I’m sorry for that. You’re a good soldier. Shame, really.”
Slowly she started on the dressing again. “It’s not a disease,” she said.
“Well what is it?” I have no idea why I cared, but it seemed to matter a great deal at the time. “You people, Thorn Bug-people, you’re born all spickly anyway, but you were born even more spickly? Is that what is it?”
“We’re not born like this. The world is not quite as cruel to our mothers as all that. It’s an Art that develops early, though.” She was whispering, scanning the darkness yet again. “But this isn’t the way I was born, sir.”
“Oh no? So tell me, soldier. That’s an order.”
There was a long silence, long enough that I forgot whether I had actually said the words or not, but at last she spoke.
“When I was just a slave, and not an auxillian, sir... when I was just a slave, a man decided he wanted to know what it was like to lie with one of my kind. Obviously there were... challenges involved. We are not easily raped, sir.” She shifted position slightly. “I understand it was for a bet, or maybe some kind of game. It took the artificers hours to file me down to something vulnerable enough that he could have his fun. In truth, I don’t think he enjoyed it much. More than me, though.”
I had about a hundred rejoinders swimming about in my head, most of which would be standard army issue, concerning slaves, free men and lesser kinden. I didn’t say any of them.
“I got into the army soon after. Better Auxillian
than civilian, right?” she went on, her voice quiet and brittle, but just reaching me. “Pioneers suit me. Don’t see many people, in Pioneer Corps. Can be your own officer, most of the time.”
“You’re very good at it.” I don’t know why, even in my state, I thought that weak praise was what the situation needed.
“I like blending in.”
I laughed, just a coughing chuckle. I couldn’t stop myself.
She shrugged, a soft rustle of greenery. “Sometimes it’s a blessing to look like something else, lose your outline, be overlooked. And besides, there’s no better way of getting close to your prey. You can’t deny me that.”
“I wouldn’t want to.” My leg was starting to throb as her draft began to wear off. There was still a fair amount of the night to go. I was considering whether it befit an officer of the imperial army to beg more potion from an Auxillian when there was a clack, and a choked gasp from between the trees. It took me a moment to realise that Cari had loosed her crossbow. A moment later she was gone from my side, though I couldn’t have told you where she went.
There were sounds in the dark. I hunched myself partway to sitting, a shaking hand directed out at the night. I saw nothing.
Then, just as I was about to collapse back down, someone jumped me. I got a knee to me chest punching the breath from me, and my hand was struck aside. I had a glimpse of a lean, angular Mantis woman with her dagger already drawn back, her face utterly expressionless. The only sound I made was a panicked inhalation.
Then she was thrown off me by an invisible hand, rolling over to lie still, all with barely a sound herself. In the moonlight the moth-scale fletchings of the crossbow bolt stood proud of her body.
Cari was back with me shortly after that. “Got them all, sir,” she reported. “Just three of them come to look over the bodies. Maybe take a few trophies, hey?”
I refrained from saying that using an officer as bait was generally frowned upon in the army. I was suddenly extremely away that if she, who clearly had few fond memories of the Empire or the Wasps, chose to make me one more casualty of war, there would be little I could do about it.
“Don’t worry, sir,” she told me, still staring off into the darkness. “I’ll watch over you.”
Old Mercy was not much pleased by the affair, as you can imagine. It was only because of the Beetles that I was able to salvage any of it. We lost about one in three of the regular Wasp-kinden, but the Beetle Auxillians got out with less than one in ten casualties, thanks to a combination of durability and common sense. I was thus able to dress the whole disaster up as a scouting exercise and repeat my doomed requests for a stronger force with which to make the assault.
A tenday later, enter three hundred light airborne.
I was as surprised as anyone, but there they were, spoiling for a fight. Apparently Old Mercy had decided to smash the Sel’yon once and for all, and our ‘progress’, which existed almost entirely within my reports, was enough for him to secure the release of troops who had been idling elsewhere. My orders were for a swift, merciless raid, leave no opposition alive. With the new troops I reckoned we could give it a decent try.
I conferred with my sergeants, old and new, and laid out an order of battle to make best use of our new resources. The Commonwealers would know we had been reinforced, so no sense waiting around. We would allow the new arrivals two days to rest up and get their bearings, and then we’d be back into the trees.
After I’d packed the sergeants off with their orders, I did not call Cari into my tent. One of the Wasp-kinden pioneers, the one with the wife, had already been given orders. It would not be fitting for me to consult with a mere unranked Auxillian.
No, so instead I sought her out, which was easier said than done. I limped all over camp looking for her, and at the last she obviously heard about it, because she found me.
“You’ve heard.” I wasn’t quite looking at her, just standing there gazing over the camp. Anyone watching me would not have seen me conferring with a subordinate. Perhaps they would not have seen Cari at all. “What do you think?”
“Have the pioneers sent ahead of the line. We’ll break up their positions, spoil their ambushes. Before we came, sir, the ’Wealers had a lot of home ground advantage, but we’ve been chipping away at that, and with the men you’ve got now...”
“You think it’ll work?” A Lieutenant of the imperial army seeking assurance from a shabby little Thorn Bug wench. “You know Mantis-kinden...”
“I do, and they’ll go down fighting to the last one of them, no doubt; but, sir, there are perhaps sixty of them, maybe less. Send the pioneers ahead. Let the airborne get stuck in everywhere the enemy appear, mop up with the Auxillians.”
After that, I thought for a while and then sent for the leader of the pioneers, to amend his orders.
We went in on schedule, stings blazing. I had the light airborne set a punishing pace, which was easy for me to say since I wasn’t capable of keeping up with them. I went in with the Auxillians, but I told Sergeant Wanton not to stop until he was in sight of the Sel’yon fort. I felt I was being somewhat optimistic, in this, but once the orders were given and the men sent off, it was out of my hands.
My experience of that battle was basically a gruelling march through a wood, at the best pace I and the Beetles could set. We didn’t see a single live enemy all the way, and everything I know I gleaned from reports. The short story is that the imperial army excelled itself, admittedly with odds heavily in its favour. The light airborne attacked in force, swarming the enemy every time they showed themselves, taking losses but not letting up. The slightly longer story is that those enemy were usually visible to be swarmed because one or other of the pioneers had already stirred them up. We lost three more pioneers in that action, but they did their job, the job that Cari had set out for them. They were the only soldiers we had who could meet the enemy on the Commonwealers’ terms, spoil their ambushes and draw our airborne to them.
Two hours later my Auxillians and I drew up alongside Wanton’s airborne, and the fort was indeed within our view. I was exhausted and, although I stepped out to greet Wanton on my own two feet, I had been leaning on Beetle shoulders for a lot of the way. Strange how sometimes we feel we have to make more of a show for our own people than for the Auxillians.
As ordered, the airborne had halted their advance to allow the heavies to catch up. Indeed, the pace of the airborne had been such that they had been in time to see the fort gates closing as they arrived. Wanton reckoned there couldn’t be many people left in the fort, given how many of the Mantis-kinden had gone down during the advance – never easily, but stings and numbers will deal with most things. The Dragonfly noble who was at the heart of this, however, was unaccounted for, so he and his family and closest retainers were likely still holed up there.
The fort itself was nothing worthy of the name, a thing of slanted wooden walls and mounded earth, all built up around and between three trees. The base was broad, the top narrow and ringed with spikes of splintered cane, and there were plenty of arrowslits. Not a joy to take over ground or air, therefore, but such places are only as good as their defenders. It was time for the Auxillians to get their hands dirty.
Sporadic arrow-shot met us as we stormed the gates, but the Beetles had come with big shields, and the airborne put enough stingfire into the walls to dissuade any sharpshooters. One of the Auxillian company artificers set a simple petard against the gates and then they made their hasty retreat. No doubt the Commonwealers thought they’d driven us off and were celebrating, because precious few shafts were sent after the Beetles. Shortly after that there was a muted boom, the metal pot of the petard flew off into the trees, and, when the smoke cleared, the gates were punched in as though some giant foot had stamped on them.
In went the airborne, and there was a brief, vicious skirmish: a half-dozen Mantis-kinden dead for nine of ours. Any enemy left had retreated to an inner bailey, another slanted wooden box with arrowslits. At this
point I was considering just burning them out, but Sergeant Wanton pointed out that there were no arrows coming at us.
“Maybe there are no archers inside?” I wondered, and then, “Maybe they want to surrender.” Certainly the list of possible outcomes that saw any of the defenders remaining alive was growing slim. “You’re sure nobody escaped by air after we got here?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Sir!” one of the other airborne shouted. The gates were opening.
The Dragonfly nobles had indeed fled into their fort, at the end, I later discovered, although they had left their Mantis-kinden followers outside to die. However, even as they closed the door on our troops, they had not known that they were already infiltrated.
Standing in the gateway was a familiar figure, all over spikes and stripped of her usual cloak of leaves. In the crook of one arm she held her crossbow, and the other hand was lifting a head high. I could not know for sure, but I was willing to lay odds that the twisted features were those of the Dragonfly noble who had made the Sel’yon such a miniscule thorn in the Empire’s side.
We cheered her then, first the Auxillians and the soldiers of my original command, but soon enough the newer arrivals too.
What impact any of this had on the war as a whole I can’t say. I don’t imagine that Commonwealer princes were running up and down the halls of their palaces, decrying the loss of the Sel’yon. Old Mercy, though, was very pleased indeed. After my detailed report I received, by return, a terse note informing me that he would be taking the unprecedented step of actually coming over to inspect the troops and congratulate them. He wanted them ready for the parade ground within two days, which was not going to endear him to them, and he particularly wanted to see the Pioneer Corps, of whom I had spoken so highly.
Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1) Page 11
