Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Soul Je had used his Auxillian status to install them in the upper room of a wayhouse at the edge of the market. From its small window they had done their best to keep track of where Ecta’s followers had gone, but in the end at least half of the Scorpions had vanished entirely.

  “Time to move,” Mordrec decided. “Hokiak’ll be here any moment.” He looked at his allies doubtfully. “We’ll have to hunt them.”

  “We’ll strike when the old man turns up,” Dal Arche stated. “You want him to be impressed, yes?”

  “Yes,” Mordrec agreed, heartfelt. He glanced from face to face: the grizzled Dragonfly-kinden; Soul Je with his long, unreadable face; squat and broad Barad Ygor with his lethal pet, Scutts, coiled about his feet. The former slaver hefted the weight of his nailbow. “Let’s move.”

  The Slave Corps were not known for subtlety, but Mordrec had fought in the Twelve-year War and had his own memories of playing stalking games with Dragonfly Mercers and assassins. He had served the Corps as scout and spotter, in the air and on the ground, and he entered the hushed market noiselessly, the bulk of the nailbow cocked back over his shoulder to keep it from rattling against anything, his free hand palm out, ready to unleash his sting in case someone else was stalking him.

  Of his allies, Dal Arche and Soul Je had vanished utterly, not a sound or scent of them. The maze of vacant stalls did not admit to their presence in any way. Barad Ygor was hanging back, not the stealthiest of men, crouched by a derelict potter’s with his crossbow cradled, string taut, in his arms. His venomous friend was gone, though, and Modrec imagined the creature creeping, belly to the ground, beneath the awnings and the wooden stands, hunting out the enemy on Ygor’s behalf.

  It was dusk now, and Wasp eyes were not at their best. Mordrec took his progress step by step, working his way towards the centre. He was in sight of the cleared space, edging round to get an angle on Ecta himself, when he realised that, only a few yards away, one of the other Scorpions was crouched, clawed hands on the haft of a crescent-headed axe. Mordrec froze, but the man’s attention was wholly inward. With painstaking care the ex-slaver canted the heavy nailbow from his shoulder and brought the machined barrel round.

  The Scorpion twitched, and very nearly died for it, as Mordrec’s nerves were stretched to snapping. A newcomer was shuffling a slow progress out into the open space at the market’s heart.

  Hokiak lent on his cane with each step, breathing heavily as though the mere walk from his Exchange had worn him down. He glanced around him, plainly suspecting that Ecta’s confederates were nearby, and then stopped a dozen yards from the bigger Scorpion, both hands on the head of his stick. Ecta’s stance had changed when the old man made his entrance: the greatsword’s length and weight now hanging easily in one fist. For a moment it seemed that he was expecting something special: for Hokiak to leap into the air and reveal himself as some great combat master whose edge could never be dulled by mere time. The ancient renegade just hunched there, though, a sack of bones and yellowed skin and rheumy, watering eyes.

  You had better be bloody grateful for this, Mordrec thought to himself. You had better not have come here wanting to die, you wrinkled bastard.

  Ecta had apparently understood that there was nothing more than this: an old man at the end of his times. With a disappointed grunt, clearly audible against the sound of so many people being silent, he hefted his blade.

  Now. And Mordrec’s finger twitched on the lever, and the nailbow roared in his hands, all but jumping out of his grip. He had intended to put a neat hole in the back of the man before him, but he emptied a half-dozen bolts in a wild arc amidst the sound of firepowder and thunder. Two bolts struck home, more by luck than anything else, slamming the man forwards hard enough to overturn his hiding place. Then a second Scorpion had arisen from a few feet to Mordrec’s left, lifting a halberd with a roar of fury, and everything started to happen at once.

  Ecta was single-minded and he went for Hokiak still, trusting to his men to deal with the noise. He changed his mind when an arrow clipped his shoulder, signing a narrow line of blood against his dead white skin. Turning, he saw a Dragonfly drop to the ground across the market square, already reaching for another shaft. Ecta was at him, though, covering the intervening ground with startling swiftness, the greatsword’s blade blurring between them. Dal Arche’s wings flickered in and out of sight, landing him ten feet back, but the string of his borrowed bow snapped as he tried to get his second shot off, whipping across his face.

  As the halberd came for him, Mordrec loosed his sting, the golden energy flashing from his palm to scorch across the Scorpion’s flank. The man snarled and hacked for him, and the Wasp let his wings cast him sideways between two stalls, nailbow dragging in his wake. He almost barrelled straight into another man who was rushing towards the noise. For a moment he was caught between them, stumbling aside from the newcomer’s scything claws. The halberd came down again and Mordrec bounced the haft bruisingly from his forearm, waiting for the claws to come in. Instead, the second man went down with a howl, and Mordrec tripped over him. He landed half on something hard and lumpy, and rolled off with a yell when he saw that it was Scutts’ segmented back, the sting poised above him like a stiletto.

  Mordrec twisted urgently to one side, seeing a brief glimpse of the creature’s claws clasped about his fallen opponent’s knee. Then the needle point of the sting lashed down into the luckless man’s groin. The halberdier roared and raised the heavy blade of his weapon to strike, and Mordrec emptied the nailbow into him in an explosive judder of finger-long bolts.

  When he looked round, Scutts had made herself scarce amongst the stalls. And I hope that bloody Ygor keeps her on a firm leash.

  Dal Arche had a Wasp-issue shortsword out now, looking like a butter-knife compared to Ecta’s greatsword. He could have flown away without difficulty but Hokiak still stood there, staring pop-eyed at the spectacle of a Commonwealer rushing to his defence, and so he led the Scorpion chieftain a chase about the market square, keeping out of the broad reach of that massive blade. Initially he had hoped to be able to feign his way past the Scorpion’s guard for a swift strike, but Ecta was both fast and skilled. Twice now he had almost caught Dal Arche with a sudden burst of speed, or an unexpected leap forwards that extended the man’s reach four feet. Every time Dal tried to turn the assault, the sweep of the greatsword almost had him, every time he fell back Ecta drove for Hokiak. Where are the others?

  Mordrec was heading for the market’s centre when a couple of fighters crashed through a stall immediately in front of him. For a moment he saw only two Scorpions fighting, but then he spotted the shorter one as Ygor. The Wasp barked out a shout, the sort the Corps used to stop running slaves in their tracks. With a supreme effort, Ygor’s adversary cast him down to the ground and stared at Mordrec, obviously unsure whose side he was on. With a hard grin the Wasp levelled the nailbow at him and pulled the lever.

  Of course, I should probably have reloaded the cursed thing...

  The backhand blow of the Scorpion’s clawed fist knocked Mordrec entirely off his feet, his head ringing with the force of it. For a moment his enemy stood over him, hand raised to drive those Art claws down like daggers, then the man was running, seemingly without transition, and a moment later Scutts bounded past, pincers wide and body a sinuous curve. Ygor had recovered his crossbow from somewhere and got off a bolt that flew a good eight feet wide of the fleeing man, but a moment later a long arrow appeared like magic through the running Scorpion’s neck, stopping him for a moment, upright and dead still, before he collapsed.

  Without a word, Modrec and Ygor ran for the central square with Scutts pursuing them excitedly.

  Dal was running out of options. He was relying on his wings more and more to keep him out of Ecta’s way, and the Art was draining him slowly of his strength. The Scorpion seemed indefatiguable and had found a rhythm now, was even giving the retreating Dragonfly a fang-bristling smile.

  “About time!”
Dal shouted, as Modrec and Ygor pounded into sight. “You get the rest?” Then he kicked high into the air, passing entirely over Ecta’s bald head to land in a crouch, rasping for breath, behind him. When the big man turned he saw three human opponents and a barely-restrained animal facing him.

  He seemed utterly undaunted. He was barely breathing hard, they saw. “Oh this is good,” he murmured. “Hokiak, you amuse me.”

  Mordrec had his hand out, fingers spread, ready to sting, and Ygor had reloaded his crossbow, dragging the string back with one notched thumb-claw. Ecta barely seemed to care.

  “Come forth, my warriors,” he bellowed. Mordrec was frantically counting in his head. He had done for two, and Scutts had stung another, and presumably removed him from the fight. Dal Arche had gone straight for Ecta, as they had planned. Had Ygor killed any others? That still left...

  None. Apparently that left none. Nobody came forward to answer Ecta’s summons. The Scorpion chieftain shrugged, looking from the newcomers to Hokiak. It seemed he would say something, some threat or piece of defiance, but then he launched himself at the old man, sword drawn back, an unstoppable, unheralded charge. Ygor loosed and missed, and Mordrec held off his sting for fear of striking Hokiak himself.

  Ecta fell at Hokiak’s feet. The slender shaft of a longbow arrow stood between his shoulder-blades like a standard. For a moment nobody moved, waiting, and then a tall, angular shadow moved amongst the stalls, and Soul Je stepped out, almost apologetically, nodding briefly to his allies.

  Hokiak stared at them for a long while. He had barely moved throughout the whole skirmish, still leaning on his stick as though he was just an old veteran enjoying clement weather. Eventually, and in tones that were hard to analyse, he said, “You clowns.”

  Mordrec exchanged looks with his allies, save for Dal Arche who was mopping gingerly at the red weal that his bowstring had left across his face.

  “Oh you utter clowns,” the old man repeated, but there was a chuckle recognisable in his tone now. “All right lads, out you come.”

  And out they came, more than a dozen of them: Mynan Beetle-kinden with levelled crossbows emerging from either side of the withered Scorpion, all of them staring at Mordrec and his fellows as though waiting for the order to shoot.

  “You...” Mordrec started uncertainly. “But I though that...”

  “I told you Scorpions don’t care about honour,” Ygor reminded him in a murmur.

  “And there’s another two dozen ready to come in,” Hokiak said slowly. “I called in a lot of favours. What do you clowns want?”

  “Out,” the Wasp replied promptly. “Safe travel out of the Empire. Papers, transport, whatever it takes to be out of the reach of the Rekef.” He glanced at Dal Arche. “The Commonweal’s nice, this time of year.”

  For a moment Hokiak regarding him disdainfully. “I hear Lyker got himself dead.”

  “That was... careless of him,” Mordrec managed.

  The old Scorpion could hold his face still no longer. He shook his head to hide it, but there was a grin somewhere amongst the yellowing stumps of his hutting teeth. “Myna’s better off without you,” he spat, and then held a hand out swiftly in case any of his followers took this as an order. “You’re fools, all of you, to do this on credit, but I’m feeling generous all of a sudden. Come back to the Exchnge and I’ll see what I can do.”

  He lent on his stick less, they saw, as he hobbled off back towards his den, and despite his years there was a decided new spring in his step.

  Characterisation in Shadows is often a case of playing against the type I’ve given a particular kinden, and Hokiak is surely the most extreme example: the most important Scorpion character in the series is, at the same time, the least Scorpion of them all. Here we have conquered Myna shortly before the events of Empire, with the Twelve Year War consigned to history and Myna as just a stopover for the loot funnelling out of the Commonweal. Speaking of that, Dal, Soul, Ygor and Mordrec all have their day in court in Heirs of the Blade, which draws a lot of loose threads together. The only other major character from the novels whom this story touches is unnamed here, but it doesn’t take much to work out just what major blow the Mynan resistance has suffered, and just why Soul and Ygor are persona non grata with the locals.

  Brass Mantis

  Helleron, city of smoke and iron; a good city for bad times. Oh, perhaps the rich magnates there lived swaddled in wealth and luxury, but then it never seemed to be Helleron that they lived in. Their lives of palatial townhouses, of elegant waste and barbed entertainments, belonged to some other city that the rest of the populace could only observe as through grimy glass.

  For the Apt, those whose birthright was machinery and the ability to understand it, Helleron exercised a powerful attraction. Its countless forges and workshops and factories were always hungry for bodies. There was a living to be had there, slotted into a tiny mould, performing one restrictive function over and over, making a lifelong profession of being a miniscule cog. Helleron was a vast machine that consumed lives and produced everything else. It was the industrial heart of the Insect-kinden’s world, beating oil and gear trains and the hissing strength of steam.

  What, then, for the Inapt? For those to whom machines were a mystery that could never be parsed, choked by their mystic superstitions that the Apt laughed at in scorn, what could Helleron possibly offer? And yet they came, and the answer seemed to be nothing more than dissolution. There were Moth-kinden begging on the streets whose ancestors had been great magicians back in an age nobody could quite remember any more. There were Dragonflies starving in the gutters who had donned glittering armour to ride against the mechanized hosts of the Wasps, and lose. There were renegade Spider-kinden in the tavernas and the whorehouses, stalking death one sin at a time.

  There was a Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster that nobody could kill.

  He was a lean, deadly man, Tisamon his name, and he had drifted about the eastern Lowlands, cutting wherever he touched, until he drew too close to the hungry pull of Helleron. People whispered about his past. Certainly he seemed to have little to live for. The only thing keeping him alive looked to be pride. They said his brooch, a sword crossing a circle, was the mark of an ancient, forgotten order of warrior mystics. They said he was seeking death, but it was not in him to bare steel with any intent save to win.

  Tisamon fought two kinds of matches. Publicly, he was a prize-fighter. Such clashes were never overtly to the death. The pretence, at least, was of a clash of skill, two professionals meeting with respect and elegance to the delight of an informed crowd. Standing on that bloodied sand, listening to the drunken jeering, the bustle and babble, Tisamon felt the artistry of his trade corroding, as though the caustic air that hung about the factories could etch and eat at a man’s soul.

  He preferred the other sort of match, staged for nobody’s entertainment. Much of Helleron was held by a patchwork of gangs, the Fiefs, who existed under and alongside and sometimes in the pocket of the great industrial magnates. There was always a fight brewing amongst the Fiefs. There was always a street or a gambling den changing hands. There was always blood. It was almost reassuring how there was always blood.

  Tisamon admitted to no Fief, acknowledged no masters, but there was always a brisk trade in skilled freelancers on the hard streets of Helleron. There, to no applause and to the death, he plied his trade. He had a reputation.

  It was a Fief turf war that brought him to the artificer Ellery Mainler.

  A disagreement had arisen over a particularly choice establishment, conjoined brothel and gambling den – specifically, who had the right to protect these establishments from the woes of the world, for a modest fee. The players were the Seven Clocks, native Beetle-kinden muscling in from the nearby factories, against Fabrus Brothers Union, close-knit Ant-kinden exiles from some place in the Empire. The Fabrus boys were noted brawlers but the Clocks had the wherewithal to call in a few independents. Their factor tapped the Beetle woman who served as Tisamon�
��s agent, and she gave him a time and a place.

  Supposedly it was going to be just a friendly piece of leaning, the Clock lads swaggering over to take in the sights and put the Ants in their place, with Tisamon for backup. The Fabrus caught wind of it, got the wrong idea, and did their level best to turn a minor incursion into a war. Tisamon had to earn his keep. Whilst the grandees from Seven Clocks decided the game had gone sour and beat a retreat, the Mantis had a busy few minutes dancing and stepping through a shifting net of Ant swords and knifes, leaving bloody writing everywhere he went and getting a guided tour of most of the establishment along the way.

  He particularly remembered a tight spot when three knife-men had him penned up in a small room in the brothel, whilst the original occupant and his patron cowered underneath the bed. Tisamon’s claw – the gauntlet with its metal blade that jutting down the line of his fingers – had been busy fending off their furious lunges and, whilst he left them plenty of shallow wounds to remember him by, the Ants fought together well, and he had begun to wonder if this, this tawdry little business, might be it. Then one of them lunged too strongly, and Tisamon took the man’s arm and flung him through the wall, so that the entire brawling pack of them spilled out into the gambling den next door.

  With a little more space at his command he was able to teach the Fabrus boys that the game was not worth the stakes, and once he had killed one and bloodied the rest they vanished away, leaving him standing on a card table with a stunned audience of gamblers.

  There was one woman there, who did not seem the type. A Beetle-kinden, like most of the Helleren, but dressed too well and looking too clean. She had been staring up open-mouthed with the rest at this bloody interruption to the game. Unlike the rest, who got out of his way as though he had the plague, she trailed him to the doorway and offered to buy him a drink.