Salute the Dark sota-4

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Oh, well,’ the officer said, ‘a small detachment of Auxillian engineers had been split off to fortify a nearby camp, and thus escaped the massacre. Then they came under attack themselves from what should have been an overwhelming Commonwealer force. However they managed to hold out for seven days from behind their fortifications, and killed so many of the enemy that the relieving force was able to put the Dragonflies to flight and save the honour of the Empire.’

  ‘And those Auxillians were Bee-kinden?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And so the new Sixth, when it re-formed, became known as the Hive.’

  Malkan watched as the gates to his camp opened, and the newcomers began to file in. At the very head of the army, the vanguard itself was composed of a rigid block of heavily armoured soldiers, too short and stocky to be Wasp-kinden, and dressed in black and gold uniforms halved down the front, rather than sporting the usual horizontal stripes. It seemed the Bee-kinden at Masaki had won themselves some privileges in their mindless defence of another race’s Empire.

  ‘So tell me about General Praeter,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t the original general, of course.’

  ‘No, sir. General Haken died at Masaki, which most think was the best thing that could have happened to him. Praeter was merely a lieutenant at the time, but he had already been given command of the engineers. Rumour suggests that he was not popular with his superiors, and it was a punishment duty.’

  ‘Engineers and glory seldom go hand in hand,’ Malkan admitted. Praeter had been the man the Empire chose to make a hero, though. He had been the only Wasp-kinden officer available for the post, hence the man’s sudden rise through the ranks.

  ‘They say he is a little… too comfortable with the Auxillians,’ the intelligence officer said carefully, ‘and he likes things done his way. Traditional ways.’

  ‘We shall have to see about that,’ Malkan decided. ‘Send a message to him. Give him two hours to settle his men, and then I request his presence.’

  Praeter was older than Malkan had expected, and his short-cut hair was liberally dusted with grey. He must have been quite an old lieutenant, at Masaki. He was relatively slight of build, neither tall nor broad of shoulder. The two Bee-kinden soldiers who clanked in alongside him were barely shorter, and much more heavily set. He wore a simple black cowled cloak over his armour.

  ‘General Praeter,’ Malkan acknowledged.

  ‘General Malkan.’

  Malkan had expected resentment from the older man forced to serve under the younger’s guidance, yet Praeter’s manner was anything but, which triggered a current of unease.

  ‘Alone, General,’ he suggested. ‘I think we should speak alone.’ His pointed glance took in the two Bees, without deigning to acknowledge his own intelligence officer.

  Praeter frowned, glancing back at his men.

  ‘I did not ask you here to have you murdered, General,’ declared Malkan, with hollow good humour.

  The older man nodded to the two Bees, who ducked back out of the square-framed tent that Malkan commanded from. Nevertheless the sound of the two of them taking up stations outside the door was pointedly clear.

  ‘They’re obviously fond of you,’ Malkan noted.

  ‘We’ve been through a lot,’ Praeter agreed, expressionless.

  ‘How many of them? Bee-kinden Auxillians, I mean?’

  ‘Two thousand, one hundred and eight.’

  Malkan glanced at his intelligence officer, his smile brittle. ‘General, are you quite mad? Surely you’ve heard the news from Szar. What happens when your Bee-kinden troops hear it too?’

  ‘They have already.’

  ‘Have they?’

  ‘Unrest in Szar,’ Praeter said. ‘Their queen dead. They know it all.’

  ‘And you’re not worried?’

  ‘No.’ Without ceremony, Praeter drew off his cloak. The armour beneath was not the banded mail of the Empire but a simple breastplate, half black and half gold. ‘That’s why they’ve sent us out here, to keep us away from Szar, though there’s no need.’

  ‘Is there not?’ Malkan asked.

  ‘With respect, no. My men are loyal.’

  ‘They’re Auxillians nevertheless, General. You surely can’t say that they’re as loyal as the Imperial Army.’

  ‘They are more loyal,’ Praeter said simply. ‘Nobody understands the Bee-kinden – not even after we conquered their city. The inhabitants of Szar were loyal to their queen. It was a commitment that they never even thought to break. When we had the queen, we had them too. Now the queen is dead, they have no reason to obey us. That is the root of Szar.’

  ‘But your men are different?’ Something’s wrong here, Malkan was thinking. Praeter was like a man with a sheathed sword, just waiting for the moment to present it. All this talk of Auxillians was just a prologue.

  ‘They have sworn an oath to me,’ Praeter said, ‘and they will not break it. An oath from Masaki, which binds them and their families, their fighting sons, to me.’

  ‘And if you die, General?’

  ‘You had better keep me alive, General Malkan.’

  Malkan nodded. Here we go. ‘I must admit, General, that I had expected a frostier man to stand before me. After all, it’s a rare senior officer content to serve beneath someone twenty years his junior.’ That ‘twenty years’ was a deliberate exaggeration, but not a flicker of annoyance crossed Praeter’s face.

  ‘Why, General Malkan, you mistake me,’ he said blandly. ‘I have no intention of doing so.’

  Malkan carefully raised a single eyebrow.

  Praeter smiled shallowly. ‘Perhaps this will explain.’ He reached for a belt-pouch and retrieved a folded and sealed document, which Malkan took cautiously.

  Men have encountered their death warrants like this, he was aware, but he opened it without hesitation, seeing on the wax the sigil of the palace.

  In a scribe’s neat hand, there were a few brief lines written there: This commission hereby grants to General Praeter of the Imperial Sixth, known as the Hive, on account of his seniority and notable war record, joint command over the Sixth and Seventh armies, for the duration of the campaign against the Sarnesh.

  Malkan peered at the signature. ‘General Reiner,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Of the Rekef Inlander. He is most kind,’ Praeter said flatly. Malkan felt the situation now balanced on a fulcrum. The Sixth were settling themselves in, the Seventh were already established. A single word from him and things could get bloody. Bloody and potentially treasonous. The mention of the Rekef, the Empire’s secret service, had charged the air in the tent as though a storm was about to break.

  ‘You are aware that I was installed in this position by the grace of General Maxin,’ Malkan said. ‘Also of the Rekef Inlander.’

  ‘Do you have his sealed orders to confirm that?’ Praeter asked him expressionlessly.

  Well, no, of course not, because since when did Rekef generals actually put their own cursed names on such things? Since when was that the drill? But the answer to that was since now, he supposed, because here was Reiner’s own name, clear as day. Malkan had been distantly aware of the Rekef’s internal squabbling, but he had never thought it would come to bludgeon him out here on the front. Don’t they know there’s a war on?

  ‘Well, General,’ he said, with brittle brightness. ‘Do you have any orders for me, or shall I have my intelligence staff brief you on our present situation?’

  Three

  Balkus shuffled, shrugging his shoulders about and looking uncomfortable. ‘Remind me again why I’m doing this?’

  Stenwold looked the big Ant-kinden soldier up and down. ‘Because you’re desperate for a reconciliation with your own people.’

  Balkus spat. ‘Not likely. They’d lynch me.’ He shifted his broad shoulders, trying to settle the new armour more comfortably.

  ‘They won’t. You’re not turning up at their gates as some kind of renegade,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘You’re arriving there as the field officer of a Colle
giate relief force, Commander Balkus.’

  ‘Commander Balkus,’ the Ant mused. ‘Hate to say it, but a man could get to like the sound of that.’

  Stenwold shrugged. ‘You wanted it, I recall.’

  Balkus scowled. ‘You get tired of being on your own. It’s in the blood,’ he muttered. ‘Never thought I’d end up going home, though.’ He bit his lip.

  Stenwold reflected that all the renegade Ants he had ever known who had turned their backs on their home and people, they were each of them still chained to their heritage. Growing up with a mind full of the thoughts of others left a big, empty gap when they set out on their own. How many of them were drawn back, eventually, for all that it would usually mean their deaths?

  Balkus was obviously thinking on similar lines. ‘And they’re fine about it, are they? My… the Sarnesh?’

  ‘They know all about you. I’ve sent word to them, saying who I’ve put in charge.’

  ‘That isn’t the same!’ Balkus objected. ‘Look, I don’t want to go up that rail-line only to find they’ve just been sharpening the knives.’

  ‘We’re at war now, and the Sarnesh understand that they have to put aside their preferences,’ Stenwold replied. ‘And you have more experience than anyone else in the army here.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got that right,’ Balkus grunted.

  ‘Shall we inspect the troops, now?’ Stenwold asked. The Ant nodded gloomily and led the way out of the hall of the Amphiophos, Collegium’s seat of government. While Stenwold had been in Sarn, arguing diplomacy, Balkus had been training troops here at home. Collegium had never possessed a standing army and, although the recent siege by the Ants of Vek had created hundreds of veterans, it was short of full-time soldiers. Balkus would not normally have been considered officer material in anyone’s book, but he had a loud voice, and he was an Ant, meaning warfare in his very veins. What he had so far made out of the recruits they had given him was nothing to compare to a properly regimented Ant-kinden force, but it was something entirely new to Collegium.

  There were already a dozen other officers waiting on the steps of the Amphiophos, leaders of the merchant companies watching as their troops assembled in the square below. They were Beetle-kinden men and women for the most part, broad and solid of build, wearing breastplates over quilted hauberks padded out with twists of rag and fibre that, in theory, would slow or even stop a crossbow or snapbow bolt. They also wore caps armoured with curved metal plates designed to deflect shot. As armour went, it was very new and mostly untested. The breastplates had all been stencilled with the arms of the Prowess Forum, namely a sword over an open book sketched in silver lines across the dark metal, but many of the officers and their gathering charges had overlaid these with sashes and surcoats carrying the various company badges they had chosen to display.

  There had been no time for complex planning, or for establishing elaborate networks of supply or support. On the other hand, since Collegium had begun building its army from scratch, it had created something uniquely Beetle and previously unseen. The term the war council had coined was ‘bow and pike’. A third of the soldiers were equipped with glaive-headed polearms, the stock-in-trade of watchmen everywhere, to hold off an enemy either on the ground or in the air. The rest were armed to fight at a greater distance. The Wasps were not an enemy to stand solidly together like Ant-kinden and hack at close quarters. Instead they moved swiftly, struck from range or attacked from above. The square before the Amphiophos was currently filled with repeating crossbows, nailbows and the new snapbows, the Beetle-kinden having taken to the weapon so readily that its designer might have specially intended it for them.

  Could it be that the Wasps themselves have given us the tool we needed to defeat them?

  There were some from other kinden too, for Collegium was not too proud to turn away any who wished to help. The army would include Fly-kinden spotters and archers, and some of the pikemen were Mantis-kinden or Spiders. There were Ants of four or five different cities amongst the ranks, all former renegades like Balkus who had given their tireless loyalty to Collegium.

  The city was now sending just under a thousand soldiers to reinforce Sarn – because if Sarn fell, then Collegium might as well surrender. It was the one point that the war council had not bickered about. Several times that number of battle-ready troops would remain to guard the walls of the city against a surprise attack by the Wasps, or even by the Vekken. Meanwhile volunteers kept arriving in droves for the new regiments.

  My city will be changed irrevocably by this, Stenwold reflected. Not for the better, either – we could have lived happily without this war.

  The sound of precisely marching feet came to his ears and the final part of the relief force came into view with a discipline that shamed the locals. Commander Parops had arrived, with 700 pale-skinned Tarkesh Ants to his name. This was the bulk of the Free Army of Tark, as Parops himself had named it, comprising the military strength of his currently occupied city. They were the best-armed Ant-kinden in the world, just now: every second man of them carried a snapbow as well as a sword and shield, and many sported nailbows and crossbows as well. Their linked minds meant that this entire force could go from weapon to weapon, in whole or in part, as the battle demanded. They would form the core of the Collegiate force, from whom the locals would take their strength and their example.

  Parops halted his men and strode up the steps towards Stenwold.

  ‘All ready to go, War Master,’ he said, and smiled because he knew Stenwold could not abide that title.

  ‘The troop trains are waiting at the station,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘Already loaded with supplies, canvas, even some light artillery, I’m told.’ He clapped the Tarkesh on the shoulder. ‘I know what’s at stake for you, Commander.’

  Parops nodded soberly. ‘The Sarnesh are bound to be cursed ungrateful hosts as well, but we’re short of choices right now and my soldiers want to fight. With your permission, I’ll begin getting them stowed on board.’

  Stenwold nodded silently and the Ant marched back to his men and began to move them out. Stenwold turned to Balkus to find him now a little distance away, kneeling down by a small figure that was hugging him tightly. Sperra, Stenwold saw, was looking better in health than she had been before, though clearly upset that the Ant was leaving. She and Balkus had been close since their time as agents working for Stenwold’s cause in Helleron.

  ‘You look after yourself, you oaf,’ Sperra was ordering him. ‘Don’t you dare let anything happen to you.’

  ‘What could happen to me?’ Balkus replied, trying hard to smile. ‘And if those Sarnesh give me any grief, I’ll give them double in return.’

  ‘You do that,’ she hissed fiercely, and clung to him one last time, before letting go and giving place to Stenwold.

  ‘Suppose this is it.’ Balkus grimaced.

  ‘You’ve said your other goodbyes?’ Stenwold asked.

  Balkus grinned. ‘To those that have time for it. Everyone seems to have something urgent on their minds right now.’

  ‘That’s true enough.’ Between Achaeos’ injuries and whatever emotional gauntlet Tisamon seemed to be putting himself through, it had been a lonely time for Sten-wold recently. ‘Good luck, Commander. I hope you won’t need it, but good luck all the same.’

  ‘A man always needs luck,’ Balkus murmured, and went down into the square to order his troops. All around the Amphiophos square men and women were bidding goodbye to their loved ones: wives, husbands, parents, children. Beetles in unfamiliar armour bent for a last embrace from a lover, friends clasped hands, business partners thrust forward knapsacks of choice tidbits from the stock to lighten the journey. Eyes took one last look over the roofs of Collegium, the Amphiophos and the College, and there cannot have been many who did not wonder whether they would see any of it again – or what flag would be flying over it if they did.

  Tisamon had spent the day deliberately seeing no one. He had found a high tower of the College, the stair
s leading to it thick with dust, and some abandoned study given over by its occupant in exchange for somewhere less exerting. It gave him a fine view of the city, if he had wanted it, but instead he looked up at the sky. Even the clouds that scudded there, ragged nomads in that vast blue, weighed upon him. He felt as though he was dying.

  He should be with Tynisa now, he knew. She was suffering, and he should go to her. It was good Mantis suffering, though, and that was what she did not understand yet. They had brought her up amongst soft Beetle-kinden, who did everything in their power to stave off pain, and so she had never learned the catharsis of hurt.

  It was a Mantis thing: to have slain or injured a fellow by tragic mistake, in the madness of battle – the songs were legion that told this same story. She should bear up to the deed, take it inside herself rather than hiding from it. He himself should be teaching her all this.

  Except that he was no role model – at least not now.

  The storm had come, at last. He had felt the winds rising before he had left for Jerez. He had given Felise into Stenwold’s care, but not for her sake, never for her sake. He had felt the storm-winds in his soul, and he had gone off with Achaeos to shelter from their blast.

  The storm had inevitably come.

  She had been practising, he heard, while he had been away. She had been dancing through all the infinite moves of her skill in readiness for his return. They had sparred; they had matched their skills. It had been his doorway back into a world that he had long been barred from. It had been the world of his people, and hers, the perfect expression of the duel, but all the histories of his race were cursing him for how he felt now.

  The air was chill up here, but he hauled off his arming jacket, tore apart his shirt, bared his chest, tried to freeze the malady from himself. Yet the cold could not touch sufficiently deep in him: there was not mortification enough in all the world of men to do that.

  He hurt with a pain he had not felt in a long time. Even when the Wasp intelligencer Thalric had seared him with his sting in Helleron it had not hurt like this. When Stenwold had suddenly thrust an unknown halfbreed daughter on him, it had not hurt like this. He was impaled: writhe as he might, he could not escape. He could now not even seek sanctuary in his skill, because of the gaping absence he felt when he trained and danced alone.