War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Seda stared into that half-mask face. What does he gain from this? This is because the Spiders poisoned him, is it? He hates them that much? Where has this come from?

  ‘Majesty,’ Roder said again, and it was not the soldier that now spoke, but the plain man beneath. ‘Heed me on this, I beg you. They are no fit allies for us, and Tynan is in danger every moment he marches alongside them. Ask him!’ Incredibly, he was pointing at Tisamon, driven to calling upon the least likely aid in his attempt to persuade her. ‘Ask your other bodyguards. Ask the Nethyen! The Mantids have known forever what the Eighth found out in the last war. I have seen my men poisoned and trapped, seduced from their duty, turned against their superiors. I have fought a war against them, and there is nothing of the soldier in them, no honour, no heart, just masks and more masks!’ He was baring his soul now, and the bitter venom in there startled her. She recalled how he had asked to be given the southern front, before the Empire had allied itself with the Spiderlands Aristoi. And that would have gone even more poorly than I thought, and we would even now be fighting around Solarno rather than most of the way to Collegium. And yet, and yet . . .

  The Spiders were an old Inapt power, and they had held onto that power when most of their peers from the Days of Lore had fallen into ruin. They controlled vast territories, cities of the Apt and the Inapt both, and just like Seda herself they made use of all the artificers’ machines without needing to understand them. A jolt of uncertainty shot through her. What have I overlooked? Overconfidence was always the scourge of rulers. Of course, the Spiders are clever – they have been playing for centuries the game I have invented for myself. So what is the true plan that the Aldanrael have hatched? Is Roder right?

  She could not say, and that gaping chasm in her knowledge came close to frightening her. But Roder was right in one thing: she could not be certain of the Spider-kinden as allies. They were treacherous, and she must remember that, and take steps to protect the Empire from them should they turn.

  ‘General Roder,’ she began, and her very tone was enough to retract Tisamon’s blade and to dispel the tension that their little confrontation had been spreading throughout the camp. ‘You are a good and loyal servant of the Empire,’ she continued, ‘and I hear your words. Our allies in the Spiderlands have been true to us so far, but there will come a time when we will not need them, or they will not need us. It is well to be watchful, and perhaps Tynan is indeed too trusting.’

  She saw him relax, and at last glimpsed the spark of motive there. Yes, he hated the Spiders for the injuries of the last war – both to him and to his army – but there was more. His concern was for the Empire and for its greater war. True, if Tynan fell, then Roder would find himself caught between Sarn and the Collegiates, but it was more than that. Roder wanted the Empire to win. She realized, then, how close she had been to turning him away, how her own exalted station, her personal ambitions, could have compromised the war. And they will do so, still, for I will brook no barriers, but I am Empress – as well as heiress to the Days of Lore. I must remember my people. She had a hollow, unhappy feeling that this would be harder and harder to achieve, in the days to come. I will be Empress and magician-queen both. I will rule as the Spiders rule. And if the Spiders challenge me, then . . .

  ‘Captain Vrakir,’ she snapped, and one of her Red Watch came rushing over to do her bidding. He had been listed to accompany her into the forest, but now she had another task for him. ‘Commandeer an orthopter and fly to join the Second,’ she told him. ‘I will have sealed orders prepared for you. You are to act as adviser to General Tynan, with my full authority. Ostrec alone will suffice to represent the Red Watch in my escort.’

  Vrakir saluted. He was a serious, intelligent man, formerly a lieutenant in the Fourth Army, one of the survivors of the Felyal massacre early in the last war. More, he was gifted: some great-grandparent had adulterated the Wasp blood within him, and she knew he had proved deficient with machines and maps, a poor representative of the Apt. He was no magician, of course – none of her Red Watch could have mastered the simplest magic – but he made a good vessel. There was just enough vestigial affinity within him that she could work through him, speak to him, even see through his eyes if she used all her strength. It would be like trying to force herself through the tiny holes of a sieve, but that was better than the solid wall presented by most Wasps.

  ‘I will have orders drawn up by the time you are ready to leave,’ she told him and, as Vrakir ran off, she turned her attention back to Roder. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘show me my escorts, your picked men.’

  Seda knew that Ant-kinden armies were built about their famed heavy infantry, blocks of supremely disciplined, mindlinked men and women who had mail and swords, shields and crossbows that made up the grand majority of every Ant army the Empire that ever faced – for all that the individual city-states were usually at each other’s throats. They were slow to innovate, the Ants. All that intermingling of thoughts, which might have been a well-spring of invention, instead seemed to suppress any individuals with new ideas. Seda suspected that on the rare occasions an Ant with a different way of thinking was allowed any power, the world became aware of it rapidly. For that matter, she had been receiving some disturbing reports concerning the new Ant general opposing the Eighth.

  Wasp armies, in contrast, had traditionally been built about the Light Airborne, soldiers armed with swords or spears and their stinging Art, and able to move swiftly about the battlefield, lacking the Ants’ iron discipline but swifter and more flexible. Wasp heavy infantry could not stand toe to toe with the Ants for long – not even the old disbanded Sentinels could have done that, whatever retired veterans might tell each other – but the Wasps beat the Ants repeatedly by outmanoeuvring them and by out-thinking them, by using the strengths of their Auxillians – and by allowing individual talent to count for more.

  The Pioneers were a good example of this. They had been created during the Twelve-year War against the Dragonflies of the Commonweal, a foe who at their best had been as mobile and unpredictable as the Wasps themselves. Often the Commonwealers had taken inaccessible spots as their strongholds – badlands, hill-forts, or the hearts of ancient forests just like this. Often, too, there had been Mantis-kinden fighting alongside them. The Pioneers had been some of the most skilled individuals that the Empire could draw upon, perhaps the first ever occasion when the usual considerations of purity of blood had been allowed to slacken, when sheer ability had become paramount. And they had died, of course. Fighting the enemy’s war on the enemy’s ground, they had suffered a rate of attrition worse than frontline battlefield units, but they had done their job. No Dragonfly fortress or holdout had survived the Empire’s attentions, and in many cases it was the work of the Pioneers to bring in the rest of the army.

  The war against the Lowlands had been a slow time for those veterans of the Commonweal, so far. The Lowlanders fought like the Apt should, with machines and with armies. The call had gone out though and, even as Roder’s Eighth had crossed the Imperial border, the Pioneers had been strapping on their gear, taking up their weapons. Now Roder had brought before Seda the best of them that he could offer. His expression was pained, for they were hardly the immaculate paragons of Wasp soldiery that he might want, but they were good. They knew their craft and, if she was to break off from the main force within the forest and pursue her own aims, she would need them. The forest would be against her, and half the Mantis-kinden in it, together with whatever force the Sarnesh could commit. And her of course, the cursed Beetle girl, Seda’s rival. Seda would need every advantage, including this ragged, disreputable trio.

  There was one Wasp amongst them, and he was perhaps the biggest man Seda had ever seen, hulking head and shoulders over his peers as though he had some Mole Cricket blood in him. He was broad, too, bulked out with muscle, his bared arms massive, looking as though they could uproot every tree in the forest for her until she had what she wanted. Twin axes were sheathed across his b
ack, each looking as though a normal man would need two hands to wield it, and he wore a long coat studded with chitin plates, with a dark metal breastplate beneath it, nothing of the black and gold about him. His name was Gorrec, Pioneer sergeant, and he was the closest to an Imperial soldier that she was looking at.

  To his right stood Icnumon, who looked as though Gorrec could have crushed him in one hand. He was a slender, pale piece of work, his ash-fair hair worn long and tied back, his features sharp and slightly out of proportion, as so often with halfbreeds. He had Wasp blood in him but his father had been Mantis-kinden, which made for a very dangerous combination. He had his mother’s sting, and the spines of his father’s people speared out from his forearms. He was an assassin, Roder had explained, who had stalked the shadows of the Commonweal, playing hide and seek with Dragonfly scouts and executing enemy leaders within their own forest haunts. He wore no armour, just a loose, long tunic and cloak of mottled grey-brown. There was a short, recurved bow holstered at his back, and long knives at his belt, but Seda could tell far more than Roder could what the man’s real advantage was. Through some teaching of his father or secrets learned in the Commonweal, Icnumon had a touch of the magician about him: a few incantations and half-understood tricks to complement his Art, to let him stalk unseen in the darkness.

  To Gorrec’s left was a shorter, squatter figure, and not what she would have expected among the Pioneers. Instead of a slender Inapt killer or a rugged Wasp, here was a solid, balding Beetle-kinden wearing a hauberk of reinforced leather that was one step removed from an artificer’s protective overalls. He had a snapbow over his shoulder, not the standard infantry model but the shorter-barrelled pieces that she understood the Light Airborne preferred for speed and ease of movement. This man was Jons Escarrabin, who had been born in Collegium a very long time ago, and who had fought on both sides in the Twelve-year War, graduating from captive to Auxillian to Pioneer. He looked like a mild shopkeeper, and had been personally mentioned in reports as a crack shot, an expert wildsman and a halfway decent artificer. He fought for the Empire for the same reason that a surprising number of mercenary types did, because where else would they get such a rewarding opportunity to practise their trades?

  ‘I shall take them,’ she declared. ‘General, begin moving your chosen forces into the forest. The Nethyen and their Moth-kinden masters are expecting you, and they shall serve your officers as guides and Auxillians, bringing you to the fray. No quarter for the Etheryen. No quarter for the Sarnesh. Drive them back wherever you meet them.’ Roder would have some inkling of the magnitude of the task, the size of the forest, its beasts, its darkness, no fit terrain for the Wasp-kinden, and yet they would do their best, despite it all, for her glory and that of the Empire.

  And if those two glories diverge slightly, who is to know?

  ‘My retinue will be Gjegevey, Tisamon and my personal bodyguards, Ostrec of the Red Watch and your three Pioneers. I shall commandeer such others as I see fit from the locals and your forces as I need them. For yourself, Roder, while the Mantis-kinden are at war, there will be no support from the woods for the Sarnesh. You have waited long enough. Ready your men to march.’

  Nine

  The drone of Imperial machines was all that was left in the sky now. The deceptively quiet Collegiate Stormreaders had been and gone and, from his position dug into a hollow alongside a handful of Spider mercenaries, Morkaris could not have said how much the new Farsphex had helped. He had heard a fair number of bombs going off, for all their efforts.

  Cautiously he crept out of the hollow. Morkaris was a cadaverously thin Spider-kinden, seeming pale as the grave in his articulated black mail, with a double-handed axe across his back that looked too heavy for him to wield. He had been a mercenary all his adult life, though, fighting for every coin and at every station, from lone warrior to captain, from captain to captain of captains. Now he had signed on with the Aldanrael family as their adjutant, the man who kept all their varied mercenary forces in line – and damned if he wasn’t regretting it.

  I should have stayed in the Spiderlands.

  The last few days had been a harsh lesson about how well the sort of war he was used to travelled. The Spiderlands Aristoi fought all the time, with various levels of deniability, and mercenaries were a common commodity over there, with a good company never short of work – sometimes taking the coin of three families in as many days – sometimes all on the same day, or even in the same battle. In the Spiderlands, war was something Morkaris understood. Here, though . . . between the Collegiates’ cursed flying machines and the Wasps’ own murderous devices, he was feeling old and out of his depth.

  ‘Chief,’ one of his men said, and he looked up to see another Spider approaching, and not one he was pleased to see, either. There had just been an attack, with the Collegiates quartering the sky and dropping explosives on any target that presented itself, and here was Jadis of the Melisandyr, his full armour gleaming as though the man had sat polishing it throughout the bombardment.

  Jadis was commander of the Aldanrael’s regular forces, hence Morkaris’s opposite number, chief rival and constant foil. Here was a man born with all the advantages Morkaris had been denied: good looks, good family, respect that didn’t require the daily shedding of blood . . . Morkaris spat wearily as the man strode over.

  ‘You’re a hard man to find,’ Jadis told him.

  ‘I like to think the Collegiates say the same. What do you want?’ Morkaris demanded. ‘Worried about my health?’

  The two men sized each other up, not for the first time, as the mercenaries moved out in a loose semicircle behind their leader. Jadis had come alone, but nothing in his pose or expression suggested that he was remotely worried about his safety.

  If I thought that was just arrogance . . . Challenges between individuals of comparable rank was not uncommon in Spider armies. Just as Morkaris was here to keep the infighting of the mercenaries at an acceptable level, so he himself could kick up some trouble if he wished, and had Jadis been the powdered major-domo he would have expected, then perhaps a little accident might have been arranged. Jadis could fight, though. The Melisandyr trained their sons well. When the Felyen Mantis-kinden and their allies had attacked the camp, Morkaris had witnessed the man at work: sword and shield and mail, protecting his mistress. The sight had been an education.

  ‘We’re moving,’ Jadis told him flatly. He was sharp enough to know just what Morkaris thought of him, and not to care overmuch. Being liked by mercenaries was plainly not an ambition of his.

  ‘Who’s we, and where to?’

  ‘All of us. To Collegium.’

  Not entirely unexpected, but no more welcome news for that. ‘And once they pull the army together, what about the Collegiates? What do we give them, save for a target?’ Morkaris pointed out. His hands itched for the haft of his axe, just on general principles.

  ‘A moving target, at least,’ Jadis replied. ‘Those are your orders. Get your rabble together. What’s left of it.’

  Morkaris grimaced despite himself. It was no secret that, regardless of all he could do, more than a quarter of the mercenaries had deserted, companies and individuals deciding that living under daily bombardment had not been what they signed on for. To keep those who remained, he had personally fought four duels in the last few tendays. Whether going on the march under that continued aerial assault would help morale at all was an arguable point.

  ‘The new machines will help, they say,’ Jadis offered. ‘They will keep off the worst of the attacks.’

  ‘If they don’t just explode, like the last lot,’ the mercenary spat. The fate of the Second Army’s last fliers was well known by now.

  ‘This will not happen, they say,’ Jadis continued implacably.

  Morkaris scowled. ‘I may not understand their machines, but I can still count. The new fliers are very few.’

  ‘This is irrelevant. Gather your companies for the march, or be ready to explain your failure to the Aldanra
el.’ Not quite a challenge, not quite a personal insult and nothing that Morkaris could not ignore, but still . . . for just a moment the mercenary wondered about quitting, which would certainly mean taking on Jadis then and there. The odds were too wide open, though, and he was still owed pay.

  Instead he decided to stick a knife in where he knew the man’s mail didn’t protect him. ‘Oh, well, if the Wasps say to Herself that they’ve won the skies back, who am I to argue? If Herself’s that won over by the Wasps, then tell her that her mercenaries will be ready for the march, no worries.’ The barb went home and Morkaris saw the other man twitch a little. ‘After all, no point arguing with you. You’re not the one she listens to any more.’

  Jadis’s face remained very set, but he was a Spider Aristos and master of his own emotions. It was an open secret that his mistress, Mycella of the Aldanrael, was bedding the Wasp general, and it was similarly known that Jadis was eating himself with jealousy about it. There was barely a flicker, though, to betray the man’s feelings. In spite of himself, Morkaris was impressed, for here was Aristoi reserve at its finest. Shame that it wouldn’t save any lives when they got close to Collegium.

  ‘Listen, Jadis,’ he pointed out, feeling weary and old with the tedious predictability of the statement. ‘The Wasps don’t like us, and they can’t be trusted, and they don’t share power. Tell me she knows this. Tell me that her . . .’ For a moment he nearly descended into an insult, an indelicate remark about Jadis’s blessed mistress, and that would have meant a duel whether Morkaris felt ready for it or not. ‘Tell me that her coming to an accommodation with the Wasp general is all about her twisting him around to do her bidding. Because my men have been talking.’