War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Seconds only until the Stormreader would unleash its cargo. All those dumb minds down there watching that swift approach and desperate to live.

  Now. And she was on her line, piercers opening up with their juddering roar, and she saw the constellation of sparks about the Stormreader’s engine casing, punching a string of bolts towards the left wing.

  Three hard strikes punched into her hull, but then one of her fellows was coming straight at her pursuers, shooting wildly and putting them off their aim.

  For a moment, just one of those split seconds she was living between, she thought she had lost it and that the determination of the bomber would surpass the accuracy of her own flying, but then his wing splintered apart as her shot knifed into the joint, and the Stormreader was spinning away, end over end, ploughing into the ground behind its intended target. She saw a sudden plume of fire as his bomb detonated within the bay.

  Then came the counter-attack, and she dragged her machine away, taking a half-dozen holes through the silk and wood of one wing. Her fellows were there to cover for her, but abruptly the fighting had become something new – not the fencing match of threat and counter-threat, but life and death as the Collegiates gave up on their ground targets to deal instead with their annoyances in the air. Her pilots had superior coherence and discipline, but the Stormreaders were arguably better machines for this duelling, and they had twice the numbers.

  She took in her pilots’ views of the air, formed them into a whole, found their best chance for survival, scattered her people across the sky without any of them ever being alone for a moment, all efforts now concentrated on evasion and yet refusing to be driven away, always there and never ceding the air to the enemy.

  As one of her fellows died, she felt the stab of pain as if it was her own. His mind, within hers, was a briefly burning red-hot spark of pain and fear, snuffed out instantly as his Farsphex nosedived into the ground.

  One less. And they could hardly spare it. Her thoughts rallied the others, spurred them on. The Empire is counting on us.

  Her father had possessed the same poisoned gift: that mindlink Art whose known practitioners had been rounded up and executed just a generation before, by the Rekef secret police. Never tell, he had insisted. You must never let them know. But when she heard what the Empire wanted her kind for, she had turned herself in to the Engineers without a second thought.

  Give me back the sky, had been her only desire,

  The intervention of the other Imperial machines came as a surprise, not a part of her mental battle plan at all. They had most of them not been ready for immediate launch but, the moment the Stormreaders had been spotted, the ground crews would have been working towards it. Now that uneven clutter of old Spearflights and the flying rabble of the Spiderlands was all about, still not quite evening the numbers, but complicating matters for the Collegiates. The Stormreaders outmatched them badly, but there had been a clock ticking ever since the attack started. Most Stormreaders had a limited fighting range, and their forays over the Second Army were on a strict leash – and the more they had to fight, the more spring-stored power their clockwork hearts used up. The older Imperial machines could refuel when they needed it, and the Farsphex had been able to fly from the Empire to fight over Collegium itself, and then return in safety, so efficient was their fuel.

  Her pilots called it in all at once, the moment the Stormreaders began flashing their signals to each other. Fall back, she instructed. No heroics. They could not risk losing another Farsphex to a sudden ambush. Defence of the army was all.

  She pictured the pilot who had died, not so much the face as the feel of his mind. What they would do when they got closer to Collegium, when the Stormreaders would be able to fight for as long as they needed, she did not know.

  So I hear that command has a plan: the thought of one of her fellows, filled with discontent.

  We can only hope, came her reply.

  Ten

  ‘The problem, basically, is that the Mantis-kinden never fought a traditional battle in their lives. When we fight, we go in, we take and hold land, consolidate, press on. Them? They attack, kill, fade away. They don’t stay where they were. Their only strongpoints are their actual holds, which are basically villages built into the trees, which you could pretty well miss if you walked right through them – until they killed you, anyway.’

  Tynisa nodded, remembering her journey to the Felyal with her father. He had been bringing her there to see her people’s way of life. Since then she felt she had run into more than her fair share of the Mantis way, and yet here she was again.

  The speaker was an Ant-kinden named Sentius, placed in command of the Etheryen relief force by Tactician Milus. He was a lean, weathered Sarnesh with some grey in his dark hair, and he had ventured into the forest before to liaise with Sarn’s allies.

  ‘The Etheryen tell me that they won’t attack holds, and the Nethyen won’t either. Now, I reckon that’s likely to change soon enough, either because someone starts losing or because your Wasps won’t know the rules. For now it’s a blood-pissing chaos in here. There’s basically a whole third of the mid-forest that’s full of war bands from either side all running about lying in wait and jumping out at each other, and both sides are striking out towards the other side of the wood – so we’re only a hundred yards in and still I’ve got scouts out,’ he went on. ‘And then there’s me with my men, and at least we can get as split up as you like and still know where we are, but I reckon that I’ll be losing whole squads within a day or so, once the Nethyen get wind of us – and our friends will be doing the same for the Wasps, too. And then I have you lot to cope with as well. All of you.’

  Overhead, the canopy was near full. The world beneath was cast in shades of dark green and pale grey, lanced by errant sunbeams. Just a hundred yards in, as Sentius had said, there was no mark of axe on any tree, but instead great bloated forest giants that three men could not have stretched their arms around, and growing far closer together than seemed reasonable, each one muscling up against its neighbours for room. The space between them was like some mad architect’s fantasy, a vaulted, irregular colonnade that unravelled in every direction into the gloom. All around them were Sarnesh Ants, stepping carefully through the undergrowth that somehow clawed itself a hold here despite the poor light: great sprays of ferns, twisted nests of brambles, the jutting shelves of bracket fungus, and slender capped spires of mushrooms half the height of a man.

  ‘Civilians,’ Sentius pronounced, giving the word that special contempt unique to military men. His gaze raked the assembly, barely pausing on Che and her followers. Tynisa understood that they were already accepted, by order of Milus himself. The rest, however . . .

  The Roach girl, Syale, was no surprise, and in truth she seemed to pass through these woods with an ease that surprised even the Mantis-kinden. Or perhaps she just had no common sense, of course, but it was plain that the Sarnesh were not going to keep her out. The ambassador from Princep Salma was here to stay.

  The ambassador from Collegium was a more contentious figure, though. Helma Bartrer, Master of the Great College and representative of the Assembly, seemed oblivious to any hints. Instead she had attached herself to Terastos, the Moth-kinden nominally representing Dorax, and she was not to be dislodged short of physical force. Any such attempt would be complicated by Amnon, her vast and unsubtle shadow.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Bartrer told Sentius sharply. ‘I am an expert in the history of the Etheryen and their culture. I have studied these matters for longer than you’ve held a sword.’

  ‘I’ve got experts, Mistress Bartrer,’ Sentius told her with admirable mildness. ‘I have him—’ Terastos. ‘And I have her—’ Che, to her plain surprise. ‘More to the point, I have every cursed Mantis who lives in this forest and isn’t actively trying to kill me.’

  ‘And you have me,’ Bartrer finished, with great finality. ‘Believe me, before this is done you’ll be glad of me. Tell him, Mistress Maker.’
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  Che started in surprise, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. ‘I . . . why?’

  Helma Bartrer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Because I know what you’re after here. And, believe me, you need me.’

  There was some unheard signal from down the line, and Sentius abruptly blanked the entire conversation from his mind. The Sarnesh, who had been making a cautious advance, were instantly seeking cover, then freezing to stillness with crossbows and snap-bows at the ready.

  Che and the other ‘civilians’ crouched together in the midst of an overarching stand of ferns. ‘What are you talking about?’ she hissed at Bartrer.

  ‘Oh, I hear a lot.’ The College woman seemed almost hostile. ‘You reckon the Empress is coming here – or is here right now. You reckon she wants something in these woods, that’s the word I hear, but you don’t know what that something is. Even though you’re Inapt now, I hear.’ That last comment seemed the crux of the dislike in the woman’s voice, and yet Tynisa could not see it as merely the Apt dismissing their forebears. Instead she read something like envy in Bartrer’s tone. Live long enough with history? she wondered. Like most Beetles, Bartrer would be Apt, making the study of the Inapt a maddeningly frustrating business.

  Che looked from face to face. ‘I assumed that if there’s something here the Moths would know.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Terastos.

  The Moth grimaced. ‘Some scraps perhaps. I am no Skryre, and my masters are jealous of their learning, And many of the texts in Collegium are lost to my folk, despite our demands for their return.’

  Che looked into Bartrer’s face again, and her eyes flicked to Amnon, who would presumably go where the academic went. Perhaps it was the thought of his able help that decided her.

  ‘Then I need all the help I can get,’ she admitted. Maure plucked at her sleeve, but she shook the halfbreed magician off.

  By then the Sarnesh were moving again, some false alarm now dealt with. Squads were constantly moving off, to be rapidly lost in the darkness, guided only by the best-guess mental map they shared between them. Sentius reappeared with his repeating crossbow over his shoulder, and a Fly-kinden padding along almost under his armpit. This was Zerro, his chief of scouts, a gaunt and taciturn man who moved as silently in the forest as any Mantis.

  ‘Bartrer’s with me,’ Che told him, pre-empting any argument.

  Sentius nodded glumly. ‘Fine. You get to tell your people when something happens to her. She’s not my concern from this moment. And I gather that you’ll all be out of my hair soon enough? Off on a jaunt into the depths?’

  Che nodded.

  ‘Zerro here will be with the vanguard. You break off from him at your discretion. ‘I’ve been in here more than most. There’s some bastard things in this wood that I only ever heard about from the locals. There are places the Mantids won’t go. Wandering around with your mouth open’s a fool’s errand. But, like I say, we’re up to our eyeballs in experts, and I reckon you’ve got your own, now.’

  ‘Is that your way of wishing me good luck, Commander?’ Che asked him drily, but he just shrugged.

  Tynisa fell in alongside Maure. ‘What is it?’

  The magician glanced at her – obviously still a little uneasy in the Weaponsmaster’s company after their jagged history in the Commonweal. ‘The Beetle woman, Bartrer.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I don’t like her. There’s something wrong with her: a ghost . . . or something like a ghost.’

  Tynisa waved that away. ‘You don’t trust her, I don’t trust her.’ Thalric, the third member of their forced clique, had drifted in to eavesdrop, and she added, ‘And you don’t trust anyone, so that makes three of us.’

  Thalric nodded curtly. ‘Except Che, but yes, there’s something eating that woman for sure.’

  ‘The others?’ Tynisa pressed.

  ‘Amnon’s straight up, from what I remember,’ Thalric admitted. ‘Moths are always trouble. For the rest, we’ll all just keep our eyes a bit wider open.’

  In his mind, Tynisa knew, everyone was an enemy, Sarnesh and Etheryen Mantids included. She found that she had begun to value his paranoia.

  The Sarnesh camp at the edge of the forest was breaking up, its work accomplished. Those detachments chosen by Tactician Milus had entered the forest with the Etheryen blessing that Che Maker had negotiated. The balance, along with Milus himself, was readying itself to head for home.

  Somewhat controversially, of course, both the Collegiate and Princep ambassadors had gone into Mantis territory. Balkus had already departed to report to his Monarch on the war’s most recent twists. The Collegiate orthopter still stood, one of the last machines on the impromptu airfield. Its Beetle pilot was in her seat and ready to go, but the side-hatch was still open, with a small and lonely figure sitting there, staring out at the disintegrating camp. Laszlo was still waiting, and had been waiting since before dusk. Now the moon was high, the bulk of the Ants had left, with their trademark efficiency, and he refused to give up.

  ‘Seriously.’ The pilot’s voice came from within. ‘I don’t know whether you noticed, but it’s about an hour short of midnight by the clock. Can we go now?’

  ‘She’ll be here,’ Laszlo declared, not for the first time.

  ‘Well, then at least tell me who—’

  ‘An agent. One with vital information for Collegium,’ the Fly snapped back. That was his story, he had decided. Perhaps it was even true.

  ‘She’s stood you up,’ the pilot’s voice told him unhelpfully. ‘Look—’

  ‘Just – hold on.’ For a moment, just a moment, hope flared inside him, but even he could not fool himself for more than a second. Yes, someone was approaching the orthopter, but it was not Lissart. This was an Ant and, as the figure neared, Laszlo with a sinking heart recognized Milus.

  ‘Collegium is surely waiting for your word!’ the tactician called out as he drew near. ‘And yet here you are.’ He must have had good night vision for an Ant, Laszlo considered, because he was able to look the Fly straight in the eye at that distance. His crisp little smile said a great deal. ‘You’re Laszlo, of course.’

  Having his name known to the Sarnesh court was not a thing of joy to Laszlo. ‘What of it?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘She’s not coming. I’d have let you exhaust your patience, but it’s inefficient. Go home.’

  For a moment Laszlo was frozen motionless, not a thought or quip or plan in his mind. ‘What do you mean, she’s not coming?’ was all he could come up with in the end.

  Milus’s mind was unreadable from his face but, unlike with most Ants, it was not for want of an expression, just that the mild humour he posted up there was feigned entirely for Laszlo’s benefit. ‘My adviser, Alisse – or te Liss, as she called herself in Solarno – will not be joining you. You should go now.’

  Laszlo had a knife, and he had a little cut-down snapbow known as a sleevebow, which could poke some nice holes in the Ant’s mail, but there were a lot of Ants left about the place, and he was suddenly convinced, by his instincts and his Art, that there would be Ant marksmen with their weapons trained on him right now. ‘What have you done?’ he asked hoarsely.

  ‘Taken her in for questioning,’ Milus said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘She was a Wasp agent, you know. Well, of course, you know.’ That false smile broadened by the requisite amount.

  ‘I . . .’ Laszlo had always prided himself on his quick wits and ready tongue, but Milus was changing his ground faster than the Fly could keep up. ‘What do you mean, I would know?’

  ‘I read your report in Collegium, Laszlo.’ The use of his name was pointed and deliberate.

  ‘You’ve been spying on Collegium?’

  A polite laugh. ‘Collegium has been sharing its intelligence with its allies, the Sarnesh. Your report included.’

  But I never . . . ‘I didn’t say anything in my report about—’

  ‘A Wasp agent?’ Milus’s pale eyes flicked across his face as though Laszlo
was a specimen in a jar. ‘It was all there for an adequate intelligencer to read, in between the things you actually wrote. Without that one thing, none of your story really makes much sense. Her treachery completes the picture nicely. Although I am grateful to the look on your face for confirmation.’

  Laszlo failed to say two or three separate things because his heart was hammering and he could not quite catch enough breath for them. He remembered Lissart telling him what a poor spy he was, over and over, and he had never realized how right she was, or that his failings would prove her undoing. His expression, whatever was left of it, prompted another careful widening of the tactician’s smile.

  ‘I know,’ Milus admitted. ‘We are Ants. We are terribly traditional. We make good soldiers and not much else. We do not understand you other kinden with your free-thinking minds: how very confusing and lonely you must all be, we think. We do not know how you think, and we cannot read your faces because we are ourselves so inscrutable. How our linked minds must cripple us, hm? How unfair, then, to discover at this late date that we can play the same games you can.’

  What Laszlo finally got out, at that juncture, was, ‘You can’t take her.’

  ‘She is taken. She is gone,’ Milus assured him. ‘You should also go.’

  Piss on me, Laszlo found himself thinking. And he’s on our side! ‘I’ll go to Mar’Maker about this.’

  Milus regarded him with an expression now turning to pity. ‘And he will be overjoyed that his allies are so committed to the war that he has lived for most of his life. I know Stenwold Maker well enough, from one meeting and three score reports. Stenwold Maker hates the Wasps. So do I, and therefore so do all who serve under my command. Stenwold Maker and I need each other, and we understand each other, and he will not care that an Imperial whore and spy is assisting me. Tell him I will let him have a report of what she knows. But go now. Your continued presence is inappropriate, and I am sure your pilot wants to see her home as soon as possible.’