War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The captain looked moderately pleased with himself, but not over much. It was not so great a triumph as all that. ‘Back to the tables with them?’

  ‘No, I have another use for them, and I need them for it now,’ Cherten told him. ‘I think we need to break the morale of their friends in the College. Have them secured and I’ll take them off your hands.’

  By the time the Antspider ascended to the courtyard wall there was already quite a crowd there, jostling and craning, and most of them with snapbows loaded and directed towards the Imperial lines.

  ‘Are they mustering?’ she demanded, though she could hear no sound of it. Surely there would be the rumble of the Sentinel engines; surely the movement of a large number of men could he heard on such a still night.

  ‘Lighting up the place, is what they’re doing,’ Castre Gorenn told her.

  Straessa opened her mouth to question that, but it was true. On a rooftop just overlooking the Imperial barricade directly facing the College gate, the Wasps had set out lanterns and lamps as though they were celebrating something.

  ‘What does it mean?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Nothing good,’ the Dragonfly guessed, and Straessa had to agree.

  Out of uniform, wearing only a nightshirt that hung short of his knees, Gerethwy stumbled into place beside her. He carried his snapbow, for what it was worth, and for a moment she was tempted to order him straight back down again. His face was drawn, hollow-cheeked through lack of sleep and from the recurrent stabs of pain he felt from the fingers he no longer possessed. Right now, he was plainly of no use to anyone.

  But it would shame him, she knew, and so she left it. See, I’m a terrible officer. Why does nobody else realize that?

  ‘Is that a flag they’re bringing?’ someone asked, and her attention returned to the rooftop. There were a fair number of soldiers there, and they carried some sort of bundle of staves. Her stomach went cold, wondering what new kind of weapons the Empire’s engineers might have dreamt up.

  ‘Should I try a shot?’ Gorenn asked.

  ‘At this range? Too far even for you, surely?’ Straessa pointed out.

  Gorenn shrugged irritably, and Straessa was about to suggest she try it anyway, when a Fly-kinden piped up, ‘Spears. They’ve got spears.’

  ‘Have to be bloody long ones, then,’ a Beetle youth remarked. Whilst he earned himself a murmur of laughter, Straessa felt something grip her far beyond the nebulous threat of a new invention.

  Not new . . . A real old-fashioned Wasp tradition, isn’t that right?

  ‘What are they doing?’ More than a few people were asking the question, as the Wasps began setting out the long, barbed-headed weapons in pairs, fitting them to sockets they had already set in the flat roof. Four spears, forming two crosses.

  Straessa was gripping the edge of the courtyard wall so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her whole world had contracted to that one bright spot ahead where the Wasps had cast out the darkness so that they could put on a show.

  ‘Crossed pikes,’ someone observed, and the conversation died, word by word, until almost everyone was silent. Of course, there were a few who had neglected their studies, but Straessa did not feel like educating them just then.

  She remembered Averic talking about this, once – he had so seldom spoken about his home. He had been a little drunk, his pale face discoloured with bruises from a beating he had received, but had not risen to. She – or was it Raullo? – had said something about wagering that sort of thing wouldn’t go on back where he had lived. He had then explained to them just what did go on. It had been a lapse, of course, and once the over-hasty words were spoken he had plainly wanted to take them back.

  There was a skill to it, he had explained. To drive the spearhead into the side of the abdomen by careful degrees, so that whatever damage it did would agonize without killing – to lever it through the ribs without gashing the lungs, and then to ram it into the tricep and biceps, so that, once the crossing was complete, the victim hung from the spear-shafts, with the hooked heads embedded in the solid flesh of the upper arms. A soldier who could perform all that reliably was guaranteed a sergeant’s rank badge.

  Someone – either slow on the uptake or just absurdly optimistic – now moaned with horrified realization, as two new figures were led up onto the roof.

  Eujen. Averic.

  ‘I can’t see Serena,’ someone was saying, some friend of the Fly-kinden officer’s.

  ‘Then she’s the lucky one,’ Straessa whispered. ‘Gereth . . .’

  The Woodlouse was staring out at that illuminated rooftop, fingering his snapbow, but even on his best day he couldn’t have made the shot.

  . . . rammed through the body, inch by searing inch, an anatomy lesson for sadists, then hung . . .

  The officer in charge seemed to be taking some pains explaining to his prisoners what was going to happen to them. Of course, Averic must already know in great detail . . . while Eujen always did have a quick imagination.

  Straessa levelled her snapbow, sighting it on those distant figures. The previous day’s exchange had demonstrated that she could not possibly hit her mark, or probably even make the roof at all, and she would get in only one – perhaps two – shots, before the Wasps made sure she could not spoil their fun.

  And she couldn’t shoot Eujen. She didn’t have it in her, despite everything. How many times had she joked that the thing he needed most was a shot in the head, and here they were . . . and she couldn’t.

  ‘Gorenn, you said . . .’ She watched as Eujen and Averic had their hands freed, but of course you would have to have unbound wrists to go up on the pikes. ‘You said you could manage the shot. Can you?’

  The Dragonfly looked round as though noticing Straessa for the first time. ‘Of course. Why not?’

  Straessa saw them unsocket the spears again, in preparation for their bloody work. Setting the weapons up in advance like that was part of the ritual: to make the victims – and the onlookers – understand and know fear.

  ‘Founder’s Mark, do it,’ she spat. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Eujen. I wish you a clean death. That’s all I can do now.

  Atop the roof overlooking the barricade, Cherten peered into the night, over at the College, seeing movement without detail along the wall.

  ‘Well, why not?’ he addressed his prisoners. ‘After all, you came to negotiate a surrender. I will now show your fellows what terms they can expect if they continue to resist the Empire.’

  Eujen did not look at him, staring at his own feet, but Averic glowered, twisting in the grip of the soldiers who held him.

  Cherten favoured him with a cold smile. ‘Yes, the greater of the two traitors first. Put the pikes in him now.’

  He turned back to regard the dark bulk of the College and opened his mouth to shout something at his audience there, and an arrow pierced his throat, through to the fletching.

  And on the College wall, Straessa cursed and demanded, ‘What did you do?’

  Castre Gorenn stared at her. ‘Wasn’t that . . . Wait, what did you mean for me to do?’

  There was a moment when that single arrow became a full-scale attack in the minds of most of the Wasps there, and Averic seized on it.

  He tried to put an elbow in the throat of the man holding him, but slammed it painfully into the soldier’s chest instead. It was enough, sending his captor reeling away from him, and then Averic’s hands flashed, knocking down the man with the pike who stood right next to him, still staring dumbly at Cherten’s body. The barbed spear ended up in Averic’s hands, and he lashed it across the face of the man holding Eujen.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted, and because Eujen plainly had no idea how or where to go, he grabbed the Beetle student tight and threw them both off the roof towards the splintered architecture of the barricade.

  His wings flashed, but Eujen was heavy, and the two of them barely cleared the barricade at all, before tumbling to the ground. There were shouts fro
m behind and above – at least some of them directed at the escaping prisoners and—

  Averic’s heart soared. Eujen was on his feet and already beginning to lumber towards the College, stumbling at first, but gaining momentum as he went. And Averic flew after him, turning in the air to spit a scatter of stingshot at those he knew must be following.

  ‘Get the doors open!’ Straessa yelled. ‘Get . . .’ and then she had simply vaulted the edge of the wall, hanging by her hands for a moment and then dropping. Gorenn was with her, and a couple of Fly-kinden, and she heard the rattle and groan as the doors were unbarred and opening behind her.

  Her feet pounded the flagstones, and she was already trying to level her snapbow, but it was a futile effort. Ahead she saw bright flashes that must be Averic’s sting – and they were answered in kind, for the Wasps were in the air and descending fast on the fugitives. The distance between them – from Straessa to the escapees – seemed immense and ever-growing however fast she ran, like in some terrible dream.

  Beside her, Gorenn was loosing another arrow, yet barely slowing.

  She saw Averic turn again, kicking into the air, hands on fire with golden light. Then he had lurched sideways, and she realized he had been struck. There were snapbowmen still on the roof, and they had a clear shot. Averic was down on one knee, and she saw Eujen falter, slowing as if to turn – slowing to be caught.

  ‘Run!’ came Averic’s high, clear voice. He had not even looked back, but his hands flashed and flamed, burning up his life in crackling Art.

  He was down. It was so sudden Straessa did not even see the transition, but her Wasp friend was a motionless heap on the ground when her eyes found him again . . . and Eujen was still labouring towards her. He had spotted her now, and his expression was like a drowning man’s.

  There were Wasps behind him, practically hovering over his shoulders. One spun away with an arrow punched through his mail. The other dropped down to the ground, snapbow levelled.

  ‘Eujen!’ Straessa shouted. ‘Go left!’

  He lurched – it was nothing more than that – but she was already bringing her own weapon up, pulling the trigger, her hands so steady they should have belonged to someone else. The Wasp soldier stood up suddenly, then fell back down, and Eujen . . .

  Eujen was picking himself up unsteadily, weaving oddly. His lurch had not been in response to her call. He had been shot.

  She tried to run faster to reach him, to compensate for the fact that he was no longer running at all. The next two bolts that struck him, she saw only in the shuddering of his body before he collapsed.

  She was screaming, and there were other Wasps ahead, but she had brought a boiling mass of students in her wake, and now the snapbow bolts were flying in both directions and the Wasps had not been ready for a Collegiate sally.

  She reached Eujen’s body, saw him still moving, still clawing to stand up, and she took his hand, took his arm, but the sound he made when she tried to get him to his feet curdled her insides, and she let go.

  ‘Gereth!’ she called out, and of course the Woodlouse was there, without even a snapbow in hand. But he had come after her, and now he was gathering up Eujen, lifting the Beetle’s bulk as though it was nothing, while soldiers of the Student Company flanked him and loosed their bolts at the Wasps to keep them back.

  Straessa spared one look for Averic, but he was too far away, and lying too still . . . and she knew that to go after his corpse would be to run into a killing ground.

  ‘Fall back,’ she spat. ‘Back for the College.’

  The surgeons had been and gone before she was allowed to see him, coming and going behind closed doors as if they were merely ghosts or rumours. When Straessa finally forced her way in, after she had exhausted the protests of the staff, she found the same two Fly-kinden tending him as had watched over Stenwold Maker earlier. Sperra, the woman from Princep, and of course Sartaea te Mosca, her friend. Eujen’s friend.

  There was such grief on the little woman’s face that Straessa thought he must have died.

  When she crouched beside him, though, kneeling on the floor by his mattress, she could just hear his breathing, picking it out from the laboured breath of the other casualties there because she recognized it, even diminished as it was.

  ‘Tell me,’ she whispered.

  Te Mosca shook her head slightly. ‘We can’t know, dear one, I’m sorry. There’s hope . . .’ Her tone belied her words.

  ‘They said if he hadn’t been a Beetle, he’d not have made it as far as the walls,’ Sperra explained, briskly businesslike because Eujen was just one more injured Collegiate to her. ‘They’ve dosed him up with Instar but sometimes it doesn’t take, and sometimes it makes things worse.’

  ‘It seems that medical science has come full circle, until it’s as vague as my magic,’ te Mosca murmured.

  Sperra bent over Eujen’s chest and listened carefully, before noting something down on a scroll. ‘Don’t do anything stupid. Just let him lie there . . . and let whatever happens happen. Make a nuisance of yourself, and it’ll make him worse.’ She stood up for a moment, swaying slightly, and Straessa wondered when this woman had last slept.

  Te Mosca squeezed the other Fly’s arm – small support but all she could wring from the situation – and Sperra nodded and moved on to the next bed, where her big Ant friend was sitting halfway up and sipping gingerly at a jug of water.

  Eujen’s dead weight lay beside Straessa, and she would have needed the instruments of the Apt to register his chest rising and falling. His colour was a ghastly greyish hue, as though the blood had congealed inside him. His exposed skin bore at least a score of lacerations, many still weeping.

  She took his good hand, finding it clammy and too cold, and she sat there beside his bed for as long as she could stand it, listening to the weakening falter of his breath. Nobody was counting, but she reckoned that she lasted less than twenty minutes before she wanted to scream out her anger and frustration at the vaulted ceiling.

  She stood up without warning, and te Mosca looked up at her, concerned.

  ‘Straessa?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t just . . . I can’t just sit here and wait.’

  The Fly took in her expression. ‘Please, he needs you.’

  ‘I can’t. Not for him, not for you.’ She was shaking a little, with a chill that had come from his cool hand.

  ‘Straessa, please, don’t go and do anything—’

  ‘I can’t just wait for him to die!’ she burst out – heedless of the other patients, or of Eujen himself. But it was a true confession, and every moment she spent there, wondering if there would even be a next breath, was winding her up like a clockwork, tighter and tighter, until she could not remain still any longer. Until she had to act.

  Out on the courtyard wall again, with the night sky above her – was it only a couple of hours past midnight? – she stared out towards the Wasp lines. She had escaped Eujen’s deathbed, but the scratchy, failing whisper of his breathing had come outside with her, as though his comatose body was hung just behind her, whichever way she turned.

  And she knew only this one thing: I have to act.

  Castre Gorenn, who seemed to need no sleep at all, was eyeing her doubtfully, but then she used that same expression for so much she encountered in Collegium. She had left her home and come to an alien world of Beetle-kinden politics and artifice, and for her the Wasps were probably the only familiar faces in the whole city.

  ‘I’m going over the wall,’ Straessa told her, and the look that appeared on the Dragonfly’s face was one of pure understanding. ‘I’m going to fight the war.’

  No objections, no raising of the alarm. Gorenn just nodded because it made sense to her.

  ‘I’ve fought as an Ant for long enough,’ the Antspider stated, unbuckling her breastplate. ‘Now I’m going to fight as a Spider.’ She set the metal down carefully and stripped away her buff coat as well, leaving only her dark tunic beneath. ‘Besides, I’m far bette
r with a sword than I ever was with a snapbow.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to kill General Tynan.’ There, the words were said.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  Straessa stared at the Dragonfly. She had already considered the likely outcome of her mission, and it was plain that Gorenn concurred, but that offer had still been made.

  And it seemed so tempting, but Straessa wanted no more weighing on her conscience, not just then. ‘You hold your post, soldier. I’ll be back before morning.’

  And then she was over the wall and away, with assassination on her mind.

  In the extensive cellars of the College library building there was one spur of rooms never used to store books. The chill was insidious there, far more so than any obvious factor could account for, and the walls ran perpetually with an acrid condensation. The College had tried to use the little chambers there as an ice room, but the resulting ice always smelled odd. People reported hearing strange scratchings sometimes. It had become a standard student dare to spend the night there: the Inapt claimed it was haunted, and the laughing Apt found it a safe place to titillate themselves with daring thoughts of the old days once the lanterns were put out.

  But, being a place of education, among each generation of students there had always been a few inquiring minds who had been curious and analytical enough to work out precisely what was going on, to solve the mystery and declare it anything but supernatural, although they were largely ignored.

  As luck would have it, a couple of such inquiring minds were in the Student Company garrison trapped inside the College, even then.

  Forty

  Milus had barely slept, or perhaps not at all. That was another thing that marked him out amongst his people – placed him on that razor-edged line between prized thinker and freak. His troops slept soundly, and would wake in an instant. Only he felt compelled to run his plans over and over, to build increasingly redundant fallback scenarios for remote possibilities. What if they . . .?

  He went to speak with Lissart, because he could kick her awake at any hour, but she stared at him sombrely as though death had entered the tent alongside him.