War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Bit weird, having another airship about,’ Vrant muttered.

  Sandric shrugged. ‘It was a big storm. Probably downed ships all over this part of the Lowlands. Please, sir.’

  Corver nodded, looking up at the sky. Late morning already, not long before noon. ‘How sure are you that you can find the site?’

  ‘I took a compass bearing when I saw it go down,’ Sandric confirmed.

  ‘Then we go now.’

  Back in the Twelve-year War Corver had been ordered to chase some fleeing Commonwealer troops into a forest, which had turned out to be a Mantis-kinden hold not marked on any of the ink-still-wet Imperial maps. The Mantids, who had not so much as lifted a finger to help the Dragonfly troops in the battle just concluded, had taken the invasion of their privacy very seriously indeed.

  It was not the fighting that had marked Corver, but what came after. As they had hunted him through the trees, as his wounds had run fever through him like a hot knife, he had heard the screams of the men the Mantids had captured – probably soldiers from both sides for all he knew. He had staggered through a night strung with other people’s torment and then . . . and then . . .

  They had herded him to one of their places, where a worm-eaten idol had been reared up, crooked arms grasping wide. He had turned at bay then, the world about him a fever-dream of whispering voices and blurred images, but they had not come for him. Instead he—

  He had not. He had not heard the voice. That had been his wounds and his delirium.

  Now he was back in the green again, back in the land of the Mantis-kinden. Before Sandric’s revelation some part of him had already given up – surrounded and besieged, there had been no hope for them. Now the pilot was offering him a slender lifeline, but it involved going out there, and facing . . .

  If he had not made the call to depart then and there, reflexively and without thought, then his fears would have got the better of him, and he would have crawled into the airship’s wreck and never come out. He knew that he was not thinking clearly, as an officer should, but he had no other options.

  ‘Sterro!’ he snapped out. ‘Get your scrawny arse out here, or we leave you behind.’

  There was a hurried scrabbling from within, and then the Fly hauled his skinny little frame out of the hold, making suspiciously heavy weather of it. When he presented himself before Corver, his leather coat hung with the bulked-out heaviness of mail. Every pocket bulged.

  Seeing the sergeant’s glower, the Fly scowled furiously. ‘What? So we’re supposed to leave it there?’

  ‘It’s the army’s money,’ Corver stated.

  ‘And how’s the army going to see it again?’ Sterro demanded. ‘Look, sir, we’re in the latrine here, right in it. It’s just us, no Emperor, no Rekef, no generals. We have to look after ourselves.’

  Corver opened his mouth, but Vrant had already made a move for the hatch. At the sergeant’s challenging stare he shrugged. ‘Just a purse-full, eh? Think of it as a bonus for having to put up with Ordan.’

  ‘Be quick about it then,’ Corver snapped. Part of him was raging at the poor discipline, the rest just bitter because he had left himself no dignified way to back down and grab a double-handful of retirement fund himself.

  Sandric had made no move to follow. ‘Sir, movement in the trees.’

  They were crouching low in the next moment, using the rail and the slope of the airship as cover. Corver squinted and stared, and after a while he began to see it too – nothing so identifiable as a human form, but he knew they were out there, and in force this time.

  ‘Think they’re working up the courage?’ Sandric asked him.

  ‘Mantis-kinden don’t need to do that. They’re stupid enough to charge artillery.’ He remembered the war, though – when the Mantids fought it was seldom as part of the Commonweal battle host. They came and went by incomprehensible rules of their own, attacking when least expected, but passing up on some obvious opportunities too. Rituals and superstition, Corver supposed.

  ‘Get up here now, we’re pulling out,’ he called, and Vrant had appeared the moment after, sword in hand even as he clambered out of the hatch.

  ‘Sandric, which way?’

  The pilot consulted his compass and pointed.

  ‘On three, then,’ Corver decided, and then an arrow sprouted from the deck near his hand, almost magical in its suddenness, and he was going, sliding down the slope of the airship and over the rail, and the rest following him, jumping and gliding to catch him up.

  The Mantids moved on them immediately: a scattered flurry of fleet, lean bodies moving through the trees from behind and both sides, spearheads and swords glinting momentarily as they crossed stray shafts of sunlight. Corver had meant to move into the trees like a soldier, alert and wary, but he was running almost immediately, and the others struggling to keep up. Sterro flapped along at the rear complaining, getting briefly off the ground with desperate stutterings of his wings before the weight of his sudden enrichment brought him down again.

  An arrow cut past Corver, from nowhere and into nowhere, existing for him only in the moment that its swift flight crossed his path. There were whoops and yells from around them – then the crackle of stingshot as Vrant turned his Art on them – directing a palm backwards and lashing out blindly to make the enemy keep their distance.

  And yet they were keeping their distance, and this frightened Corver more than anything. It was the Commonweal all over again. The Mantids were playing with them. Had they wanted the Imperials dead then a few well-placed arrows would have accomplished it, and Corver knew full well how good a shot the average Mantis archer was.

  Abruptly he stopped, Sandric almost cannoning into him, Vrant barrelling past before skidding to a halt. Sterro practically dropped at his feet. Corver had his sword in hand, his off-hand directed outwards, and the other Wasps quickly joined him, standing shoulder to shoulder and facing away from one another.

  ‘Sir?’ came Vrant’s taut question.

  Corver peered between the trees. There was a complete canopy above them, and it was as dark as twilight down here. For a moment he could see nothing of the Mantids, just the overwhelming undersea gloom of the space between the trees, the shimmer and dance of flying things and the scurrying in the undergrowth.

  Then he saw one: a tall, lean man in clothes the colour of the forest, bearing a bow as tall as he was, standing motionless, watching. Abruptly he could pick out at least two dozen of them, men and women bearing bows and swords and spears. They were unarmoured, probably barely counting as warriors by Mantis reckoning, but they were quite enough to make an end to some lost soldiers of the Empire.

  They began stalking forwards – not running, but a slow, deliberate advance, and wherever Corver looked, in that quarter, he saw them slipping between the trees, bowstrings being drawn back, spearheads dark and thirsty.

  ‘Go,’ he decided. The word forced itself from him without his consent. A moment later he was on the move again – less of a frantic rush, because he was too tired and bruised for it now, but hurried even so. He knew without looking that the Mantis-kinden would be effortlessly keeping pace.

  Ahead, the forest grew only darker, the trees closer together and the branches overhead just heavier and more intricately interleaved.

  They battered their way another few hundred feet, tripping over roots and dodging about trunks, and each of them feeling an arrow aimed at the small of their back. In Corver’s mind was the demand, How far do they want to drive us, before they strike? Certainly they would strike – probably to pick off one or two of them before running the survivors further. They were a cruel people, the Mantis-kinden. Every Imperial soldier knew it.

  Sandric tripped and fell, cursing, tangled in briars, almost vanishing into an abundance of undergrowth that was abruptly about them past knee-height. The trees around them had become larger – trunks broader than a man was tall – and further apart to compensate. As Vrant hauled the pilot to his feet, Corver glanced up, seein
g patchy sky for the first time in what seemed like two hours. Clouds rolled there, although it seemed impossible that there could be another storm brewing so soon.

  ‘We left them behind,’ Sterro declared.

  Corver opened his mouth for a scathing denial, but he was scanning the trees back the way they had come, and the pursuit – which should have been on them by that time – was nowhere to be seen. Then he saw that the Fly-kinden was pointing.

  They were there, the Mantis-kinden, but they were holding their ground – at least two score of them now, clustered between the trees, watching.

  Vrant swore wearily.

  ‘Sandric, do you have the first idea where we are, relative to that new crash?’

  ‘Well yes, sir, I . . .’ The pilot consulted his compass. The fact that they had surely gone madly off course in their flight was present with them, unspoken but universally acknowledged.

  ‘Get yourself up there and take another look,’ Corver ordered him.

  Sandric looked as though he was about to argue, but then his wings whisked him up, kicking and twisting to avoid the branches.

  Sterro sat down, dragging a water bottle out from one of his many pockets. After a deep swig he surprised Corver by handing it around.

  The Mantis-kinden did not disperse, but kept their distance – not a bow was drawn back, despite Corver’s estimate that they were still within longbow range. Just waiting to make sure we don’t double back, was the miserable thought in Corver’s mind right then.

  A minute passed before Sandric dropped clumsily back down again, indicating a new course.

  ‘We’ll make it by dark?’ Corver asked him.

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ said the pilot who had no experience of long treks through forest.

  It had not escaped Corver’s notice that the direction Sandric had indicated was into the thickest undergrowth, and more heavily shadowed, but perhaps that was just his luck coming into play once again. That the shadows seemed oddly independent of the canopy cover above . . . he shook himself. This wasn’t the Commonweal. This wasn’t that forest, and besides, there had been no voice, not then, not now . . .

  Making off at the whim of Sandric’s compass proved one thing: the Mantis-kinden had not been simply keeping their distance. They really had stopped, and in a very short time indeed they were out of sight, taken away by the trees and the underwater gloom. At that point Corver just knuckled down and marched, because there was no way at all that giving himself a chance to think about things was going to help.

  Kicking and pushing through the ever-denser undergrowth played havoc with any sense of time or distance, and the forest that loomed on every side seemed always the same. When Vrant called out his warning, Corver realized he had no idea how far they had come.

  ‘Movement!’ the big man had snapped out, and Corver peered between the trees frantically, trying to spot . . .

  Nothing, there was nothing.

  Then they were upon him. He saw just a flurry of motion, barely anything registering of the body that made it, and a blow clanged off his upraised sword. His hand flashed in instant response, and he felt in his gut that he had scored a hit, but the undergrowth swallowed any body hungrily, and then there was movement all about them. Vrant roared and struck – he had always been good with a sword – and Corver saw the shadowy forms of two lean men attacking him – then falling back as the furious Wasp soldier hacked at them. An arrow struck Sterro in the flank, knocking him sideways with a yell, then he righted himself, his ill-gotten gains acting as a coat of mail. A moment later the Fly simply vanished into the ferns, very little discretion required to overcome his meagre valour.

  Corver lashed out at anything that came near him. The Mantis-kinden were dancing from tree to tree, moving swiftly, using every part of their forest home to hide them. He caught not a straight glimpse of any of them, not a single face – just the murderous rushing movement as they lunged at him and then skipped away.

  One darted past him – a momentary impression of hard, empty eyes, a sinuous form shrouded in grey – and Sandric went down, struck hard. He made a sound like a man dying, and Corver had heard enough of them in his time. He stabbed at the attacker, then tried to bring his sting to bear, but the Mantis was gone.

  They were all gone. Corver straightened up, feeling quiet return to the forest. As swiftly as they had struck, the Mantis-kinden had fled – some part of their game, no doubt. One by one, they’ll come for us, just like . . . but then Sandric sat up, his head just clearing the ferns. He looked pale, his face washed out and drawn in the fickle light, but he was alive, and Corver helped him up.

  ‘Hurts, sir,’ he said, but the leather of his pilot’s cuirass had turned the blow just enough.

  ‘We need to move,’ Vrant stated. ‘They’ll be back. Where’s—’ But Sterro had already made his reappearance.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he snapped at the big man. ‘Don’t pretend you care.’

  ‘Sandric, go up and take another look.’ Corver glanced at the sky and saw to his surprise that much of the gloom around them was evening stealing upon them.

  The pilot ascended wearily, clutching at his side where the Mantis had struck him, and the other Imperials crouched in the ferns and waited. Then Vrant let out a long, low hiss, hefting his sword.

  ‘What is it?’ Corver asked him, tense as a wire and waiting for the Mantids to come back for a second sitting.

  But Vrant just pointed. ‘There’s the bastard,’ he said.

  Corver tried to follow the man’s finger, seeing it shake slightly. Still, Sterro saw it before he did, and only after a long time of staring did he pick out the shape of the beast that Vrant had spotted: a praying mantis, and a big one, fifteen feet if it was an inch, poised like an executioner, arms drawn up in contemplation of its next victims. One eye was a charred and ruined mess.

  ‘That was on the airship,’ Vrant grunted. ‘That brought us down.’

  ‘A mantis?’

  ‘That,’ the soldier insisted. ‘It was that.’

  ‘What are you saying, soldier? This animal followed us here?’ Corver growled. The lopsided look the mantis had turned on them was considering, reflective, anything but bestial.

  ‘I’m not saying anything, sir. Look, can we move—’

  Then Sandric had descended in their midst, which failed to startle Vrant but almost saw Corver kill the pilot by reflex.

  ‘We’re right on course,’ Sandric confirmed, pressing the compass into Corver’s hand and showing the direction, ‘but look, sir, I saw . . . hard to say but I saw what looked like – I don’t know, buildings maybe? Or something.’

  ‘Buildings . . .’ Corver exchoed.

  ‘Or something,’ Sandric repeated, shrugging. Between us and the crash. And there was what looked like . . .’ His face twisted wretchedly. ‘Something bigger, a hall or something, I could just make it out – something further in.’

  Further off, surely, Corver corrected for himself, but Sandric’s words seemed entirely and unwelcomingly appropriate. ‘We press on,’ he told them. ‘But watch for any sign of construction, is all.’

  ‘Night soon,’ Sterro muttered. Nobody dignified him with an answer.

  Vrant took the lead, chopping and shouldering his way, from time to time in the ever-waning light consulting the compass that Corver held. The physical activity strained his abused ribs, but he was glad of it. In a long history of stupid assignments, this business was surely the worst. What was happening to the Imperial army these days? Surely things were simpler back when they were fighting the Dragonflies?

  Building, the sergeant had said, as if anyone would really build anything in this place. Surely the Mantis-kinden slept in trees whilst their beasts roamed free and attacked innocent Wasp airships.

  And that was another thing he didn’t like. That had been the same mantis, bearing the scars of their previous encounter – but it had not attacked, and then Corver had been all ‘press on’ and Vrant had lost sight of it. That it was still ou
t there was no hard conclusion to reach, though. Hunting us, he decided, but they were already so lost and so foreign to this louring place that he had to wonder just what sort of opportunity the monster was waiting for.

  ‘Wait!’ Sterro’s voice hissed abruptly, from waist level. The little man had taken to travelling right at Vrant’s heels, to his great annoyance, mostly to take best advantage of the path the Wasp was forcing through the undergrowth. And since when did you ever get a forest like this – so much underfoot and yet so little sky above, eh?

  ‘Report.’ Corver’s voice sounded ragged.

  ‘Light, sir. A fire.’

  Vrant glanced up, barely able to distinguish scraps of sky from the branches that barred it out. The fabled buildings were starting to seem less a threat and more of a promise. Roof over our heads wouldn’t go amiss, no matter how many Mantids we had to kill for it.

  The Wasps squinted in the direction Sterro was pointing. Was there a faint suggestion of red there? Vrant couldn’t tell.

  ‘Move,’ Corver decided, and they muddled on another hundred yards – by then they could all see it – a sullen glow that outlined the low, curved entryway to a hut. ‘Hut’ was almost an overstatement. The thing seemed mostly woven from branches, and one side of it was just latched onto a tree trunk. Aside from the doorway the only external feature was where the weave of its root projected up into an unpleasantly anatomical-looking spout, from which a light trail of smoke could just be seen as they approached.

  Then Vrant looked to one side, and stopped, putting out a hand to halt the sergeant as well, with Sterro pattering on another few feet.

  ‘Sir, we’re surrounded,’ Vrant murmured, sword clearing its sheath in what he hoped was a subtle way. He waited while the others took stock and came to the same conclusion.

  The hut was a Mantis hut, no doubt about that, but that was because they were in the middle of a Mantis village. Of course, unlike civilized people the world over, the wretched Mantis-kinden didn’t deign to undertake such menial tasks as clearing the ground around where they wanted to live. Instead, Vrant and the others had been walking through the Mantis community for some time. Now that they looked, they could see similar misshapen structures between and around and halfway up the trees in all directions, as though the forest had erupted in monstrous tumours.