Quickly he made his way through the forest to the nearest tower: one of the makeshift wooden constructions engineered from sections of the travelling fort his men had brought with them, rising barely above tree level and dressed with deadwood to make it less of a visible target. He let his wings drag him up there despite the weight of his armour, though he felt every one of his nigh-on fifty years as he reached the top. The Fly-kinden lookout saluted briskly, making room as half of Tynan’s bodyguards made their laborious way up as well.
‘Send word to the — the Spider colonel,’ he ordered the Fly. He had almost referred to the woman by name, which always disconcerted his soldiers. ‘Have her get ready any automotives she can. Tell her we’re going to retrieve what we can from the airships.’
The Fly was off instantly, wings ablur.
Tynan looked out: the airships were plainly visible as little round shapes in the sky, approaching fast with a following wind and growing larger even as he watched. How much more obvious must they be to the Collegiate pilots whose eyes were trained to scan the sky, and everything in it?
Overhead, the aerial battle was moving away, heading east now towards the approaching supply ships. At least we get spared a pummelling, Tynan considered grimly. Suddenly the enemy had better things to do than scatter bombs randomly in the hope of killing Wasp soldiers.
Perhaps, after this, I can talk Mycella into sending our supplies by sea, although I suppose sea-ships would be just as vulnerable as airships. Mycella of the Aldanrael was rightly the joint commander of the Collegium campaign. Labelling her as a colonel had been the best way to keep Tynan’s own people in line, though, for they had been trained rigorously to observe a rigid command structure: general to colonel to major in command, captains and lieutenants in the middle, sergeants and regular solders to fight and work and complain. An army had only one general. Two heads could not govern the same body, every Wasp knew.
Tynan knew better now, He had been initially surprised at how easy the Spider Arista was to work with. Then he had got to know her better, and to understand that she had been stripped of a great deal of her pomp and pride as a result of the failed armada attack on Collegium. After that, he had come to know her altogether too well by most standards. No doubt his intelligence officer, Colonel Cherten, had sent a few interesting reports back home, but no reprimand had come back to Tynan yet.
Still, amongst the Wasps she was a colonel and he supposed that it was a high honour: unprecedented for a woman, a non-Wasp and not even an Imperial citizen. He also suspected that she privately found this obsession with assigning ranks and titles deeply amusing.
The circular silhouettes presented by the airships against the sky began lengthening as they turned. Perhaps they had some broadsides of artillery ready to deal out, but in truth the Collegiate Stormreaders would be able to skip aside from anything the lumbering dirigibles might throw at them. Impatiently, Tynan flicked out his telescope and tried to make sense of what was going on.
Spying on an air battle was harder than the engineers made out. Tynan’s circle of view wheeled constantly across the sky, catching the little insect shapes of the orthopters as they spun and danced against each other, the new way to fight a war that he was excluded from. The best he could gather was that his own side was putting up a spirited defence of their airships. His shaky viewpoint managed brief images of the Spearflights and the Spiders’ motley collection of fliers throwing themselves against the nimble Stormreaders, clashing with them, loosing their weapons, executing turns that were too wide, too slow. He caught sight of one Spearflight in the very moment of its dissolution, falling away to the summons of the distant ground.
The airships were parting company, diverging enough to buy a few of them time to close another mile with the Second, perhaps. His own Fly messenger, be he ever so swift, would still be far from delivering Tynan’s orders — he could not possibly have outstripped the orthopters in their chase towards the supply ships. And I should have some small, fleet flying machine ready for that sort of messenger work — the old ways aren’t good enough any more.
Grinding his teeth with the impotent frustration of it, he wrestled with the telescope, desperate to see the end, no matter how disastrous.
He was rewarded by spotting the swift, hunched shape of a Stormreader go flitting across his view, another craft in hot pursuit, the two of them cornering agilely in the air and slipping out of his vision almost instantly, leaving his mind to interpret that brief glimpse. What have I just seen?
The aerial contest remained maddeningly opaque, his lens continually finding handfuls of empty sky wherever he took it. Then he found one of the airships — the only reference point that vast world had to offer — and was able to watch the swift darting of the orthopters all about it as its fate was decided.
He watched the Stormreaders dive in, bringing themselves into line to attack the gondola itself; and the defending fliers rise to meet them.
There was a moment of utter clarity, in which the hull shapes and wing patterns unshelled their secrets to him, as if he had been born an engineer, and he shouted out in a bark of triumph so violent that his bodyguards feared he had been shot.
After he had reassured them, he tried to focus again, but by that time the aerial tide had turned. The Stormreaders were already speeding off for home: not because they feared the fray — he had more than enough evidence of their fanatical tenacity when it was called for — but because Collegium would need to know that the Second Army had recovered some fragment of its air power.
Defending the airships had been a flight of the new Farsphex models that had come close to winning the air war once before. Tynan had no illusions that the fight was decided, but his army could at least put up a fight in the air. They were back in the war.
After the airships had set down safely, to the general enthusiasm of the Second Army, the flight of Farsphex made their landing — long, elegant machines, larger than the Spearflights and yet more agile in the air, representing a whole different generation of flying machine. Their four wings could be fixed for longdistance flight, they were designed to make use of the Empire’s new and efficient mineral fuel and they were equally ready to duel in the air or to bombard a city.
Tynan saw only a dozen of them. The Stormreaders could probably have destroyed the lot, with losses, had they kept at it. The Collegiates valued knowledge over bloodshed, though, and Tynan suspected that they were right to do so.
Where are the rest? he asked himself, but he had a feeling this was all he was getting for now. No great strikes against the enemy, then. Perhaps just enough, with the Spearflights and the rest, to make taking to the skies over the Second costly for the Collegiate pilots.
‘There will be new officers,’ he told his staff. ‘Some from the Air Corps at the least. Bring them to my tent. I want to know what’s going on.’
The last batch of pilots he had worked with had proven a law unto themselves, clannish and close-mouthed, but of course he knew the reason for that now, although it had taken him a while to get his intelligence officer to reveal it.
The Empire keeping secrets from its own generals, but at least that’s nothing new.
His tent, nothing grander than those of his subordinates since the Second’s camp had been hit by the first Collegiate bombing, was a cramped place in which to hold a command conference, but Tynan wanted his own slice of secrecy this time. He felt a keen need to get to grips with this changing war before his soldiers were allowed time to speculate about it. Old, I know — and getting older by the second, the way this war’s going. The future of the Empire was in the hands of cleverer men than he: artificers, pilots, diplomats, all innovating, changing the rules of his profession. Some days he felt surprised that the Empress had not replaced him.
He thought of sending for Mycella. Relations between her people and the Wasps had been fractious these last tendays, the enforced waiting and the bombing leading to much blame being cast about. Wasp soldiers were always rea
dy to hold their allies of lesser kinden responsible when things went wrong. Usually, in Tynan’s experience, they were right to do so, but in this case the assistance of the Spiders had proved invaluable in espionage and strategy, as well as in the actual fighting. Still, there had been skirmishes and brawls, and his sergeants were stretched to their limit in keeping discipline — those of them who were not themselves nursing a resentment against the Spider-kinden.
Having Mycella alongside him when he met the new arrivals would send a strong message of unity, but in the end he shied away from it. One never knew, after all, what orders might be coming from home. Instead he summoned Colonel Cherten of Army Intelligence, just in case he needed the man’s sidelong perspective.
The two men who came to see Tynan and Cherten first were not pilots, nor even Wasps. In the lead was a bold little Fly-kinden man with a major’s badge, wearing an outdoorsman’s hard-wearing leathers with a striped tabard thrown over them. Studying him, Tynan would have taken him for an officer of scouts.
‘Major Oski.’ The salute was haphazard, but at least it was there. ‘Engineers, and come with some fresh artillery for you.’ He jerked a thumb at the larger man standing behind him. Tynan saw a stocky Bee-kinden, older than Oski, younger than Tynan himself, dark-skinned and flat-faced but with none of the sullen slave mindset that he was used to seeing in Bees. He wore a uniform of halved black and gold, but with an engineer’s insignia at the chest.
‘Captain-Auxillian Ernain,’ Oski named him. ‘He’s my second.’ He waited to see if Tynan would make something of that, because an Auxillian engineer holding that rank was a fair-sized stone likely to cause ripples.
‘As long as he knows what he’s doing,’ Tynan remarked, because for him it was competence that was the paramount military virtue.
‘That he does, sir. I’ve orders for you, also.’ The little man handed over a sealed package. ‘How do you like our entrance, by the way?’ He seemed very pleased with himself.
‘You must have been very sure of your escort, Major,’ Tynan noted, breaking the seal. ‘We were all set to pick over your corpses, since the Air Corps has failed me before.’ He fixed the small major with a scowl before breaking the seal.
The orders were unambiguous: more space was devoted to the stamps, codes and signatures of authenticity than to the Empress’s will.
‘We’re to march,’ Tynan announced, his eyes seeking out Oski’s. ‘What the pits am I supposed to do about their air power, Major? I can assure you, unless those Farsphex have some new sky-clearing secret weapon, they’ll not win the skies over Collegium. Perhaps Capitas underestimates just how tenacious the Beetles are, land or air.’
‘I’m just artillery, sir,’ Oski said with an easy shrug, an engineer passing up on another man’s problem. ‘I’ve been knocking walls down since the Twelve-year War and I’m looking forward to Collegium getting within greatshotter range.’
‘So was your predecessor,’ Tynan warned him. ‘And the fact of your being here should tell you how that went. How many. .’ He stopped then, because a new voice was addressing his guards outside.
‘Inside, now,’ he snapped, and his new pilot officer ducked into the tent, shouldering Ernain the Bee aside.
Tynan registered the captain’s insignia and the pilot’s chitin helm and goggles dangling from the belt. In truth, he should have been ready for the rest of it, but still required a moment to recover his balance before he acknowledged the salute.
‘Captain Bergild reporting for duty, sir,’ said the Air Corps officer, a Wasp-kinden woman aged no more than twenty. But, of course, the older pilots had mostly died over Collegium in trying to break the Beetles’ air defences. The supply of new pilots ready for combat was limited, and the Empire could not stand on ceremony when throwing them into the fray. But of course. .
Of course the new pilots, that insular elite, were those possessing the Art that Ant-kinden took for granted, but which Wasps developed so rarely. They could speak mind to mind, these pilots, and that was the secret of their skill every bit as much as their improved machines and training. The mindlinking Art was hard to find, these days, after generations of it being rooted out. Anyone who possessed it — no matter who they were and despite centuries of Wasp traditions — was required to fly. There had been women in the last batch, and one of them had given her life trying to defend the Second when the Stormreaders came.
The newcomer was staring at him almost defiantly, and he guessed that she had endured her share of hostility in getting where she was and that, to be made leader of pilots over Wasp men, she must be very good at her job.
‘Sir,’ she repeated, waiting for his response, and he finally managed to remember his maxim — competence above all — and demanded of her, ‘Where’s the rest of you? What can I do with this handful, now that I’ve been ordered forwards?’ A general berating a junior officer, nothing more.
‘Not in my orders, sir. I’m here to provide you with air defence as you march. More Farsphex are on the way, but.’ Her inflection closed the sentence firmly on that word.
‘But?’ Tynan pressed.
She exchanged a glance with Major Oski: this was something they had obviously discussed previously. ‘Rumour, sir.’
Tynan’s heavy gaze swung from face to face: the Bee, the woman, the little man who probably held the highest rank a Fly had ever attained in the Imperial army — assembled here as though someone had wanted to rub his nose in the changing times. ‘Someone say something,’ he growled.
‘Rumour, sir,’ Oski echoed, ‘but there’s something that’s been brewed up at home to solve the air war problem. Search me for what, but the engineers are keeping some strange company these days. There’s something planned, General, but it sounds as though you’ll have to take it on faith, if they want you to march.’
Tynan was silent as the seconds ticked by, feeling his thoughts inexorably swing towards: What option do I have?
Four
‘Your uncle’s been going spare,’ Balkus revealed to Che. ‘About both of you,’ he added, his nod picking out Tynisa as well. ‘He thought you’d gone off the edge of the map.’
‘Commonweal,’ Che told him, ‘so almost right.’ She and her fellows had retreated to the Princep camp after the duel between the Mantids, because nobody seemed to know what was going on and the Ants were in a state of high tension that Balkus wanted to get well clear of. The Etheryen Mantis-kinden had done their best to deconstruct the duel for outsiders. The Nethyen woman, the visitor, had made some statement that had resulted in her counterpart challenging her — apparently a spontaneous matter of honour so critical that nothing short of instant bloodletting would do. As the challenger was dead and her opponent gone, nobody was supposedly any the wiser, but the Mantids had retreated into the trees shortly afterwards, leaving everyone with the feeling that they knew considerably more than they were saying.
The Collegiate ambassador was still trying to ask questions, of Ants and Mantids alike, which nobody was giving answers to. Helma Bartrer could be seen shuttling about the camp, increasingly frustrated with her own ignorance despite the fact that it was the common property of everyone there. Amnon was constantly looming behind her, and Che reflected that this was just as well, because the woman was plainly starting to get on people’s nerves.
‘And him,’ Balkus was eyeing Thalric, who stared coldly back. ‘Old Sten Maker heard how you were carrying on with him. He sent me a letter asking me to keep a watch out. He wasn’t exactly keen.’
‘Thalric is a reformed character,’ Che replied. Her words should have sounded foolish, naive even, but she invested them with a certainty that warned Balkus off.
‘All right. Good luck selling that to your uncle, though.’ His gaze flicked to Tynisa, tracing the line of her scar. ‘I can see you’ve been busy.’
She did not even look at him, her own attention focused entirely on the forest, as it had been since the duel took place.
In light of that silence, Balkus t
urned to the fourth member of their merry band. ‘And where do you fit in?’
The halfbreed, Maure, blinked at him. Che knew the girl must make a strange figure and opened her mouth to excuse her, but Maure was already dissembling.
‘A traveller from the Commonweal,’ she said. ‘I thought, “Why not see the Lowlands?” and with Che on her way home, when would I get a better chance?’ She offered a bright smile to go with the words, quite out of character. Nothing was said about being a necromancer, making a living from dredging up ghosts and pieces of ghosts, counselling mourners and laying guilts to rest. Maure was a practical woman, for a magician, and Che guessed that she did not intend to practise her trade much, here in the Lowlands. Most likely, she was looking forward to spending time in some Apt city where nobody even believed in such skills.
‘Che,’ Tynisa murmured from the corner of her mouth. ‘Trouble.’
A figure was storming towards them from the Ant camp, slender and almost rigid with suppressed emotion: the same Moth they had encountered earlier.
‘You!’ he called out, and there was no doubt who he meant. Che stood up, feeling surprisingly calm, because ever since Tynisa had been well enough to travel and they had made their plans to leave the Commonweal, she had anticipated this. The old Inapt powers of the Lowlands were jealous of their lore, and they had no love of Che’s kinden at all. Of course the Moths would be shocked, when faced with what Che had become.
Whatever it is that I have become.
He had stitched together a little of his reserve, but the inscrutable Moth facade was still far from repaired. His hands clenched and unclenched as he stalked closer, and Che faced him squarely, hiding any uncertainties, because to a man of his kinden any weakness was exploitable.
And I may not be able to hide that well enough. In the Commonweal everyone believed in magic, and many practised it in a small and personal way, but they seemed to have no great magicians amongst them any more. Whether the Moths still did, she could not say, but they had whatever was left of magic in the Lowlands securely in their hands. Her odd and unasked-for status within the magical world might carry no weight with them. Or it might make them jealous to the point of telling their Mantis lackeys to cut Che’s throat.
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