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 back, 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 an
d 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 Aldanrael.’ 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.’
‘Mercenaries.’ One word to dismiss all that Morkaris and his followers were, but any mercenary captain learned to read his employers, and he could see the slightest flicker deep in Jadis’s eyes.
‘She had just better be in a position to sell him out before he does the same to us,’ the mercenary adjutant muttered. ‘And yes, we’ll march. We’re ready. As ready as we’ll ever be.’
General Tynan had rough hands, not the hands of a man in command but those of a man who did things for himself. He had a soldier’s scars, where a Spider in his position would have skin unblemished and smooth as silk. Spiders knew how to avoid fights they could not win, mostly, although her own family’s great battle against the Empire had given the lie to that, as had her subsequent campaign against Collegium. Against the Wasps, she had lost countless soldiers. Against the Beetles she had lost family. The greatest loss had been the esteem of her peers. The Aldanrael family was not what it had been, which had led to Mycella being here at the head of an army in a last-ditch attempt to regain by brute war what they had lost.
Leading an armed force was not a position of great honour for the Spider-kinden, since they gave it over to their menfolk and their Hoipolloi. Great ladies of great families did not dirty their hands with such business unless they were as desperate as Mycella had become. It had been the only path left to her: to take up the mantle of Lady-Martial, to sail for Solarno with her force of loyal followers, allied minor families and a rabble of mercenaries, and it had almost destroyed her pride. On the ship, she had contemplated ending her own life, because that would at least have won a moment’s approval of her peers.
To the Wasp-kinden, on the other hand, to lead an army was the highest accolade, the position that every man of them seemed to covet and work towards. She knew that they, too, had their greater and their lesser families, but success in battle could raise up even the lowliest of them. General Tynan himself had started life with a few advantages, but he had not been anything that Mycella might call nobility. His merit, his skill and judgement had effected a transformation in his status that would have been unthinkable in the Spiderlands. There, the best that a low-born could hope for was patronage by a greater family or to become a freelance for hire, like that oaf Morkaris.
She had sat up late with General Tynan for many nights, now, in her expansive tent, listening to him talk about war. He was not a bloodthirsty monster, the way his kinden were so often portrayed, but he loved warfare. It had been his life since he was a child of five, being taught the first principles of swordsmanship. War and the Empire to which he was so loyal. When he spoke of his passion he seemed fifteen years younger, filled with the burning zeal of the true adherent. He told her of his battles against the Lowlanders, against the Commonweal, against cities within the Empire. He spoke of men he had commanded — almost all of them dead by now — and of enemies he had met both on the field a
nd off it. He showed her what a Wasp general’s world looked like, and the values that he cherished — so alien, and yet how they had struck a chord in her!
She had set out to seduce him, succeeding despite his innate caution. He had known what she was about, she guessed, and yet he had given before her soon enough. The day she could not lure a Wasp-kinden soldier to her bed would be her last day. . and yet. . she had found something in General Tynan that made him far more valuable to her than a mere puppet to be manipulated. More, she had found emotions awoken in her that were unwise and unlooked for. Not just those rough hands and her explorations of the battle-map of scars he bore, for such physical pleasures were merely expedient and useful, nothing to truly move her. The true gift he had given her, all unknowing, was a return of her self-respect.
She was Lady-Martial of the war-host of the Aldanrael, but that was a mark of disgrace, as though the other families had branded their disdain onto her skin.
To General Tynan, however, for all that she was a woman who could never have attained such rank within the Empire, she counted as a peer, someone deserving admiration. Through his eyes she was a general, and that was a thing worth being.
She had chosen a robe of deep blue edged with gold, complementing the Imperial colours without matching them. Beneath, she wore a hauberk of delicate copperweave chain backed with felt, flashing in the sun when the wind caught at her gown and flurried it aside. As the Second and its allies prepared to move out, she sought out General Tynan, finding him already atop his personal automotive, scouts and messengers landing beside him for orders, then being sent off within seconds.
His eyes shone, alighting on her. Still mine then, for now. It was an uneasy relationship, though, for she shared him with an Empress.
He extended a hand to her, even as his driver made the engine roar. With a light step she vaulted atop the machine, a moment’s climbing Art serving to keep her footing on the sloping armoured plates, and she took her place beside him.
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