War Master's Gate sota-9

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Those few mentions of him that we have, hm, found,’ Gjegevey explained, ‘seem to fall into two camps. He led the armies of the Inapt, and led them to victory, at great cost.’

  He thought he was being clever, Seda considered, but she could read every wrinkle in his face. She let him speak because there was no point challenging him about it, not when the answers were written so plainly. ‘So he was a great man, remembered in song and story,’ she murmured.

  ‘Hm, yes,’ the old Woodlouse agreed, ‘but other sources speak poorly of him. We, ahm, believe that relations between Argastos and the other Skryres deteriorated later. . or that is our best, hm, reading.’

  ‘Books that speak directly of him are simply not to be had,’ Tegrec complained. ‘Probably the Tharen Skryres keep them hidden. They do a lot of that. But some texts from — I don’t know — generations after the man’s time, perhaps? They mention him obliquely — he’s used as a metaphor for pride and ambition, for turning on his betters. For. . some sort of corruption — questionable magics, that sort of thing.’

  ‘There is a play, even,’ Gjegevey added, ‘wherein it is, ahm, declaimed that, “Like Argastos, I have won for you the world, and gained but spite,” or some such.’

  But Seda was still considering what Tegrec had said. ‘I was unaware that the Skryres considered any magics questionable.’

  ‘I think. .’ Tegrec swallowed again. ‘To read my own thoughts into what is left unsaid, I wonder if he was not held to blame for doing the Skryres’ will. It would not be the only time they had made a terrible thing happen, and then found it convenient to hold their own agents accountable.’

  ‘So — ’ and enough meandering, old man — ‘this war, Gjegevey, that your ancient Argastos was so feted for. It was the war against the Worm, was it not?’

  ‘We do not speak of such things,’ Terastos hissed, cutting Bartrer off. Seeing the others’ somewhat tired expressions he entreated them, ‘Yes, so we are a secretive people. So we hold our knowledge close, and treasure it. But there are names that are not spoken. We damn them into obscurity, and in doing so we deny them power. If you are what you seem, you must know this, Beetle girl.’

  Che met his gaze, her easy retort fading in her throat. Yes, I do. Somehow I do. But times have changed. ‘The Empress will speak all the forbidden names there are, if it gives her even a thimbleful more power.’

  The Moth actually shuddered. ‘So I will speak of Argastos, but I will not speak of the war that he won.’

  ‘The war against the Worm?’ Bartrer said, obviously enjoying herself. ‘And what was that, Moth-kinden? The great and terrible war, and yet only marginalia are left of it.’

  ‘I warn you,’ Terastos spat. ‘Speak it again and I will abandon you all.’ Incredibly, he turned his blank eyes on Che, entreating for her intervention.

  Bartrer gave him a superior smile but, before she could speak, Maure stepped in.

  ‘Enough,’ the halfbreed stated. ‘I know some little of that war. The Woodlouse-kinden that trained me taught me just so much. Argastos is one thing, whoever he was — or is — but we do not conjure them by naming them. Even the old insult for them, to call them “Worm”, is too much. You are right, Mistress Bartrer, that a very many enemies joined together to defeat them. For ten generations after, there were nightmares of their return, for everyone knew that they were not so very finally defeated, and, even so, the means used to cast them down were enough to cripple half the powers of the world. Some never recovered their old strength. But we do not speak of them.’

  Terastos nodded soberly. ‘Suffice to say, Argastos was a hero, when he brought about their ruin, and after that he became something else.’

  ‘A corpse, can we hope?’ Thalric put in. ‘Forgive me if I sound somewhat desperate, but the man is thousands of years dead. So what is she after and what are we expecting to find? And just tell me whatever you believe. Don’t patronize me simply because I have the good fortune to be Apt.’

  Che squeezed his hand. His answering smile was strained.

  ‘There is something awake at the heart of the forest, this much we sensed,’ Maure admitted.

  ‘His memory must run long among the Mantis-kinden, if nothing else,’ Bartrer mused. ‘It’s only after he comes and goes in the histories that you even get mention of the two holds here. Immediately before that they’re calling the entire forest Argaryon — no prizes for guessing after who. So you’re telling me that, throughout all those centuries, your “Servants of the Green” never told you they had a guest?’

  Terastos shrugged. ‘Our servants served under certain conditions, and the sanctity of their places was one such. It was suspected that something of Argastos remained, but if so, the Mantids seemed a strong enough guard to keep him where he was. And until this cursed Empress decided to meddle, were we not right?’

  How much does he honestly know, then? Che wondered, and she came to the depressing conclusion that Terastos was being particularly frank, for a Moth. The name of Argastos had been unpicked from their histories — the histories Terastos had access to at least — so that the man only knew something had been there, and that it was safely barred away from the world. The details of what had been there, and of what was to be feared, were lost.

  She turned her gaze on Helma Bartrer, and decided that there were depths in the woman she could not decipher. The driven academic on the edge of a breakthrough in her research? Or is there something else?

  ‘There is, hm, one more matter, of course. Once I had enough people searching for the name, ahm, Argastos, it was bound to come to light.’ Gjegevey did not sound very happy about it.

  ‘The report.’ There was a similar reluctance in Tegrec’s voice.

  ‘So tell me and stop all this theatre,’ Seda chided them both.

  ‘During the last war, shortly before the, hm, battle known as Malkan’s Stand, a reconnaissance airship from the Seventh went astray over this forest and was, hrm, brought down in a storm. A single survivor, one Sergeant Corver, made it out of the trees, but his sanity was, hrm, decidedly in question. His report is, ah, lurid, contradictory, lacking in internal logic. He speaks of a terrible place within the forest, of, ahm, dead men returning to life, of being drawn to a, hrm, hall of sorts, of great gates, and passing within them into a place of darkness where he met, hrm. .’ The old Woodlouse blinked several times. ‘He met a Moth-kinden who named himself, hm, Argastos, who gave him a message. Despite the Rekef being most, ahm, insistent in questioning this sergeant, his story did not change.’

  Seda’s eyes gleamed. ‘And the message?’

  Gjegevey’s face twisted. ‘You understand we did not know this when we named Argastos for you back in Capitas.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The ahm, the message was thus: “Go to your Empress. Go to her and tell her: I am here, and ready for her. When she seeks me, she shall find me waiting.”’ Gjegevey sighed. ‘At the time Corven first made his report, your, hm, brother still lived, Majesty. I do not know what to say.’

  ‘Say that you were right, to bring this Argastos to my attention. Say that here is a power that has lasted a thousand years and more, and has still retained a modicum of wit. Most of all say that we will find Argastos before the Beetle girl, or else I will have everyone in this expedition on the crossed pikes.’

  Part Two

  Gates of Stone

  ‘Outright Victory or Death’

  — MOTTO OF OUTWRIGHT’S PIKE AND SHOT MERCHANT COMPANY

  Eleven

  They were all waiting for Eujen when he walked in. He suspected that the lecture hall had never been so full as now, housing his new recruits.

  Standing at the lectern, he did not feel the expected authority of a chief officer drop on his shoulders. He was still Eujen Leadswell, a mere student who had conceived the stupid idea of a Student Company, mostly because the girl he was sweet on had gone off and joined the Merchant Companies and then refused to allow him to do the same. Stab me, but is this s
ort of rubbish what history is actually made of? Idiot people like me making bad decisions for all the wrong reasons?

  Oh, and sod Stenwold bloody Maker for taking me seriously, while I’m on the subject.

  He had Averic standing beside him, and a stout Beetle girl who had been one of the first to sign up, so had de facto become a sort of officer. They all three wore the purple sashes that Eujen had adopted because he had known a clothier trying to shift an excess of that colour. The lectern bore a big pile of similar sashes, and a single snapbow.

  His audience watched him as though expecting him to do tricks for their amusement. These were not his volunteers, who had rallied willingly to his banner out of a desire to protect their home. Before him instead were conscripts: those able-bodied individuals amongst the student population who had been forced to take up arms by Maker’s Draft, and who had been assigned to him rather than to the Merchant Companies, because he was reckoned to be on their level or some such.

  ‘Right,’ he croaked, the acoustics of the room carrying his nervousness to the very back. ‘You know why you’re here, I suppose.’

  He had a speech prepared, but one of the students was already standing. Eujen recognized him as Howell Graveller, a year older and one of Eujen’s frequent detractors, who had mocked him when he tried to advocate peace with the Wasps, and yet had not come forward to volunteer for the Company when Eujen had started to talk about fighting. And he’s now going to walk out. And they’re going to follow him, all of them. They don’t take me seriously, and why would they? And what am I supposed to do then? Have them arrested or something? Go squeak to Stenwold Maker that my soldiers won’t do what I tell them?

  But Graveller was still standing there, shuffling from foot to foot, glancing sidelong at his fellows. ‘Look, Leadswell,’ he said, after an awkward moment. ‘I just wanted to say. . this Student Company of yours, we’re grateful for it, we really are.’ His accompanying gesture defined the ‘we’ as those closest to him, his little clique of cronies. ‘The conscription. . we could have been stuck in Maker’s Own or the Coldstone or something, right now. This. . at least this isn’t the front line.’

  Eujen stared at him for a long moment, then took up the snapbow from the lectern, aimed at Graveller’s chest and shot him.

  The harsh snap! echoed about the lecture hall like the end of the world, along with Graveller’s agonized gasp.

  They had all frozen, and Eujen noted who had leapt up to act, who were still stupefied in their seat, finding himself already sorting them into grades and categories of soldier. ‘The next one,’ he said quietly into the utter silence that had gripped the room, ‘will be loaded.’

  Graveller looked as if he had pissed his robes. ‘But why?’ he got out.

  ‘Because a Wasp will be holding it,’ Eujen explained. And now I have my audience, and they’re taking me seriously, and none of them even glanced at my Wasp friend Averic when I said that. I would win golden honours in rhetoric from that sentence alone, were a Master here to mark me.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he explained to them. ‘This is not the alternative to fighting for real. You are all going to learn how to fight, to use one of these, and to work together. You’re going to learn how to build barricades, how to shoot from cover, how to patch wounds, how to use artillery, and a whole lot more. And you’re going to learn as much as you can as fast as you can, faster than any of us ever had to learn basic mechanics or the Collegium-Helleron social deficit, because the Imperial Second Army is on the move right now. And if you don’t know what that means, then go to the library, get out a map and measure the distance between the Felyal and here, because that’s how much time you have.’

  They were still staring at him as though he was some horrible dream brought on by too much bad wine.

  ‘Barricades and. . what else?’ someone asked, her voice petering out.

  ‘Don’t you understand what this is for — the Student Company?’ Eujen spat out. ‘The others, Outwright’s, Maker’s Own and the rest, may well go out to meet the Second in the field — wiser heads than mine decide that, and I’m glad of it — but we’re the last line. When we commit to the fighting, we will be on the walls. If that’s not enough, we will be on the streets, in the marketplaces, in the courtyards of the College itself. Because we are Collegium’s final hope — and I’m cursed if I’m going to let that fail because you all thought this was the easy class to take.’

  In their eyes he read their accusation of him, echoing Graveller and his friends’ taunts of yesteryear. ‘Oh, yes, I know I was always for reaching out to the Empire, and I will maintain unto death that we could have handled the Wasps better, and even avoided this war entirely had our elected masters possessed the will to do anything other than agitate. But the war is here, now. It takes two for peace, and so now we need to break the back of the Empire’s advance to the point where peace becomes even a possibility, and to do that we need to stop them. We need to stop them out there, if we can. We need to stop them right here, if we cannot.’ He looked at them and felt despair. And where the plague were you lot, when I called for volunteers? ‘I’m not some Makerist firebrand frothing about a just war. I’m talking about the survival of all that we are. Your city, your history, casting Lots, classes in the College, drinks in the taverna: all those things that we all took for granted just a year ago.’ He turned. ‘Officer Averic.’

  The Wasp stepped forward and Eujen noted, with almost scholarly interest, the ripple that went through them all as they tried to adjust.

  ‘Tomorrow morning, one hour after dawn, you will assemble in the Briar Quad to commence training,’ Averic told them. ‘If you have access to weapons, bring them, please. Equipment is at a premium.’ He glanced at Eujen for approval, got a brief nod. All words that Eujen himself could have said, but it was important for the new recruits to know which faces to take orders from, even when those faces bore pale Wasp features.

  When they had filed out, with expressions ranging from stunned to incredulous to determined, Eujen sagged forward against the lectern.

  ‘Well done, Chief Officer,’ the Beetle girl commended him, laying a hand briefly on his shoulder. Her name was. .? Not a good start for a chief officer, he realized, because he could not recall it.

  ‘Now we have to work out how we’re even going to train them,’ he moaned.

  ‘I, ah, took the liberty of finding some veterans — old fellows from the first war with the Vekken. They haven’t used snapbows, but at least they’ve fought. And one of the artificing Masters can come and teach us about artillery. And. . I thought we could improvise, after that.’ She drew most of herself up, seeking for a military bearing. ‘Is that all right?’

  Ellery Heartwhill, that was her name. ‘That’s superb,’ Eujen told her, and she beamed at him a little too eagerly.

  ‘I can get someone from the Merchant Companies to train them with snapbows,’ a new voice sounded from the door, making all three of them jump. Eujen twitched up to see none other than Stenwold Maker himself standing there.

  ‘How much did you hear?’ he demanded of the older man, as though he had been caught plotting some sort of sedition.

  ‘Enough,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘You did well.’

  I didn’t do it for you. But to Eujen’s surprise, the words remained locked up in his mind. Now was not the time. ‘Any help in getting them ready would be appreciated,’ he managed.

  ‘War Council will be meeting tomorrow. .’ A moment of calculation on Stenwold’s part. ‘Let’s call it noon. You’ll be ready for a break by then, though I’m not sure I can promise you one. I’d give you an agenda, except it would be out of date by dawn.’

  Eujen nodded. Surely there’s an old Inapt saying, ‘May you get what you ask for.’

  Taki brought her oft-repaired Esca Magni down messily on the airfield, the rest of her flight skewing their Stormreaders to a halt around her. She slapped up her cockpit lid and kicked herself out of her seat, her wings carrying her halfway across th
e field, battered by the wind of the landing orthopters.

  A quick glance about located a familiar figure in Willem Reader, artificer and aviation scholar — and current object of her ire.

  As she approached, she could see him counting the surviving sets of wings, and he met her grim expression with one of his own. He was a small-framed Beetle-kinden — though still bigger than herself — with a mild face set off by a small moustache. Perhaps no man’s image of a great war hero, but his orthopter designs were all around them.

  ‘We should have had them!’ she exclaimed to him, as she touched down. ‘Even with the Farsphex screen, we had several clear runs at their supplies!’

  ‘Then what went wrong, Taki?’ came his measured response.

  ‘What went wrong is that the Stormreaders can only carry a handful of underpowered explosives, and lining them up for the strike is painstaking fiddly work when you’re being shot at. They may not have many Farsphex, but they know their business! When we were doing the same favour for them, not so long ago, they still got plenty of bombs on the ground — you know why?’

  ‘Because they have a second crew member doing the aiming, Taki,’ Willem broke in. ‘And because the Empire built them with that in mind, and a cursed good job they did of it. Stormreaders are built to fight in the air. I can’t make you good against the ground. We’d need a whole different type of orthopter — and you’d need to give me the time to work out the design. I won’t say I haven’t looked into it, but even if I’d started work straight after they left last time, we’d barely have a prototype when the Second arrive again. And as for reverse-engineering the Farsphex. . we have a handful of their crashed vessels whole enough to study, and nobody around here seems to realize just how complex the things are — let alone their fuel, which we don’t have, and which the chemical artifice department can’t even guess at. Taki. .’