He saw behind them, looming around the trunk into the lamp’s wan light, the pale shadow of the same mantis from before, its barbed arms reaching out, and then one of the Wasps was gone with a horrified cry, plucked from the midst of his fellows. That broke the rest and they tried to flee, but enough of the Sarnesh had crossbows reloaded to ensure that not one of them got away.
Thalric moved over to join Che, and indeed all of the non-Sarnesh were gathering there, their camp now split into two for no reason he could discern, save that the looming darkness seemed to work more towards division than unity.
‘The mantis is back,’ he murmured. ‘The beast.’
‘I know,’ Che acknowledged calmly, and he had the immediate and unworthy thought, And did she bring it here, after mastering it before? Another in the growing line of questions he wanted no answer to.
‘Zerro’s dead,’ announced one of the Sarnesh, and the rest were keeping their eyes on the trees. ‘Two more of ours also, and the Moth’s wounded.’
Thalric’s eyes located the Fly’s small corpse, sting-charred, with a short blade still clutched in each hand. He guessed the Fly had been done for by bad luck. The tide had turned against the Wasps quickly — they had not been ready for the fight, and the Sarnesh mindlink had given the Ants a cohesion that had proved fatal for the Imperial soldiers.
‘We’ll take stock in the morning,’ the Sarnesh decided, and one of the others put the lamp out, relinquishing all to the darkness.
After dawn, they discovered the Imperial camp — so close to them amidst the trees that it seemed insane that they had not realized it was there, but the forest seemed to have its own laws governing such things.
There were another dozen dead Wasps at the camp itself, meaning that their force had been much larger than the Sarnesh band. Nocturnal scavengers had been busy with them, so that the precise story was hard to unpick. A small party of Etheryen Mantids stepped out of the trees shortly afterwards, with the Roach girl, Syale, at their head — they would have caught everyone by surprise had Che not looked up a moment before. For a while, they regarded the intruders into their realm stonily, apparently only belatedly remembering that they were all on the same side.
‘The Mantids did this?’ one of the Sarnesh demanded of them, indicating the Wasp camp.
‘They slew some,’ Syale agreed. What happened to the others, she did not say. Thalric’s best guess — or at least the most palatable possibility — was that the Wasps had killed each other in the darkness after the Mantids loosed a few arrows at them. The forest killed them, was a thought he drove from his mind.
Argastos. There were good reasons he was chained where he was.
The Empress’s party was at camp, having already outstripped the Imperial soldiers currently making their unhappy way through the trees. The Moth, Yraea, knew that their officers would be trying to treat the forest like a regular battlefield, to draw up their plans and maps, advance their troops to meet the Sarnesh, whilst the Mantids of both sides flowed about them like streams eroding sandbanks.
The Tharen Moth wondered if any of the military minds on either side had ever asked to see a map of the forest. Perhaps the Etheryen had even given one to the Sarnesh but, of course, the Ants would not be able to read it. The Inapt did not represent land and space in the way that simple Apt thinkers required. No measurements and topography, no precise relationships between landmarks: Inapt maps concerned themselves with paths, with significance, with the mapping of meaning rather than bland reality. There would be nothing in such a map that an Apt eye could recognize, just as Yraea herself would carry away little from the dry, annotated charts the Apt called maps.
She had in her mind a clear picture of the forest, though — not as a map but as a branching journey, spiralling inwards, station by station. And at its heart: Argastos.
And are you watching this, old man? Yraea knew he was. She could feel his stony presence observing her, his dead fingers brushing against her dreams. She knew all about him, far more than she would ever tell the Wasp girl. He had been laid down as a guardian, so long ago, as recognition of his achievements and in punishment for his hubris. Centuries had passed since the Skryres of the Moths had needed even to think of their errant son. But now the Empress had his name on her lips: it was evident Argastos had been stretching out his power, reminding the world of his presence. Whether the girl knew it or not, Yraea was sure that he had called the Empress to her — and probably this Beetle girl as well.
Time to go secure the cage, she knew. He belongs where he was set. We do not want any once-Apt fool to carry Argastos away from here. And for that she must now reach that hidden place that was Argastos’s domain and also his prison.
It should not be so hard, for Argastos himself is working to ease the way. We might be able to just walk in. It has been known. .
‘But I do not believe it is wise for Her Majesty to just walk in,’ she reflected aloud, letting her companion in on her thoughts. The woman was a Loquae of the Nethyen Mantids, a leathery old creature who was still a warrior despite her age, possessing a little of the seer’s talents also. Yraea had crept away from the Empress’s camp without difficulty — a combination of subtle magic and her dark-piercing eyes — to meet this woman out in the unpopulated night between the trees.
‘My warriors say she is powerful, that she carries a great authority,’ the Loquae mused. Her own eyes were nowhere near as keen, but she would be able to see the shadow that was Yraea.
‘But she knows nothing,’ the Moth insisted. ‘That power she has stolen is put at the whim of a spoiled child. She has no history, no provenance. She has done nothing to earn what has been given to her. She is a danger to all of us.’
‘She wishes to bring back the old days, she claims,’ the old Mantis murmured.
‘She lies. Her days are new and without honour. Her armies have destroyed your cousins of the Felyal, and signed treaties with the Spider-kinden. What she seeks here is power for herself. Most likely she will fail even in that, but cause great harm nonetheless, both to your people and mine. What we have laid down in ages past is not to be meddled with by some Wasp girl who knows nothing.’
Yraea could see the Mantid’s expression, unhappy and uncertain: a terrible look for one of her fierce kinden to wear. ‘Servant of the Green,’ the Moth hissed, using the old title that her people had given the Mantis-kinden, ‘the Wasp cannot give you what she promises. She will only take and take. It is all she knows. She must not be allowed to enter within the heart of the wood. She would defile all she found there. Instead, let her smooth my way, and thus she will be of use, but only for that. You must gather your warriors and bind them to this purpose. The Empress’s companions will need to be dealt with as well. You understand?’
‘And the Skryres of Tharn, this is their decree?’
‘Yes.’ Some of them. Perhaps. Tharen politics had always been fluid, and the Empress of the Wasps’ new status as a magician of power had divided the Skryres all over again. A majority had agreed to join with the Empire — better that than another costly occupation like before — but how far to tread along the woman’s path was another question. Out here, beyond the reach of her immediate superiors, Yraea had come to her own conclusions. Stop Seda, secure Argastos in his chains. Maintain the status quo.
‘Well?’ she pressed.
Again a long pause, the woman’s expression of uncertainty only deepening. Yraea hissed with exasperation. ‘Servant of the Green, do you turn against us now? Are you unfaithful after all this time? Is this what the Mantis-kinden have come to?’
In the darkness, the old woman’s eyes flashed. ‘Of course not, and you are right in all you say, and yet. . my people hear her words. None has spoken of a return to the old ways for generations. We begin to despair. The Wasp’s false hope is like a blade turning inside us. Yet it is better than your offer of no hope at all.’
The rebuke stung. ‘If it could be done, do you not think we would do so? She lies. She cannot
give you what she promises. Do not be misled by her,’ Yraea repeated. ‘Do not betray me, Servant of the Green. Your place is to obey.’
At last, the Loquae nodded. ‘I will speak to my people,’ she said, almost in a whisper, with more than a hint of defeat about it. She slunk off into the forest, leaving Yraea wondering just what was left of the Mantis-kinden at this frayed and Apt-ridden end of time.
Desperate, she decided. Whilst her own people had retreated to their mountain homes and learned patience, the Mantis-kinden had merely diminished as the years had gnawed away at what they had once been, and they knew it. The Wasp Empire’s presence forcing them to resume dealings with the outside world served only as a jagged and unavoidable reminder that they had no real place in it any more. As long as they obey me in this, they shall have served their purpose.
That night, Seda saw the gates for the first time.
She dreamt, but ever since her conversion to the Inapt world, her dreams had become more than mere fancy. She had seen the depths beneath Khanaphes through Che Maker’s eyes, in those dreams, just as Che had seen them through hers when Seda trod those buried paths herself. Now it seemed she woke from each night knowing some further scrap of information, some shred of lost lore or a new understanding of those around her.
In her latest dream she was in some part of the forest she had not seen — yet! — and in her mind arose the thought, the Heart of the Green. Here the land sloped up to a hill — a mound, rather, since it was the work of hands rather than nature. A barrow, some lost thought informed her: the resting place of the ancient, honoured dead. It had been surfaced with slabs of stone, but now with grass and ferns thrusting from between the cracks. It looked to her like the carapace of some long-dead armoured beast, or perhaps a vacant compound eye.
There were similar burial mounds in the North-Empire, in Hornet country, ancient relics of her own people’s distant ancestors that the Apt tribesmen still avoided from long tradition. These days such tombs were prey to treasure hunters, those wily enough to evade the locals, but she was willing to bet that no daring thief had ever returned alive from the barrow she beheld in her dream.
Set into the mound’s side was a gate, and this was what she was drawn to. The mound’s own shape had been built out to accommodate this portal, which was nearly as tall as the mound’s highest point. A trilithon of grey slabs formed its sides and lintel, but the twin gates themselves were layered with chipped scales of gilded wood that rustled faintly together, each one inscribed with elegant, potent sigils; as fine an entry way as any prince or emperor could command.
The name that came into her mind unbidden was Argax: signifying at once Argastos’s hall and his tomb. And perhaps more. What she sought — that which she had come out and risked herself for — lay within, and all she had to do was open those gates.
Surely she must want to gaze upon the face of Argastos, after all this time.
The dream took her feet and tried to send her forwards to those gilded gates, but no magician of her skill was so careless as to let dreams get the better of her.
You mistake me. She formed the words. I am not just some Apt peasant who has chanced upon power. I am the Empress of the Wasps. And she slapped away the tendrils that had been attempting to drag her forwards. Believe me, I shall come to you in my own time, and I shall come as Empress, not as servant. Others have made the same mistake, believing that I am here to learn, and to pay homage. I drank their blood. I can drink yours too, if you have any. And if you don’t, I shall yet find some way to consume you if you will not serve me.
She expected an instant response — almost certainly an angry one, but instead there was a cool measuring of her. She was not yet sure whether what she faced was a human mind or some echo of one, or just a facet of the forest itself, but it was old and cunning and patient, whatever it was. She could not provoke it so easily.
Come, then, she thought she heard it murmur. Come conquer Argax for your Empire. Mockery, but could she sense a sliver of respect there?
She forced herself to step back from the golden doors, and she became aware that she was not alone in her dream — or rather that this was the dream of Argastos and she was not the sole participant. Nearby she saw the Beetle girl, the Cheerwell Maker creature, but this time there was no immediate surge of hatred. Instead she saw that the girl had gone through the same experience, had shrugged off the obvious lure, and for a brief second the expression on the girl’s dark face must have mirrored Seda’s own.
I will destroy you, Seda declared, and the Beetle locked eyes with her, her gaze giving not an inch. The last time they had clashed, Seda had indeed nearly destroyed her, but they were both stronger and more skilled now. Any battle between them would not be decided so easily.
Looking into that hatefully familiar face, though, the expected rush of loathing or even of fear, did not come. In that dream of Argax, standing before the barrow of Argastos, Seda entertained the strange thought that, under other circumstances, here was the one creature in the world that might truly understand her. A sister? Save that all her siblings were dead, and the last practically by Seda’s own hand.
Still there remained the uncharacteristic and melancholy thought: I could have used a sister.
Fifteen
The land lying south of the Etheryon-Nethyon forest, the great road that General Roder’s Eighth Army would have to travel, had been turned into an invisible labyrinth.
Both sides were still awaiting the outcome of the clash within the forest — at the mercy of whoever became the winners there, who could then strike with impunity at either the Ants or the encroaching Wasps. Neither side was letting the dust settle, though. Roder had his orders, and Tactician Milus had sent his city’s forces to meet him.
But not in pitched battle, because the Sarnesh had already suffered a costly defeat against the Eighth at Malkan’s Folly. For now, they maintained faith in their forces and their allies within the forest, hoped for a better opportunity for their great stand, and held the bulk of their soldiers back at Sarn itself.
Imperial flying machines still made their forays that far — Spearflights and a handful of Farsphex making the Sarnesh nights a nerve-racking lottery of fire. The Sarnesh air force itself could coordinate impeccably in the air, but their machines were old: orthopters whose design had scarcely changed in eight years. They could have held their own against those bulky old heliopters the Empire had relied on at the Battle of the Rails, but even the benefit of their mindlink barely made them the equal of the fleeter Spearflights. Inevitably, the Farsphex smashed them from the air.
On the ground, Milus’s tactic was to slow down the Empire as much as possible, hoping for a flanking attack from the Etheryen to the north, or even from a victorious Collegium to the south. He was no fool, Milus, and he could see that his people were right where the metal met. The future histories of the Lowlands were his either to write or be relegated to, depending on the decisions he now made.
Since the Imperial Eighth had begun its advance from Helleron, from before either the fortress fell at Malkan’s Folly or the Nethyen Mantids turned on their own kind, the Ants had been at work on the overgrown, broken ground south of the forest. Wasp scouts would have spotted neither earth-moving machines nor large working parties, but instead there had been small bands of soldiers, camouflaged as best they could. Some had been engineers, others snipers picked for their skill with a snapbow. They had their own scouts as well, and a scattering of bold Fly-kinden for long flights and night work, but their most valued men and women had been the sapper-handlers.
Theirs was an ancient trade, and their tool was known as the First Art. Long, long ago, when the lives of men had been short and cheap, at constant hazard from the beasts they shared their world with, some few of them had found a way to reach across the chasm between man and insect, and so become the first kinden. At first they had only begged, but much later, there were negotiations, demands, orders. Nowadays that old Art was a rare thing, but ascenda
nt mankind still lived alongside the beasts and drew inspiration from them in the form of Art. There had always been tunnels undermining Sarn, but not dug by the hands of men.
In that contested country east of Sarn, a band of Ants was crouching in a dugout, each of them touching the mind of their officer, whose periscope was even now spying out the Imperial advance.
Leading edge is composed of alternating blocks of infantry — close-packed, armed with spear and snapbow. . and war automotives. I see several of the new design, those woodlouse-looking machines. Artillery, supplies and non-combatants too far back to see. The words were acknowledged by a Sarnesh relay post to the west and would be passed on, together with an approximation of what the officer saw, all the way back to the tacticians.
I see a skirmish along the line, seven hundred yards thereabouts. One of the others — Pallina’s squad. The Ants reached out their minds to hear the distant echoes from their doomed comrades.
Light Airborne on their way, twenty seconds, concluded the officer, taking the periscope from his eye. I trust we’re all ready. His face was without expression, but the others felt his humour. It was a good man to fight alongside, he who could look upon extremity and laugh.
They were going to die, to a man: all the little squads that Milus had posted out here were ‘lorn detachments’, suicide details. They would spend their lives in slowing down the Wasps.
For Sarn, came the answering thought, first from one, then from all of them. Sarn the mother of us all!
Scorvia. The officer focused his attention on their one sapper-handler. The woman looked at him for a moment, her mind elsewhere and tainted with the alien feel that always came with her particular Art.
Oh, ready, Officer, Scorvia confirmed. For the mother of us all.
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