‘We have to go after Che!’ he insisted.
Her face, as it turned to him, was devoid of expression. ‘Where is she?’
Another arrow lanced towards them, and she turned it away with a lightning flicker of her rapier, without even looking. Thalric’s quick glance around detected plenty of movement coming their way, just as Tynisa said.
‘They know she’s special,’ he stated. ‘They wouldn’t. .’
‘They’re Mantis-kinden, Thalric. Of course they would.’ Only at these last words did her voice shake, a brief window on the fear and rage inside her.
Amnon had his snapbow out, a bolt chambered and the battery charged. ‘We fight?’
‘A sacrifice,’ Tynisa breathed.
Thalric stared at her, but he had no need to ask what she meant. Outside Khanaphes, other Mantis-kinden had very nearly done for him at one of their nasty little shrines. And of course, as he said, Che was special. She was owed a special death.
‘I’ve an idea, but it means we need to speak to them. So we need to be able to hold them off,’ Tynisa was dancing quickly backwards, heading in the direction where Maure had gone. ‘Come on, quickly.’
‘But. .!’
‘Thalric, die here and what have you accomplished?’ Whatever she saw in his face prompted her to add, ‘The Commonweal trick, Thalric. Remember?’
They were all of them backing off now, because the Mantids were so close. Thalric let his sting speak three times in the hope that it would deter them. The Commonweal trick. . ‘Didn’t work so cursed well last time.’ Her ravaged face, and the limp that seized on her the moment she wasn’t fighting or running, those were her rewards from the Commonweal trick.
And who’s to say it’ll work again? Another arrow glanced from his pauldron — uncomfortably close to his face — and abruptly he was running, and cursing himself for it. The other two followed right behind him.
Ahead of them rose those wooden walls, and he had already identified exactly what they had once been. He had seen vessels like this often enough during his time in the army. Imperial scout airship, old model — but there were still enough of them around by the end of the last war. Even before he saw it, he had been expecting the Seventh Army insignia he saw there: the badge of General Malkan’s Winged Furies that had been destroyed by the Sarnesh and their allies at the place still known as Malkan’s Folly.
The vessel’s hull lay at an odd angle within the clearing it had carved as it came down. There was little sign of a balloon or rigging, and the hull was mossy and probably part rotten from a few years in a place unfit for human craftsmanship, but it offered cover at least. The only problem was that it might become a tomb as easily as a hiding place.
Maure appeared at the open hatch, and then ducked back inside almost immediately, as an arrow thudded deep into the wood right beside her hand. Thalric let his wings bloom, kicking into an extended dive that pitched him neatly through the square opening, and then he was turning back, hauling Tynisa inside and putting out a hand for Amnon. The Khanaphir leapt to the hatch in one clear bound, paused there for a moment to discharge his snapbow — Thalric heard a cry as the hasty shot nonetheless hit home — and then dropped in, already fumbling for another bolt.
Thalric took up station with him at the hatch, one hand poised to sting as he waited for the Nethyen to make an appearance. There was plenty of movement between the trees, but nothing that made a good target. The corpse of the man that Amnon shot lay in a crumpled heap just inside the clearing. Too keen by half.
‘We’re not the first to end up hiding here,’ Maure observed softly, in the silence that descended. Thalric risked a glance backwards, and saw her kneeling by a skeleton still attired in Imperial armour, picked clean by busy scavengers long since.
‘Probably died in the crash,’ he decided.
‘He didn’t,’ the necromancer corrected him, and he felt disinclined to press the matter.
‘Where the hell are the Moth and that Collegiate woman anyway?’
Amnon shook his head. ‘They fell behind.’ There was a finality to his tone.
Behind them, Tynisa swore, but with a hint of awe in her tone. ‘Thalric. .’
Leaving Amnon watching, Thalric navigated the sloped interior to see what Tynisa had found. He expected another body, or some further evidence of Mantis atrocity. He had not expected to find a fortune, but there was a chest there — Quartermaster Corps heavy-duty issue — which was still nearly full of Imperial mint gold coins.
‘Some deal they were brokering with the Mantids?’ Tynisa suggested.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Not a currency that’s any good around here though, certainly not at the time this boat must have come down. Your plan, Tynisa — it’s a fool’s plan.’
‘We’re all fools anyway, so that works out well,’ she retorted, ‘but I’ll make Che the stakes of the wager.’ Her eyes shifted over to the hatch, past Amnon’s shoulder. The sky was darkening already. ‘Mantis honour. Let’s hope that currency’s still good around here.’
She made as if to go, but Thalric caught her arm. For a moment he held her, just looking into her eyes, words rising in him and being thrust back down again. In the end, he could not bring himself to thank her for what she was about to try, although it was a debt that weighed on him heavily. After all, it doesn’t matter that we don’t like each other, so long as we both love Che.
She nodded, and in that brief motion he saw that she understood. Then she was stepping carefully over to Amnon, the only one of them who did not know what the Commonweal gambit actually entailed.
He knew Mantis-kinden, though, and after a few brief words she had him nodding agreement. ‘I will go, though,’ he put in.
Tynisa jabbed a thumb at the sword-and-circle brooch she wore. ‘This badge says I go.’ She stepped past him and hauled herself out into the square stretch of greying sky that the hatch delineated, holding her sword high.
One arrow, right now, and the Commonweal trick hits the dirt, thought Thalric. But perhaps that raised weapon signalled Tynisa’s intent, for no shaft feathered from the trees to seek her out.
And the problem with the Commonweal trick is that it isn’t a trick at all. And surely those Mantids out there will have a few of those badges between them.
And, of course, you couldn’t solve all the world’s problems just by fighting a duel of champions. Not even the Mantis-kinden world worked like that. So Tynisa could buy Che a slightly longer life, but they were all still intruders in the Mantis heartland. There was only so much some Mantis swordsman’s death could buy for them.
Or Tynisa’s life. And Thalric was surprised to find that the prospect of Tisamon’s daughter getting her surely justified comeuppance did not delight him the way it once had. I am running out of peers. I shouldn’t squander the few I have left.
‘Hear me!’ Tynisa called out. ‘Know me by the badge I wear. Are any of you bold enough to meet me?’
Thalric waited, still half-expecting that arrow, but then Amnon grunted, ‘Someone comes.’
A lone, lean figure stepped out into the clearing, and Thalric wondered if that same wariness — of a sudden and treacherous shot — had affected their enemy as well. Even Mantis-kinden must fear a bad death. The woman who stepped forwards had a bow in one hand, but no arrow to it, and she looked up at Che curiously.
‘For entering our forests, you will die,’ the Nethyon declared, her voice clear and sharp. ‘And for being of our enemy’s kinden, you must die. For being of that kinden, and worse, death is better than you deserve.’ She looked up at Tynisa fiercely. ‘And yet you bear the badge. . I see Parosyal on you, halfbreed.’
‘I earned this on the island,’ Tynisa agreed. ‘I was accepted there. No words of yours can strip me of my right to bear the sword and circle.’
Thalric expected an angry response, but the Mantis woman’s shoulders sagged, and he could almost put the words into her mouth: What is the world coming to? For a long time she just stood there, looking up
at Tynisa, at the unforgivable adulteration of Mantis ways that she represented, and at the badge she also bore.
She would rather we had just shot her, Thalric guessed.
‘Let it be at dawn,’ Tynisa declared, when it was plain that the woman was not going to say anything. ‘And I claim as trophy the Beetle woman your people have taken, she is the victor’s prize. Not one drop of her blood must be shed, until we have fought.’ She said the words boldly, but Thalric was already trying to plan for her failure: How can I get Che out of this mess? And, furthermore, he knew that Tynisa was fully aware he would be thinking just that. So Mantis honour is a blade that only cuts one way, is it?
‘You speak of the great magician?’ the Mantis woman asked.
Tynisa hesitated, but Maure spoke up: ‘Yes! That is who we mean!’
‘We don’t have her,’ the Nethyen said slowly. ‘We are hunting her, and she may be killed, once she is found. If she is taken alive, we will kill her after we have killed you, but I cannot guarantee that she is not already dead — or that she will not die soon. We know better than to take risks when hunting a magician.’
Tynisa remained very still, but Thalric could see the fingers of her off-hand clawing at the rotting wood of the hatch’s edge.
‘Let it be dawn, though,’ the Mantis woman finished. ‘Why not?’
Terastos let his attention flow out between the trees, trying to project all his senses, into hunting out his enemies. Night was drawing in — his advantage, for his eyes were better than any Mantis-kinden’s — and he neither could see nor hear any suggestion that the Nethyen were close by. Nor did his paltry magic suggest it
‘Gone,’ he whispered for Helma Bartrer’s benefit. ‘Gone off after the Maker girl and the others.’
The Beetle woman shifted, in a single motion making a remarkable amount of noise. They were almost completely buried amid a stand of bracken, its fronds curling almost to man-height above them, but every time Bartrer moved their entire hiding place shuddered as if the wind was at it.
‘Oh, they clearly know who’s important,’ the woman said acidly. ‘The Maker girl and her newfound heritage, yes. Not us.’
‘Thankfully,’ Terastos added. ‘Come full night, I’ll see what trail I can find. We can catch up with them. . if they got away, that is.’
‘I have a feeling that Che Maker is quite safe. There was a purpose in her coming here. Not necessarily the purpose she assumed,’ Bartrer put in.
The Moth turned to her. ‘You’re well read, for a Collegiate.’
‘I’ve been studying the old ways since before you were born,’ Bartrer boasted. ‘And I might not understand what the Maker girl is now, or how she does it, but I can read between the lines.’
‘And what is your scholarly conclusion?’ Terastos enquired somewhat archly.
‘Argastos wants her here.’
He turned to her, wide-eyed. ‘You think?’
‘I told you, I’ve read enough to know some scraps of history about this place. I only wish I’d got to visit here when there wasn’t a war going on to complicate things. History books, yes, but a scholar can’t live off books forever. There was an Argastos once, and I believe that there is an Argastos still, somehow, some shadow of him.’
‘You’re a remarkable Beetle,’ he conceded.
‘Not as remarkable as Che Maker, it’s true,’ she allowed bitterly, ‘but I do my best.’ She rammed her dagger up under his ribcage with all the force she could muster, right up to the hilt, so that what emerged from his lips was not a cry but only blood.
She struck two, three more times, and made a sorry mess of the task, too. She was, after all, an academic and not a habitual killer.
Then she wanted to retch, to cast aside the knife and retreat from her horrible handiwork, but she knew that time was of the essence.
‘Argastos,’ she said, for even though she possessed no power, she had still learned that names were power among the Inapt. If I go through the motions well enough. .? ‘Argastos, this is yours, this blood. I have no altar, no icon. Take his life, though. It is my gift to you. Argastos, I am weak. I am the last of my line, the dregs of a once proud lineage. In times long past my family were loyal followers of your kinden. We were your servants and your slaves, Argastos, and that was our purpose and our place in the world. But we have lost our meaning, generation on generation, and now I know I am just a weak and empty vessel, but please, there must be enough — some last spark of the old ways in me — that you can hear my words. Argastos, I shed his blood, a magician’s blood, for you. Please, please, please let me in.’
Her head jerked up. Was that. .? Had she heard some faint voice on the wind, something distant as a dream?
The night was coming on, though. It was time for dreams.
She stood up, hands still dripping with Terastos’s blood, and walked out from among the ferns.
And into another forest, another place.
Twenty-One
I’ve had this conversation before, on a smaller scale. Not a reference to Laszlo’s size, but here were Balkus and Sperra, freshly arrived from Princep Salma, both complaining about exactly the same man.
‘What do you expect me to do?’ Stenwold asked them.
Balkus folded his arms. ‘I don’t know. Something. Thinking of what to do is supposed to be your strong point.’
Stenwold crossed to the window of his current office, staring out over his city, with special reference to the scars of the bombing, the conscripted soldiers below being taught battle formation, the factories turning out Stormreader parts and new artillery for the walls. This is what my home has become.
‘Seriously, Master Maker,’ Balkus persevered from behind him, ‘it’s an attack on Princep’s sovereignty, is what it is. He just about annexed us on behalf of Sarn. You’ve got to do something.’
‘Why me?’
‘I can’t think who else that man might listen to,’ Sperra put in, speaking from around Balkus’s waist level.
Stenwold took a deep breath. ‘He is the military leader of my city’s foremost ally. He is dedicated to fighting the Wasps. What am I supposed to say? Do I tell him we’re not his friends any more because of one girl?’
‘One what?’ Sperra and Balkus exclaimed almost together, high and low like two-part harmony.
For a moment Stenwold lost track of the present conversation. He had been making do with perilously little sleep this last tenday. Not the girl this time, that was Laszlo. ‘For just one city. Princep Salma. Do I call off the alliance?’
‘Threaten to do it,’ Sperra insisted.
‘And he’ll know I’m bluffing, and all I’ll achieve is to alienate the Sarnesh.’
‘Then don’t bluff!’ Balkus had his turn now.
At that, Stenwold turned round, sitting back on the windowsill. Something in his expression tapped the big Ant’s anger and drained it, leaving the man almost fearful.
‘It would be a bluff, because we cannot afford to do without Sarn,’ Stenwold said simply. ‘They cannot do without us, it’s true, but our need is mutual. It’s an alliance, after all.’
‘But it’s wrong,’ Sperra said, sounding almost childlike.
‘We need to win this war, Sperra. We need to defeat the Empire, or what has it all been for? We need to. . somehow we need to bring this to a close. I’m being frank with you. Believe me, Sarn could go much further down that path, and I’d still back them. I have to.’ And good sense told him to stop there, but his mouth continued speaking. ‘And a lot of people would ask whether Princep should not be expected to fight to defend its freedom.’
Balkus stared at him. ‘They came to my city and they turned my people into their soldiers, under their orders, at their command. How is that different from the Auxillians of the Empire?’ And then, before Stenwold could riposte: ‘Maker, I thought we were friends. Is this it, then? Were we only ever just hirelings of yours? To be cast off when you don’t need us?’
Of course not.
It’
s not like that.
You’re not seeing the whole picture.
Balkus, just see sense for once. This is bigger than. .
But Stenwold said none of those things; he just looked at Balkus and Sperra and said nothing at all, with no real idea of how cold and hostile his expression might have become. He saw Balkus balling his fists, Balkus the Ant mercenary, with a sword at his belt and a nailbow slung over his shoulder.
But he knew Balkus. The Ant was no danger to him. They were friends, after all.
The Sarnesh renegade’s face twisted in some strangled expression obviously taught to him by living amongst other kinden. Then Sperra was tugging gently at his arm, her eyes regarding Stenwold sadly.
‘Bye, War Master,’ she said. ‘We’ll leave you to your war.’ She did not even remind him of the time the Sarnesh had tortured her on his account. Not a word, not a facial tic to recall it, and yet the thought might almost have leapt straight from her mind to his. And as for Balkus: the Ant had led Collegium’s own forces in the last war, had been a hero to the people of Stenwold’s city.
But I don’t need them now. I need Tactician Milus and the Sarnesh. So he simply watched them go, the two of them, and knew that he had betrayed them utterly, unreservedly.
Tactician, we have each considered your plans.
Milus waited, standing on the battlements of Sarn, whilst all about him a city was preparing for war. Not an army but a city. Every Ant-kinden became a warrior in time of need, and now the artisans, the labourers, the merchants among his people were being kitted out with hauberk, crossbow and shortsword, forming a citizen militia to hold the walls and support the main army.
His mind was linked with the Royal Court, the King and the other tacticians, those who had given him oversight of the campaign against the Empire. That they were not instantly agreeing with him was a point of concern, but he allowed them time. They had shown their faith in him when they appointed him. His was a rare mind for an Ant, able to chew over many problems at once, able to see unusual solutions to difficult problems — and often to simplify those problems by tearing right through them where a lesser man might get mired in detail.
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