War Master's Gate sota-9

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘The Felyen?’ Che demanded. ‘They fought. .?’

  ‘They are gone,’ Ceremon confirmed softly. ‘No blood of theirs remains unshed. They have carved their own gate and stepped through it, and no more shall they be known. There are many of my people who would see that as a good thing, something to be desired.’

  ‘But not you?’

  He met her eyes briefly. ‘If not for Amalthae, I might think it, but she. . she shows me that we have strayed from our path — no, that the path is too hard, and the ways we have fallen into are because we have strived and failed. That so many of us now see extinction as preferable to finding a new way is proof of that, she says.’

  Che nodded carefully. ‘And where do I come in?’

  ‘You are able to speak with the same authority as the Lady of the Wasps. We know this, for Amalthae can see the brand upon you, even now. If you demand it, my people will listen.’

  ‘Your people will kill me.’

  ‘Perhaps, but first they will listen. Amalthae says speak with them. Guide them.’

  ‘To what end?’ This time Che was addressing the great mantis directly, and it paused in its devouring, only the abdomen of the beetle left intact.

  ‘She says. . she says she wishes you to save us. She says you are the only one whose words might be heard. She says. . she has lived long and I am her third consort. Her kind. . we are her children, and she fears for us.’ The man’s soft voice began to quaver. ‘She does not want us to go.’

  Sergeant Gorrec of the Pioneers watched the Empress as she spoke with Tegrec the Turncoat and with that gangly old Woodlouse, noting all the signs — ones he was more than familiar with, of superiors in disagreement. Of all possible places, this is not the one for argument. Not that anyone would openly defy the Empress, of course, but she was asking questions they could not answer — or maybe she did not like the answers they gave her.

  The other two Pioneers huddled close, Icnumon and Jons Escarrabin. The Beetle looked just about how Gorrec felt — namely miserable and lost and worried. He clutched his snapbow to him like a talisman. The halfbreed, though: Icnumon had changed when they. . well, Gorrec couldn’t say precisely what they had done, but things were definitely different.

  They had passed through into what seemed somehow a different forest. The trees grew closer, were more gnarled, their branches a solid interlacing canopy ahead, whilst the undergrowth was now shot through with briars, making progress tiring and painful. There was almost no sign of animal life — Gorrec and his fellows were tried woodsmen and knew what to look for. They spotted only the occasional mark or track that Icnumon identified as the killer mantids. The air was dim and curiously obscuring as though some shreds of fog remained even at noon, and the colours. . nothing here was bright. Sounds were muted and, in the long silences, it seemed as if there were other noises just at the edge of hearing, a whispering and a murmuring.

  Only one of the Empress’s female bodyguards had made it this far, the Sarnesh and the Etheryen having accounted for the rest. The woman sat by herself, withdrawn and wordless; the Wasp soldier, Ostrec, seemed little better. Even the armoured man that Seda called Tisamon seemed changed here, a troubled introspection evident in his immobile stance.

  Gorrec shifted closer to Icnumon, meaning to question him, but the halfbreed’s look warned him off.

  ‘If I could tell you, I would,’ the man said, ‘but there are no words.’

  Then there was a sharp sound — a real sound — and the three Pioneers leapt to their feet, weapons to hand. Tegrec was sitting down, one hand clamped to his face, Seda standing over him.

  ‘No more discussion,’ the Empress declared. ‘You will follow my lead or you will die here.’

  ‘Your Majesty,’ came Tegrec’s thin voice, ‘Gjegevey and myself, we have both sought for the path, and in doing so we have seen where it leads. Majesty, this is not. . this is what we wished to avoid! The Seal. . it is here. No records, no stories even, but-’

  ‘You pair of blind fools,’ Seda snapped back. ‘Of course there is a seal here. Which war did Argastos win? Which enemy was he victorious over, except the Worm? And you thought that they would just set him as a guard in the wilderness? Oh, there are seals in many places, but Argastos guards the greatest.’

  Gorrec would not have credited the paunchy Wasp turncoat with much courage, but holding his argument against the Empress must have required all of it. ‘But we brought you here. .’

  She planted a booted foot on his chest, her hand out with palm directed towards his face. The old Woodlouse made a convulsive, aborted movement as though about to intervene, then stepped back.

  ‘I know you sought to divert me from the Worm by dangling Argastos before me. I sought advice, and this was yours. And you were right, for Argastos is power, and a power I had best claim before my sis- before that damned Beetle can do so. But if I cannot do so — if I must destroy Argastos, or if his power is truly nothing more than a shadow — then how convenient that I shall be in place to follow my original plan, hmm?’

  Tegrec goggled up at her, but he had run out of words.

  ‘And what about you?’ she demanded of the old slave. ‘Anything to say?’

  Gjegevey shook his head and looked away.

  Gorrec had been convinced that the robed Wasp was already a dead man, but Seda turned away from him, letting him stand up. ‘This place still resists us,’ she snapped. ‘Even though Argastos himself tries to smooth the way, there is a will here that contrives a maze for us. Go find me the path, the two of you. Prove to me that you have value yet. Lead me to Argastos.’

  Icnumon straightened suddenly, starting a pace forwards, then stopping.

  ‘What?’ Gorrec demanded. Not that any of them exactly liked it here, but the halfbreed was taut as a bowstring and jumping at shadows. Or at things that were very real but that Gorrec and Jons were unable to see. Nasty thought.

  ‘Thought I saw. .’ Icnumon grimaced. ‘A person. A Beetle woman.’ He spoke the words quietly but Seda — a good fifteen feet away — whirled round instantly.

  ‘You saw what?’ she exclaimed, storming over. Behind her, Gorrec saw Tegrec get well out of the way, no more willing to help the Pioneers than they were to assist him.

  Icnumon tried to mumble something and dismiss the matter, but Seda was staring at him and, whilst Gorrec was quite scared enough of the woman, his comrade plainly knew enough to be fully terrified.

  ‘I thought I saw a Beetle, Majesty. . a Beetle woman, just for a moment.’

  ‘The girl is here already?’ Seda demanded. Again, Gorrec thought she would lose hold of her temper and just kill the nearest target, but again she reined it in — an admirable trait in a commander, he had to admit.

  ‘Wouldn’t call her a girl, Majesty,’ Icnumon said hoarsely. ‘Older. . going grey. Old as Jons’s mother might be.’

  Seda frowned. ‘Then she’s not. .’ It was plain that she made no sense of it. ‘No matter,’ she decided. ‘We press on. If you see such a woman again, bring her down if you can. Kill her if you must.’

  The Mantis-kinden were silent killers, of course, and there would be no warning when they struck. That was plainly what Thalric and Amnon were thinking, anyway, for Tynisa could read the tension in every move they made.

  When the drum started beating, they jumped, poised to take on the wave of killers that must surely be about to descend from the darkness.

  She realized she had been expecting it. It was not loud, a soft, slow rhythm like a heart, and it spoke to her at a deep and primal level.

  Thalric started speaking, some suspicious, nasty-minded comment no doubt, but she hissed him into silence. The glower of the fire lit up the woods ahead, yet always further through the trees as they approached, until it was revealed as a far greater blaze than they had expected. But, then, they have many dead.

  When the singing started, she felt her own throat tighten with it, moments from joining in. There was no hint of words to it, and it felt older th
an speech to her: something preserved by the Mantis-kinden from the depths of time, and not heard by any outsider since the revolution. The last ebb tide of the old ways.

  The voices, three of them, climbed like vines about each other, each with its own song, each complementing the others without seeming to intend it, as though three independent singers had somehow come together by impossibly prolonged coincidence. The voices soared, but never joyously, and the depths of their grief and loss stuck daggers into Tynisa, because she could share it. She had been born to it, and no amount of Collegium years could rid her of that burden, and that birthright.

  She felt a hand on her arm: Maure, regarding her solemnly. She understands. She has Mantis blood too.

  And Tynisa strode onward towards the blaze, drawing the rest in her wake. And they were already amongst the Nethyen, spread out amongst the trees with blades to hand, staring at these intruders, these unthinkable trespassers on their rites.

  ‘No weapons,’ Tynisa murmured, because her own rapier was clinging to its scabbard and showing no signs of leaping to her hand. ‘Fists closed, Thalric.’

  ‘These are Mantis-kinden,’ he argued. ‘Weapons and fighting are the only things they respect.’

  ‘Then I’ll let them kill you. Here and now, I say no weapons. There is more to my. . to their kinden than you know.’

  ‘Not much more,’ he muttered, yet his sword stayed sheathed.

  The Nethyen were approaching cautiously, from behind and on either side, but ahead there was only the fire. She could now see the singers, three women, old and young and middle-aged, their voices drifting into silence as the intruders stepped out into the clearing surrounding the blaze.

  Bodies on the fire, of course, and Tynisa counted one short of a dozen corpses, and beyond the flames stood one of their idols, this one a ten-foot giant whose rotting wood was enlivened with bone, clusters of skulls giving it makeshift compound eyes.

  She was aware of many eyes fixed on them, tens of Nethyen, seen and unseen, staring silently. She felt their despair — not outrage but despair — at this intrusion. The presence of the enemy here in their heartland confirmed to them what they had feared for some time now. She could read it fluently on each face. The future is here for us. What else was ours alone, save the fire, save the blade’s point? Are even these things robbed of their power and sanctity?

  They could not kill these outsiders, not yet, for they were bound by the duel, bound by their own agreement to stay their hands. And, despite Maure’s fears, that code still held them. Instead they just stared, and Tynisa felt suddenly mean and guilty. This ceremony, this wake, it was all they had, more important to them than she could appreciate, and she had pushed in and denied them even that.

  Then Maure knelt down by the fire, not far from the three singers, and drew a deep breath. And Tynisa reminded herself just what sort of magic the woman was skilled in.

  She began to sing, not quite after the style that the Nethyen had given voice to, but something akin to it, and with words that Tynisa could now follow. Maure sang with her eyes closed, her frame as still as when she had been seeking out Che.

  ‘Take wing, take wing,

  Between the trees the horn is calling

  It summons you

  It summons you to your great battle

  Look not back

  For we shall come to you

  And we shall bear your name

  Until the day we meet once more

  Take wing, take wing

  The gates of night are open

  And we shall bear your deeds

  That they shall be known evermore

  Go, warrior,

  Go, great hunter,

  Take wing, take wing.’

  Maure paused, opening those strange, iris-less eyes. Other than the crackling of the flames, the forest was utterly stilled. Tynisa saw the necromancer’s gaze shift, focusing on something that she herself could not discern, or perhaps just the smoke that shrouded the fire and twisted upwards towards the night sky.

  A Mantis woman approached Maure, and Thalric and Amnon were both instantly on edge once more, but Tynisa put a hand up to calm them. What was offered was not sharp steel, but a cup.

  Then the Mantis singers started up again, their song subtly different but still wordless, and something invisible that was all around them had been inverted like a coat, so that the strangers — the trespassers — were somehow in now, their passage bought by Maure’s song, or by Tynisa’s badge, or something.

  When the chitin cup came to Tynisa, she drank deeply, and knew it for mead mixed with blood and bitter herbs — something distantly akin to the draught they had offered her when she earned her Weaponsmaster’s brooch. It did not come to the two Apt men, and she sensed that was for the best. She could already feel her awareness shifting — in some ways sharpening, in others blurring — but who knew how Thalric and Amnon might take that? She glanced back towards them, seeing that the Wasp was plainly ill at ease, still suspecting a trap, a betrayal. But why not, for that is the meat he has served others with for so long. Now he is slower to trust than the Nethyen themselves. Amnon had sat down before the fire, though, and she saw tears glinting on his cheeks. Maure’s song had included them all in this wake, and so it had included their dead also. Amnon stared into the flames and mourned his lost Praeda, as perhaps he had never been able to, before now.

  And I? She had done her mourning back in the Commonweal. No weeping left for her now. The lack of it felt hollow within her, and worse was that she shared her dry eyes with Thalric. If he ever had any tears, they were burned out of him long before we first met.

  Then the Wasp had twitched back, a movement sharp enough for half the Mantids near him to be instantly on their guard. His cry was lost amid the song but Tynisa read it on his lips.

  ‘Che!’

  Twenty-Three

  ‘Do you see it?’ Bergild demanded, the first words spoken in some time. Oski and Ernain, cramped together in a space not intended for two, had been bearing their discomfort stoically as the pilot followed the Red Watch machine towards wherever it was that they were going. Now, apparently, they had arrived.

  Oski tried to crane past Ernain’s shoulder to look down the length of the crawlspace leading to the cockpit, but could make out nothing, and said so loudly.

  ‘I’ll fly past,’ Bergild called back. ‘Get the side hatch open.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You’ve both got your wings, haven’t you? Just open the cursed thing. You’re going to want to see this!’

  ‘Don’t be so pissing cryptic, woman,’ the Fly snapped, but Ernain was already fumbling at the catch, bracing himself against the walls to resist the sudden rush of wind trying to drag them both out.

  For a moment Oski could see nothing but sky — then Bergild banked, and something incredible slid into view.

  It was an airship, and the base model was one he knew well. This was a big cargo-hauler that had already seen service for twenty years and more, not unlike the vessels that were now attempting to keep the Second supplied. When the original had been constructed, its designers had cared for little save storage space and not having it fall out of the air: certainly a more innocent age of warfare.

  Some fool had been busy with this one, though. The broad and rounded boat-like hull had been attacked savagely, and now there were rows and rows of circular hatches studding the vessel’s exterior so densely that the entire ship looked as though it had been hobnailed. Bergild let their craft drift closer, and Oski had a fine view of them, hundreds of sealed ports each perhaps three feet across. The effect was ugly and warlike and dangerous. And useless.

  ‘Oh, balls,’ the Fly engineer cursed. ‘Oh, piss on it. General Tynan’s going to have a fit.’

  ‘It’s a city-breaker, it must be.’ Bergild had plainly been thinking along the same lines. ‘Bomb-chutes. . or modified leadshotters, maybe. You could pulverize whole districts with the thing.’

  ‘If you got it to fl
y over them,’ said Oski in a horrified whisper. ‘Oh, sod me, some bright spark’s spent fifty thousand in gold solving the wrong problem!’

  ‘One look at that thing and the Collegiate fliers’ll be all over it. Or they’ll be above it, rather, shredding the airbag and loosing bombs,’ the pilot agreed. ‘I don’t see any of those hatches pointing up, after all. And there’s no way my people can protect this thing. It’s huge, and the Collegiates’ll see it just like we do. Nothing we can do will pull them off it until they’ve dropped the cursed thing right in Tynan’s lap.’

  ‘The stupid bastards,’ Oski swore. ‘Is that. . Where’s our boy gone? Is that his craft landed on their top deck there?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Well we better go down after him, and see if someone can tell us just what the hell they’re playing at.’

  Landing on the gondola of an airship was tricky, but nothing to tax Bergild’s skills, and she soon had them down neatly, facing the Red Watch Farsphex in a somewhat confrontational way. The three of them extricated themselves from their vessel and took a moment to look about the deck.

  Oski noted three distinct divisions of crew, none of which brought him much joy. There were a half-dozen Beetle-kinden who looked like Consortium aviators, men more used to cargo runs than any sort of fighting. Overseeing them were a trio of Wasps with Red Watch badges, all of whom were regarding the newcomers coldly. Lastly, Captain Nistic had gone to join a gang of men who looked every bit as wild as he did. Their gaze was scarcely more friendly than that of the Red Watch men, and the amused comments they muttered to one another were plainly at the expense of their visitors.