Dragonfly Falling

Seventeen

The Ant-kinden shot all at once, the arms of their crossbows a vibrating blur with the force of the bolts let loose. Salma saw half a dozen men drop, mostly shot in the head or throat. Even with their targets lit up by the working lamps, it was a fine display of shooting.

Basila and her people were already moving. She took half her force forward with drawn swords, while the others spun the wheels of their crossbows to recock them. Salma had a moment’s hesitation before he went with them, catching them up with a flurry of his wings and diving at once into the fray.

Most of the men they fell on were Wasp-kinden artificers, unarmoured save for their working leathers, and some of their slaves. There was no time to distinguish or apply any mercy, though, and Salma knew that the Tarkesh had none to apply. Eight or nine utterly surprised men were caught unawares, cut down where they stood, and then two of the Ants were running on towards the nearest in the line of towering airships.

There was another hollow explosion from within the camp as Basila’s tactics of distraction continued. One man, a suicide from the moment he set out, was running through the tents of the Wasps and throwing grenades at random. Salma could only imagine the confusion.

Other Wasp soldiers were coming at them now. Most came running from the nearest rows of tents, unarmoured, some barely clad, but there were already some in the airships only now making themselves known. A second hail of crossbow bolts raked across the enemy approaching from behind, taking all but two from their feet. Salma turned to deal with those remaining two, who now hesitated, suddenly wrong-footed by their comrades’ demise. Giving them no time to react, he stabbed one through the throat and then planted his blade in the other’s bare chest. He glanced around for the Ant crossbowmen and saw them advance down the line of airships, loading as they did. Totho was still among them, he was glad to note, busy slotting another magazine into his repeating crossbow.

Basila and her few made quick work of the airship guards. One Ant-kinden was already shinning up the ropes to the first gondola. For a moment Salma wondered why they didn’t just cut the cords and let the buoyant machines blow away with the wind, but when he caught Basila up he saw that the lines were twisted steel, three fingers thick and sunk who knew how deep into the ground. Destroying the gondolas themselves was the only option left to them.

An energy bolt crackled past him, signifying that there were more Wasp soldiers on their way. He flung himself into the air, almost by instinct, and met a Wasp coming the other way. Salma grappled with the man as the two of them spun in the air before stabbing the Wasp and letting him drop to the ground.

The Ant crossbowmen were loosing bolts again, but they were being rushed as they did so. Two or three of the Wasps went down, some shots went wild and shields took others. For a moment Salma swung in the air, torn between either helping Basila destroy the airships or aiding Totho. Then he was arrowing down, sword first. Totho had his own blade drawn, crouched low as a Wasp thrust at him with a spear. Salma landed on his feet behind the spearman, thrusting his blade straight into the man’s back. He met Totho’s eyes for a moment, and then the halfbreed artificer took up his crossbow again, and immediately Salma sprang into the air.

He had been noted, now, so he twisted and spun to dodge a scatter of sting-shot directed at him, and a couple of crossbow bolts as well. A sweeping glance saw Basila’s people moving over to the next airship, and he soared in beside them.

‘Faster!’ he urged.

‘We can’t do this faster.’ She was climbing a rope even as she said it.

‘Can I help?’

‘Can you carry me — flying?’

He shook his head. ‘The bombs. Is it so.?’

‘You are not Apt,’ she told him, dragging herself over the gondola’s side. Two soldiers ran at her immediately, but she had already taken up her crossbow and stopped one with a bolt before he was even halfway towards her. The other’s hand spat a dart of gold fire that she sidestepped, and then Salma caught him by one of his armour-straps while Basila ran him through.

She looked across the deck, picking the best spot for the explosive. Salma went to the rail, looking out over it, and his heart sank. There were more soldiers coming, fast. The Wasps had mobilized much more quickly than they should have done. ‘I don’t think your distraction worked,’ he commented.

There was a flight of at least three score enemy heading for the airships. Clearly the Wasps had second-guessed them.

Basila was now kneeling, setting the bomb by clicking at something. A clockwork fuse, Totho had said, but it meant nothing to Salma.

‘We don’t have much time,’ he hissed. She ignored him still, patiently aligning the mechanism.

The first Wasps were at the rail even then. Salma cried out something wordless and half-ran, half-flew at them, stabbing the leader, driving him to the deck of the gondola. He then slashed up at the next man that he sensed was about to stab him in the back, catching the Wasp across the face. Two more were on him instantly but the sound of fighting behind him heartened him no end. Basila must have finished and they had not caught her unprepared.

They drove him back, and soon two became four, and then he had to take to the air to avoid being surrounded. They followed but he was swifter, skipping past their blades and bolts and leaving a trail of blood whenever he got within sword’s reach. He had wheeling glimpses of Basila still fighting on the deck, unable to flee but giving a good account of herself.

The plan had failed. He knew he should now find Totho and try to get both of them out and away from the camp and away from Tark. He knew that he could not abandon Basila, though. With a tight loop in the air he lost the two men still pursuing him, and dashed back for the airship.

Can you carry me? she had asked, but he could not. Not upwards, not even sideways.

He screamed as he stooped on them, catching one man in the back hard enough for him lose his grip on the sword. Then he had scattered them, just as Basila finished one more off. With no time for explanations he caught the surprised woman about the waist and ran with her to the rail. He kicked off.

Totho had run out of places to go. As the least bold of the band of saboteurs, so he was nearly the last. Only he and one more Ant remained, and there were now Wasps everywhere.

The Ant loosed his crossbow, bringing down another opponent, but then the enemy were on them again, at sword’s length, and Totho stumbled back while the Ant engaged them. Though a skilled swordsman, they mobbed him and, although several of them fell, one of them drove a blade down into his neck, almost to the quillons.

And Totho raised the crossbow his automatic hands had reloaded, and emptied it into them. He saw three men punched back by the power of it as he raked it in an arc across them.

Totho jammed another magazine into the weapon. He was now almost at the camp’s edge, and beyond that scattered perimeter of lights lay escape. Surely they could not follow him very far at night. He took another few steps back, raised the crossbow again and pressed the trigger as the closest soldier was almost within arm’s reach.

It jammed, and he heard a crack as the shaft of the bolt shattered under the stress. A moment later a Wasp sword was arcing down on him. He held the bow up, cringing, and the enemy blade embedded itself in the weapon, severing the string and sticking itself hopelessly amidst the workings. As Totho let go the snarling Wasp soldier hurled sword and bow away from him. Then he and two of his fellows were wrestling Totho to the ground.

Totho was strong, but so were these professional soldiers of the Empire. One of them struck him in the face hard enough to rattle his teeth. A moment later, groggy, he was being hauled upright to see the gleam of a sword being drawn back to strike.

‘Save him!’ a voice snapped, and Totho looked blearily into the face of an angry man with a bloodied scalp — an officer who, for all the wrong reasons, had just saved his life.

A moment later a sword pommel connected expertly with the back of his skull, and he remembered nothing more.

It was the kick, more than his wings, that cleared the rail for Salma, and then he was putting all his strength into flight as the burden in his arms dragged him back towards the hungry earth. If she had struggled they would both have been lost, but she clung to him tight and they dropped awkwardly in jolting stages until they found the earth.

‘We have to go!’ he said, snatching up the first discarded sword he found. When she looked at him all he could see were her eyes, but he thought that she was smiling at him.

‘How?’ she asked, and then they were both on their feet, fighting back to back. There were a dozen of the enemy trying to get at them in their eagerness to finish it. Salma laid one Wasp’s arm open and then cut down one of the stocky slave-kinden who was coming at him with an axe. A Wasp spearman drove the weapon at him, and Salma lunged forwards along the shaft to stab the man in the ribs. When he fell back again, Basila was no longer there.

He felt a single stab of hurt, but he knew that unless he did something quickly he would be just a corpse lying beside hers. His wings exploded from across his shoulders and he launched himself upwards. The enemy were following him and he was growing weary, his Art starting to falter. He landed again and spun round to face them, cutting the first one down even as the man touched ground. They were hanging back now, and he threw himself aside as they began launching their stings, each bolt of golden fire briefly lighting the night.

He turned and ran, looking for Totho but seeing only more of the enemy. He soon found himself deeper amidst the tents, always on the move, running up against little knots of Wasp soldiers and slashing at them frantically, making them scatter.

One pack did not budge, however and he slammed straight into them, losing his second sword. He cracked one in the head with his elbow, rammed his knee into another’s stomach. The third man grabbed him, tugging at his arming jacket, but Salma punched him in the face, snapping his head back. Pain burned across his back like the lash of a whip: a sting-blast had scorched him and he reeled, falling to one knee.

He leapt up instantly, wings searching for the sky, but someone grabbed an ankle and dragged him down. Even as he was yanked backwards a bolt of light split the air where he would have been flying. He lashed out blindly with hands and feet but they were all around him now and he met resistance with every blow.

A sword glinted nearby and he grasped the wrist that held it, bringing the swordsman’s arm down across his knee with an audible snap. Then the blade was in his own hand. They were furious now, mad for blood, but so was he. He killed the two of them closest to him with brief, brutal moves of the sword.

Another sting-shot flared past him as he ran. He wanted to fly but as soon as he took to the air he would have no cover, and there would be too many shots from all sides to dodge.

Someone grabbed for him and the pair of them tumbled to the ground. Salma was up first, driving his sword down into his opponent then dragging it up in desperate parry as yet another soldier lunged at him. The force of the blow spun him round but, as he staggered back, he managed to get back on his feet. The soldier confronting him paused a moment, sword extended, and then went for him, and for a second they were duelling, just as though they were in the Prowess Forum.

Then another Wasp was close behind and Salma lashed back at him with the sword but only struck the man across the face with the guard. The soldier in front of him took his chance then, and Salma whipped his sword back into line to deflect the blow.

The force of the attack knocked something out of him, the great punching blow to his stomach. Salma gasped, and his world contracted until it contained only himself and the Wasp soldier. No sounds, only dead silence as his sword swept round and lanced the other man through the ribs. His opponent could not parry because his blade was buried deep in Salma’s body.

Salma fell forwards into the arms of his adversary, the two of them leaning on each other like drunkards. Then Salma’s knees gave way and they toppled sideways together. For a moment their fight was an embrace of brothers.

And darkness rose within Salma, accompanied by a strange cessation of pain.

He was aware again of pain, before he had any idea of where he was. The back of his head was thumping angrily, sending tremors through his skull and into his eyes. Totho shifted awkwardly only to discover that he was lying bound at a strange angle in some peculiar kind of chair.

Growing awareness swiftly furnished his last reliable memory: the night attack. Was it still night? His eyelids told him it was dark, yet he could hear the slightly muffled murmur of a waking world beyond. He was in a Wasp tent.

And tied. He remembered what Che had said, about the torture devices the Wasps had kept in Myna. And that would explain the uncomfortable contours of the chair he was lashed to, its cold metal.

As well as most securely bound, he was stripped to the waist, and when he flexed his body experimentally, he felt the tug and pull of bandages, over rows of surgeon’s stitches.

And from somewhere close above him, a female voice stated, ‘I think he is awake.’

Totho froze into immobility, but too late. There was no longer anything to be gained from shamming, so very carefully he opened his eyes.

Even the dim light within the tent sent a stab of pain coursing through his brain, but he could just make out a blurred shape looming above him.

Something cold touched his lips, and he twisted his head violently, ringing his skull with agony. The woman’s voice said sharply, ‘Stop that. It is water only.’

He cautiously turned back to press his mouth against the lip of a cup. The water it contained was so startlingly cold that he felt there must be ice in it. A moment later a damp cloth was put to his forehead.

He forced himself to look properly, to make the vague shapes resolve themselves. The woman who had spoken was young, he saw, and dark-skinned. At first he assumed she was a Beetle, but her face was too flat, her frame too compact. Then he recalled the slave-artificers and recognized her as of the same kinden.

‘Where am I?’ he finally rasped, and found the ache in his head was joined by another inside his cheek. His mouth tasted rusty with dried blood, so he must have bitten himself in the struggle.

He saw the woman turn and glance at someone behind her, who had not, in all this time, moved or spoken. Merely the thought sent a shiver through him, and then she had stepped aside, and someone else was now standing beside the strange chair. Totho turned his head as far as the pain would allow, and saw a metal-gauntleted hand, exquisitely worked.

The newcomer’s voice was quiet and sly, slightly mocking. ‘In your position, young man, I would not waste my time with unnecessary questions. What is your name, young one?’

He decided he was not going to answer, and then the gauntlet shifted with a slight scraping of metal and he said quickly, ‘Totho. They called me Totho.’

‘A Fly-kinden name.’ The man sounded amused. ‘You must have been brought up in. Collegium, I would guess? Well then, my own name is Dariandrephos, but the boorish Wasps call me Drephos. Or “the Colonel-Auxillian”, of course.’

‘Colonel.?’ Totho wrestled with the term.

‘In fact I am the only Colonel-Auxillian in the Empire. I know that because they invented the rank solely for my benefit. Perhaps one day they will have to make me General-Auxillian, and then perhaps, what? Emperor-Auxillian. That would be amusing. Where were you trained?’

Totho shut his eyes and said nothing.

‘Do you know why you are here — rather than with the other prisoners? Perhaps you do not. We captured three of you, and the other two will be questioned as the Wasps question, as far as their physical capabilities permit. This, as you should have surmised, is not questioning. This is merely a friendly conversation, Totho.’

Still Totho said nothing, and his interrogator clicked his tongue in annoyance. Totho waited for a blow, but instead there was a tugging at his wrists, and then his bonds were loosened. He opened his eyes to see the girl retreating from him again.

‘Of course, you require some token of my good will,’ said Drephos.

Finally Totho was able to twist around to look at him. He saw none of the man’s flesh. The robe and cowl made a tall spectre of him. Only that gauntlet emerged from the folds of black and yellow cloth.

‘What is going on?’ Totho demanded. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘You are here because of this.’ The gauntlet dipped into Drephos’s robe and came out again with a strangely hesitant precision that made Totho wonder whether the hand inside had been injured or burned. On its reappearance it was gripping a small mechanism that he knew only too well.

‘And this.’ Drephos’s other hand, dark-gloved but bare of metal, appeared briefly to hang a long strip of pocketed leather on the arm of the metal chair. It was Totho’s tool-strip, and the device brandished before his face was one of his air batteries, his little pet project he had never been able to finish.

‘It is remarkable how much one can learn from the contents of a man’s pack,’ Drephos continued. ‘You have clearly been trained as an artificer, but I could have told that from the calluses of your hands. You were trained in Collegium then? In the Great College?’

Numbly, Totho nodded.

‘I would have given a great deal for that privilege.’

‘You’re an artificer?’ Totho seized on that statement. It seemed to offer him some small chance of respite.

Drephos laughed hollowly. ‘I am perhaps, though I say it myself, the most skilled artificer you will ever meet. The only reason I qualify that with “perhaps” is your own tutelage. I am painfully aware that, myself excluded, the Empire is somewhat young in the game of artifice: three generations from barbarism whilst you Lowlanders have a tradition that goes back centuries. Still, one must work with the tools one has.’

‘But the Empire must have artificers. Wasp artificers?’ Totho said. ‘I can’t be so special.’

‘But you are, because I do not want to rely on Wasp artificers. They are either dull men who have learned their mechanics by rote, or they waste what intellect they have in politics and one-upmanship and care nothing for the science itself. No, my people, my journeymen, are chosen from other sources. Unless the man be an outcast, I will not have a Wasp in my workshops.’

‘You want me to-?’

‘I am interested in you, Totho. I have never had the honour of a Great College student working for me.’

‘I will never work for the Empire!’ Totho snapped, sitting halfway up, then falling back, his head still clamouring.

‘I have a case to make.’ Drephos sounded amused.

‘I know the Empire. I know how they look on other races, even if they aren’t halfbreeds!’ Totho said through his teeth.

‘And what if they are?’ There was such dry humour in the man’s voice that Totho propped himself up on one elbow to see what was so funny.

Drephos raised his hands, one cased in metal and one without, and slipped his cowl back. The face he revealed was mottled and blotchy with grey, and his eyes had no irises. There were many grades of halfbreed, Totho already knew. A few like Tynisa were just like one parent or the other, and some others managed to combine their heritage into something exotic and attractive. Most were like Totho himself, stamped with an intermingling of bloods that others saw, and then judged them by. Drephos, though, was of those few who seemed actively twisted by their inheritance. His features were lean and ascetic but subtly wrong in their proportions. Even when he smiled the effect was unpleasantly skewed.

‘I am aware, young man, that I will win no prizes for my beauty, but believe that I, therefore, judge no man on his face or blood,’ he said.

‘Drephos,’ Totho said softly. ‘And that other name, the long one. Moth-kinden names?’

‘My mother was left to name me. My father, unknown and unmourned, bestowed on her only so much of his time as it took to rape her. Wasp soldiers are not known for their benevolence towards prisoners or slaves. I suppose few soldiers are.’

‘But you said you were an artificer?’

The lopsided smile grew wider than seemed comfortable. ‘Remarkable, is it not? And yet something from my father’s seed has communicated to me all the workings of the world of metal, for here I am, so much of an artificer that they turn their hierarchy inside out to accommodate me. Without me the walls of Tark would still be whole, utterly unbreached. Yet my mother’s people sit in their caves and draw pictures on the wall, and pretend they are still great.’

Totho sank back into the chair. There was a feeling snagged deep inside him, because he was now interested. This maverick artificer, who seemed to have carved out some high station even amidst the Wasp Empire, had caught his imagination.

‘Was it your idea,’ Drephos asked softly, ‘to destroy my airships?’

And there was a leading question, and more what Totho had been expecting. It would be better, he thought, to return to familiar ground. ‘It was.’ He steeled himself.

‘Don’t be shy of it,’ Drephos said. ‘It was a well-planned raid. I’d guessed that the Ant-kinden hadn’t considered it. I have dealt with them before and there is not a grain of intuition in their entire race. But you saw the threat and acted, even as I myself saw our vulnerability. That is why I had two whole wings of soldiers on standby, to rush to the airships the very moment anything disturbed the camp. And just as well I did.’

So that was it: the final nail in the coffin for Totho’s desperate plan. He recalled in his mind a brief swirl of images, the fighting, the fury. A sudden lurch took him, and he tried to spring out of the chair. Even before the young woman had moved to restrain him, he was already toppling, the pain in his head making it impossible to stand. Her arms grappled his body, surprisingly strong, hauled him up and sat on him the edge of the chair.

‘Prisoners. ’ Totho muttered

‘Yes?’ Even with his eyes closed he could hear Drephos moving near.

‘You said you had taken prisoners. Other prisoners.’

‘Two to be precise, although one of them may not recover enough to be questioned.’

‘Was there.?’ He squinted up at the man. ‘Was there a Dragonfly-kinden man? He would have had-’

‘I know the Commonwealers, the Dragonflies,’ Drephos confirmed. ‘After all, the Twelve-Year War was the testing ground for some of my best inventions. I’m sorry, though, but the other prisoners are just Ant-kinden. If there was a Dragonfly last night, he has not been taken alive, nor did any escape, to our knowledge. I am afraid it seems most likely he is amongst the fallen.’