Dragonfly Falling

Twenty

Totho was well enough to walk about the next day, but the Wasps kept a close eye on him. He gathered that Drephos was busy with his Colonel-Auxillian duties, whatever they were. The halfbreed artificer seemed to have carved out a strange niche for himself within the imperial army. Totho could see in their faces that the Wasps looked down on him, and yet they deferred to him, and it was not just patronizing. They clearly feared him. Totho did not know yet whether that was fear of the man’s own vengeance or what he could call down on them from the higher ranks.

Totho’s only real contact had been with Drephos’s female assistant. Her name was Kaszaat, and she came from the city of Szar, far to the north, near where the border of the Commonweal had stretched before the Twelve-Year War redrew all the maps in the Empire’s favour. She was Bee-kinden, he discovered.

‘Are you. Drephos’s slave?’ he asked her, in truth having assumed it.

She gave him a cold look. She was perhaps five years his senior and had not made up her mind about him, whether he was a man or a boy, or to be spoken freely to. ‘I am not a slave,’ she said sharply. ‘I am an artificer.’

‘I have not seen many women here. I didn’t mean. ’ He had seen precisely two other women and, from the way they had been treated, realized they were being kept as slaves and for one purpose only. ‘Does that mean you’re. part of their army?’

‘There is no other way,’ she confirmed. ‘Drephos is colonel of the Auxillians and I am a sergeant. So I can tell the common soldiers what to do.’

‘Does that work?’ he asked, wide-eyed.

She was about to snap at him again, but in the end she smiled a little, understanding his point. ‘Sometimes, but they do not like it. I am a woman, after all. And inferior of race they claim. They would have the same problem with you, for you are mixed-blooded. But you, too, shall have rank, and so they must obey you, in the last.’

‘I. ’ He hung his head. ‘I cannot join up with Drephos. The Wasps are conquerors, tyrants. They’re evil.’

‘No such thing,’ she said briskly. ‘There is no good, no evil, only men who do this thing or that thing. And the Wasps, yes, they do terrible things, things more terrible than you will have ever witnessed. And they do this because they can. And yet anyone else who could, they would do these same things. And so the Wasps are not special, not evil. They are just the strongest. There will come a day when it is no longer so, and then terrible things shall be done back to them, perhaps by those they have conquered.’

‘Like your people?’ he asked, and her eyes narrowed, all of a sudden.

‘Foolish words!’ she told him, but her eyes warned: dangerous words.

He occupied a sectioned-off area of a tent, with a straw mattress and a lamp. There were soldiers beyond, always watching him. Totho might just possibly have crept out, but then he would be right in the middle of a camp full of Wasps. If he tried to escape they would kill him.

Salma would have tried, of course, taking to the air the instant he was outside. He could have seen his way in the dark and outpaced any Wasp airborne sent after him. And of course, Salma was dead.

There was a hollow sinking in Totho’s chest, each time he remembered that. He had let Salma die. It had been his own idea to come out here, that idea the Ants had so naA?vely taken up. It was almost as though he had killed Salma with his own hands.

‘I cannot ever join with the Empire,’ he replied at last, not emphatically but hopelessly. ‘I have lost too much to them.’

Her hand moved so fast he jerked back, expecting to be slapped, but instead she caught his left ear in a pincer grip and dragged his head down to face her. He twisted with pain and surprise, goggling at her foolishly.

‘You know nothing,’ Kaszaat hissed. ‘So your people, who are not even truly your people, may fall to the Wasps. But they are no warriors. Most likely they will surrender, and be spared. My people fought the Wasps, year to year, for three years, through all our farms and forts and villages and to the gates of our city of Szar. We are loyal. We would die for our Queen. My father, my mother, uncles, aunts, all gave their lives. Flying into battle. Running into battle. Crossbow, pike and axe. Fight and then fight again. Over and over the Wasps stormed our walls. They must take Szar. It is the gateway to the Commonweal. They did many things. They stood up our fallen on stakes and spears. They poisoned our water. They butchered whole villages to make us surrender. Then they won. Our Queen was stolen away. She is made to be a slave-wife, a concubine to their Emperor. So we became them, and must take their orders and be their soldiers. They rule Szar now, and kill anyone who even speaks against them. They take our men for their armies, and spend our lives like water pissed on dry sand. They cripple us with their taxes. They take everything we have, everything we make or grow. We work in their factories. We make their weapons and armour. We mend their machines. We fight and die for them in places like this Tark, which we did not even know exists, and so many of us, so many of us shall never see our families and the walls of our beloved city again.’ She was staring into his eyes, from just inches away. He looked for tears but saw not one.

‘And I work for Drephos, because it is better than not. Because of all the masters in the Empire he is best, because I am an artificer and he treats me as an artificer — not as a woman, not as a slave. So do not tell me how you hurt so very badly, and cannot work for the Wasps. Because you know nothing, Totho of Collegium. You have no understanding.’

And she released him and spun away, about to leave his little partitioned room then pausing at the door, as if thinking better of it. She did not turn round, though, and he wondered whether she had said more than she meant. He put a hand to his aching ear.

‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose I’ve. Well, in Collegium even a halfbreed can train as an artificer. I can’t imagine. however did Drephos manage it?’

‘He once escaped the Empire, he told me once,’ she said, turning back to him. ‘To where, I do not know, but when he had learned, he came back to them, because. ’

‘Because where else could he truly ply his trade?’ Totho realized.

A Fly-kinden messenger put his head about the partition just then, muttering something to Kaszaat.

‘He has sent for you,’ she told Totho. ‘There is something he wishes you to see.’

She followed the Fly outside, and Totho felt he had no option but to follow.

He had clearly lost all track of time, for he had expected early morning and yet it was dusk already, making him wonder how long he had slept, how many hours were missing.

He already felt a traitor to himself and to his friends. They were treating him here like some honoured guest, instead of Totho the halfbreed. He should have been put in chains, as Che had been.

Or killed, as Salma had been.

The Fly led them to a roughly built gantry that made a tottering tower twenty feet, at least, in height, but close to he saw the joints were solid, the structure thrown up hurriedly but with a kind of stubborn care. He guessed then that it had been Kaszaat’s people who had been put to work here. It was not the hands of untrained soldiers that had constructed this.

‘Up there.’ Pointing, the Fly lifted a little from the ground for emphasis, and craning back Totho could see that there was someone robed and hooded standing at the gantry’s narrow apex. Drephos, of course.

Kaszaat had already begun climbing and Totho fell in behind her, letting his Art free to fix his hands as he needed, so that he had no fear of falling. When he was most of the way up there came a flash from far off, but he did not look up or remark on it, concentrating instead on the climb itself until he had reached the top.

There was little room for three of them there and he was uncomfortably aware that he was likely the only one of them who could not fly. Drephos put a steadying hand on him, the metal gauntlet heavy on his shoulder. The other bare hand was already pointing.

‘I brought you here to witness some artifice in motion, Totho,’ Drephos explained. ‘So watch and learn.’

Totho looked up and found the Colonel-Auxillian was pointing towards the city of Tark.

It was now under attack in seemingly the most sedate, detached way possible. High above the city the slow and stately airships swam like ponderous fish. Parts of the city were burning and, as he watched, something blossomed into fiery life above the rooftops, falling like a flaming teardrop until it impacted amongst Tark’s streets. He had foreseen this event himself, but never realized how accurate he had been. Like spilling burning oil onto a map, he had said, and here was the map aflame in front of his eyes. Another missile bloomed into vision in the dim air between the zeppelins and the ground, lower this time, and he heard, like the surf of a winter sea, the roar of it striking.

He shivered, clinging there to the gantry-top, because it was a whole new war that was being waged. He felt as though he was watching the years blister and shred, the world reborn in fire into some unimaginable future age. The age of the artificer.

And it was terrible, but it was beautiful. Seeing those drops of flame at such a distance, with no screams, no sight of charred bodies, it was beautiful.

‘The airships are a refinement, of course,’ Drephos remarked, scholarly. ‘The incendiaries are an entirely new plan. I intended to improve on the taking of Maynes, which dragged out over months even after the walls had fallen. Tark will not stand a tenday.’

‘Your incendiaries. ’ Totho stammered. ‘How.?’

‘You tell me, Totho. Let this be a test of your skill. What difficulties do I face?’

‘They cannot be accurate from such a height,’ Totho almost protested.

‘Difficulty the first,’ agreed Drephos. ‘And a lesser artificer might have persuaded General Alder that accuracy was not necessary.’ Another brilliant drop flared and fell. ‘And yet it is, and they are accurate. So how have I done it, Totho?’

‘You could. assuming a low wind, such as today. you could fix the propellers into the wind, hold the ship as steady as you can. ’ Even as he spoke Totho realized that something in him had responded to the bombing in a way he did not like, something that could consider wholesale destruction as no more than a problem set by a College master.

‘Go on,’ Drephos murmured and, despite himself, Totho did.

‘Then you could attach a telescope — I have seen men use telescopes on the best crossbows, tech-bows and magnetic — to allow them to strike a target at the weapon’s utmost range. Something similar. with calibrations perhaps, linked to an altimeter?’

‘Oh very good.’ The metal grasp on Totho’s shoulder tightened in an almost paternal squeeze. ‘And close enough to how I did it. The calibration required an enormous amount of calculation to get right, what with there being no real opportunity to test it, but my airship captains inform me that they work very well indeed. So, next problem?’

Totho glanced at Kaszaat. She was not looking at Tark, just staring at the rail she held on to. Another flash of fire caught his gaze, and he felt suddenly ill imagining those people he had seen, spoken to, trying to find shelter from such a barrage. The Ants built their houses in stone but still there seemed a great deal on fire down there.

And his traitor mouth continued. ‘You would want to control the timing of the missiles’ ignition, if you could. A higher ignition would disperse the flame and impact over a greater area; a lower impact would cause more focused damage.’ Delivered as though this were some piece of theory for discussion by the class.

‘I knew I had read you well. That’s excellent thinking, Totho. So solve for me problem the second.’

It isn’t as though I’m helping him. He must already have solved it. ‘I suppose you could have. clockwork fuses or timers?’

‘Such as those you were intending to destroy my airships with? And what further problem would you encounter with that?’

Totho still watched, and by some chance three of the airships loosed their charges, that flared into being within seconds of one another before bursting across the city. ‘Cost,’ he suggested, and Drephos crowed.

‘So few artificers even consider it, but we will still have to drop so many incendiaries before Tark is ours. Something cheaper?’

Totho racked his brains, considering all the mechanisms and devices he had learned of. After a moment, Drephos laughed again.

‘No matter. You’ve come far enough to repay my foresight in saving you. You must learn to think simply, where simply will suffice. Tell him then, Kaszaat.’

‘Simple cord,’ said the Bee-kinden woman. ‘Cord of differing lengths-’

‘And when it reaches its length, it pulls out a trigger, and ignites the incendiary!’ Totho saw clearly, and for a moment was so in love with the elegance of the idea that he did not see a city burning at all, simply a demonstration of artifice and skill. ‘That’s brilliant-’ And he stopped, abruptly shamefaced.

Drephos had not noticed the catch in his voice, but merely watched the airships as they began to make their slow way back to the Wasp camp. ‘They will be nearly out of incendiaries now,’ the master artificer said. ‘And my range-finders do not work well in the dark. I have yet to devise a machine that can see in the dark as well as I can. Do you see my point, though, Totho?’

‘Your.?’

‘That this is the proper place for you. Here, where the metal meets. You must have guessed the great secret of our artificer’s craft, since it comes to all the best minds eventually. War, Totho. Think how many inventions and advances come from war. Not just weapons but in all branches of our science. It is war that is the catalyst, that inspires us and whips us on. Artifice feeds off war, Totho. You must see that. And war feeds off artifice, so that each clings to the other, like a great tree growing ever higher and higher. They are the left and right hand of mankind, so as to allow him to climb to the future. War is the future, Totho. War to hone our skills, and our skills to make war.’

‘There must be more than that. ’ Totho started. ‘At some point war would have to end because the weapons would become. so terrible that if anyone used them. everyone would die.’

Drephos’s laugh came again, no less gaily than before. ‘Do you think so? I disagree. There is no weapon so terrible that mankind will not put it to use. On that day that you describe, the end to war would only come after the end of everything else.’

‘And that is what you are working towards?’ Totho said.

‘Look down there, boy!’ Drephos’s mismatched hands encompassed not only the camp but the fitfully burning city. ‘What of that would you save? Take away my machines and they would be at each other’s throats with swords and knives instead. Then take away their steel and they would pick up rocks and clubs. There is no saving them: they are merely the fuel for war’s engines. Only we, Totho — we are the point, the reason. We, because, alone amongst this destruction, we create, and we create so that they may destroy, so that we may create anew.’

‘I cannot join you,’ Totho whispered, but something had swelled in his heart, that stopped the words ever being properly heard: something that beat along with Drephos’s words, and the pitiless, sterile glory that he spoke of.

‘Only think,’ Drephos said softly. ‘Only think, and watch, and learn. Is it so terrible to be a master of the world — to control, rather than be lost to the current? Come, I will teach you some more that you never learned at the College. I like you, Totho. I see a keen mind, an artificer’s mind. That is the most valuable thing in the world, and I would not see it wasted.’

Drephos descended the gantry awkwardly, dark wings flickering once or twice to keep his balance, and once a hiss of pain as his injured leg locked briefly. Kaszaat had simply floated down on her own, leaving Totho to make the downwards journey rung over rung, wondering if Drephos was humouring him by doing the same, and deciding not.

‘The general and his clowns are done for the day,’ Drephos observed, making off into the camp with his uneven stride. ‘In truth, they are done for the war. All the planning is now here, in my mind. They merely stand slack-jawed and wait for me to hand the city over to them. But I will show you how they play with the toys I have given them. Here!’ His gauntleted hand picked out a large tent ahead of them, near the centre of the sprawling camp. The three of them ducked inside, finding the officers’ map table and a crudely sketched ground-plan of Tark.

‘The battle plan is remarkably simple, as all the best plans are,’ Drephos explained to Totho. ‘The airships batter a neighbourhood with the incendiaries, and sometimes with targeted explosives if there’s a barracks or a similar hard shell to crack. The incendiary material I have devised burns exceptionally hot — enough to fracture stone — but briefly, and so, once an area has been swept clear, the Empire’s soldiery can move in without fear of immolation. In this way we secure more and more of the city, a street at a time.’

‘But what about the people left behind by the retreat?’ Totho asked. ‘They cannot be taking everyone with them, surely?’

‘You forget the admirable self-possession of the Ant race, Totho. They forget nobody, leave nobody unless they are forced to. Their civilians evict themselves in good military order. And so hundreds, thousands even, will flee their homes, and the remainder of the city becomes more and more crowded. And the results of the next airship bombardment, therefore, become all the more effective.’

Totho stared at the map, seeing red markers for the latest positions of Ant forces, black and yellow for the heavy hand of the Empire that was creeping in from the sundered wall.

Totho had not slept at all well, yet. The city of Tark had been under the radiant shadow of the airships for four days now. The same savage pattern had been repeated over and over. The Tarkesh formed up against the Wasp advance, the airships drifting in like weather. The Tarkesh then retreated, or they burned. A third of the city was now a blackened ruin, the Wasps’ encroachments dark with the ash of their victories.

Totho had not slept well simply because his dreams were troubled with small modifications, innovations and tinkerings, by which this entire process could be made more efficient.

In the day he had a limited run of the camp, because Kaszaat watched over him and there were always guards within shout. He made no attempt to escape, however. He had nowhere to go. It would be simpler if they killed me, he thought, but made no attempt to provoke that. Sometimes Drephos would call upon him, and then he would be put to the test, examined on his artifice, or shown again the map table, given some lecture on the order of battle. The very artifice of war, of supply and strategy, in itself held a keen interest for the Colonel-Auxillian.

Drephos rearranged the blocks on the rough sketch of the city, heedless of the damage he was doing to the tactical situation. Everything would have to be moved soon enough to represent the latest advance.

‘You see, the Ants don’t give ground lightly,’ he explained to Totho. ‘They fall back and regroup, as good soldiers should, and then they press forward again. And toe-to-toe they’re better than the imperial soldiers, make no mistake. That mindlink their Art gives them is a wonderful advantage. Some Wasps have it, true, and the Empire has specialist squads, but not enough to make a difference. Especially as our men at the front are the light airborne, and they can’t possibly hold off heavy Ant infantry. So what do we do?’

‘I am. not a tactician, sir,’ said Totho cautiously.

‘A good artificer must become one, or at least become familiar with that trade. You must know how your creations are being used, how to best put them to work. Remember, any army officer, given half the chance, will waste any advantage you give him. Kaszaat, explain.’

The Bee-kinden woman glanced at the table, and then looked up at Totho with a bright, challenging look in her eyes. ‘When the Ants engage, we target their soldiers directly. In order to use their superior discipline they must stand close, solid formations. Then the airships take them. It is the best time. Our forces are more mobile. Most at least can avoid the fire.’

‘Most?’ Totho asked weakly.

‘What’s the matter?’ Drephos asked, mocking him. ‘I thought these Wasps are your enemies. If their own officers care nothing for their lives, why should we?’

Memories of the bright orange flares, the incendiaries flowering over Tark in all their deadly wonder, lit up Totho’s mind, and he shivered.

‘Are you going to. wipe them all out, destroy Tark?’

Totho had begun to believe it. The fighting had been fierce. The Ants had ambushed the Wasp airborne a dozen times, killing scores of them in each engagement before themselves being wiped out or driven back. The fiery rain over the city continued relentlessly, relieved only by nightfall or when the airships had to return to the gantries for rearming and refuelling.

Though the Ants had tried, they could not adapt to this new warfare. They had been fighting the same set-piece war against their neighbours for centuries. Now the Empire had reinvented the word: ‘war’ no longer meant what they thought.

‘That may be necessary,’ Drephos said, evidently none too interested. ‘But unless the Tarkesh are very different from the Ants of Maynes, it will not be. You see, they are a pleasingly logical breed, Ant-kinden, and there is an inevitable conclusion bearing down on them: that if they wish to save anything of their people, anything at all, then they must lay down their arms and accept what treatment the Empire gives them. A third of their city is already in ruins, and it will mean years to rebuild what these few days have taken from them. They will realize, eventually, that their destiny as slaves offers them more of a future than their destiny as martyrs. Then they will surrender. Because they are a rational people — an Apt people — they understand the numbers, you see.’

Totho was feeling very cold all over. The logic was icy and unassailable. ‘But they are soldiers — every one of them. Surely. ’

‘They are soldiers who cannot fight back. They will eventually realize this. Their civic pride will be heated and cooled, heated and cooled, until it is at last thrust into the waters one time too many, and it breaks. A month to take Maynes?’ Drephos clenched his gauntleted hand. ‘Now I have given them Tark in a tenday. For that, they will give me whatever they want. Including you.’

‘I cannot-’

‘You cannot accept it, of course. You would rather be returned to their hands, to be questioned as they call it, or tortured, as I would say. You would rather be a menial slave than an artificer. Morality is not something that has overly plagued me, but I respect it in others. It is your choice, but delay a little before you make it. Once that decision is made you cannot change your mind.’