Dragonfly Falling

Twenty-Two

Parops’s mind, like his city, was on fire. It was a clearing house for a thousand voices: his own calling to his men, keeping them in order; the soldiers with him, relaying their positions from every side; the watchers looking out for the next bomb to fall from the distantly circling airships; the civilians fleeing their homes; the civilians trapped in their homes and who could not escape. Tark was built of stone, but when the bombs exploded overhead they deluged streets in fiery rain that scorched in through shutters and doors, flooded the rooms beyond, and burned and burned. The substance being used was stickier than oil and it clung to walls, to armour and especially to flesh. It did not keep burning for long but even water would not kill it.

Through this constant cacophony the order came to him to fall back immediately. He knew that two score of his soldiers were busy trying to free trapped civilians but he passed the call on, leaden-hearted. Orders were reaching him directly from the Royal Court now, the King’s own voice issued them. Even Parops, who thought further and wider than most of his kin, would not dare ignore a royal command.

Fall back to Fourteenth-Twenty-ninth! he instructed his detachment, slinging his shield up on his back. Just then another incendiary charge struck, only two streets away, igniting at barely over roof level, and he felt its impact amongst the men of Officer Juvian, heard the exclamations of fear and horror as it consumed the officer himself and two dozen of his men, scorching the street clean of them. Tears shone bright on Parops’s face, but he had his duty. As an Ant-kinden of Tark, he would never shirk it.

His men began falling back in good order. About half of them were regular infantry, properly armed and armoured. The rest were drafted citizens, for every Ant was trained to use a sword from the youngest age. These militia had no shields, but they had no armour to slow them either, and armour proved no protection against this incendiary deluge.

He had lost his tower, almost the first structure to fall. During the evacuation, half of Parops’s staff had succumbed to shot or flame, not just soldiers but his messengers, his clerks, his quartermaster. As soon as Parops was clear he had new duties forced on him: to take command of a hastily formed body of men, to oppose the Wasp advance. Yet his progress had been retreat after retreat. He knew that several of the other detachments were advancing slowly and that there must be some grand plan that the Royal Court was working towards, but he himself was not privy to it. He must only hope that it was a good one, so that if he was called upon to give his life for his city, it would not be in vain.

He had always thought himself a bit of a philosopher amongst his people, a man who questioned where others never thought to. Now he discovered that he was, after all, just a soldier. If the orders came to die for Tark, he would do it and gladly. He surprised himself with the thought.

‘I’ve been looking all over for you!’

A blur of motion above, and Parops only just gave the order in time for them to stay their hands before Nero would have been transfixed by a dozen crossbow bolts.

‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded of the Fly.

The bald man shrugged his shoulders, settling on a windowsill one floor up. ‘Looking for you, you fool! What the blazes are you up to?’

‘Obeying orders,’ Parops told him shortly. ‘You should move back — we’re the front line here.’

‘Oh, I know that.’ Nero wore a padded cuirass, that was an arming jacket meant for a child of twelve, and a short-bow was slung over his shoulder.

‘You’re no soldier!’ Parops insisted. ‘You’ll get killed if you stay here, probably by us. Go find yourself somewhere safe!’

‘You tell me where that might be, and I’ll go there,’ Nero said.

Parops wanted to argue, but orders came through again at that instant: Commander Parops. Advance.

He spared one more upward glance at Nero, then sent this command onwards, watching his men come out from their shelters, from side streets and within buildings. Those armed with shields formed up to the fore, and the rest quickly crowded in behind. Parops took his place, as naturally as any of them. It seemed he had always been trying to find his place in his own city, and it was terrible that only a disaster such as this could show it to him.

But they were now advancing, as ordered, and he knew that the detachments on either side, that were within the reach of his mind, were doing likewise. Ahead he could see a flitting of black and yellow as the Wasps spotted them and began to get into order. They were lightly armoured advance troops, and many were already taking to the air. The first bolts of energy spat towards the front rank of Parops’s men, most falling short and fading, and one crackling impotently against a shield.

At a thought relayed from himself the third rank passed their shields up and forward, making a second level of defence against shot from the air. The second rank then levelled crossbows through the gap between the two lines of shields.

Fire at will. Target the airborne, he instructed them, and the crossbows began sounding off with dull clacks. Their range was further than the Wasps’ Art-born weapons, and men began to tumble from the sky ahead of them.

‘Parops, the airships!’ he heard Nero shouting. He had one of his men near the back look up for him, his own range of sky being covered with shields. Two of the lumbering machines were indeed manoeuvring into position above the Ants even as they advanced.

Increase pace. Engage. The Wasps could do one thing or another, he decided. They could drop fire on them or resist their advance on the ground. Anything else and their own men would be forfeited, surely?

The first bomb, plummeting in front of Parops’s troop, ignited while still in the air and incinerated two dozen Wasp soldiers. The balance scattered left and right, darting to avoid the spreading flame.

But there was a second airship overhead, and Parops relayed this information to the Court even as his advance continued. The enemy on the ground were falling back, fleeing even, giving up the scorched and blackened streets without a fight.

The next incendiary exploded towards the rear of Parops’s formation, amongst those least prepared for it. Ordinary citizens of Tark with swords and crossbows were suddenly ablaze and searing, the hair, skin, clothes of them instantly becoming a torch in human shape — twisting briefly and dying in Parops’s mind. His advance continued and in his mind he now heard the yawning silence of a lack of orders. The tacticians of the Royal Court were reeling in shock.

He saw the remainder of Juvian’s men under even heavier bombardment, the impact of it cracking their formation, grenades and explosives from on high flinging men — and parts of men — into the air.

He heard the voices of the King’s tacticians and for an awful moment they were talking all together, their orders contradictory: go forward, go back, spread out, stay tight. Parops’s teeth were grinding helplessly together, his men were looking to him, but he would not relay that babble of panic that was being passed his way.

And then the King’s own voice. Retreat and split up. Retreat! And he instantly followed the order. His men spread out and began falling back. Wasp soldiers darted in at once, their stings sizzling everywhere, but Parops kept his troops in order, delegating men to turn with crossbows and loose their bolts on the enemy before retiring in good order.

Nothing had been gained. Hundreds had been lost. The battle continued.

The composition of Parops’s detachment changed almost hourly. His continuing casualties were balanced by survivors from less resilient squads who came to join him. He picked up a greater number of armed civilians, many now wearing scavenged Ant or even Wasp armour, and even the tail end of a detachment of elites who had been mostly smashed in a fierce day-long engagement in and out of the blackened hulks of houses in the mid-city. They included nailbowmen, men with repeating crossbows, piercers or wasters — and Parops did not know what to do with them.

He had mounted another abortive attack yesterday, only to find the soldiers he was sent to support all dead even as he arrived. Then the airships had loomed and he had ordered a fall-back almost before he heard it directed by the Royal Court. Another street lost. Another battle conceded to the enemy. The numbers of his force might rise and fall, but the ranks of the city’s defenders only fell, singly or in their tens and hundreds.

When he allowed himself to think it, Parops had to acknowledge that the situation here was poor, and that he could not see a way out of it. He had to hope that the King and his tacticians had some master plan, something more than a series of futile holding actions.

It was the fifth day, and the surviving population of Tark was packed into the western half of the city, while the Wasps controlled the rest.

Nero was still alive, however. Parops was forever surprised by this, as he had never thought of the man as a fighter. He had turned out to be a true survivor, his Fly-kinden reflexes not one whit dulled by age. Now the ugly little man was again perched on a rooftop, watching the combat that was no longer distant.

The Royal Court itself was under attack, Parops knew that, and his men could not fail to realize it. He wanted to lead them to the Court’s aid, but direct orders from the King had countermanded it. As the list of available officers had shortened, so those remaining had become more familiar with their ruler than they would previously ever have imagined. It seemed the ruler of Tark now even knew Parops by name.

I have something I may need of you, the King had told him directly.

‘Looks like your man on the right there is losing ground,’ Nero called down, though Parops was not sure quite why he bothered. Parops knew exactly the disposition of the officer and his forces, and that Nero was indeed correct.

He sensed another detachment, across the far side of the royal palace, being committed, and saw a change in the movements of the airships as one lazily meandered further in. The outside of the palace was already blackened and burned. The King himself was down below, in the ant tunnels. People had tried the same trick elsewhere in the city, attempting to shelter from the fire, but Wasps had merely approached the tunnel mouths with hand-held firecasters, pouring their searing liquid flame down until everything within, human and insect, was burned or suffocated. Dying in the dark, but not dying alone, because they were dying a death whose agonies were felt by a whole city.

Parops felt his hands begin to shake even at the memory.

They are within the palace. The thought came to him with the voice of one of the King’s tacticians, though Parops had the feeling it had not been intended for broadcast. He tensed, getting ready to lead his men forwards. Another firebomb exploded two streets away from the palace walls, no doubt attacking Ant-kinden reinforcements.

Let it be over with, thought Parops, keeping the words to himself. Let us go in. Let us die. Just let it be over with. He could not bear to live like this any more.

All officers, report your strengths and position, came the tactician’s call.

Here we go, Parops decided, and relayed back that he had eight hundred and sixty-two men under his command, and that he now was at Forty-fifth-Seventh.

And he waited for the call. His tension was clear to his men even if his words had been kept silent from them. They began cocking their crossbows, taking up their shields.

Commander Parops, came the call, and this time it was the King.

Your Majesty, Parops replied, almost breathless with anticipation.

I must issue two commands today that are unthinkable, came the voice of the city’s ruler. I tell you this so that you do not think you have mistaken what you will hear. No monarch of our kind should ever be forced to give such orders.

Your Majesty? Parops queried uncertainly. We are all ready to die for you. With the exception of Nero it was no more than the truth.

I know you are, but I will not have it. Commander Parops, you are ordered to take those men currently in your command to the west gate, and leave the city by that route. Then break through the Wasp cordon and-

Your Majesty? Parops broke in, agonized. You cannot mean it.

These are your orders! snapped the voice in his head. He was seeing shock on the faces of his soldiers now, and realized that the King was making sure that some of them, at least, would hear what they must do. Break through the cordon. The Wasps are not expecting it. Leave our city. Find somewhere else for yourself and your men. And when the time is right, Parops, whether it be you and your men, or your children or their children, reclaim our city from the invader. That is the task I give to you. That is your order. There is no more than that.

A great silence had fallen over the city of Tark. It was not any of the normal silences of an Ant city going about its day-to-day business. It was a silence born of loss and shock. In its resounding, thunderous absence one could hear the faint echoes of ten thousand squandered lives.

Half the Royal Court buildings were covered in char, the stone beneath cracked and riven by the sheer heat of the incendiaries. The gates had been staved in during the last reaches of the fighting, splintered by a ram borne by six great Mole Cricket-kinden. The ram-bearers had all died in the attempt, or immediately after it, and their colossal bodies had only just been removed. Not one of their kind was left living in the Wasp army. Every one had given its sad life for the taking of this city.

Before the gates stood two dozen Ant-kinden, still wearing their armour. Their hands and their scabbards were empty. They stood in precise ranks, watching. They were all of the Tarkesh royal staff that remained. It seemed likely that they would be executed, but it was less likely that they cared very much, at this point.

It was Colonel Carvoc who now approached them, with a guard of a hundred light and medium infantry. His face, seeing those defeated men and women, held no sympathy, nor even much triumph. The day did not belong to the Fourth Army, the glorious Barbs. The day belonged to science, and that left a sour taste in the mouth.

He signalled to his men, who remained as wordless as the Ants themselves. One of the light airborne stood forwards and saluted him, carrying a cloth-wrapped lance in his off-hand.

As Carvoc nodded to him the man’s wings flared, and he launched into the air, tracing a graceful curve up onto the roof of the Royal Court. There had been no insignia kept there, no emblem or banner to be cast down, so the soldier was forced to hunt across the rooftop, to the gathering silence of the men below, before he found a crack in the stonework that would fit his ambitions. With a decisive gesture he jammed the lance’s pointed ferrule in, forcing it down until it was firmly rammed in, lodging deep in the substance of the Tarkesh heart. Then he loosed the cords, and the wind caught the cloth, streaming it out in a billowing gust of black and gold.

The city of Tark had fallen to the Empire after only five days of bombardment.

The Wasps then took control with a firm hand born of long experience. They appointed their deputies amongst the conquered people, giving their orders and leaving the delegation of them to the Ant-kinden mindlink, so that by speaking to a single Ant they could effectively command the whole city. Drephos and General Alder were able to walk through the streets of the conquered city, watching the disarmed inhabitants set to clearing the ruins of their own homes. They worked in silence, and both men felt the shocked quiet that filled the space between their minds: How could it have come to this?

‘I must confess, I do not trust this silence,’ Alder remarked. He had an honour guard of a dozen sentinels, implacable in their heavy plate armour.

‘That is because you do not understand Ant-kinden, General,’ Drephos told him.

‘And you do?’

‘I make an effort to know who my machines are to be used against, so that I can better direct that use. They have come to the conclusion for now that to resist the Empire is only to invite greater wrack, so they surrender.’

‘They’ll rebel in time, then.’

‘Every subordinate always does, when given the opportunity,’ Drephos said airily, and then qualified it. ‘Except for the Bee-kinden. They don’t seem to have the knack.’

‘And that squad that got away.’ Alder shook his head, his plan having not provided for that. Eight hundred men suddenly breaking from the west gate and running his blockade — which, needless to say, had not been expecting any assault and broke almost instantly. He had himself been there to witness the tail end of the fighting and the Ant soldiers making their orderly retreat from their own city, flanked by nailbowmen and heavy crossbows. The pursuing airborne had been cut to pieces, and he had realized that he could not spare more men to go after them just as the Royal Court was being cracked open. So he had reinforced the western perimeter and waited for them to make their vengeful return to attempt to break the siege, but they had not come back. They had simply gone. ‘Did they run?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Did their nerve break, at the end?’

‘It was done by design, General. I am sure of that,’ Drephos said. ‘You’ve not seen the last of them.’

Alder nodded gloomily. ‘Do you believe it about their ruler?’ he asked. ‘Again, I don’t trust it. All these Ants look the same to me.’

‘I believe it implicitly, because it is the only way the matter could reasonably be accomplished,’ Drephos said. ‘While he was King, no matter what order he had just given, his people would still be waiting for his word. They would never lay down their arms. They would always think that some further move could be made in the game.’

‘Game?’ Alder surveyed the dead Wasp soldiers that were, one by one, being hauled from before the palace gates. ‘This is a game for you, is it?’

‘For all of us, General, and you can’t say you didn’t know the stakes. No, the King had to go, and he knew it.’

‘So he killed himself, or had his generals kill him,’ Alder said tiredly. He had read the report. The first Wasp soldiers had burst into the tunnels beneath the Tarkesh throne room to find their King slain. The tacticians of Tark had been waiting there peaceably, accepting their fate. They had been put to death, of course. There was no sense inviting further trouble by letting them live.

‘I’ve sent a messenger for the Supply corps,’ Alder added. ‘The administrators, the Auxillian militia, the garrison and the slavers — they’ll all be here in a day, perhaps two.’

‘And for you the conquest goes on?’ Drephos asked him.

‘I have orders to move west,’ Alder confirmed. ‘There are two Fly-kinden communities to take into the Empire but I’m not anticipating a fight there. Then my information is that there is another Ant city-state offshore, and some Mantis savages in the woods that we can root out.’

‘I wish you luck with it, General.’

Alder frowned at the halfbreed. ‘And where will you be, Colonel-Auxillian, that you’re wishing me luck?’

‘I have arranged a transfer to the Seventh for myself and my people, General. I have given you the tools to unpick an Ant city, but the Seventh is yet to be thus supplied. They are listed to march on Sarn eventually and, besides, their more immediate destination is of interest to me.’

Alder shrugged, one-shouldered. ‘If you have wheedled such orders, then so be it.’ He glowered at the artificer briefly. ‘I don’t like you, Drephos. You’re a worm, and don’t think I don’t know how much you hate us.’

Within the shadow of his cowl, Drephos smiled thinly. ‘But.?’

‘But you have accomplished a great deal here,’ Alder admitted reluctantly. ‘I shall note it in my report.’

‘You’re too kind,’ Drephos said. ‘If you do not mind, General, I will return to the camp. I have business to take care of before I bid you a final farewell.’

A few fires were lit, well hidden in hollows to escape unfriendly eyes. They had marched a long way, far enough that they were long out of the reach of the Ant minds left in Tark. Parops and his men had thus no clue as to the fate of their city, but it seemed clear that it would be one of two results: either Tark would bow the knee or it would be overwritten on future maps by some Wasp name, a new town dug out of Tark’s ashes.

His men were as dispirited as he had ever seen soldiers be, and he shared their despondency. They were creatures of routine and loyalty, creatures of the city they were born in, conditioned to obedience there, knowing nothing but the will of Tark and its monarch. Now they were alone. Six hundred and seventy-one Tarkesh men and women out in the wilderness, on the road to Merro, with no idea of where they could go or what could be done next.

Between them, they had food for less than a tenday, even if carefully rationed. There were few of them with the ability to live off the land, since it had never been needed, and all of them had left family behind. Parops himself had abandoned his unfaithful mate whom he now missed beyond reason.

There seemed barely any point in continuing, and Par-ops found the burden of responsibility intolerable. Though ground down with misery, at least his soldiers could look to him for orders. He had never wanted this role. They had made him tower commander simply because he had a good head for logistics and it was considered a position where he could make the least trouble with his unconventional thinking. Now unconventional thoughts were all that could save them, and he could not seem to muster any.

‘How are you feeling?’ Nero came fluttering down beside him.

Parops gave him a look that was all the answer he needed.

‘No sign of any pursuit, anyway,’ the Fly said. ‘Got other things on their minds, I’ll bet. Any thought to what you’re going to do next?’

‘If I had a free hand,’ Parops said flatly, ‘I would lead my men back to Tark and attack the Wasp camp.’

‘Because that would be suicide,’ Nero said.

‘Exactly. But my last orders don’t allow that, so I have to think of something else.’

‘Well I’ve had a couple of thoughts if you’d like to borrow them,’ Nero offered.

‘Anything.’

‘Get your men to Collegium,’ Nero said. ‘I’ve got an influential friend there who’s dead set against the Empire. He’s on the — what do they call it? The Assembly.’

‘Collegium’s too far,’ Parops countered. ‘We cannot travel through most of the Lowlands in the hope that some friend of yours will take in six and a half hundred homeless Ant soldiers. Not to mention that if the Kessen see us tramping down the coast, they’ll wipe us out.’

Nero nodded. ‘I can see your point there. All right, Parops. I’ve been a good friend to you — or as good as I could be, yes?’

‘For a Fly-kinden, I suppose.’

‘High praise there. Right then, I’m going to suggest two courses of action, and you’ll not like either of them. All right? One of them is what I’m about to do, and the other one’s what you could do. You don’t have to, but I’m out of ideas if you don’t. First off, I’m going back.’

Parops stared at him. ‘You’re mad.’

‘It’s a loyalty thing, Parops. You should understand. Not to Tark, I admit: loyalty to my friends. I have always tried to be loyal to my friends. Because I travel a lot and have no certainties, and I never know when I’m going to need a friend, for a bed, for a meal, or to get me out of prison. And Stenwold and me, we go back twenty years.’

‘His two agents, or apprentices — the halfbreed and the other one?’

‘The Commonwealer, yes. I have to find out what happened to them. Probably they’re dead, but I have to know. Because Stenwold would want to know.’

‘They’ll catch you,’ Parops said. ‘You’ll end up a slave, or dead.’

‘They won’t catch me,’ Nero said, ‘because I’m not going skulking in like a thief. I’m just going to walk straight up to them: Nero the famous artist, perhaps you’ve heard of me? Happened to have a lot of black and yellow paint spare. Maybe you want a portrait. You know the stuff.’

‘They will kill you or enslave you,’ Parops said firmly.

‘You were going to kill me too, at one stage. I’m good at not being killed. I’ve done it all my life,’ Nero said. ‘I owe Stenwold, and he would want to know.’

Parops shook his head but found he did not have the strength to argue. ‘So what is your suggestion for us? Is it as mad as that one?’

‘Madder,’ Nero said, giving the first smile anyone there had seen for a long time. In a low voice he explained his plan, and men around them began raising their heads as Parops’s mind put out the information.

‘We cannot do that. It would be-’

‘Suicide?’

‘Worse. We’d be slaves. My people would never agree to it,’ Parops stated.

‘Wouldn’t they? There’s an Empire coming this way, with armies to spare, and you’ve got seven-hundred-odd highly trained Ant warriors. So who would turn you away?’

Parops just stared at him.

‘Will you at least think about it?’ Nero pressed.

There was a moment when Parops did not even see him, when he was concentrating simply on the interchange of ideas flashing between his men, their rapid, silent debate of the concept, of Nero’s plan.

‘We will attempt it,’ said Parops finally. ‘What do we have to lose?’