Dragonfly Falling

Thirty-Nine

In the last few days Stenwold had become an old hand at estimating the numbers of soldiers. Now he looked at the citizens of Collegium who had joined him at the wharf front and knew he had less than one hundred and twenty.

The armourclad had been hauled around now in the harbour, and a great, wide-beamed ship was coasting through the gap, with grey sails piled far higher than the ruins of the harbour towers. Its bow was square and there were men there manhandling a folding bridge, and beyond them the rails were lined with armoured forms.

‘We have no chance here!’ Stenwold told his tiny force. ‘The Vekken are breaking in at the west wall even as we speak, and we cannot hold them here. Go back to your families. Go back to your wives and husbands and children. There is no sense in your staying here.’

‘What will you do, War Master?’ one of them asked him.

‘I will remain,’ Stenwold said heavily. ‘When they dock I will see if the word of one Master of Collegium can yet carry weight, but you must go, all of you.’

He heard some take him up on his offer, but when he looked round he still had more than a hundred remaining.

The great ship was coming in, coasting with a terrible grace. The sails were being furled and there were two anchor-chains in the water to slow her as she approached the charred wood of the wharves.

‘Stenwold,’ Arianna said in awe. ‘That isn’t a Vekken ship.’

He looked from her to the approaching vessel, and back again. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because that’s a Spiderlands ship out of Seldis, and I ought to know my own people’s work.’

Stenwold gaped at her and then at the ship. The bridge was coming down now that the ship was yards from its berth. ‘Hold your shot!’ he told his men.

A Spiderlands ship. He saw her sleek lines, the pattern of waves and arabesques that decorated her rails — but those rails were lined with Ant shields.

The bridge struck the wharves, and his men began backing up nervously, fingering their crossbows and swords. If it is the Vekken, then a surrender offered here, without a shot loosed, may buy these men their lives. ‘Hold still!’ Stenwold told them.

And the Ant-kinden coursed out onto the Collegium docks, forming up even as they did so into a fighting square. They were not the glossy onyx of Vek, though, their skins were pallid, pale as fishbellies.

Tarkesh Ants. What is going on? Stenwold moved forward, more to keep a distance between these newcomers and his own ragged followers. His people were nervous, and seeing these new Ants assemble, moving from shipboard to land in impeccable order, was not helping them.

‘Identify yourselves. You are on the soil of Collegium!’ he shouted. He had the feeling of every set of too-similar eyes on him, all those swords and crossbows, directed straight at him.

One man broke from their ranks, slinging his shield. He regarded Stenwold without expression, unknowable conversations passing through his mind. ‘You speak for Collegium?’ he asked.

‘I am Master Maker of the Great College. What is your business here? We are not at our best to receive visitors,’ Stenwold said, thinking, If this goes badly, then I take the brunt. At least Arianna has a chance to get clear of it.

The Tarkesh officer smiled grimly. ‘I am Mercenary-Commander Parops, formerly of Tark. I hear you have a little Vekken infestation.’

One of Stenwold’s men exclaimed and pointed, and then they were all rushing to the broken edge of the wharves to stare out to sea. The Ants shifted, but only to give them a clearer view. Something was burning out on the water, sheets of flame shooting forty feet in the air, and Stenwold saw that it was one of the Vekken supply barges. There were little copper-hulled ships out there, darting through the waters with steaming funnels, gallantly doing battle with the remaining Vekken armourclads and blazing away with flame cannon at the other barges, which were already starting to smoke. Stenwold saw one of the little ships blown apart as a leadshot from an armourclad struck its steam engine, but the others were nipping nimbly through the hail of shot and loosing their own weapons.

Larger, flat-hulled boats were meanwhile driving through the waves to make a landing west of the city, packed with soldiers, and beyond them all another half-dozen of the elegant Spiderlands galleons were tacking wide of the fighting, whilst smaller sailing ships with high forecastles made passes against the armourclads, showering the Vekken sailors with arrows. It was only for a moment that Stenwold watched that slow melee, the sails of the Spiderlands frigates a nimble elegance against the lumbering ironclads. He saw one of the Vekken ships listing, Spider-kinden marines fighting on its decks with grim desperation. The wooden ships were fleet, but when the Vekken caught them they were matchwood in short order. Still, the sea was full of sails. It was an entire fleet that the Spiderlands had sent them. The Vekken navy, already diminished by its assaults on the harbour, was falling to their numbers and to their grace.

‘Stenwold,’ Arianna hissed to him. ‘The wall!’

‘Commander,’ Stenwold said, bringing his mind back to his responsibilities. ‘The Vekken are in at the west wall.’

‘Take us there,’ Parops instructed him. ‘And we shall turn them out again.’

The Vekken rushed into the city, desperate to flood their soldiers past the breach, to set foot at last on the conquered enemy ground. When they were past the wall there was a moment of confusion. Akalia’s plan had gone so far and no further. The wall was down, the city was therefore taken.

But the people of Collegium did not see it that way. There was no surrender. Even as the Vekken formed up in the wall’s curving shadow, the arrows and the sling stones fell on them, rattling from their shields, bouncing from their mail. There were men, women and children at the windows of every house, throwing rocks, loosing crossbows. Impromptu lines of citizens formed before the orderly Vekken advance, armed with clubs, with spears. Every house became an archer’s platform, every street a choke-point. The Vekken advance was never halted, but it was slow, so slow. Two streets from the wall and a house they were passing suddenly erupted in fire and stone, razored shards scything through the tight-packed Vekken ranks, killing scores of them. As the invaders recoiled and recovered, the people of Collegium were in the next houses, shooting down at them. Girls of twelve, old women of seventy, Fly-kinden publicans and fat Beetle shopkeepers, grocers and clerks and cooks swarmed from doorways and alleyways, holding their knives and chair-legs, their scavenged waster bows and stolen Vekken shields. In the fore, always in the fore, was a giant Sarnesh Ant-kinden with a nailbow and paired shortswords. He became the man the Vekken hated most, the man they needed to kill. A crossbow bolt found his shoulder. A sword-stroke had riven the armour over his hip. He refused to fall. To the Vekken it seemed that he even refused to bleed.

Another house detonated to the Vekken rear, and every building of Collegium had become their enemy. The call was going out for artificers, but the streets were so full of Vekken soldiers, their advance backing up all the way to the wall, that no engineers could have got through.

A grey-haired Fly-kinden woman almost fell on Stenwold and his new allies in her eagerness to intercept him. With commendable precision she got out her report on what the people of Collegium were sacrificing for their city. The persistence of his own people astonished Stenwold, and even more so because by now there was no command, nothing from the Assembly that could order the defence. The street-by-street stalling, the sabotage of their own homes, this all represented the men and women of Collegium taking their fate into their own hands.

Parops digested the situation quickly. ‘Have people lead my men to each major thoroughfare before their advance,’ he said. ‘People who can explain that we’re on your side. We will hold the Vekken as long as we need, and holding them is all that needs doing.’

Stenwold recalled the landing craft he had seen. ‘There are a great deal of Vekken out there, Commander,’ he warned.

Parops’s face lacked something human in it. ‘That’s my employers’ problem, Master Maker, but they have brought a great many troops.’

‘But why?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘Does it matter? Now let us do our work,’ Parops cut him off.

Arianna clung to Stenwold’s good arm, practically dancing with glee, watching the Tarkesh rush into their time-honoured calling of killing the Ants of other cities.

*

Tactician Akalia stared at the flames of her barges and could not understand what was happening to her war. An open call had gone out to every man and woman of her officers to explain it to her, and not one had the answer. A mass of ships had crept up on them at night from who-knew-where, and was going about the savage business of finishing her entire fleet. There were little sparks in her head that were the masters of her vessels, and they were flickering out, one by one, each giving his life and his ship for the greater glory of Vek, and leaving nothing but ripples in his wake.

Tactician! We must withdraw troops from the siege!

No! We are inside the wall, she threw back.

But, Tactician, they are coming for us! And she saw through the eyes of the officer the approaching ships already close to beaching on the shore. The soldiers left in the camp were already rushing to intercept them, but the vast majority of the Vekken force was up about the walls of Collegium.

Bring the force back from the north wall, she decided. Our men here will hold the enemy until then.

Even as she thought it, her men at the beach were dying. For a panicked moment nobody realized why, but then she saw that there were repeating ballistae mounted on the front corners of the flat-bottomed craft, and as the Vekken soldiers came to repel the beachhead they were being systematically shot down. Some managed a ragged shield-wall, and began to return shot with crossbows, but then the first of the craft had ground on the sand of the beach.

Men with skins like burnished copper were leaping out. They wore long hauberks of the same colour, mail with rings of incredible fineness, and long oval shields with a distinctive notch cut into them. Many of them were fitting repeating crossbows to those notches even now, advancing on the diminishing Vekken while they began to loose. Others were lifting the ballistae from the bows of their boats and running forward with them to where artificers were setting up three-legged mounts for them.

She instructed the men coming back from the north wall to pick up their pace.

Tactician, we are encountering heavy resistance within the city!

No excuses! she snapped. There could be no excuses, now, for failing to capture Collegium: not these newcomers of unknown kinden, not the new ships, not any device of the Beetle academics.

But, Tactician, we are facing soldiers from Tark, several hundred at least.

The situation began to slip from her fingers. Tarkesh, in Collegium? Even as she considered it, the last of her men at the beach died. Too few to mount a proper defence, they had been outflanked and shot down. Now the enemy was rushing up the beach, and two hundred yards inland lay the Vekken camp, all but undefended.

Withdraw all from the camp and join the northern force, she decided. Then we shall sweep them back into the sea.

Tactician! The eastern force is under attack!

From who? she demanded, stalking out of her tent with her greatsword balanced on her shoulder.

A mixed force, Tactician: Flies, Scorpions, Spider-kinden, others I do not know-

And the speaker was gone in a brief impression of shock and pain. There were others there clamouring for her attention, but she blocked them out. With the remainder of her staff she headed north, and it took all her control not to run.

Joined by the forces reclaimed from Collegium’s north wall, she tried to make a decision, but she craved only an outcome that would enable her to sack Collegium, and that goal was fast receding. Her eastern force was pinned against the very wall they should have been taking, under attack from the defenders above and from the inexplicable new forces that had come in off the sea. Her western force was held in the city by the Tarkesh, and under attack from the rear by the copper-armoured strangers. She had but a third of her army left to her name.

We will attack. If she returned to Vek with this disgrace, then she would never have the respect of her kind again. She began marching her forces back towards the city walls. The breach was still there, so she would force her way into the city and then proceed to hold it against the newcomers.

Ahead, a force had gathered to oppose her. There were Tarkesh there, and the copper men, and many, many diverse men and women of Collegium, Beetles and all other kinden. They outnumbered her surviving force by more than three to one.

They were not Ant-kinden in the main, though, so they could not stand together and fight together as Ant-kinden could. What were such odds, therefore, compared to the iron discipline of Vek?

Shields to the fore and stand fast, she ordered, for the enemy were charging now, coming for her people at a run, hoping to break them. Obedient to her will, her soldiers closed ranks, crouched behind their shields, and waited to weather the assault. Crossbows. Volley fire.

She saw the first sheet of crossbow bolts strike them, saw some parts of the attacking force crumble back, others press on. The Tarkesh held, and so did the copper men, while the exhausted locals were knocked back, thrown into confusion. Many of them had not even possessed shields.

Hold firm. Throw them back.

She sensed the realization go through the enemy Ant-kinden that their assault had failed before contact was made. Almost immediately they were making their withdrawal, the enemy force falling back piecemeal to its starting point and leaving its dead behind. She herself had suffered barely a dozen casualties.

Artillery! came the warning in her mind. The repeating ballistae had now been brought up from the beach, and the copper-skinned artificers were setting them up with grim efficiency. The Vekken force was well within their range.

Shields, she ordered. Advance. Drive them into the sea.

The mass of Vekken infantry, her prize soldiers, the finest in the world, locked shield to shield, before them and overhead, and marched forward in double time towards the enemy line. Let them use their ballistae when it has become sword against sword, she thought.

The artillery was now launching, the bolts peppering her lines, punching through shields, knocking holes in her formation that were quickly filled. There was still confusion as her enemies tried to arrange their line. She saw, to her surprise, that they were going to charge again, to try to halt her by the sheer force of their momentum, to wrap around and take her force in the flanks.

An Ant-kinden army has no flanks. The men at the sides would simply turn to face their aggressors like pieces in the machine. Collegium could still be hers.

They were in crossbow range now, both sides loosing a torrent of bolts to thud into shield or stab into armoured flesh. Then she saw her enemies gather what courage they had left and charge her.

Hold, she instructed, and then, Cut them to pieces-

Something loomed just then over the enemy force, something dark in the great span of sea and sky behind them. It was rushing towards her army, coursing with and around and between her enemies: a great barbed shadow cast by nothing at all, but thorned and spined and shifting like the shadows between great trees, and Akalia screamed, in her mind and out loud, as it descended upon them.

It was a trick of the light, or a moment’s hallucination, but every man and woman of her army saw it just as she did, and they shifted and started, and their shields slipped, and then the enemy struck them.

*

It was a long time ago. It seemed a hundred years ago. It seemed like yesterday.

They were already rebuilding, Stenwold knew with satisfaction. They were planning the regeneration of Collegium, from the wounds it had inflicted on itself, and the wounds the Vekken had dealt it.

And I would rather be out there with them, but that was not true. I would rather be at home. He did not want to be here in the Amphiophos in his formal robes.

‘Master Maker, can I introduce the Lord-Martial Teornis of the Aldanrael?’ asked Lineo Thadspar, stepping into his view.

Stenwold managed a weary bow to the immaculate Spider-kinden Aristos. This was the one who had commanded the fleet, he realized: the man who had saved Collegium.

The Amphiophos was full of new faces today, but most keenly he felt the lack of so many of the old ones. The Assembly, like the city it governed, was peppered with holes. Where now was Waybright, who had fallen to a crossbow bolt on the east wall? Where was Doctor Nicrephos, and where was the stern old visage of Kymon of Kes?

‘Lord-Martial, I have no words to thank you,’ he said, all too truthfully. ‘I had not thought the Spiderlands would be such a supporter of our city.’

‘The Spiderlands holds no single opinion as one entity, nor takes any single action, War Master,’ replied Teornis drily. ‘However, I myself see sufficient advantage in trade and political futures to go so far on behalf of your city. You must thank another, though, for the invitation.’

Stenwold could see, from Thadspar’s face, that this was something new, and he made a politely enquiring sound.

‘You are acquainted with a most enchanting member of my kind named Tynisa, are you not?’

‘You’ve seen Tynisa?’ gasped Stenwold. ‘Where?’ The world was making no sense to him now. Is it because I am so tired, or it is really all nonsense?

‘The full story I shall tell you when we can find more leisure,’ Teornis promised. ‘It is unfinished as yet, for she and her companion had some small matters to attend to before their own return, or else I would have offered them space on my flagship.’

Stenwold nodded, mind still reeling, and thanked him again before looking for a place to sit down. It was five days since the Vekken army had been defeated and Collegium saved, but people still moved about their city as though there was a war going on. There were a great many foreigners here, and the locals regarded them nervously. If Teornis had wanted Collegium for himself he could have made a serious attempt on her, Stenwold knew, and in their negotiations the day after the battle the Spider had pointedly not quite said as much. Stenwold knew a little of the trade concessions that the Aldanrael family would reap from this, the loans and the technology and the student places at the College, even two Master’s seats that were also seats on the Assembly.

‘Commander Parops,’ Thadspar said, drifting past. The Tarkesh officer was still in his armour, and he shook Sten-wold’s hand heartily. ‘You’re Stenwold Maker!’ he said.

‘I am indeed,’ Stenwold admitted. He still felt that he should sit down, but just now he was supposed to be a diplomat. It was a wrenching change from being a soldier, and after an hour of this he was not sure which he preferred.

‘You know a Fly-kinden, name of Nero,’ Parops informed him.

It was obviously a day for name-dropping. ‘Yes, I do,’ Stenwold said, ‘although it has been a long time since I’ve seen him.’

‘Then I have a lot I can tell you,’ said Parops. Then, seeing Thadspar anxious to introduce him to others, he grimaced and added, ‘Later, though.’

I can see I’ll not have many evenings free for a while. Stenwold allowed himself to lean back against a convenient wall, before he saw another Assembler approaching him, leading a copper-hued man of rangy build.

‘This is Artificer-Commander. ’ the Assembler started, and the name had obviously evaded him.

‘Dariaxes,’ said the copper-coloured, copper-clad man whose eyes were a startling red.

‘Commander Dariaxes is Fire Ant-kinden from Porphyris,’ the Assembler announced excitedly. ‘This is the first-ever formal contact between our cities. Isn’t that remarkable, Master Maker?’

Stenwold tiredly conceded that it was. ‘I am only pleased our first meeting is under such amicable terms, Commander,’ he said. ‘Your men are. mercenaries for the Spiders?’

‘My city is a satrapy of the Spiderlands,’ Dariaxes corrected. It was a word Stenwold was only vaguely familiar with but the context told him more than he was happy with. How different was a satrapy from a city the Wasps had conquered? He supposed that the chief difference would be that the Spider-kinden, who could convince anyone of anything, had probably persuaded the Fire Ants that they were perfectly content with their servitude. They were not the only ones, though, that was clear. The Spider-lands were vast — unmapped as far as any reliable atlas of Collegium went — and the Fire Ants had not come alone. Stenwold had already been introduced to a Dragonfly soldier whose ancestors in the Days of Lore had fled so far from the Commonweal that the Spiders had taken them in.

Sour thoughts were easy to hold, with the scars of the war still so fresh. Dariaxes’s men had died outside the walls to make his city safe, and there had been Spider-kinden amongst the dead too, along with Scorpion mercenaries and a dozen other races.

‘Collegium thanks you,’ he told Dariaxes, whose smile told him he had guessed at some of the thoughts in Stenwold’s mind.

Stenwold glanced around the room, seeking escape, and he picked Balkus out of the crowd — a full head over anyone except the Scorpion captain. The big Ant was, at least, enjoying himself. He had a bandage on his face, still, where a Vekken sword had cut open his cheek, but he was still managing to form a smile around it, and there was a young Beetle-kinden woman, an artificer of the College, hanging adoringly on his arm. Stenwold could not begrudge him that.

There was a touch at his elbow, and he turned to see Arianna, with one hand resting on the sling that marked his own war-wound.

‘Ah,’ he said, with false jollity, ‘you’re here to tell me there’s something urgent I need to attend to.’

‘Yes, I am,’ she said, with such intensity that his stomach lurched.

‘Something’s happened?’ he said, instantly worried. ‘What?’

There was such a serious look on her face that it could be nothing good. ‘You had better come with me,’ she said. ‘Some of the guardsmen outside have picked up someone who came asking for you. You need to see this.’

She led him outside, while he was still trying to figure out who it could be. True, everyone seemed to have learned his name during the war, but he had hoped to return to obscurity as soon as it was over.

‘In here,’ Arianna guided him, tense as a taut wire, her hand seeking her knife-hilt. Stenwold’s mind was full of wild speculation as he looked inside, but none wild enough to prepare him for what he saw.

Sitting at a table, between two men of the city militia, was none other than Major Thalric of the Rekef.

*

Beyond the wide tiered steps of the Amphiophos, where the Assembly of Collegium met, there was a broad plaza where ancient statute forbade any market trader to set up stall. In former times the people of the city had gathered there to hear proclamations from their most respected leaders, but more recently it had been a good vantage point from which to protest, wave banners, shout obscenities and throw things at the Assemblers as they hurried inside.

Now it had been returned to its original purpose. The people of Collegium packed it, wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder, with their children held up high to see too, and Fly-kinden thronging every window-ledge, and the roof-gardens packed with even more, since residents were allowing complete strangers up through their houses to enable them to witness this gem of history being cut and mounted.

Stenwold, one of that gem’s key facets, had a hard time bringing his thoughts to the moment. When Thalric had told him that the Wasp major had fled from his own people, Stenwold had not believed him at first, despite the deep wound in his erstwhile enemy’s side that some Inapt healer had neatly dressed. Then Stenwold had recognized the livid mark across the man’s face as the result of burning from a Wasp sting, and had begun to think. Arianna had urged him not to believe anything the man said, for Thalric was subtle as a Spider, she said, and Stenwold had no doubt that was true.

But even Spiders, it was said, got caught in their own traps, every so often.

Lineo Thadspar led them out onto the steps, and the roar of approval seemed to shake the very marble beneath them, making Stenwold stagger a little until Balkus caught his good arm to steady him. There were no words in that roar, but the unadulterated joy of a people freed from terror. Ever since the previous Vekken attack had retreated from the city before the arrival of a Sarnesh relief force, in the days when these grown men of Collegium were but boys, there had been the knowledge that the Vekken would try again. Now the Vekken army had been smashed so decisively it would take that city a decade to regain its strength.

Thadspar had been intending to speak but the crowd just would not be silent, continuing to thunder its approval for the saviours of the city. A junior artificer had hurried forward and passed Thadspar a speaking horn, but there was not a device invented that would have made his voice clear over that joyous throng, and so he waited. Stenwold, who had always taken the old man for a shrewd politician, saw tears in his eyes.

Back in a guest suite, and under heavy guard, was Thalric — Major Thalric of the Rekef — who had limped into the city with Stenwold’s name on his lips. Major Thalric, who had nowhere else to go, by his own story, and so had finally come here.

‘What would I do with you?’ Stenwold had asked him sharply. ‘We are enemies, you and I.’ He could not rid himself of what this man had been ready to do to his niece Che, when she had been in his clutches.

‘I have only enemies left in the world,’ Thalric had admitted. He was a man fighting to control his circumstances, not drowning but not swimming either. The next adverse wave could swallow him. ‘The fact that I am sitting here talking to you shows that you are less my enemy than those I once called friends. As for what I can do for you, I know something about what the Empire may do next. I know a great deal more than you about how the Empire does things.’

‘And how can I trust you?’

‘You’ll never know if you can,’ the Wasp had said, ‘and I’m sure that little traitress on your arm will urge you to put me to death but, really, will you ever have a better chance?’

Stenwold frowned, now, in retrospect. He did not want this, to be here at the focus of all this cheer and attention. Instead he needed to deal with Thalric and make his decision. He hated unfinished business.

Still, if he put those nagging thoughts aside, just for a moment, there was some strange satisfaction in finding himself here in a jubilant scene that would surely be recorded in history books to come. The saviours of Collegium, the defiers of Vek. Thadspar stood with the other surviving members of the War Council, fewer than might have been expected, and a handful of other citizens who had led the defence: militia officers, stalwart merchants and artisans, and College artificers, even Master Hornwhill, who had been so very reluctant for his inventions to be used at all. Balkus stood shoulder to shoulder with the Tarkesh commander, Parops, and beside them was the slighter, rangier form of Dariaxes, with his constant copper smile. Then there was Teornis of the Aldanrael, dressed as soldier-gone-fop in a gold breastplate, jewelled gorget and a helmet adorned with glittering wings. His expression was one of modest contentment, which drew attention to him far more than waving and grinning ever could. There were others, too, of his own company: Scorpion, Fly, Dragonfly, Spider. The steps before the Amphiophos were crowded today.

At last the crowd had quieted enough for Thadspar to be heard, and he left it another beat before he spoke.

‘Citizens of Collegium, this day shall be recounted to our children so that it never be forgotten,’ he said, his voice booming metallically from the horn. ‘To teach them, we must learn many lessons ourselves. We might learn from this that we are strong in ourselves, for it is true. Most important, we may learn that we are strong in our friends — you see those around me, do you not? There is not one man or woman standing before you who has not earned their place on these steps but, in truth, if all who had earned such a place were given it, then we would need steps that spanned our whole city! I see those before me who have shed blood for their city. I see the peaceable citizens who took up the sword and the crossbow without fear or complaint. This victory belongs to every one of us.

‘But look again at these who stand beside me, familiar faces and strangers both. Our true celebration must not be for the destruction of the Vekken who, but for their misguided envy, should not even have been our enemies. Instead, it should be for this alliance, this company you see before you. When else, in all the years this city has stood, known as Collegium of the Beetles or even as Pathis of the Moths so long before, has such a band of allies been ranged together? You see here Ants from the city-states of Sarn and Tark who have fought side by side for Collegium. You see lords of the Spiderlands, and the allies they have brought with them whose faces have never been seen in our community before.

‘And more than this, I look into your faces, and I see Fly-kinden, Mantis, even Moth. And more, I see in my mind all the faces of those who cannot be with us, who have been cut down in this war, and they were many, and of all kinden, and this day is also theirs. We must never forget all those who gave everything for us. Where you stand now there shall be a memorial carved, and I wish every one of you to bring us the names of those you knew who fell, and each one shall have its place. The gate of the west wall, whose shutters, I am informed, can never rise again, shall never be reopened, and a new gate will be built where the Vekken made their breach. In this way, by including it into the very structure of our city, we shall never forget our friends, or our victory.’

Thadspar accepted a bowl of wine from a servant, drained it, and handed it back, pausing a moment before continuing.

‘Many of you will have heard that in the east a new power is brewing,’ he told the crowd. ‘They are Wasp-kinden, and they call themselves an Empire. You may even have heard that they have taken the city of Tark for their personal possession, and we know this is true. Their forces even now threaten Sarn.

‘We have never seen their like before. Some of you may know that War Master Stenwold Maker has been warning of their power for many years, and I say now, as Speaker for the Assembly, that it is to our shame that we did not heed him sooner. The Wasps wish to see us destroyed, and why? Why us? Look upon these men and women ranged beside me, and that is your answer. All of us, standing here, we are the Lowlands entire, and to conquer the Lowlands, their Empire must first conquer us!

‘We have won a battle,’ Thadspar told them finally. ‘We still must fight a war.’

Stenwold thought that he should feel triumphant, that his warnings had finally been heeded, that Collegium was at last committed openly to opposing the Empire. Instead he just felt tired, heading back with Balkus and Arianna to speak once again to Thalric — to interpret the foreign script of his prisoner’s face and try to master its grammar.

‘Good speech,’ Balkus rumbled beside him. ‘Of course, I’m not really Sarnesh any more. I did wonder why they wanted me up there.’

Stenwold was about to reply when he saw a young Beetle waiting to see him as he approached Thalric’s suite.

‘Master Maker!’ he got out. ‘There’s someone to see you. Says it’s urgent!’

Then a Fly-kinden had bolted past him, virtually bouncing off from Stenwold before she had come to a halt.

‘What’s-’ Stenwold started, but Balkus got out, ‘Sperra!’

Stenwold stared at her, seeing a thin and grubby Fly woman who looked as though she had neither eaten nor slept for days.

‘But you were in Sarn. ’ he said stupidly.

Balkus knelt quickly towards her, and Sperra leant against him gratefully. She looked half-dead with exhaustion.

‘The Sarnesh have fought the Wasps. field battle,’ she got out. ‘They lost, pulled out. when the train got us back to Sarn we had news from here that the Vekken had been turned. I got on a train to get here right away — didn’t stop for anything. I brought the Moth-boy. He got himself hurt. They put him in a Wayhouse hospice nearby.’

Something in her manner, in the words left unsaid, had crept up on Stenwold, and now he said softly, ‘Slow down now. What about Cheerwell?’

‘Master Maker, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Che was supposed to be in the last automotive off the field, only. it never made it back to the city. I’m so sorry.’