Empire in Black and Gold

Thirty-nine

The whole band of them scattered, crossbows dragged up towards the dark sky, but a moment later it was Che’s voice saying, ‘Calm! Quiet! It’s Achaeos.’

They clustered again, and saw the first shape come down a little way away. There was a waxing moon that gave a wan light and there were lights enough across the engine yard behind them, but even then it took Stenwold a moment to pick Achaeos out of the shadows.

He was about to go to greet the Moth when the other figures came down, and he stood, paralysed for a moment with the fear of betrayal, and then with sudden hope.

There were at least half a dozen other Moths, all with bows in hand, and a brace of Fly-kinden wearing cut-down versions of the Moths’ hooded garb. There were two Mantis-kinden as well, male and female in studded armour, as tall and arch as Tisamon ever was. There was a Dragonfly maiden with a longbow, and a Grasshopper-kinden with a pair of long daggers glittering in his hands. All of them were in shades of grey, mottled and patched so that, between the moonlight and the shadows, they might stand in the open before wide eyes and yet be near invisible.

‘Hammer and tongs,’ Stenwold said, some small piece of the weight on him lifting at the sight. ‘Your Skryres saw the light then? Or the darkness, however you want.’

Che pushed past him to fling her arms round Achaeos, and then suddenly looked back at Stenwold guiltily, but at that moment he could not care.

‘When I arrived back at Tharn, these men and women were already waiting for me,’ Achaeos said, one arm about Che. Even he sounded a little awed by it. ‘I now find myself their captain. The Skryres. . deliberate, still. . Tharn has as yet taken no stance on the Empire.’

‘Then who are these?’ Stenwold asked, and then the word welled unbidden in his mind. ‘Arcanum. .?’

Achaeos glanced back at his cohort. ‘They have said nothing but that they will fight the Wasps, Master Maker. Some Skryre has clearly made a personal decision on this, and called upon his or her own agents. Yes, they are Arcanum, Master Maker, and they are with you. For this one task only, Stenwold Maker, they are with you.’

‘So how’re we going to do this?’ Scuto asked, still sizing up the newcomers.

‘We have scouted this place before,’ Achaeos said. ‘It has been guarded, always. Now the Helleren guards are gone.’

‘Easier for us, surely,’ said Balkus from over Scuto’s shoulder.

‘No, for it means our coming is known,’ Achaeos said.

Stenwold had to agree. ‘All killed or bought off, or perhaps they were withdrawn on some magnate’s orders, some merchant-lord bought by the Empire. So where are the Wasps, Achaeos?’

‘There are some inside the machine itself,’ the Moth explained. ‘And we have also seen four sentries hidden about this place. We think there are more and that this is a trap.’

‘And we know it is a trap, and therefore we can do something about it, so the trap snaps both ways,’ Stenwold said.

‘If you wish to do this thing we will follow,’ Achaeos said. ‘Everyone here with me is sworn to it.’ He grimaced, squeezing Che just the once and then letting her go. ‘It will be a fight, Master Maker. We have seen two score Wasp soldiers lurking close to here, surely waiting for a signal from the sentries. Their main camp is close as well, no doubt by design, so they will be able to reinforce almost immediately. How long will it take to destroy the engine?’

Stenwold glanced at Scuto, who shrugged expressively. ‘Ain’t easy to tell. Never had a crack at a beast like this before.’

‘Then it will be a fight,’ the Moth said sombrely. He looked pale and very young, and then Stenwold looked over the other faces there. Apart from himself and Scuto, and Tisamon, and the Grasshopper-kinden brought by Achaeos, they all looked so young to him.

‘If anyone, I mean anyone, wishes to go now, then go,’ he said, and of course none of them moved. They were all scared, except a few like Tisamon who had death running like blood in their veins. It was pride and fear of shame that kept them here, and he wanted to shout at them that dented pride might heal where mortal wounds would not.

But he said nothing, for they were now his people. They were here for his plan, to live or to die as chance and their skills dictated.

‘How can we best use you?’ he asked Achaeos.

‘We will be able to strike without their seeing us. We will have the first cut of the knife,’ the Moth said. He glanced at the female Mantis, whom Stenwold guessed to be his tactician of sorts. ‘What we will do,’ he explained, ‘is attack the Wasps in the engine — and the sentries, those we have found. You will see it happening, and at that moment you should run for the engine. The alarm will sound, I am sure, but there will be confusion. My people, and those of your people who are not destroying the engine, will have to hold off whatever the Wasps produce, until the task is done. That is our plan.’

Stenwold nodded. ‘I have no better one,’ he conceded.

Achaeos and his war party melted into the darkness that for him at least was no darkness. Stenwold gestured to the others to keep low, and advanced to the lip of the works pit. There was a spoil heap below, so getting down there and over to the Pride itself would present no problems. Getting out again with a whole skin would be another challenge altogether.

He had started counting, and realized that he was counting towards no number he could guess, and so he stopped. The night was cool, with the faintest breeze blowing from the east, and silent beyond all measure. He could hardly believe there were two score Wasps lurking within spitting distance.

They must be holding their breath.

‘There!’ Tynisa hissed. Stenwold had seen nothing, but he was so keyed up he responded on her recognizance.

‘Go!’ he hissed.

‘Sir!’ one of his men called, and Thalric snapped out of his reverie. The night was quiet, and no signal had been called.

‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘I saw something by the engine, sir.’

Thalric mounted the bank and stared. His people were not night creatures, but the gas lamps burning around the Pride were bold enough.

‘I don’t see anything. .’ he said, but then he did, and a sentry got off his whistle at the same moment.

A shadow. It had only been a shadow between the light and him, but then a man had fallen out of the Pride’s cab. One of his ambush party. The attack had started.

‘Move out, the lot of you!’ he shouted. ‘Light airborne, secure the engine. Infantry-’ Even as he spoke he saw men surging down the side of the pit and across the engine field. ‘Take them down.’ He pointed. There were a dozen of his men in the air already, wings springing to life to propel them towards the engine with all the speed they could muster. Another dozen were surging past him, more heavily armoured with spear and shield. Thalric took one more brief look at the intruders and thought he spotted Stenwold at the fore. In these small actions a good commander should lead his troops, and Thalric respected him for that.

‘You.’ He turned on the Fly-kinden messenger at his heels. The youth was staff, not local, wearing imperial livery over a leather breastplate. ‘Go to Major Godran,’ Thalric told him. ‘Tell him to bring up three. . make it four squads at all speed, and tell him to send in the automotive and the spotter.’

‘Yes, sir.’ And then the messenger was gone, darting into the night as he headed for the main imperial camp. Thalric, who had been surrounded by two dozen men and more a moment earlier, was now on his own.

Stenwold was no runner, and the fleeter members of his party were outstripping him before he had made half the distance to the Pride. He had heard a shrill whistle that spoke of at least one sentry the Moths had not found in time. Ahead of him fleet forms were flitting past the lights that festooned the Pride’s awning. He saw brief motes of gaslight on steel, heard grunts of pain, cut-off cries. Tisamon and Tynisa had the vanguard now, bearing down on the engine with murderous speed, but they would be unable to do anything with it once they got there save shed enemy blood.

A Moth raider flashed overhead, a confused image of grey cloth with white eyes and a drawn bowstring. Stenwold, his breath already failing him, saw most of the others had passed him now. He risked slowing down to save his strength, glancing right and left.

To the left the engine works were mostly clear until a pair of coupled carriages made a dark, curving wall on a veering section of track. To the right the darkness was mounded and humped, two spoil heaps forming almost perfect cones of debris. Past them, as he ran, he saw another rail engine, a midge compared to the Pride’s great bulk, and he caught movement through its windows: there were men running along the line of the vacant engine’s far side.

Ahead there erupted full-scale fighting all of a sudden. He saw the flashes of Wasp stings, the cries of the wounded. He was close enough to see one Moth-kinden flung backwards against the Pride’s unforgiving metal hide, the smoke of his burn-wound bright under the gaslight. One of the Tharn Mantis soldiers leapt into the air with her wings unfolding, cutting down the leading Wasp even as he tried to slow his charge.

‘To the right!’ Stenwold bellowed. ‘Che! Scuto! Tis and Nisa! Get on to the engine! The rest with me!’

Having ordained it, simply stopping was a difficult thing to do, skidding in the grit and gravel, while trying to bring his crossbow up. There was a squad of Wasp soldiers running straight for them, well armoured and formed into a wedge, shields high and spears levelled. Even as he got a bolt to the already-drawn string, two missiles had flashed past him to stand quivering in the Wasp shields. The wedge was coming at a brisk run. Stenwold reached into his pouch for a grenade.

He was deafened the next moment, because Balkus had opened up with his nailbow, three quick detonations that echoed across the whole sunken field. The point of the Wasp wedge was abruptly collapsing, two men falling backwards with holes punched through shield and armour. Balkus was kneeling now, fighting to clear a jammed bolt. Another crossbow bolt picked off a soldier near the rear as Sperra leapt into the air to shoot down on them. For a moment the wedge was broken before re-forming. Stenwold saw Wasps passing spears to their left hands so as to free up their stings.

Put in his place, perhaps greater commanders had all the time their genius required to weigh the balance of the moment, but Stenwold was no soldier and so he simply shouted ‘Charge them!’ Even as he said it, he had the grenade lit with a flick of his steel lighter, and was hurling the hatched metal ball ahead of him.

It struck a shield, rebounded and fell at the nearest soldier’s feet. The man had only a moment to see what it was before it ripped apart, sending out shards of metal that scythed him down and cut across his fellows. Stenwold, in the lead, felt one jagged fragment skin his own shoulder.

And then they were in. He had his sword out and in a second he was in their midst as they tried to pull together. He got one man in the armpit where the armour did not reach, who clung to Stenwold desperately as he fell. Beside him the Beetle-kinden in the sentinel armour slammed his poleaxe down, buckling a shield and breaking the arm that carried it. Balkus’s nailbow roared twice more at point-blank range and then he slung it over his shoulder and dragged a shortsword from its resting place, fighting always with the neat economy of his race.

Che was still running for the engine, seeing that there was a great deal of fighting there, and too many bodies. She saw, through that darkness, that they were mostly Wasps, but that three Moths lay dead, and any one of them could be Achaeos.

I must not think like that. Even so she could not stop thinking like that, but her legs knew what to do and carried her onwards.

There were Wasps there now, and they were turning to face the newcomers. An energy bolt sizzled past her, over her head. Another lanced towards Tynisa but she sidestepped it nimbly, and then she and her father were in.

They had been seconds ahead, those two, just steps ahead. Che could not believe her eyes, despite all the evidence of Myna. She had never seen Tisamon fight before, and never realized her own foster-sister could come so close to matching him.

They gave the Wasps no chance, no time. They charged from the darkness into the harsh artificial light and they drank blood, or that was how it seemed to Che. Tisamon danced with his claw, as though it and he were two separate things, attacking from separate vantage points, but linked in the mind like Ants of the same city. Tynisa was never still, never where their swords drove at. The rapier in her hand could not be stopped or parried or ducked. Each thrust moved with her victim, followed and followed until it had run itself red in him.

Scuto just passed between them, barely sparing them a glance. He vaulted up into the engineer’s cab at the back of the Pride and then came straight out again with a Wasp’s sting searing over his shoulder. His assailant cut down at him, but the shortsword clanged off his breastplate, and then Scuto seized him, hugged him close, a dozen hooked spines tearing into the twisting soldier, scratching his armour. Che found that she wanted to stop clear of the action, not for fear of the Empire, but for fear of Tisamon and his daughter, lest their deadly skills should not discriminate. She forced herself on, and her sword lodged itself in the back of the man Scuto wrestled with.

She felt it scrape against his mail and then plunge into his flesh. It was a shock that went right through her. Her first life’s blood truly shed. It was a horrible feeling, a knowledge for the worse.

And she had no time, no time to adjust. Scuto was already hurling the body away, leaping back up into the cab and holding a prickly hand out for her.

Inside, as the killing went on without, they stared.

It was the face of the lightning engine, and neither of them had ever seen anything like it. The central panel was blurry glass, and behind it there were coiled pillars that sparked and danced and glowed like lit glass themselves. Either side were dials and levers, pull-chains and toggles, and it all meant so little to her. She could see from his face that it meant even less to Scuto.

‘I wish we had Totho here now,’ she said sadly. ‘When I did my mechanics, this sort of thing was just being thought of. I know only the. . the basics.’

‘Good,’ Scuto said. With a brutal movement he brought the butt of his crossbow down onto the glass, but it barely chipped. ‘Founder’s mark!’ he spat. ‘Must be a foot thick. Can’t even trust grenades on that. You reckon you can overcharge this thing?’

Che looked over the instruments, in the familiar situation of being their best expert on a subject she knew little enough about. ‘Let’s try,’ she said. ‘Let’s just try.’

Scuto risked a look out across the engine field. ‘Try fast,’ he advised. The Wasp wedge had fallen. A pair of survivors was running, and Balkus was already slotting a new magazine into place atop his nailbow to loose at them. Stenwold glanced around, seeing a mess of dead men. Here were Wasps, fallen in close order, attacked from all sides, bodies one atop another. There lay one of Scuto’s Beetle-kinden with his face charred, and beyond was a dead Fly, blank eyes fixed upwards.

Everyone’s eyes were looking upwards in the next moment, as energy bolts started to fall around them. The next wave was here already, swooping down on them with extended, fiery hands, and lances levelled. Balkus loosed smoothly, sending bolt after miniature bolt ripping into them, spinning the flying men off balance, punching them right out of the sky.

‘Cover!’ Stenwold shouted, as one of his Ant-kinden fell trying to reload his crossbow. Sperra was already in the shadow of the lesser engine, frantically turning the winch of her own weapon.

There was a flurry of motion above even as Stenwold cast himself behind the uncertain shelter of an earth mound. He then dared to look, and saw that the entire sky had become a battleground. The Wasp squad was wheeling and passing against some of Achaeos’s people. The Dragonfly flashed through the melee’s centre, a better flier than any of the others, turning even as she flew to slice an arrow through the air that caught an unsuspecting Wasp in the back. The male Mantis-kinden caught an enemy by the belt and carved his claw into the man, two brief moves and then releasing the limp body. Then a bolt caught him in the side and he dropped. He hit the earth still living, but a Wasp had dropped with him, driving his sword into him before the stricken Mantis could recover from the fall. Stenwold shot the victor in the chest as he made to get back into the air.

Someone was shouting a warning but he could not catch the words. A moment later he did not need to. From the side of the Wasps’ camp the clashing of gears told him everything before the monstrous shape of the automotive came into view. It was a squat, armoured thing, an ugly, riveted box with a front like a sentinel’s helm and narrow slits to look onto the outside world. Its four legs arched up like a spider’s and moved it in sudden jerky steps that covered a great deal of ground. There were two great crossbows mounted beneath its blunt nose that were loosing even as it appeared, and on its back a mounted ballista — but it was more than that. Stenwold threw himself down again even as the jagged outline became clear. There was a shield bolted to the weapon to protect the crewman but he had spotted the great wooden magazine beyond it. A repeating ballista, a truly modern weapon. Seconds later began the harsh clack-clack-clack of it as it flung its bolts one after another.

It would soon smash them to pieces, he realized. They had to destroy the thing before it got into its stride.

Within his first two steps from cover his courage left him. He saw the Beetle sentinel cut down by the crossbows at the engine’s fore, collapsing back in a chaos of armour with twin spines jutting through the metal plate over his chest. One of the Tharn Fly-kinden tried to dart overhead, but the ballista winched round smoothly, and the bolt hit her so hard that for a moment she was dead still in the air as the missle passed straight through her, and then she dropped.

The automotive lumbered on, gathering pace. There were other Wasps ranked behind it, another squad at least. Stenwold took a grenade out, wondering how thick this machine’s armour was but knowing there was only one way to find out.

He lit the fuse and counted — a ballista bolt flew past him as he did — and then threw, and he had the range perfect for once. The grenade struck, and as it struck it exploded. For a moment there was fire and nothing else in his view, and then the automotive was there again, rocking back on its spindly legs. The front had been dented by the impact, and at least one of the crossbows below it was ruined, trailing its bow arm uselessly, but after a second the monstrous thing was forging ahead once more.

‘Destroy it!’ he shouted impotently, with no means of doing so.

There was fighting behind the automotive now, for two or three of the Moth contingent had dropped there. Stenwold saw the Grasshopper with the two knives making bloody work, leaping and dancing and scattering bodies aside. The ballista wheeled back to face the machine’s stern, showing Stenwold the back of the bowman’s armoured chair.

‘Now! Go now!’ he shouted, and ran for the advancing automotive without knowing if anyone was following him.

Achaeos slashed once more at the man he was fighting, his long dagger striking sparks off armour, then he was in the air again, spiralling away. Two or three bolts of energy passed him, and he glanced back to see the Wasp soldier barrelling after him, hand extended and face furious. Achaeos threw himself into a loop that left the Wasp spinning in the air and stabbed out as soon as he was in arm’s reach, jabbing the man in the leg. As the Wasp turned to follow him one of Achaeos’s fellows sped past and hooked the man around the neck, clinging on grimly as Achaeos looped back and put his blade in twice, three times, until the Wasp dropped out of the sky. He and his comrade then flew their separate ways across the battlefield.

Achaeos’s warriors were split up now, each acting on his or her own. That was the way they worked, in both raids and warfare. Nobody realized that the Moths ever went to war, but it was midnight skirmishes like this that brought out the warrior in them. He sheathed his dagger, shrugged his bow from over his shoulder and loosened the drawstring holding his quiver closed.

He saw the automotive wade ponderously across the battlefield, the murderous artificer’s device atop it pivoting back and forth, constantly spitting death. Passing over, he saw that some few were even attacking it, and that one of these was Stenwold.

Stenwold was undoubtedly going to die. The fat old Beetle was making almost as much heavy going as the machine itself and the weapon was swinging round towards him like the head of some blind god. Nobody believed in gods, of course, but the artificers had created them anyway.

Achaeos reached for his Art, that trancing Art he had used on Che what now seemed so long ago, and dashed past the slit of the ballista. The first shot spun past him, and the second, and then he felt the shock of contact as his mind, his gaze, caught the artillerist’s.

He dragged on that contact, as his wings took him up and back, and he knew that, for precious seconds at least, the man’s gaze would be drawn with him, the weapon itself swinging away blindly.

Thalric was trying to make sense of the battle, and there was precious little sense to be made. It was the cursed Moth-kinden and their allies. They had taken the fighting everywhere, whereas Stenwold’s sorry lot could have been contained. The fighting at the Pride itself had been over a moment ago, and now it was back on, another squad of the light airborne coming down to root out the attackers. Meanwhile the automotive was making steady progress, despite fierce resistance. When it got to the Pride the night would be as good as won, but he knew that there were no certainties this night. Stenwold had mustered more allies than he had ever expected. Even the smashing of Scuto’s ring seemed hardly to have broken the Beetle’s stride.

Major Godran was now by his side. The man picked to lead the invasion of Collegium, he was peering towards the Pride with any captain’s concern at the fate of his vessel.

‘Will you look at that!’ he choked. He was pointing at the skirmish around the engine, and Thalric saw it too. What a one-sided affair it should have been, the Wasp soldiers stinging down, then dropping with drawn blade to take on so few defenders. What a one-sided affair it was, indeed. There was a Mantis-kinden there who moved like light and shadow both. The stings of the Wasps could not find him, and when they closed to sword’s reach, they died. There was no more subtlety to it than that. Thalric’s eyes could not follow it, but the man seemed to have a lethal aura about him, as though even the air he moved through was fatal to his enemies. He was holding them off. He was more than holding them off. He was slaughtering them.

The automotive continued to manage a slow crawl across the field. They needed something more than that now. Thalric looked for the only useful flier they could mobilize, a spotter blimp with a pair of winched repeating crossbows mounted in its belly. He located its pale bulk overhead, but saw instantly that it was in trouble. There were Moth-kinden attacking it, gashing the gasbag and clinging onto the small gondola as they stabbed at the crew. That particular gambit had died before it even entered the battle. There would be no help there.

Which left one thing.

‘I’ll take a squad in,’ Thalric decided.

‘Are you sure that’s wise, Captain?’ asked Godran.

‘No choice, Major.’ Thalric rapped his fist on the armour of a sergeant. ‘You and yours, with me!’ he said, and kicked off into the air.

Stenwold was halfway to the automotive, with another grenade in his hand, when he saw the ballista cupola wheel back towards him. Even as he saw it he was directly before it, seeing the arms tensioned back, the power in this weapon of bent steel and twined horsehair enough to split him in two.

And yet it did not shoot. He stared at the head of the bolt, metal sheathing it for a full eighteen inches, and then it lurched aside, tilting up at the stars. He lit the grenade, throwing it even as he did so.

He thought the fuse must have been cut too short, because he was punched from his feet almost instantly, the wash of fire singeing his eyebrows and fragments of metal gashing his armour and his scalp. A moment later he saw the cupola rock back with the impact. Then four men were dashing past him. One, the Beetle with the blunderbow, was cut down by the remaining fore crossbow, almost falling onto Stenwold’s legs. Rakka the Scorpion was already past, long-hafted axe raised high, and Balkus and Sperra were following close behind. Stenwold saw Sperra leap into the air and launch a bolt at the bowman behind the ballista, but it merely rebounded from the weapon’s armoured housing. Then the ballista was sweeping around, trying to pick her out of the air, its tireless mechanisms throwing bolt after bolt at her. In the confusion, Rakka gained the side of the automotive.

The huge man had only an axe and, even as he raised it, Stenwold could not understand what he meant to do. Then the Scorpion brought it down where the leg closest to him met the machine’s housing.

It seemed a futile gesture but Rakka was stronger than Stenwold realized, a strength augmented by surging tides of Scorpion Art. The axehead bit deep into the leg’s casing, buckling the pistons and gears operating within. When the automotive took its next step, that same foreleg made only half the gain, slewing the entire machine round.

A sting blast scorched across Rakka’s bare back, and the Scorpion howled in pain. Balkus returned the shot, the chamber of his nailbow flashing again and again. Rakka now had the axe up once more, every ounce of his strength focused on that single point of the machine. With a wordless battle cry he brought it down once, and then twice, even as a second bolt of energy impacted between his shoulder blades. The leg had canted to one side with the first stroke, its joints abruptly frozen. The second blow must have cut almost through it because, when the automotive took its next step, the damaged leg snapped off entirely and the machine tipped forwards, back leg waving in the air, its nose grinding into the dirt.

‘Clear it!’ Stenwold shouted, rushing ahead. Balkus was meanwhile helping Rakka away, whereupon Stenwold lit his last grenade and hurled it at the ballista’s cupola.

It bounced, but he had overshot, and so it struck the sloping hull beyond the weapon and rolled back. Then it thundered to pieces and in its wake the ballista became a shredded splay of metal around an open hatch.

Stenwold looked for Balkus and saw the Ant lowering Rakka’s body to the ground before snatching his nailbow up again. Even before Stenwold could call it, he was rushing forward, stepping up onto the tilted hull. He levelled his nailbow down the hatch and emptied it at the crew as they tried to climb out.

There were more Wasps out there, at least another two squads that had been following up behind the automotive. Stenwold felt old, weary to his bones, his heart like a hammer pounding in his chest and his lungs raw. He was past all this. He should be safe in some distant study with his papers, like all good spymasters. He squared himself up, advanced to the cover of the wrecked automotive, waiting for them.

But they were not coming closer: instead they were fighting. He could not tell who they were fighting save that it was armoured men, not Achaeos’s raiders. Then he could tell, and could not quite believe. They were Helleren militia, men with pikes and crossbows and chain mail. They were not as mobile or as savage as the Wasps, but there were more of them, and they were giving a good account of themselves.

His first thought was that it was Greenwise who had sent them, but how would he have known? The obvious answer then came, that there had been enough commotion in this place to attract someone’s attention, and when the guardsmen had arrived they had taken the closest combatants rushing towards the embattled engine as their enemies.

Thalric came in high, fast. He saw the Mantis-kinden duellist spin, dance, another two men falling back, and dying as they did so. There was a chill in the Wasp’s heart. He was better travelled than most of his race, so he had heard tell of Mantis Weaponsmasters, the last scions of a truly ancient cult. He could not really believe it but here was the very thing.

He would have no second chance now. He watched the swift passes of the Mantis’s claw, the step of his feet, the rhythm of his fight. Thalric was no novice himself: his Art-sting was second nature to him, stronger than it was in his fellows, and he himself more practised with it.

As Tisamon lashed out at another of his soldiers, Thalric chose his moment and loosed, the golden energy of his bolt streaking ahead of him like a falling star.

Impossibly, the Mantis was already turning away from the bolt, twisting away from it even as he fought. Thalric saw it strike, though, lashing down the Mantis’s side as the man finished off the last of his opponents, throwing him against the Pride’s hull and bouncing him backwards to where he collapsed.

Victory soared in Thalric’s heart and he stooped on the Pride, determined to finish this. He heard a voice, and it surely must have been Cheerwell Maker’s voice, cry out, ‘Tisamon!’

Thalric landed ahead of his men, sword in his right hand and his left spread open to unleash his Art-fire. The Mantis was hunched about the wound, struggling to rise. One blow and it would be a simple matter to break into the engine room and dispatch whoever was inside, dispatch Cheerwell, if it was her.

The idea hurt him, but it was for the Empire. It was war.

He looked up, and Tynisa descended on him from atop the engine. She led with her sword, and she shrieked something as mad as the rage-racked look on her face.

His blade was coming up, and he was falling back, but too late, too late.

The point of the rapier lanced for his chest. It struck the banded imperial armour and pierced it with the slightest bending of the blade, but the plates slowed it enough that when it met the copperweave beneath it merely scraped down the links, severing them one after another, drawing a line of agony down his chest that was nevertheless only skin deep, until it ripped free of his ruined armour and stabbed him through his thigh.

He dropped to one knee with a cry of pain and lunged forward with his own blade. It caught her in the belly but it was a weak blow, dulled by shock and hurt, and it skidded across her arming jacket before it drew blood, slicing along her waist and then bloodying her arm on the backstroke. She reeled backwards and he saw her fingers open, and yet the rapier hung in her hand still, refusing to be dropped.

He stood, fell to his knee almost immediately, but already loosing his sting at her. It melted a fist-sized dent in the metal of the Pride as she lurched out of the way.

‘You killed him!’ she screamed at Thalric, and he fell back and rolled as she lunged at him, the rapier’s tip drawing a line of blood across his scalp. He came up swinging, forcing her back, left hand pulled back for another shot.

Tisamon lurched to his feet. They were both deadly still in that moment as he levered himself halfway up, and then forced himself to rise the rest of the way. One arm was wrapped about his burned side, but his claw hung ready for battle, steeped in the blood of two dozen Wasps and not slaked yet.

His bared teeth might have been a grimace of pain or a smile of anticipation.

Faced with that sight, wounded and battered and with this monster on its feet again and standing like an executioner, Thalric felt his nerve falter. He had feared before, but it had been a rational fear. Now he kicked backwards, wings flickering in and out of his back, putting a distance between himself and this mad killer and his even worse daughter. Then his men were there, rushing into the fray, and he watched Tisamon and Tynisa take them on. Both injured, both more ragged in movement than before, and yet they held their ground. Thalric gathered himself, looking round for the automotive which surely must be there by now.

It was burning, he now saw. Three legs were rigid and one gone entirely, flames licked from within its cabin, gusted from its eyeslit. Beyond it he could see a slow trail of fire in the sky where the spotter blimp was drifting downwards in ruin.

Che pulled another two levers and turned one of the crank wheels, feeling the power within the engine start to vibrate the footplates beneath her. She was almost there, she knew. The glass-fronted chamber was almost incandescent, with Scuto peering into it through two layers of cloth. She could feel the whole of the Pride shaking, and she knew its inventors had never intended such intense stresses on it.

‘Almost,’ she said, and gave the wheel another three turns, bringing the supercharged elements within the engine’s long body closer and closer. She could only imagine the lightning crackling one to another, faster and faster until it was lightning no longer, but pure motive power.

‘Che-’ Scuto began nervously.

‘Just a little more,’ she told him.

‘Che!’ he said. ‘No more! We have to go!’

‘Why?’ she asked, and looked up from the controls.

He was only half there, or so her eyes told her. The half of him furthest from that window was dark shadow, the rest was invisible in a sea of light. Not heat, she realized, pure light, and yet the thick glass was running like ice on a warm morning, limned with a molten glow, streaking the metal beneath it to puddle like wax on the floor.

‘We have to go!’ he said again desperately, and then with all his might, for those close to the Pride, he yelled, ‘Everybody clear of the train!’

Tynisa heard the Thorn Bug’s wild cry. She saw the surviving Wasps were already being routed, those few that could. She looked at Tisamon and saw him ashen even in the moonlight, swaying.

She caught him, got his arm over her shoulder and her arm about his waist. He barked with the pain, but there was no time, no time. Behind them white light was streaming from the Pride’s cab, and from the very seams of its engine housing.

There was a Wasp ahead of them on one knee, the very man who had shot Tisamon. She readied her rapier, hoping to cut him down before he could loose his sting or cut at them. For a moment she met his eyes, seeing pain and bitterness and a certain resignation. Then he was gone, his wings casting him high into the sky.

And she ran, and Tisamon ran when he could and she dragged him when he couldn’t.

And they fell. She looked back then, at the Pride, which was leaking fire at every rivet hole.

She saw it explode.

Except it was not that, not quite. The roof of the engine chamber burst open with a thunderous peal and a bolt of lightning shot straight upwards at clouds that were forming even then, spewing out of a vortex above the stricken Pride, enough to blot out the moon.

And a clear second later, the lightning lashed down, a stabbing spear of blinding white that struck the Pride square on and blasted it to pieces. She was blinded by it, seeing white only, and deafened because of the thunder that rumbled on and on in the sky.

She realized then that she had not seen Che get clear of the doomed engine before the bolt struck.