Salute the Dark

Twenty-Five

It was well before dawn but General Malkan had his slaves dress him in his full armour. This was a state occasion, he decided. He would be the representative of the Empire speaking with a foreign power, even a captured and humbled one, so it would do to look the part. He had unpacked his suit of partial plate mail, enamelled black and edged with gold, to go over the lightweight hauberk of fine chain made to his personal specifications by the Beetle smiths of Sonn. He had his best sword, with the gilded pommel, buckled to his belt, and held his helm beneath his arm. After all, there was no shame in appearing gracious in victory.

‘Have the man brought in,’ he instructed, once the last buckle had been tightened. The armour was well made enough that its weight barely slowed him, distributed evenly across his shoulders as though it was nothing more than a scout’s light brigandine. His slaves retreated from his tent without needing any order, and two soldiers then marched in with the captive.

Malkan studied him: a Commonwealer, which confirmed the rumours and gave cause for thought. He was a young man, with his kind’s slender build and a steady gaze despite the broad bruise spreading across half of his face. His hands were bound behind him, but he stood straight and tall like a visiting officer come to inspect the troops. Malkan decided that in other circumstances he might have liked this man. As it was, he did not have that luxury.

‘So you’re the one they call the… what is it? The “Wasted Prince”?’

‘I can’t vouch for what your people call me,’ Salma replied. He had found a curious calm within him, now his run of fortune was finally at an end. Had he not been here before, in the custody of the Wasps? Of course he had, and worse, too. He had even died outside the walls of Tark, had he not? Then all this was just borrowed time. It was all credit he had accrued with the world, and if the world now called on him to pay his debts, how could he complain? ‘You are General Malkan, I take it.’

The Wasp general made the smallest nod but Salma, looking him in the eyes, saw the faintest disquiet there, a tiny worm gnawing at the man’s contentment.

‘You have a name?’ Malkan asked him.

‘Prince Minor Salme Dien, enforcedly at your service,’ Salma informed him, managing a moderately accomplished bow.

‘You really are a prince, then.’ Malkan had witnessed the last convulsions of the Twelve-Year War, for as the youngest general of the Empire, most of that glorious, costly campaign had preceded him. He recognized the Commonwealer title, though. ‘Renegade, are you, then? Exiled?’

The suspicion already in Salma’s mind began to solidify. ‘Not at all, General. Still a proud son of the Commonweal, I’m afraid.’

Malkan regarded him without expression. ‘A little out of your way, aren’t you?’

‘We go where the Monarch commands.’

‘I don’t believe your Monarch has ever heard of the city of Sarn. I don’t believe it’s even marked on the Commonwealer maps.’

Salma was staring straight into the man’s eyes, and he saw that small flicker again. He’s here in person talking to me, and he’s got up as gaudy as a Spider whore, but he’s not telling me how wonderful his Empire is and how defeated I am. Somehow I’ve thrown him off his course. He took a deep breath and smiled casually, as though he and the Wasp were merely standing in Collegium debating philosophy. ‘Mercers are always allowed a little initiative, General, in how we go about fulfilling our orders.’

The moment’s pause told Salma that the lie, the outright abject lie, had registered. Malkan obviously knew of the Mercers, and imagined them, no doubt, as some kind of Dragonfly Rekef.

‘Well, perhaps I should send your head back to your Monarch, to show him how he has failed,’ Malkan declared and, without that pause before, he would have sounded entirely confident.

‘What failure would that be?’ Salma asked him.

‘Your “Landsarmy” is scattered and mostly slain,’ Malkan replied. Salma knew that he must have flinched at that news, for he saw his reaction mirrored in the other man’s eyes. ‘I have you, to do with as I wish, to enslave or kill or send to the Emperor himself as a trophy. You have failed.’

‘But you were speaking of the Monarch, not of myself.’ Salma kept his voice steady, hoping that Malkan was painting the situation darker than it really was. ‘The protection of the Lowlands from imperial aggression is not a task to be entrusted to only one man.’

Malkan stopped, again just for a moment, but Salma noticed it. The thought of a dozen, a score, a hundred Mercers, infiltrating the Lowlands, raising scrap-armies as Salma had done – the tactical implications unfolded in Malkan’s mind.

If I can achieve nothing else now, let me crack his confidence. Words were all Salma had left in the way of weapons. He would not spare them.

‘Well, we shall question you at leisure about whatever comrades you have,’ Malkan decided. ‘Being a Commonwealer, you will be unfamiliar with our methods of questioning, so I shall have my artificers introduce you.’

Beneath Salma’s feet, the earth shifted slightly, very slightly. He had only soft shoes on, and most likely Malkan would have felt nothing through the soles of his armoured boots. Behind his back, Salma flexed his fingers. ‘General?’

‘You have some other vague threat for me?’ Malkan asked him.

Salma’s thumb-claws flicked out, digging into the ropes about his wrists. The angle was awkward, but he drove them in as hard as he could. ‘You forget two things.’

‘Do I, now?’ Malkan asked, irritated, but paused for just a moment more. ‘And what would they be?’

‘You will have to discover that for yourself,’ Salma said, every bit the picture of the mysterious Commonwealer, and when Malkan signalled for the two guards to take him, he concentrated all his strength into his arms, his hands and his thumbs, and flexed them.

The rope sheared and his hands sprang free, just as the whole of the earth floor within the tent bucked once and then burst open.

General Malkan was thrown off-balance, but already grabbing for his sword’s hilt as the ground split. A monstrous form hauled its broad-shouldered bulk out of the ground, and for a moment, in the explosion of dust, it was impossible to see just what it was. The two guards that Malkan had kept to hand did not need to know precisely what was attacking their general, though. One was already raising a hand towards Salma even as the ropes gave way. The other drew his sword and threw himself forwards with a kind of blind courage, not risking a sting-shot with Malkan so close.

It was Morleyr, of course. Morleyr the Auxillian deserter whose squad Salma had talked into defecting. Morleyr the Mole Cricket-kinden giant who could dig through the earth with his bare hands.

His hands were not bare now, though. The soldier that rushed at him, into the cloud of dust, met the upswing of a mace-blow intended for Malkan. Salma heard bones snap as its heavy iron head struck the man through the ribs. Salma was already moving, casting himself to the left as the crackling bolt of energy seared past, and then jabbing with his thumbs, going for the throat but tearing a bloody line across the soldier’s face instead as he reeled back.

Malkan’s sword was now clear but there were others emerging after Morleyr, coughing and choking but armed with shortswords and daggers. They were a handful of Salma’s people dragging themselves out of the darkness…

No, not dark, for there was light down there. Salma’s chest contracted at even the brief glimpse he had of it.

No! Not here! He lunged forwards, got a hand about the soldier’s sword-wrist, trying to prise the weapon free. The man backed out of the tent into the night, stumbling through the flap, colliding with another man who rushed in and just managed to say, ‘General Malkan-’ before he was bowled over. The soldier Salma was grappling with tripped, and the contested sword was driven deep into his chest as Salma fell on top of him.

There was no time to waste. Salma got his hands around the hilt of the stunned new arrival’s blade and drew it clear; easier to pluck a sword from a scabbard than from a man’s ribs. The messenger goggled at him and Salma gritted his teeth and drove the sword into the man’s throat. Honour was like a coat: sometimes one did not have time to put it on.

He spun back towards the tent, seeing Morleyr aim another great sweep of the mace at General Malkan. Mole Crickets were monstrously strong, but also ponderously slow, and Malkan drove his sword forwards once, twice, in the time it took Morleyr to strike. The first lunge carved into the great man’s side and his blade came out spilling red, but the second went up to the hilt in Morleyr’s armpit, making the Mole Cricket cry out in shock. Then the huge body was collapsing, sword still deeply embedded, and by then Malkan had a knife in his other hand and had slit the tent behind him. Another man, Salma could not see which of his followers it was, lunged at the general with a dagger, but Malkan grabbed his wrist almost contemptuously and then stabbed him in the eye before backing out of the command tent altogether.

Salma darted out of the tent and pursued him with sword in hand. Within the tent, the light was growing ever brighter and he did not want to see her here in this place where death was moments away in any direction. But of course, how else could Morleyr have found me, save by her?

This was not the plan. A mad rescue was not the plan. We’re right in the middle of their army! But the army currently seemed to have other things on its mind. Soldiers were everywhere, but they were all heading somewhere else, and most of them were running towards the western edge of the camp. It occurred to Salma suddenly that, of course, this was the plan after all.

The Sarnesh possessed their own time-keeping machine to count the moments for them. They would have sprung up, every one of them, at a single thought, and begun their approach. Dawn had not begun to lighten the eastern sky, and already the Sarnesh assault had reached the Wasp camp.

The dust-coated fighters Morleyr had brought with him were now spilling out from the tent, twenty of them at least, a chaotic rabble raggedly engaging any black and gold that they could find. General Malkan grabbed a passing sergeant, shouting orders at him, dragging the man’s sword from his hand. Before the sergeant could pass on the word Salma was on them both. Distantly he heard the roar of field artillery, a leadshotter loosing its shot, the tremble of the ground as a catapult missile landed. Salma jammed his sword in under the sergeant’s arm, swiftly and cleanly, dragged it clear and turned towards Malkan.

That he was amazed meant only that Balkus had been away from his own kind too long.

When the moment came, every Sarnesh in the camp had woken simultaneously by virtue of the tactician’s call to arms. Balkus himself had leapt up, snapped instantly from his sleep, hauling on his chainmail by old instinct, in exact step with thousands of Sarnesh soldiers.

By the time he had the hauberk on, he had come fully to his senses. He had first kicked awake Parops and Plius, thus wrenching their entire detachments from sleep into instant wakefulness. Then he had run about amongst his own men, shouting and striking them, telling them to go and wake others. They would be the anchor dragging at the attack, he realized. The last to be ready, the last to get in line. Still, his urgency got through to them, and they strapped on their armour as swiftly as they could, readied their snapbows and crossbows and pikes. Beyond them, Balkus saw the Moth and Mantis-kinden warriors spreading out to take up their staggered skirmish line ahead of the army. By day there had been Wasp scouts lurking nearby, keeping an eye on the Sarnesh force. By the time Balkus’ men had assembled they would all be dead.

The Sarnesh fell smoothly into place by their nature and instinct. Balkus meanwhile was left shouting and harassing his people to do the same, hearing them blunder into one another in the dark. Then the Sarnesh were moving. He heard the command in his mind, called it out to his men. It was still night but they were bringing the war to the Wasps.

Ant-kinden could not see in the dark, of course. They were like Wasp-kinden in that, and the Wasps knew it. Their scouts had already noted the approach of the Sarnesh force. The morrow, everyone knew, would see the opposing forces close enough to do battle.

Ant-kinden were constantly within each others’ minds, though: it was a much-vaunted ability. It made them fight as one, defending each other, seeing through each others’ eyes. The more obvious applications of the mindlink were well known. It also allowed for a certain degree of logistics that other kinden could not match. In this case it allowed for 10,000 Sarnesh soldiers to move out from their camp some hours before dawn, in perfect order, and march on the Wasp encampment. It had never been done before, but then the threat posed by the Empire was just as unprecedented. The Sarnesh King and his tacticians had quietly made their decision the previous day, and the entire army had instantly known and understood.

The logistics, though! Ten thousand men in the dark of a clouded night, but each one with an absolute knowledge of where his neighbours were and where his feet were going, so that not an elbow jostled, not a foot was trodden on. They had muddied their armour, smeared lampblack on their blades. For a vast mass of heavy infantry they moved absurdly quietly, not a word spoken or needed, just the gentle clink of mail.

In advance of them, in the air and on the ground, went their screen of skirmishers: scores of Mantis warriors from the Ancient League, Moth-kinden archers, Flies, men and women to whom the dark was no barrier, sent ahead to find and silence the Wasp scouts and pickets. They were utterly silent, invisible by skill and Art and the cloak of night. They were merciless, killing by arrow or blade without warning, without fail. General Malkan had not stinted on his scouts, supplementing his own people’s poor eyes with the keener vision of Fly-kinden and fielding enough watchmen to give him every warning of raid or ambush, and not one of them lived to report to him.

And then there was Balkus and the other allies who were here, but whom nobody knew what to do with. After plans were laid, the tacticians had found themselves with three commanders that had no obvious place in their scheme, but whose numbers were such that it would be imprudent to leave them out. They had in the end given the right flank to Balkus: the trailing right flank that straggled back behind the main line of advance in case some Beetle loudly fell over his neighbour. Here were Parops’ Tarkesh expatriates and the little contingent of Tseni that Plius had called for. Here were the Collegium merchant companies, with their snapbows at the ready, and nailbowmen interspersed throughout in case the Wasps got too close.

The Collegium contingent did not have a mindlink to keep them together and, as they drew closer, Balkus could not risk shouting at them the way an officer of such a rabble would normally need to. He was uncomfortably aware that they were getting strung out, unable to match the brisk pace that the Sarnesh had set, but there was nothing he could do about it. He would just have to trust that not too many of them would get lost. At least, back here, they were not likely to sound any alarms.

In Balkus’ own head were the Sarnesh officers. He had tried to block them out, but it was a constant rattle of orders and reports, relaying information he needed to know. It had been a long time since he had counted himself a son of Sarn but the wider family had closed about him seamlessly. He was dragged along with their advance, hearing the tacticians convey out their orders to adjust the facing of the line, to increase the pace, and hearing the reports come back from the officers at the front – enemy scouts down, the lights of the camp now in sight.

When the word came to charge, Balkus found that his pace picked up instantly and without question, so that he almost left the men under his command behind in the dark. Those nearest him hurried to catch up, and so the unspoken order to run was passed back simply through people finding themselves being outdistanced by those in front of them. Out there in the dark thousands of swords had been unsheathed, while crossbows were cocked on the run.

He sensed the precise moment that the Wasp camp, as an organism, became aware of the attack, seeing a sudden, vast and unheralded rush of movement in the torchlight, the sentries already falling to arrow-shot. It was as though, for just a second, the Wasps themselves partook of the great Sarnesh mind, if only to register a brief surprise.

Then the Sarnesh line thundered into the Wasp encampment, braving the first scatter of sting-shot, breaking the fragile shell formed by the sentries to get at the meat within.

‘All right let’s go!’ Balkus yelled to his people, to Parops and Plius, his whole ragged command. ‘Form an archery line on me!’ And with that he was off, running and not waiting for them. They would have to catch up with him, and already he was sending a thought out – Where do you want us? – abandoning himself to the greater mind.

The general was shouting desperately at the nearest Wasp soldiers as they rushed by, trying to re-establish his authority. Salma rushed him just as another member of the dusty rabble did – a stocky Beetle-kinden woman wielding a simple workshop hammer. Malkan rounded on her furiously, swayed aside from the heavy stroke, and then loosed a sting-shot into her face, blasting her backwards. Salma drove his sword into the general’s side, but the man’s heavy mail turned the blow. Reeling from the force of it, Malkan was spun half-around, but then his blade came lashing back at Salma, trying to gain room.

Salma kept with him, almost inside the reach of their swords, knowing that if he fell back then Malkan would scorch him. He managed a glancing gash across the man’s face with one thumb, and jabbed up with his sword, though too close to put any force into it. The tip dug between Malkan’s armour plates but there was chainmail beneath to catch it. Salma caught a glimpse of the Wasp’s expression, twisted in fury with blood smeared across it. Then the general’s shoulder slammed into Salma’s chest, knocking him backwards. He expected the lash of the man’s sting, but instead Malkan was coming at him sword-first, the short, swift blade dancing and swooping in the gap between them. Salma fell back before the first three swings, and then caught the next on his own weapon, trying a riposte that Malkan instantly turned back on him. The Wasp kept his attack going, for a moment forgetting both his army and his rank, becoming just one duellist intent on the death of another. Salma picked up the rhythm: it had been a long time since he had fought one-on-one like this. Malkan’s offence was savage, leaving almost no gap for Salma to get a blade through.

He’s good, he’s good. Salma flung himself up, wings flaring, arcing overhead and coming down behind the man, sword striking backwards to take him as he turned. Malkan was faster, catching the blow but not strongly enough to counterattack. Salma took the lead now, lunging and cutting, always moving his feet, darting left and right or flicking up with a moment’s rush of his wings. Malkan’s armour, which had turned so many blows, now slowed him down. He could not match Salma for speed. Even defending, he still kept his poise, slowly turning the tide, letting Salma wear himself out against Malkan’s immaculate parries until he had an opening to strike. Salma’s blade pierced his guard once, to dent his pauldron and bound away, and Malkan took this opening smoothly. His blade lanced narrowly past Salma as the Dragonfly threw himself aside, and then Malkan’s offhand blazed with golden fire.

The bolt was badly aimed, hurried. It seared across Salma’s shoulder and side rather than smashing into his chest, but it was enough to make him reel, stumbling over the corpse of the Beetle-kinden woman, and Malkan drove forwards with a snarl of triumph.

His sword blazed with white fire, the night around them as bright as noon. The blade drove beneath Salma’s ribs with all the force that Malkan could give it.

She had gone by many names already. It was the custom of her kind to don a new name as easily as a new garment, to suit fresh circumstance. She had been Free of Lilies and Soaring Fire. She had been Grief in Chains and Aagen’s Joy. And most recently she had been Prized of Dragons, and the lover of Prince Minor Salme Dien.

Her kind were strange and few, living in remote places, secluded glades throughout the Commonweal and beyond. They lived off the sun’s own light, and had no needs or cares save when others found them. They were coveted, taken, forced, enslaved. They were the bright cousins of the Moth-kinden, too shining and beautiful for others to contemplate without wanting to possess them. When they were enslaved, though, they brought a trail of ruin, being passed from hand to hand, stolen, bought in blood, becoming the cause of fights and murders and the sundering of friends and brothers. It was only from other kinden, and their small and greedy minds, that they learnt of such things as sadness.

Salma had been different. Salma had been an island in the raging sea of anger and fear and lust. Salma had brought back to her an awareness of the nobility of his people, the one people that the Butterfly-kinden consented to live amongst. But Salma had a flaw, in that his nobility had driven him to a desperate, violent course.

She had known it would end like this, but she had led Morleyr and the others here anyway, desperate to find him in time to snatch him from the claws of the Empire, to rescue him as she had rescued him before the walls of Tark. Freed now from the earth, from the tunnel that Morleyr had crafted with his own hands; freed from the general’s tent and rising with flaming wings above the fighting that spread out from it, she saw him.

He had fallen to his knees just then, and the Wasp was dragging the blade out, and she felt, in her own soul, the life that was Salme Dien wink out – cut to the heart, dead on the instant – and beyond even her powers to bring back.

She had already learnt many terrible things from the Empire and its subject peoples. She had learnt of betrayal and need and contempt, bigotry and vice. She had learnt hate and rage, but never until now had she experienced these emotions herself. There came surging through her something monstrous, roaring and screeching. There was a voice in her mind and it was crying out for something her kind had never known before.

Vengeance! it screamed, and she was powerless against it, battered by the storm of feeling that was now blowing her from the sky down towards General Malkan.

She saw him look up, shielding his eyes. Beyond him, the Wasp soldiers were no longer rushing frenziedly backwards and forwards, but instead were staring only at her. She was used to that, to attracting such attention. The massed eyes of 500 men were no obstacle to her. Her attention was on Malkan only.

She saw him take a step away, stumbling, the sword becoming loose in his hands, falling from his grip.

She screamed, and let her Art fly from her, all of it, using Art that no other kinden could know. So the Empire had taught her how to hate, at last, and she would teach them something in turn.

Balkus took his men forwards another twenty yards, and by now they dutifully formed their two ranks of archery line around him without needing to be told. The battle was going raggedly, messily, for not even the Sarnesh mindlink could force this pre-dawn fight to run smoothly. The Wasps had rallied swiftly along the far edge of the line, and now there was a solid block of soldiers opposing the centre, composed of imperial sentinels and heavy infantry with a circling screen of the light airborne. The Sarnesh advance had ground to a halt.

Losing our advantage. The surprise and momentum that had carried them this far was fast disappearing. The attackers’ losses were mounting and Balkus was acutely aware that his detachment was due for a hammering if the Wasps actually threw a counterattack his way. Parops’ Tarkesh soldiers were keeping a line of shields braced against the stings and flagging snapbow bolts that arced over, thus giving cover to Balkus’ snapbowmen. However the Wasp line was growing longer by the minute, as more of their men ran to the front. Now, Balkus had Plius’ men making a line down his formation’s right flank, taking up where Parops’ shields left off and watching the imperial lines extend ever further to flank them. The Tseni agent, squeezed into hastily refitted armour, was white-faced and sweating. He had been a long time as a civilian in Sarn.

Balkus shook his head, whilst around him the snapbowmen of Collegium loosed their shots, scattering the Wasp line as it tried to form up. The Mantis warband that had been on his far right had been scythed down almost to a man by an enemy snapbow volley, and a moment earlier he had felt in his mind the sudden flare and silence that had signified a leadshot ball ploughing through twenty ranks of Sarnesh soldiers.

But where in the wastes is their real artillery? Apart from the leadshotter, and a lone catapult somewhere towards the rear of the enemy’s camp, there had been nothing so far, not even war-automotives. Does that mean Salma actually pulled it off?

The order came just then. Commander Balkus, your men to loose on the Wasp centre.

What about our flank? Balkus demanded, but then realized that the thought had remained in his head. He could not question the order. Obedience was too deeply bred in him. The Wasps across from him were already finding the range, so that Parops’ men were taking a battering. Balkus turned his attention to the solid mass of heavy infantry at the centre, and saw that they were about to press forwards.

We are dead, he realized – another thought he was keeping to himself – and then he shouted, ‘With me!’ and rushed to get in range of the Wasps, taking advantage of the space that opened up between Parops and the Sarnesh main force.

A snapbow bolt, at the limit of its range, jammed into his mail with a spark of pain but he ignored it, knowing that his men were following him, and that enough of them were bright enough to know what a bad idea this was. The Wasp left flank, which had been trading shot with his men, suddenly began to pull together, to seize the opportunity. Without being asked, Plius’ contingent moved their shield-wall to take the brunt of them as they came.

‘Throw everything you’ve got into those lads!’ Balkus shouted out in a real battlefield bellow. The men and women of Collegium fell into place around him as though they were professionals, and not just a rabble of tradesmen, merchants and adventurers. Their expressions, Beetle and Fly and Ant and many others, were fixed and blank, concentrating on the task in hand while blotting out the carnage around them. It was only their second battle, and this time they had no walls to stand behind.

The Wasp centre surged forwards, and Balkus’ snapbowmen opened up almost as one. The closest corner of the Wasp formation crumpled instantly, sending a shock from man to man, so that the far side was still moving, but out of step, and the near side was at a standstill. In this second of confusion, the Sarnesh began charging them, thundering forward shield to shield, whilst the men of the second rank loosed their crossbows and snapbows directly into the faces of the enemy line.

‘They’re coming!’ Plius bellowed, drawing his blade for the first time. The Wasp left wing, heedless of what was happening at their centre, was rushing them, both on the ground and in the air. Balkus watched his own people reloading all around him, and knew they would be in time for one more round.

‘And loose!’ and they did, raking through the spread formation of light airborne and infantry. The Tseni soldiers braced themselves, with shields overlapping, and the Wasps struck them head on. Between Balkus and the Tseni, Parops’ men were ready waiting, cutting into place like the blades of shears to trap the Wasps between their shields and those of Plius’ contingent. To Parops’ left, there were only the Collegium irregulars to hold the line.

‘Nailbows!’ Balkus roared, and took his own up from its strap, emptying it rapidly into the charging Wasps. The roar of the weapons from all around him told him that his order had been heard, and for a moment the Wasp charge was down to nothing, as though a great fist had struck them still. Then they were coming on again, and Balkus had his sword drawn whilst his band of militia were taking up their shields and maces, axes and spears, with the pikes thrusting in from the second and third ranks. The Tseni line buckled abruptly, no longer enough of them left to hold. The shock of impact recoiled into Parops’ shield-wall, as the Wasps drove a wedge between him and Balkus’ men. Plius died without ever striking a blow.

From behind the Wasps, from within their camp, came a sudden, soundless explosion.

It was light only, with no force: a monstrous wash of white light. Balkus reeled back, covering his eyes, hearing a few sounds of metal on metal, the scream of a man wounded. The Wasps had meanwhile faltered, scattering within feet of their targets, pulling back. Balkus, still blinking, saw them looking around, their officers trying to find out what had just happened.

Something was burning within the Wasp camp – no, not burning, something was alight. Hanging in the air was a human shape, but one so bright that it hurt the eyes. The Wasps closer to it had all turned towards it, but were now pushing away. The light was so bright that Balkus could see every detail beneath it. This was not bright like day. No day had ever been so harshly radiant.

There was a figure directly before that light, and Balkus swore in awe and fear because the man standing there was burning, flaming incandescent. His very armour was glowing white-hot with the focus of that terrible light. This was Art, Balkus realized, but Art that he had never seen before, and never wanted to see again. The man was staggering, flailing, and yet he still faced the searing, glowing creature before him, the light so excruciating that he could not draw himself away from it, even as his armour melted on his boiling skin.

And there was a flare, another tidal wave of light ripping through the Wasp army, so that those closest to the fire, those that had turned to see what it was, screamed and clutched at their eyes and fell to the ground.

And it was gone, and the torches and lanterns of the Wasp camp barely touched the utter dark, but the Sarnesh were in one another’s minds and they rammed home their attack into the suddenly disarrayed Wasps. Then Balkus gave the order to shoot at an enemy he knew was there, only yards before him, unseen and unseeing, and the snapbows of Collegium shattered the Wasp left and broke them apart.