Salute the Dark

Twenty-Seven

The sky was streaked with the smoke from failing orthopters.

The Solarnese had no control over the fighting. The Wasps were using their greater mobility to split the locals up, dropping squads of the airborne down between them, holding strategic alleys and avenues so as to divide the city into manageable sections. Jemeyn’s people, some 200 men and women of the Path of Jade, were now cut off from the rest of the fighting, and there were seventy or eighty of the enemy blocking their way, holed up in a narrow street with a few ensconced in the buildings either side for flanking shots. Time was running short. If another forty appeared behind them things would get particularly nasty.

‘We have to take them!’ Nero declared. Jemeyn shook his head, with teeth bared. He had a curving Solarnese sword clutched defiantly in one hand but his nerve was going. Nero could see it visibly fraying.

‘We have to go!’ Nero insisted. Jemeyn licked his lips. His fighters kept shouting insults and challenges at the Wasps, but they were keeping well out of sting range. Some of them had crossbows, but the Solarnese fashion was for little pocket-sized things that had no reach to speak of.

The Solarnese fight for style, Nero reflected, while the Wasps fight for substance. This isn’t going to go well.

‘Listen to me,’ he began, but he already had gone through all the reason and logic of it. The fact of it was simply that Jemeyn could not bring himself to grasp the nettle, and that was that.

‘Behind us!’ someone cried, and Nero swore, kicking up into the air to see better. Instead of another detachment of the black and yellow, what he saw gladdened his heart.

It was Odyssa the Spider-kinden, and not alone. Lumbering behind her were at least three score of her mercenaries: huge, broad-shouldered men with massive claws and jutting jaws, all Scorpion-kinden warriors from the Dryclaw desert, those inveterate slavers, raiders and sell-swords. Nero was gladder than he could believe possible, just to see them.

He saw the same uplift of spirits surge through the Solarnese, too. These Scorpions, however dubious their reputation, looked the business.

‘We need to punch our way through!’ Nero proclaimed. ‘To get to where the real fighting’s at.’ Odyssa merely nodded and he saw, all Spider masks and airs aside, that she looked pale and frightened. He guessed that she had never been in a real battle before.

The Wasps had closed ranks on seeing the mercenaries appear. They had raised a fence of spears, and they had their stings and their blades ready behind them. The Scorpions, however, had massive cleaving swords, five or six feet long, just made for the job of hacking a hole through a line of men who carried no shields. Others had heavy crossbows or throwing axes, most had at least a leather cuirass and kilt, but some were bare-chested and their leader wore a breastplate over a long chain hauberk.

‘Gonna hurt, this,’ the chief Scorpion remarked.

‘And?’ Nero demanded, as a flying machine hit the ground a street away. Whether it was Solarnese or imperial he never knew, but he did not flinch.

‘So let’s get to it,’ said the Scorpion, and he raised his great sword over his head one-handed and bellowed a roar that could have been heard out across the Exalsee, and which shook the Wasps as they consolidated their stand. Then the Scorpions were charging, and taking the Solarnese with them, in a sudden, rushing mob descending on the soldiers. Nero took up his sword, a short blade stolen from the enemy that was like a broadsword to him, and he lifted it high and joined the charge, his wings a blur, scooting over the ground in the very front rank.

He witnessed the sting-blast that felled Jemeyn, the man pitching back to trip the two following behind him, but of the shot that then struck Nero himself he saw nothing at all.

Axrad was very nearly too quick for her, his striped orthopter darting out from beneath the barrels of her rotaries and dancing along the length of the Starnest. Taki’s heart was heavy as stone. She had known Scobraan a long time and, although they had not always had kind words for each other, they had never been enemies. The Esca Volenti dived after Axrad, jinking with him, her aim creeping inexorably on to him.

Elsewhere, across the sky over Solarno, there were tens of private duels. Niamedh’s beautiful, sleek Executrix drove into a Wasp fixed-wing and forced it down into one of the carrier blimps, propellers shredding the cumbersome dirigible’s airbag. Drevane Sae’s jewelled dragonfly stooped on the streets of Solarno, the city of his lifelong enemies, his arrows picking off Wasp officers who were trying to organize the defence on the ground. The ugly, blunt-nosed Bleakness, constant scourge of the Exalsee, fired its broadside banks of shrapnel-casters at anything that came close, even as the Bleakness itself closed towards the great overhanging canopy of the Starnest.

Axrad’s flier was abruptly beyond the great dirigible’s frame, and it dropped out of sight instantly. Taki cursed, pulled up and high, knowing that, in his position, she would have then looped round the airship’s hull in order to meet her enemy. She was right, and he came back into view even as she was poised at the point of her dive, his fleet, agile ship leaping into sight for an ambush that she had not been fool enough to fall for. Instead he rose now to meet her, and she fell upon him, and their weapons began to blaze at the same time.

Two bolts clipped her hull, then a third smashed the window of her cockpit and clipped her shoulder, enough to make her tug on the stick without intention. She dragged her goggles down over her face against the blasting air, while Axrad’s undamaged vessel passed over her so close that their beating wingtips touched.

In the instant she was spiralling away, fighting to get back on the level, and she knew that he must be wrestling for just the same goal, and then the Esca was hers again and she swung back towards Axrad, towards the Starnest, seeing him find his place and commence a mirror-image move.

He had killed Scobraan, and who knew how many others, but he was a pilot to reckon with and she could not take that from him.

Elsewhere, the Creev’s Nameless Warrior danced with three Wasp orthopters. The halfbreed slave, the finest pilot of Chasme, had a ballista bolt jammed through his leg, pinning him to his weakening hull, though he barely felt it. He had no Art-flight anyway, and if his ship died, so would he. His rotaries, four of them, spat out their bolts, and span together about one axis to make a storm of shot, smashing one Wasp flier entirely, shredding its wings to ribbons, leaving a punctured carcase of its hull. He was faltering, though, his body and ship both wearing thin. He would die above his enemies’ city unmourned and unseen by any save for the Wasp that would bring him down – but not yet. He had some killing left to do before the end.

Axrad was now flying straight, and Taki knew that he would soon end it one way or the other. The Esca was shaking in unfamiliar ways: the poor ship had taken her share of beatings in this fight.

She pulled the trigger even as Axrad did, and she saw furrows raking into his hull before her rotary jammed altogether, and his shots slammed into the Esca’s undercarriage.

Oh.

She must dive aside now, but when she did he would find his place behind her, and then she would be lost. Another shot lanced past her, through the broken cockpit, heading for the engine casing.

She counted. Three bolts passed her by and one tore straight through the flesh of her arm. She screamed.

Taki pulled the release, and the broken frame of the cockpit fell away, and she kicked up, despite the pain, letting her wings flower.

Axrad pulled up at the very last moment, pulled up late because he had been so determined to bring her down that he had not realized he had already succeeded.

She was nearly caught between the two craft. Only a Fly-kinden’s swift reflexes saved her as the empty, abused Esca Volenti drove straight into Axrad’s flier, their wings snarling instantly, the Esca’s nose snapping on Axrad’s underside and then breaking through.

She did not notice if he was able to fly clear, as the two dying ships span madly down towards the earth.

She had a dagger, and the Starnest, which blotted out her sky, was very large, but even so it was all right because someone else had a larger blade than that.

She should have known that Hawkmoth, the old pirate, had preyed on airships before. Who knew how many he had assailed in the sky, and sent plummeting down to the Exalsee, where his shipbound confederates would be waiting? Over the Starnest’s taut canvas the Bleakness dipped low, a black and evil-looking flying machine, armoured and squat, with all the natural grace of a scarab in flight. From beneath it had unsheathed two curving blades, each the length of a man. There was no subtlety in it. The pirate simply threw his machine against the airbag and unseamed it, from stern to fore, with twin gashes seventy feet from end to end.

At first it seemed that even this had not affected this pride of the Wasp airforce, but then the difference told, the lighter gas venting out from the violated compartments, until the colossal bulk of the Starnest was dipping, sagging, and then falling down upon the city it had been sent to conquer.

He would not come to bed. Stenwold, instead, sat at his desk with reports and maps and tried to make sense of it.

‘You must sleep, surely,’ Arianna urged him. She was standing at the door to his study, wrapped in a robe of his that was vastly too large for her. ‘Stenwold, they will want you on the walls again tomorrow.’

‘And I shall go,’ he said. She noticed his hands were shaking. ‘Look at all this they have given me. The curse of this city is paper! We have a war on, and every man feels he must put it down on paper for me to read!’

‘Then don’t read them,’ she said. ‘They’ll tell you nothing you don’t already know.’

‘But there might be something,’ he said. ‘How could I go to the wall tomorrow knowing that I might have missed the one thing, the flaw, the gap…’ His fists clenched.

She approached him, put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Stenwold, please, come to bed.’

His whole frame was shaking. ‘What am I going to do?’ he demanded.

‘Sten… We fought the Vekken, didn’t we?’

‘The Empire aren’t the Vekken. Their general even told me as much, but I didn’t listen. The Vekken never hit us this hard so soon. The Vekken had not so many men who could just leap over our walls. I have lost…’ He choked. ‘I have lost one man in three of my own command already, after just two days’ full fighting. We cannot hold them.’

‘But-’

He blundered up out of his chair with a cry of rage and anguish, turning the entire desk over, scattering papers across the room. His face was distraught. She recoiled from him and he smashed a fist into a wall.

‘In the Amphiophos they are already talking about surrender,’ he said, staring at the plaster where he had just cracked it. ‘They are already saying that we only managed to hold off the Vekken until Teornis came to save us. They say that, and it is true. But who will save us this time, Arianna? We have spread this war across all the enemy. We… I made sure that the wasps would fight on all fronts: here, Sarn, the Commonweal, Solarno, the Spider-lands. Now we pay the cost! Who do we call on when our own walls shake? There is nobody!’

He had resumed a mask of calm, but she saw him shaking still behind it.

‘There must be a way,’ he whispered. ‘Somewhere, there must be a way… But we are losing our air defences. We are a kinden never meant to fly, and our Mantids, our Dragonflies, our flying machines – the Wasps are destroying them. It is Tark all over again. Unless we surrender soon they will burn my city, Arianna. Collegium represents five hundred years of learning, of progress, and they will burn it.’

She came to him, putting her arms around him. ‘You’ll think of something.’

He shuddered. ‘I have no more thoughts. My mind is hollow. Who can I turn to? Who do I have left? I sent Balkus to Sarn; Tisamon is fled, and Tynisa after him; Che is in Tharn, they tell me! Even Thalric, damn him, is gone! Any one of them might have the secret that would save us, but they’re not here! Look at me, Arianna. I am a spymaster without agents! Was there ever such a wretched thing as that?’

She drew back from him. ‘Sten, you have to sleep,’ she said again. ‘You’ll be good for nothing tomorrow.’ If there was a curious flatness to her voice he did not notice it. Inside her, his words had struck something cold. Can Collegium be doomed, really? She pictured the Wasps triumphant in these familiar streets, a victory that she herself had once worked so hard to bring about.

Stenwold righted his desk with a grunt and stared about at his scattered papers. ‘I can’t sleep,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I have work…’

She looked at him: the fat and frantic Beetle now abandoned by everyone. Has it come to this? Had he been nothing but the sum of his friends?

She retreated downstairs, feeling shaken. She had assumed, as did all Collegium, that they would grind the Empire down at their gates. But the Empire had no use for gates. The Beetles were better prepared than the Tarkesh had been but the Imperial Army had not stood still either.

She began to consider that remaining here inside the walls of Collegium might not be the wisest thing to do. She began to think of what options she had left open for herself.

An hour later she returned upstairs to Stenwold, bringing him a mug of herb tea, which he drank gratefully, once again fully absorbed in his papers. It was bare minutes later that he fell asleep.

General Tynan yawned and stretched, subduing his temper. It had flared automatically when he was woken not much past midnight by one of his aides, but he had faith in their good sense, knowing they would not risk his anger on anything trivial.

His body-servants dressed him in a loose robe and sandals, with a swordbelt girded over it. ‘This had better be good,’ he warned them. ‘Who’s outside?’

‘Major Savrat, sir.’

Tynan’s eyes narrowed. Savrat was Rekef Outlander, he had been given to understand. This unwelcome intrusion meant that either the Rekef would now give him some long-buried instructions, or that some intelligence had come to the Rekef that they wanted to share. If it was the latter, he certainly wanted to know about it. He had scouts spread out over several square miles north of Collegium in anticipation of a Sarnesh relief force. News from General Malkan and the Seventh was overdue.

Savrat was ushered into his tent and Tynan stared at him balefully. There was always the chance this man was Rekef Inlander keeping an eye on Tynan himself.

‘What is it?’ he demanded shortly. ‘I’ve a war to run.’

‘Then I may be able to win it more swiftly for you,’ Savrat told him with a smug little smile. ‘We have a visitor from the city.’

Tynan scowled at him. ‘It’s late. No guessing games.’

Savrat ducked out of the tent briefly, and when he returned it was with a young Spider-kinden girl in dark, close-bound clothing.

‘What’s this?’ Tynan asked, and then directly to her face, ‘Who are you supposed to be, that I should care?’

‘Arianna of the Rekef Outlander, General. Stationed in Collegium.’

He took a moment to digest that, and then glanced at Savrat. ‘That you’ve brought her to me at all shows you think she’s genuine.’

‘She knows the code-signs, General. They’re old signs, but she was put in place before the Vekken tried to crack this city, so that makes sense.’

‘Why now?’ Tynan asked Arianna.

‘I haven’t been able to get out unseen until now, General. There are currently fewer Collegiate soldiers on the walls, after the last two days.’

‘I suppose that’s true,’ Tynan allowed. Savrat was looking intolerably pleased with himself, at this unearned victory of the Rekef. Tynan switched his scowl from him to the Spider girl. ‘You can give me a report on the city’s defences, how they’re holding up?’ he asked. It was clearly going to be a long night, and a sleepless one. He went over to his camp-bed and sat down on it, rubbing his face.

‘I can, sir.’

This could all wait until morning, was the thought crossing his tired mind. If the girl had any real secrets, though, he would want to put them into action as soon as the dawn came. The night was getting longer and later the more he considered it.

‘Savrat, go make yourself useful,’ he snapped. ‘Fix us some mulled wine at least.’ The insulted look on the Rekef man’s face, as he departed, was worth the early waking.

‘So speak,’ Tynan said to Arianna. ‘Tell me how they’re taking my visit, on the other side of the walls.’

‘Well, General,’ she started, ‘firstly the losses to Collegium’s fighting men have been considerable. The Beetle-kinden are not a naturally martial race and, even though they have plenty of other kinden employed in their ranks as well, the fighting strength of Collegium is nowhere near that of a comparable Ant-kinden city-state or garrisoned Wasp town. When you do force the walls, or exact a surrender out of their ruling council, there will be little resistance. They may even soon grow to accept imperial rule quite peaceably.’

‘Good, good.’ He looked her up and down, wondering how a Spider-kinden had ended up in this position, so far away from her home. ‘If they’d choose to surrender tomorrow it would be gladly accepted by me. I have no wish to destroy anything the Empire can use. Of course, the soldiers will want their share of blood for the comrades they’ve lost, but after that…’

Savrat came in just then, looking surly, with drinks. Arianna accepted one gladly, and Tynan sipped his thoughtfully. Savrat took the opportunity to stand next to the Spider girl, with a proprietorial air. No doubt he would be expecting a commendation for this.

‘Who were you working under, at Collegium?’ Tynan asked. An odd memory had come to him. Was there not some Wasp officer who had been disgraced there? What was his name?

‘Lieutenant Graf, sir,’ Arianna replied promptly, and Tynan relaxed. Whatever name he was thinking of, that was not it.

He yawned and stretched mightily, trying to rid himself of the last vestiges of sleep. ‘Well, tell me what cracks we can put the prybar into, Arianna,’ he continued. ‘And then let us get this siege over with as swiftly as possible.’ He upended his goblet of wine, draining it with relish.

Something cold touched him on the side of the neck even as he swallowed. It was recognizable enough that he kept the goblet held up, quite still, until she removed it from his hand.

Major Savrat was slumped on the spot where he had been standing. She had driven her blade into his throat with a brutal efficiency. Now that same blade was at Tynan’s own neck, still gory with the major’s blood. He looked into her eyes, expecting to see the certainty of his death there.

He saw almost blank fear instead: she was terrified. In a way that scared him more than seeing eyes of a cold killer. If an assassin had not killed him yet, there was still hope, but this nervous girl might stab at any moment out of sheer fright.

He began to move his hands very slowly upwards, but she jabbed him, drawing blood.

‘Keep your palms out and away from me,’ she stammered. ‘I’ve worked with Wasps, General.’

The knife she had was very keen. He felt a trail of warm blood from the tiny puncture on his neck.

‘So what now?’ he asked, slowly and carefully.

‘I really am Rekef,’ she got out. ‘Or at least I was. Only I left them. I betrayed them.’

‘That explains a great deal,’ Tynan said, trying to sound amiable and failing. ‘Major Savrat deserves his fate for his poor intelligence.’

‘I don’t imagine Major Thalric bothered filing a report about me before his own superiors tried to kill him,’ Arianna explained. He could see in her eyes the madly whirling thought: What do I do now? ‘Do you want to know why I have not simply killed you?’

‘The question has crossed my mind,’ Tynan replied. ‘I should have seen this coming. For Spider-kinden this tactic is standard, to try for the enemy leader – cut off the army’s head.’

‘But it works,’ she said. They had both remained almost motionless for a very long time, and one or other of them would not be able to keep it up much longer. The slightest move would destroy her advantage, and he would then be able to kill her with his sting.

‘It doesn’t work. The Commonwealers found that out years ago. An imperial army has a chain of command. If you kill me, I have capable colonels, they have experienced majors. Though I say it myself, a dead general causes minimal disruption in a well-run army.’

The knife twitched again and cut another little mark beside the first, moved by nothing more than her nerves.

He hissed involuntarily. How fast can I grab for the blade? How good are her reflexes?

‘This seems an odd display of bravado,’ he got out. Should I hope that a servant or one of Savrat’s people may come in? But they would be too surprised to act straight off, and if she kept her head she could still kill me in an instant.

‘Stenwold wouldn’t want me to kill you,’ she remarked pensively.

‘The Beetle general.’

‘Stenwold Maker,’ she replied softly. ‘He is a fat, bald, clumsy old man. Also, he is mine.’

The third cut on his neck was due to his own surprised reaction. He was becoming impatient, his Wasp temper rising, in a situation where impatience could prove fatal. ‘So, what?’ he demanded.

She doesn’t know.

But she was already saying, ‘I had wanted… wanted to try to talk to you, to convince you…’

He opened his mouth to say something, and just then a lieutenant of the watch put his head into the tent, mouth open to speak.

Arianna stabbed, even as Tynan tried to hurl himself off the bed.