Seal of the Worm

Thirty-One

Reinforcements were coming down the rail line from Helleron; troops rushed in from all points of the Empire, whoever could be mobilized in time. The Sarnesh were on their way, too, with a pan-Lowlander army and a new tactician.

The core of the force taking a stand against them in the ruins of Malkan’s Stand had originally been intended as a garrison force for Collegium and had since become a field army by default. The colonel in charge, a man named Brakker, had arrived not long before with elements of the First Army, and his feints and manoeuvres had kept the Sarnesh confined in their city up until Collegium had fallen. After that, and with Tynan’s orthopter messengers even then turning around and refuelling, they had fallen back eastwards. They were operating almost entirely without orders, but the colonel knew that the Sarnesh could not be allowed to march unimpeded towards the Imperial border. He sent daily for more troops and artillery, and asked that General Tynan be allowed to come and take command, bringing the veteran Second with him.

For more than a tenday, Brakker’s forces had been on the retreat, but they had done everything in their power to make the Sarnesh advance difficult: poisoned wells, broken up the rail line, littered the terrain with mines and traps. All that while, the Ants’ own pilots were flying almost constantly overhead in their ersatz Stormreaders, making strafing runs and clumsily dropping the occasional bomb. Brakker was no tested battlefield officer, but a good logistician and planner, and he did everything he could to slow the Sarnesh, apart from actually taking a stand against them.

Word had come from Tynan. He and his army had been called to the capital – the Second to defend it, he himself to account for his decisions. It was a chilling thought that, even in this moment of crisis, they were all still being judged by the Rekef, by the Red Watch, by the Empress herself.

The Sarnesh had been closing the distance steadily, and once the lost garrison force reached the ruins of the Stand their colonel knew that they would get no better terrain to turn and hold the Ants at sword point for as long as possible. This place had once been the pride of Sarn, an indestructible fortress intended to last the ages, save that the Eighth had brought it low with the newest artillery, and now only craggy ruins were left. Ruins were better than an open field, though, so Brakker started refortifying as best he could, and setting up what little light artillery he had been left with.

Then, with the Sarnesh now absurdly close, the reinforcements had arrived down the rails from Helleron: a ragbag of disassociated units with brief orders to hold firm until further notice. The newcomers had real artillery, at least, and a good number of engineers, plus half a dozen Farsphex orthopters to at least dull the edge of the Sarnesh air superiority. The troops themselves included two thousand Light Airborne, who were so new to the uniform that the colonel considered it a wonder that half of them could even fly. To give them some backbone, General Marent of the Third had detached a couple of hundred heavy infantry from his own men and sent them along – strictly without orders, the colonel surmised. Then there were the Auxillians: Ants from Maille and Monas, Grasshoppers from Jhe Lien, all come to join the colonel’s own sizeable contingent of Vesserett Bee-kinden and give their lives for the Empire.

Not that this last was likely to be an honour unique to the Auxillians, Brakker knew. Hold until further notice was not the sort of order any commanding officer looked forward to receiving. At least their force now equalled a more respectable fraction of the Sarnesh in numbers, and perhaps the Ants’ firebrand tactician might take a moment to consider the potential losses on both sides when he came hoping to prise the Wasps from their makeshift fortifications.

Milus looked over the entrenched Wasps and their allies and laughed briefly.

‘What’s amusing you, Tactician?’ Stenwold asked him. He and Kymene had been trailing the Sarnesh leader as he stalked through the camp, and at last as he came to view the enemy. Even with the Wasps in sight, Milus was not being very forthcoming about his plans.

‘Don’t you see how the tide’s turned?’ the Ant asked them. ‘For too long the Empire’s had the initiative, but now look at them repeating our mistakes. We couldn’t hold out here when there was still a fortress to hide inside. What chance have they got?’

‘They have the chance to buy time for the balance of their forces,’ Kymene pointed out.

Milus made a doubtful noise. ‘I don’t see any of the Second. It looks as if the Gears are on the run. I’d hoped to find them here as well.’

‘You were hoping to be outnumbered?’

Milus smiled pleasantly. ‘Tomorrow we will smash the Wasps. I’d rather we smashed as many of them as we can. I’d rather that balance of their forces was as small as possible.’

‘You seem very confident. Perhaps you might tell us why so, given that you no doubt expect us to commit our own forces,’ Kymene put forwards.

‘I am confident, and you have agreed to abide by my battle plans,’ he told them implacably. ‘Have your forces ready for a fight tomorrow, that’s all I ask.’

‘No night attack?’ queried Stenwold.

‘Not this time.’ That smile of his was maddening, and no doubt Milus knew it. ‘In fact, we’ll give them a couple of hours to watch us getting ready, just to rub it in. I want them to know exactly what we’re doing.’ He looked at their expressions and then laughed again; the sound was chilling to Stenwold, because Ants didn’t laugh. Not out loud, not like that. Milus was playing at being a human being for their benefit: jovial Uncle Milus.

‘If you didn’t trust me, what are you doing here with your soldiers?’ the tactician asked them both. ‘You have some other war to fight? There are a great many Wasps out there, War Master, Commander. We will devour them piece by piece, but I will still need all our forces. I’m not going to waste any bodies on foolishness.’

But you may waste them on what you consider necessity, Stenwold filled in silently, guessing that Kymene was thinking the same. And if so, it won’t be your own Sarnesh that you waste, I’ll wager.

‘Tomorrow I’ll give out the battle order, and you’ll see what I intend. Master Maker, I have a great respect for you . . . I hear the Wasps call you “General” and you are truly a tactician amongst your people. But a Beetle-kinden tactician all the same, and there are reasons nobody ever heard of such a thing. I know you consider my people simple and direct and predictable, but we understand war and the use of weapons – all manner of weapons. Trust me, and we will carry the battle tomorrow.’

Stenwold would have to be satisfied with that, because the tactician was now pointedly busying himself with the administration of his army, and so any other discussion would have to wait.

With dusk on its way, Milus retreated to his tent in the midst of the Sarnesh camp, and it was there that Stenwold went looking for him, guided in by silent sentries and knowing that unspoken word of his arrival would have reached the tactician the moment he made his presence known.

‘War Master,’ Milus greeted him. ‘Only an hour out of my company and here you are once more.’ Again such an utterly un-Ant-like comment that Stenwold was momentarily thrown. He had caught Milus sitting on a folding stool inside his tent, reading by the light of a hanging lamp – not a scout’s report or a quartermaster’s tally but what looked like a Collegiate novel, some lurid tale. He was quite sure that the whole odd impression had been planned purely to unbalance him, constructed even while he still picked his way through the camp.

‘There is one other matter that I wished to speak about with you in private,’ Stenwold confirmed, refusing to be discomfited.

Milus shrugged. ‘Speak.’

‘You have a prisoner, a Fly woman named Lissart. I am aware that she has travelled with the army and is here in this camp.’

For a moment he saw a change: the false expression freezing on Milus’s face, the body language grinding unattended to a halt. Then: ‘What of it?’ and a little more caution, perhaps, in the way the words came out.

‘I would like her released.’

‘She’s a Wasp agent.’

‘Nonetheless.’

Milus rolled his eyes, back in full mummery now, but Stenwold wondered just what the Fly girl meant to him, that mention of her had momentarily dragged him out of his charade.

‘This is because of that man of yours, is it?’ the Ant asked him. ‘The awful spy – the one who was in Solarno with her.’

‘His name is Laszlo,’ Stenwold stated. ‘I admit he’s far from the perfect spy, but there is a difference between spy and agent, and he excels in the field of action. The recovery of my city owes a great deal to his hard work.’

‘And he’s put you up to this.’

‘Before Collegium fell, he asked for my help, my intervention,’ Stenwold replied. ‘Since then, he’s not pressed hard but I know he still wants her back, and I owe him, Milus.’

No doubt the Ant had a great deal of uncomplimentary things to say about that sort of thinking, but he kept them to himself and just remarked, ‘She worked for the Wasps. I still have a use for her.’

‘I’m told you’ve tortured her.’

Again that momentary stillness, leaving Stenwold wondering, increasingly uneasily, about why Milus cared – about why this conversation was even necessary.

‘What of it?’ The same careless response, but with a sharp edge ready to be unsheathed. And then, before Stenwold could speak, ‘It is a tool of statecraft and of war. Or it is everywhere else except Collegium.’

‘Some would say that is what makes us better than the Empire.’

Milus cast the book aside in a single, swift motion, one of incredible contained violence, so that the bundle of pages almost exploded against the tent wall, its bindings splitting at the spine. When he stood, he seemed quite calm, but that brief abandon was all the more shocking for that.

‘The goal of Sarn in this conflict is not to be better than the Empire. It is to be more victorious, War Master. Any measure to achieve that end is permitted. Sarn will survive, and for that to happen it appears that the Wasp Empire must fall. If the Wasps had come to us at the start and started talking terms, then perhaps you and I would be standing in very different places, but history has given you me as an ally, and for that you should be grateful. I am not interested in the navel-gazing of Beetle philosophers. I am interested in winning.’

‘And she helps you in this, does she? Somehow there are still secrets you’ve not already prised from her?’ After all, none of this was exactly revelation.

‘She heard a great deal about various Imperial personalities while she was in their employ. She has a good ear for gossip, and I may wish to ask her about whoever we end up against next.’ Milus held up a hand. ‘Are we two truly on the verge of coming to blows over one Fly-kinden turncoat?’

‘You tell me.’

Milus obviously wanted very much to show Stenwold that he appreciated the man’s spirit in taking this stand. He got the expression slightly, discernibly wrong, though. ‘What would you do if I refused?’

‘Be gravely disappointed in you. And I’d remember.’

The conversation balanced on a razor’s edge, and Stenwold waited to see which way it would fall.

‘Let’s get to Helleron,’ said Milus dismissively. ‘It won’t be long. From there this army will become an arrow pointing straight at Capitas, and the Helleren will have better and more up-to-date news than anything the Fly girl can tell me, and they’ll sell it more willingly, too.’

Stenwold nodded heavily, aware that he couldn’t necessarily trust the man, but aware that even though he needed Milus, so Milus needed him a little, too. That would have to do, and at least he would have something to tell Laszlo.

The next morning the Sarnesh began mustering for the assault, but they were certainly taking their time over it. Colonel Brakker was not sure whether this was meant as a taunt to try and get the Empire to abandon its position and attack, or whether the Ant tactician was having second thoughts about committing his forces. The first seemed vanishingly unlikely and the second too good to be true, but Brakker’s makeshift team of subordinates could offer no alternatives.

What it did mean was that he had plenty of chance to study the structure and arrangement of the Lowlander force, and to redeploy accordingly. The Sarnesh had taken the centre for their own, along with what he took to be Beetles and a rabble of other kinden in Collegiate uniforms. There was a big wing of Mantis-kinden on the Sarnesh left, which he guessed would be swift and mobile enough that the fortifications would not slow it down much, and they were so scattered that snapbow volleys would have only a limited effect on them. The enemy’s right was more of a plodding anvil to that hammer: mostly non-Sarnesh Ants and the red and black of Myna.

Keeping the Mantids back would be key to holding his position here for any length of time, Brakker surmised; it was no enviable task. He had heard plenty of horror stories about that kinden – how they had annihilated the old Fourth Army near Merro, and the grim, savage fighting that followed the Eighth’s incursions into the Netheryon quite recently. And, of course, the Eighth was lost, too – General Roder and his entire army massacred to the last man by the Sarnesh and their allies.

It gave Brakker a cold feeling just to think about it. He had never been intended as a field commander. He thought too far ahead, and too broadly, and it seemed to him that even in the last war the Empire had not been put in quite this position. Eighth gone, Second – the mighty Gears! – in full retreat, and ‘hold until further notice’ is the word from Capitas.

In his heart, Brakker had already begun to fear for the Empire and his kinden.

He would do the best he could with what they had given him. He must hold.

A quick decision, then: who would face the razor storm of the Mantis charge? He would concentrate his snapbows against the solid Sarnesh centre, where they would be most effective – and most especially he would place the new recruits there, where their more experienced brothers would give them heart. The logical choice for facing the Mantids was his Auxillians – the Ants, the Grasshoppers, the Bees. He spared the Maile detachment to fend off the enemy’s comparatively weak right, placed the men of Vesserett, of Jhe Lien and of Monas to sell their lives as dearly as possible against the Mantis left.

As he gave his orders, the Auxillian officers glanced at one another. He assured them that, once the Sarnesh were pinned, he would spare Wasp troops to back them up. Even as the words spilt out of him, everyone present knew that they were nonsense. This was not a battle for winning. Only for holding.

Then the Sarnesh and their allies were visibly on the move, and the artillery began speaking loud on both sides.

The first orthopter droned overhead, Brakker’s own Farsphex rising to meet the superior numbers of the enemy. A moment later the bombs began to fall.

Taki skimmed over the Imperial positions, noting just how much refortification they had managed in a relatively short time. The Stormreader she piloted was sluggish and bumbling, a profoundly unsatisfactory flying experience because of the load of bombs it carried. By Milus’s orders the combat flying would be undertaken by the Sarnesh pilots this time, allowing them to chase the handful of Farsphex about the sky and thus hone their skills in what should be a relatively safe air battle. She and the Collegiate and Mynan aviators had been left with the heavier Stormreaders, bombing craft refined by the skills of Willem Reader from the jury-rigged machines the Collegiates had used against the Second Army.

And doesn’t that seem a long time ago now? she reflected.

She had wanted to know why they hadn’t been bombing the Wasps for all they were worth every day since the Sarnesh began heading east. A Sarnesh pilot commander had explained that they didn’t want the Imperials just to run and keep running. Milus wanted his battle. He wanted to start cutting away slices of the Imperial forces. Hence, Taki and her pilots had maintained their aerial presence, even dropped the odd piece of ordnance, but they had held back: a war of shadows and misdirection to draw the Wasps to this place and this fight.

Now she unloaded the last of her bombs – holding only half a dozen, the Stormreaders were far less effective bombers than the Imperial machines that had rained fire on Collegium – and turned on a wingtip to head home for more. She marked out in her mind the arrangement of the enemy, where she might want to come back and spread some love. Only the centre, though. Those were Milus’s orders and, like most of the man’s plans, not to be questioned.

The Sarnesh were coming on in open order so as to deny Brakker’s snapbowmen a chance for a solid charge-stopping volley, but the bolts were flying fast both ways, the closing gap between the two forces shredded by shot. Brakker’s men had cover, and so far were getting the best of it, but the Ants would soon turn that around if they could get in close.

Because he was an administrator and not a warleader by nature, Brakker was very focused on the centre of the battle – the part of it that contained himself – and had been assuming that someone would tell him if other parts of it were not going according to plan. When the Mantis-kinden screamed unopposed into the Wasp right flank, he was completely unprepared, unable to formulate an order for one vital minute during which hundreds of his soldiers were killed in their trenches and dugouts.

By that time the Sarnesh were in full advance, pelting across the broken ground as fast as they could in their heavy mail, with felt-backed shields held high.

The Auxillians? Brakker had time to wonder. Did they chew through the Auxillians so fast?

He had far too many underlings clamouring for his attention right then, but he needed to see the field for himself, discern how it had all gone wrong. With a strangled grunt, he kicked into the air, Art wings carrying him above the throng.

The Auxillians were still there. The Ants and Bees and even the Grasshoppers were falling back with a discipline and dignity that any drill sergeant would have been proud of, utterly unmolested by the enemy. The Mantids were just rushing straight past them, across the front of their retreating formations, as though they weren’t there.

On the other side, the Ants from Maile were pulling out with the same almost dream-like calm, as though they had not noticed that there was a bloody battle in progress. The Lowlander right was already moving in to catch Brakker’s other flank.

Brakker opened his mouth to give some order – he had no idea what, but it was plain that something remarkable would be required, the sort of order that went down in the history books.

He never made the histories. A Sarnesh bolt took him in the chest as he hung above his army, and he dropped back into the panicking mass of his men. In moments those Wasps that still could were trusting to their wings, whilst the Auxillians marched implacably away.