Seal of the Worm

Thirty-Seven

There were several hundred of them in the slave pit, when it was dug. More arrived all the time, day and night. Even with their wings shackled, plenty could climb. Even without that, they could have simply stood on each others’ shoulders. The Slave Corps were at the rim constantly, watching. There was a sense of frustration about the lot of them: professionals not being allowed to do a professional job. Looking up at their faceless helms, te Mosca could still read emotion in them. The slavers who just came here to deliver a fresh load of live human meat were brusque and hard: it wasn’t their problem what happened after they left. The camp guards had probably been like that too, at heart. They were men who had chosen a profession that was a filthy word in Collegium. Surely, of all the villains of the Empire, the Slave Corps harboured the worst.

And yet she looked up at those men silhouetted against the bright sky and she saw them as just that: men. Some were still and some were vicious. Some threw stones at their charges for sport. Some took women from the pits for their own uses, and nobody stopped them.

And yet, though they tried to seem impassive, they were troubled: she saw it in the way they stood. There was a slow panic creeping through the Slave Corps. It was insignificant compared to the misery and squalor and fear of their charges, but it was there. The slaves kept coming in, and none was permitted to leave save through the slow death of neglect. They were being overwhelmed with their chosen commodity, like a glutton being force-fed with luxuries until he burst. Something in the Empire had gone dreadfully wrong, and these men had become the touchstone of it. Even the Slave Corps was asking the question ‘Why?’

Te Mosca wondered why as well. She had an active mind, a good imagination. It was not a facility designed to give her much joy, here and now.

Today the hungry mouth of the pit was given a change of diet. Today it fed on Wasps.

When they came to the brink, te Mosca thought they were more persecutors come to see the waste of life and potential this place represented. Then they were flung in, first a few and then by the dozens. They were women, uniformly, and most of them wore white robes. Asking around, te Mosca discovered they were some sort of sisterhood, the Mercy’s Daughters. They had followed the Imperial armies, giving respite and medical aid, but apparently they had not been an approved part of the Empire’s hierarchy. And now they were here, as expendable as the rest. Yes, they could have stung, perhaps; they could have fought. But they had been beaten and whipped, and some bore ragged scars or open wounds on their palms, to show what the slavers did to those of their own kind who resisted them.

And yet te Mosca watched, and she saw that these Daughters were plainly known to the Slave Corps, and she saw that disquiet take a deeper root and grow in their captors. It was as though they were waiting for the next orders, which might demand they consign themselves to the pit.

That night, as the slaves huddled in their great host, elbowing and pushing to keep away from that part of the pit which had become their overflowing and stinking latrine, Metyssa spoke.

At first the Spider storyteller was just speaking to those closest to her: Poll Awlbreaker and a handful of others from Collegium. She had been talking for some time before even te Mosca realized it. Metyssa had a low voice for a woman – slightly husky – and it did not carry well against the constant murmur and moan of the prisoners.

Except that that undercurrent of complaint was slowing and falling silent around her, as more and more tried to listen. Te Mosca pushed between the tight-packed bodies – a Fly-kinden’s meagre blessing – until she could hear what the woman was saying.

She’s calling on them to rise up, she assumed at first. She’s inciting them, somehow. But there was nothing of the call to arms in Metyssa’s voice. There was no dirge there, either. Her voice was bright and crisp. She was telling them about Collegium.

Not the real Collegium, of course. Not the city pocked with bomb craters; the city labouring under the boot of the Second Army; the city picked to pieces by war after war, siege after siege, until it had run out of all the resources required to keep out the foe, up to and including simple defiance. The stories Metyssa had sent to the expatriates in Sarn had never been the bleak truth, after all. They had been daring tales of a resistance that never was. They had been the stories of prisoners rescued, of lovers reunited, of rooftop chases and heroic deeds. She had populated them with distorted mirrors of the people around her. Locked in Poll’s basement, denied the sun and the air for fear that her very kinden would see her arrested and killed, she had cast herself as the dashing swordswoman. They had been Spider tales, full of energy and life, of trickery and convoluted plots.

To te Mosca’s ears, at first, there was nothing sadder that she could possibly hear than a doomed woman telling her shining stories to her companions in oblivion.

And yet they listened. Pressing close on all sides they came: men and women culled from the Collegiate streets; captives ripped from the broken principalities of the Commonweal; slaves bought or just confiscated from their settled lives about the Empire; citizens of Imperial dominions taken up in their scores because of their Inaptitude; Spider-kinden prisoners of war. A wave of quiet rippled piecemeal across the pit as they jostled each other into silence, until the only sound was Metyssa.

She spoke for an hour that night, and an hour the next morning. Te Mosca had been frightened that the Wasps would single her out but, so long as the prisoners were quiet, they didn’t care.

The next night she spoke for two hours – and now she was improvising, not just repeating the stories she had written for the expatriates. She added characters, she tangled their relationships. She told of their lives. That was the thing: she told of people who lived in some other world where things had gone differently. She took her imaginary protagonists to other places – her approximations of lands that her fellow captives had known. Nobody tried to correct her, even though she was fabricating most of what she said from whole cloth.

And the day after, a Slave Corps sergeant hauled Metyssa out, because she had caught his eye, and two of his colleagues – unranked soldiers as far as te Mosca could see – kicked him half to death and made him send her back. Only then did anyone realize that her stories had attracted a wider audience.

Still the new slaves came. Soon enough there was another shovel detail working on a third pit. But te Mosca would lie awake at night, once Metyssa was sleeping, and hear distorted snatches of story being passed about elsewhere: in the other pits, in the cages, between the guards.

She saw, then, how it would go: that the story, that invisible agent, would go from ear to ear amongst the slavers, and it would win them over. It would make them see their captives as individual and human, and they would be unable to go on with their work. They would turn against the evil that was demanded of them. They would open the cages, and step back from the lip of the pit. In te Mosca’s mind – famished and thin and filthy as she was – she could plan it all out, the liberation of thousands by the words of one Spider woman. It was a tale fit to be a legend of the old days, when armies were charmed by song, and monsters were tamed by a few magic phrases.

Then another airship arrived, but there were no slaves on this one. It brought an officer with red pauldrons who immediately took command from the lead slaver. It brought engineers as well: nervous, careful men who spent a long time unloading great metal canisters from the hold, treating them as though they were glass.

Then the Red Watch man secluded himself with the slaver chief, while everyone else stood around staring at the man-high barrels.

And the work began.

Slaves were picked out: the largest and strongest. They were made to dig, again, cutting channels into the side of each of the pits. Others were sent to clamber about the stinking territory of the cages, whose reek of decay and refuse was strong enough to overwhelm even the pits’ own stench.

They were putting barrels up on the cages, over the top of them. They were placing barrels at the mouth of each channel into the pits. Some of the slavers were joking about everyone getting a drink when they popped the bungs, but most of them just stood and stared at the canisters with a terrible fear and awe.

Poll Awlbreaker it was who identified the lines the engineers ran from barrel to barrel as fuses, and then had to explain to the massed Inapt what that meant.

And there was a name being passed from lip to lip – a name caught like a disease from the more agitated of the slavers. To most there it meant nothing, but there were enough Imperial slaves or former citizens to enlighten the ignorant.

‘Bee-killer,’ they said, and they stared at the canisters. And the Red Watch man would come out periodically and examine their handiwork, all the slaves hard at work, and he would nod and smile.

After sunset, Tynan received the latest scouts’ reports. The Lowlander army was moving on through the night, according to the pilots. They were keeping up a good, fast pace, with their own scouts and counter-saboteurs clearing the land ahead of Imperial ambushers, and with automotives repairing and replacing the rail lines that the Wasps had torn up.

Some detachments of the Imperial army had tried to get in their way, but without proper coordination and without sufficient numbers. Other forces had been diverted off to the Three-city Alliance states, where there was a full rebellion going on. Large elements of the Empire’s forces were hopelessly entangled in the fight with the Spiderlands, unable to return in time to be of any assistance.

And still the situation did not add up. There were definitely garrisons and armies that were simply not moving, or were dragging their feet about it, as if avoiding the fight. Officers whom Tynan had personally sent to and entreated for aid were not replying. Some Wasps had already given over their Empire for lost. Perhaps they were plotting out their little fiefdoms. It was the reign of the traitor governors all over again.

He had spoken with Marent and the others – his co-conspirators, rebels against the Empress on behalf of the Empire. Their little alliance of like minds was fragmenting. Nessen, the Consortium man, had been unsteady. Varsec the aviator was away; hopefully mustering a good aerial response. Tynan had sent Bergild along with him, because he guessed the pilots would be loyal to their own, above all.

Vorken the slaver was receiving his reports, too, from his own reprehensible branch of the services. He was corresponding with the camps. Tynan did not know what he was doing there, whether he had a plan, but it at least kept the man out of the way. He had expected a similar courtesy from the woman, Merva – ostensibly here to represent her husband back in Solarno – but she seemed to be enquiring about everything. He had a feeling there was more to her presence than had been vouchsafed, but he had men watching her, and there was no more he could do than that.

By all estimates, the Lowlanders seemed likely to arrive in mere days. The assembled Imperial forces would be hitting them as soon as they were in range of the artillery – including a handful of greatshotters already positioned and aimed down the rail line. Despite all they could do, Tynan knew that the battle for Capitas would begin shortly after that. The thought brought a bitter taste to his mouth and a queasy feeling to his stomach, but he was self-aware enough to think, I suppose they’d just ask us how we like it, since we did it so often to them, and to so many others. We always said it was our manifest destiny, the proof of our superiority. But what do we believe when Capitas lies in ruins under the Ant boot, eh? He shook himself and added, Another reason why we’ll not let it happen.

It appalled him how quickly everything had caved in towards this moment. Did we never actually put something in place for this? But, of course, Imperial policy was all expansion and conquest. If someone had stood before the Empress – or her predecessor – and suggested they plan for the Empire’s defeat, for an enemy army to penetrate to the gates of the capital, that luckless speaker would have been on crossed pikes within the hour. Curse it, if one of mine had said it to me, I’d have had them flogged, most likely.

He had retreated to his tent, poring over the updated plans of the defences, earthworks and artillery emplacements, the best paths of attack for their vaunted Sentinels, their indestructible war machines.

Except the Lowlanders destroyed some when they retook Collegium, and when they wiped out the Eighth as well. There were no absolutes in war. Even an old man like me needs to remember that.

‘General.’

He looked up sharply, seeing Major Oski there.

‘All in order, Major?’

‘The artillery? Yes, sir, absolutely. Everything we’ve got is all . . . lined up.’ The little man was ill at ease, sufficiently so that Tynan straightened up from the map table, abruptly suspicious.

‘What is it, Major?’

‘Someone here would like an audience, sir, if that’s . . .’ The Fly-kinden glanced back. ‘There’s someone you need to speak to.’

‘Do I?’ Tynan flexed his fingers, still uneasy, but if this was an assassin he guessed that there wouldn’t have been all the introduction. ‘Let’s see him, then.’

The man that stepped past Oski was a Bee-kinden, an Auxillian engineer with a captain’s rank badge whom Tynan thought he recognized as one of the Fly’s assistants. The moment the Bee stepped in, though, it was plain that something was wrong. The dynamic between them was all skewed, with the major deferring to the captain.

Rekef? But, no, it wasn’t like that – and who’d ever heard of a senior Rekef who wasn’t a good Wasp?

‘What is this?’ he demanded.

‘Sir, this is Captain Ernain.’ Oski appeared to be trying to make himself invisible. He was frightened, Tynan saw, and not just for himself. He was carrying far more anxiety than the normal life of a Fly could account for.

‘General,’ Ernain addressed him politely. ‘I’ve come here as the head of a delegation.’ His eyes flicked briefly to Tynan’s hands, but his expression remained calm.

‘Whatever it is, it can wait,’ Tynan said, without much hope. This was unlikely to be a wrangle over pay or conditions.

‘It cannot.’ No sir and no general. ‘I see that you and General Marent have called in every soldier you can. It’s a mighty force assembled out there.’

Tynan waited, as if poised on a knife edge. He had no sense of the assassin from Ernain but then, if the man was good enough, there would be no obvious sign. Still, only a sloppy assassin strikes up a conversation.

‘A lot of Auxillians out there,’ Ernain added, as if as an afterthought.

That hadn’t been something Tynan had wanted to hear because, yes, a great many of those hauled from their posts to the gates of Capitas had indeed been soldiers of the lesser kinden, those who were not citizens. Tynan had heard some rumours about the Empire’s slave soldiers deserting – even abandoning their Wasp masters in the midst of battle. The details had been sufficiently vague that he had drawn no definite conclusions, but now . . .

‘And what delegation are you here to represent, Captain Ernain?’ he asked softly. ‘The Auxillians in this army, perhaps?’

‘Not exactly,’ Ernain replied. ‘However, I would like to report that I and other Auxillian officers have received communications from the enemy. From Tactician Milus of Sarn himself.’

‘And what does Milus say to you, Captain?’

‘Walk away, and know freedom.’

‘I see.’ Tynan was already calculating. What proportion of the force here was Auxillian? Too many, and from so many cities. What could he do to restrain them if they attempted to desert or, worse, join the enemy? He could do so reasonably effectively unless, for example, he had a Lowlander army to fight at the same time. What showing could he still make against Milus if the Auxillians were gone? Almost certainly not enough of one. ‘And what has your response been, to this kind offer from the Sarnesh?’

‘We’ve not made one, not yet.’

So we come down to haggling now, like Helleren merchants. ‘And what do your Auxillians here want, Captain? Shall we cut to the core? I have a battle to plan.’

‘I do not represent the Auxillians here – or not them alone.’ Ernain did not seem in a hurry to get to the point. It must be a luxury for a slave soldier to make a general sweat. ‘You remember the war with the traitor governors?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘I’ll recall to you one of the most remarked-upon features of that war: the lack of other rebellion while the Empress was restoring order. All those cities, all those other kinden . . . and there were so few signs of unrest. Oh, some, I’ll grant you, but there were so many cities that might have thrown out their garrisons – whether loyal or traitor – and fought for their own independence.’

Tynan was feeling like a man creeping along a ledge who suddenly realizes he has no idea of the drop that he teeters above. ‘Get to the point.’

‘We did not rebel,’ Ernain said flatly, and with that ‘we’ he was suddenly a man of a different stature, speaking words of greater weight. ‘However, we did begin to talk. Amongst ourselves, with each other, with our allies. A surprising number of allies – and some Wasps amongst them, even. About the future of the Empire. And about change.’

‘Captain, I have a Lowlander army on its way—!’

‘Yes, you do!’ Ernain declared. ‘A Lowlander army on its way to Capitas! And it may destroy all you have here and tear open the Empire’s heart, anyway, but it most certainly will do so if we go.’

‘What do you want, Captain?’ Tynan snarled.

‘Change.’ There was a fire in Ernain’s eyes. ‘Vesserett wants change. Maille wants change. Jhe Lien and Sa want change. Thirteen cities and countless individuals now make their stand and speak through me. Because now you see the lie that is Empire: you need us. You need us to fight and die for you, but why should we? And right here, right now, you cannot force us.’

‘“Change” is not a demand, Captain,’ Tynan told him fiercely. ‘I’m afraid you may have to be a little more specific.’

Ernain reached into his tunic, and Tynan extended a hand towards him, ready to sting. Oski lurched forwards, mouth open to intervene, and got the general’s other palm in his face for his troubles.

‘Easy, now.’ What Ernain had there was no weapon, but paper, just a few sheets of creased paper.

Ask any man on the wrong end of a death warrant whether paper can kill you or not, Tynan considered, but Ernain was holding the sheets out towards him, so he snatched them and stepped back.

‘And remember,’ the Bee told him, even as Tynan unfolded the sheets, ‘even if you refuse us, and you beat the Lowlanders anyway – and if ever there was a general who could, I’d say it’s you – you’ll have thirteen cities in open revolt before the last shot is loosed. In open revolt together, and where will you ever get men enough to put that down?’

Tynan had been skimming his eyes over the written words, but he seemed unable to quite take it in, as if the sheer affrontery of it was more than he could swallow. ‘What is this?’ he demanded. ‘You want freedom?’ Because that part he could understand.

‘There were some who thought we should take this chance to demand it – to offer ourselves as mere mercenaries rather than soldiers of the Empire, to go back to homes with no black and gold flag and no garrisons. But some of us looked further, and saw we would simply end up fighting one another, like as not. Or we would become divided and then fall to your people once again. Or perhaps to the Sarnesh, or whoever the next great power happened to be. This is no time in history to be a city alone.

‘And, besides, we’re not like Myna, where the older generation still remembers the time before the first occupation. We’d rather not be free only to starve. None of us was born to anything other than what we have, not even the oldest. And you know what, General? It’s our Empire too. We’ve built it just as much as your people have. We have a stake in it now. We’ve marched with its armies and we’ve constructed its ziggurats and its engines. And even we, even we conquered slaves, have reaped the benefits of Empire, once you Wasps had finished with them. But now it will change. The Empire will recognize us – or we will abandon it and it will fall.’

‘This is insane . . . you’re talking about . . .’ Finally he was starting to assimilate what he was reading. ‘An Assembly, like in Collegium.’

‘And everyone is entitled to their say,’ Ernain confirmed. ‘Army generals, Consortium, Engineers, and also city governors. City governors who will not be Wasps – or need not be. Who knows? There are certainly some out there who have gone native enough. More of them than you’d think. And everyone to be citizens of the Empire, regardless of kinden.’

‘This?’ Tynan demanded, the paper crumpling in his hand. ‘This is your price for the battle tomorrow? You think I can bring this about?’

‘I think that a few minutes with a pen and some paper would give us the signatures of you and your fellow commanders, and there could be copies of this document with your name on it speeding across the Empire. To save time, I’ve brought the copies.’

‘You think you can hold me to ransom – hold us all to ransom – over this, Ernain? You think that change can come by holding a knife to our throats?’

Ernain smiled slightly. ‘What I think, General, is this. I think that of all the commanders I have served under, you are the best. Not in the sense of the best military mind, but the best man. I think you will read this, and you will think on it, and you will start to see something other than greedy Auxillians exploiting you in your hour of need.’

‘What will I see?’ Tynan asked him, trying to muster a dismissive tone, but not quite managing it.

‘You will see that we are right. If I am correct in what I see in you, you won’t need me to tell you that things can’t continue as they have been. Look where that’s brought us, after all.’

He turned to go, and Tynan threw in, ‘You forget one thing, Ernain.’

‘I forget nothing, General,’ Ernain replied over his shoulder. ‘Because of course, someone must tell the Empress that it is no longer her Empire.’

For the Lowlanders, progress eastwards was faster than an army should be able to travel, with so many of the slogging infantry packed onto automotive carriages and hauled down the line. It was still something of a stop-start business, though, as the rail-laying automotives ahead had to slow to negotiate more difficult terrain, or as Imperial saboteurs and local forces fought desperate rearguard actions to give their main force at Capitas more time to assemble.

Out there, tearing up the dry ground, was a veritable armada of automotives – everything that Milus had been able to requisition from Helleron and Sonn. They were driven by the Sarnesh, manoeuvring together with their faultless coordination and forming a broad wing on either side of the rail line, ready to intercept any attack. Their aviator siblings were performing the same service overhead.

Straessa was passing along the Collegiate carriages, checking on her followers. Nobody was particularly happy: being cooped up in a rail automotive for days on end, barely a chance to stretch your legs, was nobody’s idea of what a good time was about. It wouldn’t have been the Antspider’s first choice for what soldiering was about either, but apparently war had moved on in a number of efficient but uncomfortable ways.

Some of her lot were trying to sleep, despite the light cutting in through the shutters and the constant jolt and sway that plagued them day and night; the rails were just bad enough to ensure there was no smooth rhythm to it. In one carriage, a dignified old Beetle woman she recognized from the Faculty of Logic appeared to be giving a lecture to whoever might be interested. In another someone had a cheap printing of some of lost Metyssa’s great Collegiate cycle – that lurid, exaggeratedly dramatic account of the occupation that some there had lived through, and that others only heard about second hand – and was reading it aloud for the benefit of his fellows. They were all doing their best to stave off the tedium of the journey.

And just as she was starting to think that it was this waiting that was the worst part of the whole experience, someone gazing through a window called out, as she passed, ‘Are those ours?’

Straessa hunched down, peering out. Her blood went cold.

She could see the Sarnesh automotives scattering, splitting off in faultless harmony, manoeuvring at top speed to react to the newcomers. But she could already see it would not be enough. She had endured at least one nightmare about these mechanical monsters.

The Empire had finally sent its Sentinels against the rail convoy.

There were five of them, that familiar and feared design of overlapping plates, like tall woodlice save that they moved at a gallop towards the great, helpless flank of the train, curving in the course of their charge so as to keep up with the automotives’ speed. Even as Straessa watched, she saw the flash and smoke of their leadshotter eyes. A Sarnesh war-automotive was abruptly lying on its side, frustrated steam venting from between its armour-plating. Another shot struck close to the rail, raising a gout of dust and earth. Some of her soldiers had snapbows already to the windows, but there was absolutely nothing they could accomplish. Straessa opened her mouth to give an order, but realized that nothing in her experience or any military theory had prepared her for this. There was absolutely nothing she could do. Their only defence was the rail automotive’s speed, and the train of carriages was so long that they were the grandest target in the world.

She saw an explosion burst and bloom about one of the Sentinels, a Stormreader pulling into a tight turn to come back for another pass. The Wasp machine had not slowed.

She was so busy watching that, that she missed the shot that actually impacted.

It struck the far end of the carriage behind hers, and sent a whiplash of destruction all along the train. The carriage taking the brunt was flayed open, punched off the tracks and sent end over end, spilling soldiers and supplies. Straessa’s own carriage was yanked off the track itself, slewing on its side over the uneven ground, occupants slamming against the walls. Two other cars, in either direction, were derailed whilst the automotive itself continued driving up the track, even with the brakes applied as hard as could be. The carriages behind rammed their siblings that still lay partway across the track, shunting them to a grinding halt.

And the Sentinels came on, shouldering aside the nearest Sarnesh automotives contemptuously.

Straessa found herself sprawled on her back against the shutters of a window that would now only open on to bare ground. Every part of her ached but nothing seemed broken. For a second, feeling that the carriage had at least come to a stop, she stared with her single eye at the sunlight coming in through what was now the ceiling.

Then she was shouting. ‘Out! Get out and get ready to fight. Grenades if you’ve got them! Get out or we’re all dead in here!’

She curled herself into a ball to avoid being trampled to death by people following her orders. Those who could were evacuating sharply, piling out at either twisted end of the carriage or hauling themselves up out of the skyward-facing windows. Most seemed to have a snapbow at least. Which is better than me. Straessa had not even been carrying hers as she checked on the troops.

With luck, by now the Sarnesh are doing something useful. She levered herself up, wincing at the all the bruises she was going to have. Come on, get moving, woman! Blearily she stumbled from the carriage into the abrasively bright daylight after her soldiers, dragging her rapier from its scabbard.

She almost fell under the Sentinel as it charged past, slamming into the next skewed carriage, sending the entire car spinning about its midpoint. She heard screams from those caught in its wake. From somewhere nearby another leadshotter boomed.

Straessa took her chance and ducked past before the machine could return, looking frantically for her people. They had formed up into approximate maniples of ten to twenty, but were keeping a lot of space between each other, which seemed good sense. Not sure why they need officers, really. They were also already shooting, using what cover the carriages and the rocky terrain gave them, and she saw Wasp Light Airborne dropping down and coursing overhead.

Another Sentinel was coming up, following the rail line, its articulated body bunching and flexing as its legs pistoned furiously. For a moment she actually raised her little sword against it, in desperate defiance, but it was already breaking off, heading almost head to head against one of its brethren. She saw that it had been painted with a long streak of black on its segmented flanks. One of ours! For the Sarnesh had a handful of the machines taken from the vanished Eighth Army, just left vacant and untouched by whatever disaster had destroyed the Imperial force.

She assumed that the two Sentinels were going to strike each other head-on. Before they got that close, though, the Sarnesh machine loosed with its leadshotter and she saw the ball skitter off the Imperial vehicle’s armour, doing no damage but deflecting its course so that, when they collided, the Sarnesh ran its prow into the flank of its enemy. Straessa flinched back from the tremendous impact, seeing both machines lurch away under it, the Imperial limping, with a couple of legs on that side trailing, and the Sarnesh brought almost to a stop by the collision, then slowly building up speed as it sought a new target.

‘Antspider!’ Gorenn dropped down beside her, an arrow ready on the string as always.

‘Report!’

‘Holding them off, Officer! There aren’t so many of their soldiers,’ the Dragonfly informed her, scanning all around. ‘Machines are fighting machines. They’ve been stopped, I think. We’re throwing them back.’

‘Was that it, then?’ Straessa frowned. ‘Just a desperate shot and then they’re spent? There must be more.’

Gorenn shrugged, but Straessa’s mind was working feverishly, starting with, Now what would I do . . .? A moment later she was darting away down the track towards the emptied carriages. There were soldiers all over – Ants forming up with silent precision, Mynans charging past with swords and snapbows – but she was looking for people who were instead keeping still, trying to be overlooked. But in such a milling crowd, stillness itself was out of place.

There . . . Curse it, I was right, and she was picking up speed, hoping Gorenn was following her. She had seen a Beetle-kinden crouching at one of the carriages still on the tracks, and no doubt the Sarnesh thought he was one of hers. He was a stranger, though, and wearing no uniform, and he was working on something at the carriage’s underside. Because if I myself was organizing this, I’d sneak a few artificers in to set some charges.

He saw her even as she was running at him, eyes wide as he realized he’d been detected. He had no snapbow, but he brought out a shortsword quickly just as she reached him, and then they were furiously steel against steel. Straessa knew she was better, but her bones and muscles were protesting the treatment with each blow, whilst the Imperial Beetle was desperate, strong and good enough to keep her at bay despite her longer blade. She tried three times to pierce through his guard, even going as far as her old trick shoulder thrust, which hurt a lot more than it had last time. She managed to pink him in the shoulder, a bare half-inch of blade, but she nearly got his own sword in her face in return, and then he tried to lunge past her point so as to grapple with her.

She got her sword into his thigh, but there it stuck, and his greater weight bowled her over, and then she was struggling with him for his own sword, as he raised it over her like a long dagger, trying to drive it down past the rim of her breastplate.

We’re in the middle of my own cursed army! Why is nobody helping me? She tried to draw breath to cry out, but she was losing ground inch by inch, and she felt that the attempted yell might see that blade plunge straight through her. His face was so close to hers that she could see the veins about the edges of his bulging eyes as he fought to kill her.

She slammed her forehead into the bridge of his nose. Or that had been the idea. In fact she slammed her forehead into his hard cheekbone, dazing herself, but he started back, losing force on the blade so that, when she pushed, she toppled him off her. With a cry, he went for her again before she could struggle upright, and an arrow skewered him almost ear to ear, leaving him sitting back on his haunches, transfixed head tilted philosophically at the sky.

‘Took your time,’ Straessa hissed, taking Gorenn’s hand and letting the Dragonfly do most of the work of pulling her up.

‘Didn’t you hear me yelling at you to give me a clear shot?’

Straessa blinked at her. ‘No . . . no, I didn’t. Look, go and round up a bunch of ours, get them to go check down all the carriages for other sods like this one, or for explosives, right? I reckon that’s going to be our best contribution for now.’

Gorenn nodded briskly, flared her wings and was away.

There were two more saboteurs caught and killed, and a dozen set explosives to disarm, but the Collegiate artificers were up to it. The Empire’s gambit had failed, on that front.

The carriage that had actually taken a leadshot hit was irreparable, and the entire army lost a day’s progress while the combined might of its artificers got the other cars back on the rails and ready to travel.

Two hundred and four Collegiates and twenty-three others had died in the attack. The work on the carriages gave their comrades time to bury them, and to mourn.