The Air War

Nineteen

The twin-rotored heliopter had been flying high, tilted nose-down at an unlikely angle as its pilot made the best of the headwind. It was an ungainly little craft, a wooden body like a squat teardrop with an outrigger either side for the blades and a box-kite tail. Someone had known a little about aeronautics when they built it, for it was swifter in the air than heliopters normally were but, when the Collegiate orthopter clipped past its nose to investigate, the visitor’s response was sluggish, lurching aside and then taking its own time to steady itself again in the air.

Taki watched from on high, in her Esca Magni. This was only a routine patrol, but the newcomer’s approach had seemed a good opportunity to set one of her students loose, so she had flashed the order. Now a young Beetle woman was guiding her flier past the visiting heliopter, before bringing herself level with it and matching course and speed. Taki nodded, satisfied.

She had not seen this model of heliopter before and it bore no markings, but it hardly seemed like something that the Wasps would use. Even now it was dropping towards Solarno, the pilot handling the craft ably despite its leaden response, and Taki used her heliograph to send another set of instructions to her trainee: break off, return to field. She could only hope that the girl would realize that Taki wanted her to advise people of the newcomer, because there was no signal for that in the code book.

The Beetle pilot obediently let her orthopter drop, far swifter and better controlled than the heliopter. Collegium had its own standard model flier, which had gone into production after Taki herself had pitched up in the city with her Solarnese know-how and got together with the capable engineers of the College. The orthopter now vanishing down towards the city was built on the same lines as the Esca: a two-winged craft with balancing halteres, hunchbacked over the clockwork engine, a long, tapering tail behind, and a pair of rotary piercers before. At the start, they had not wanted to build them armed, but Taki had always been a fighting pilot, the cream of Solarnese pride, and she had held out over this until she got her way.

She really was very, very glad now that she had won that particular battle.

Collegium had a modest airfleet of these craft now, and Taki’s students had gone on to become tutors themselves some time ago for, in another stroke of fortune, the Collegiate- Solarnese trade that the end of the war had sparked up had led to an upsurge of interest in flying. The fighting aviators of Solarno had been much in vogue, heroes of books and songs and a play or two. Taki had done well out of that but, given all those young men and women who had found sufficient coin for flying lessons, so had the city.

They called the Collegiate models Stormreaders.

Taki let her Esca slide into the view of the heliopter pilot, close enough to peer through the broad windows of his canopy. Now his machine was not meant for combat, or at least she sincerely hoped not. It was no cargo-hauler either. She could not tell precisely what it was good for, and she was worried that the answer might actually be nothing.

The pilot was a decent hand, though, and made a neat enough landing, after circling a few times while the ground crew wheeled a couple of Stormreaders out of the way, and she made one more circuit herself just to be sure there was no funny business, before making her own descent.

When she had got the Esca down, dropping neatly onto its landing legs without anyone needing to clear anything aside for her, the heliopter cockpit was open and a man was already clambering out. The ground crew, some off-duty pilots and a pair of Merchant Company soldiers watched him dubiously, but Taki felt that she owed it to a fellow pilot to take the lead.

‘Hey, you there, welcome to Collegium!’ At the sound of her voice the other onlookers relaxed and let her get on with it, which irritated her. True, she was de facto an Associate Master of the College, teaching aviation to packed classrooms when she could be bothered to turn up, but she was not even a Collegiate citizen, nobody had given her a rank or a title, and away from her students she should have no authority whatsoever. Still, being a legend was a hard thing to live with, and anyone who had anything to do with the Collegium airfields knew te Schola Taki-Amre, and held her in high esteem.

The heliopter pilot dropped heavily to the ground. He was a short man, which was to say he was only a foot taller than she was, wearing a flying helmet with a full-face mask, a military-looking piece of kit. He stripped it off as she approached, revealing an unappealing visage, a squat broad-mouthed face with small suspicious eyes, a flat nose and skin that was white enough to look dead. Halfbreed, she noted, Fly-kinden and… Ant, I think. Tarkesh Ant, with that skin.

Still, some of his unhealthy skin tone was probably weariness, she guessed. There were grey circles about his eyes, and his sag-shouldered pose suggested a man who had been on the move for some time. ‘What brings you to Collegium?’ she asked him brightly.

‘Stenwold Maker,’ he replied, his voice flat and almost toneless, and abruptly he had everyone’s attention, including that of the snapbows the soldiers were carrying.

‘That’s a big name to be throwing around right now. He’s a busy man. Has to be him, does it?’ Taki asked lightly. It seemed highly unlikely that this individual would turn out to be Rekef, as she had yet to find any crowd that he would blend in with, and his instant annoyance at being questioned would not be a good survival trait in a professional spy. Nonetheless, she had lost a few nights to dreams of Myna burning, so she was not inclined to be trusting.

‘Yes,’ said the halfbreed wearily, as though even that one word was too much effort. ‘It really, really does. You’ve got him here, or do I have to walk somewhere?’

‘Maybe I can take a message,’ Taki suggested.

The look the man gave her was venomous. ‘Is this what you do? Is this your job, to make my life difficult? Urgent top-secret message, eyes of Stenwold Maker only. How difficult is that to understand? News from Tark, all right?’

‘You know that Stenwold Maker doesn’t rule this city, I assume,’ Taki tried. Despite herself, she was fighting down a smile at the sheer magnitude of the small man’s temper. As she spoke, she had to admit that, despite everything the Beetles said about their government, she was not entirely sure that Maker did not run things here, but it would not be politic to say so.

‘Don’t care,’ the halfbreed spat out. ‘He could clean the privies, for all it would interest me. Now, is someone here going to do the decent thing and take me to him, or do I have to start asking people at random in the street?’

‘The forgemasters are all saying that they can’t do everything at once,’ Jodry declared mildly. He could afford to be amiable, as he sat in the expansive chair behind his desk in the Speaker’s office. Stenwold, on his feet and keen to sort matters out and be gone, found the Speaker’s ease aggravating.

‘Jodry, I was there,’ he snapped. ‘I saw these monster machines the Empire are deploying. When they come for us or we go to them, we’ll need battle automotives. Since we don’t actually have any, the only thing we can do is armour up any civilian vehicle that could do the job.’

‘Yes, yes, and you have made many profligate promises where the Assembly’s purse is concerned, while confiscating private property on that account,’ Jodry returned sharply. ‘And — yes, requisitioning, if you must, if that makes what is basically theft sound more palatable — and, as I say, now the wretched machines are backed up all over the city like an overflowing drain, because the foundries are working on yet more orthopters. Because Mistress Taki, she also saw the same battle you did, and apparently came away with rather different priorities.’

‘Just… get them to strike a balance. I’m not saying Myna didn’t suffer from the air, but these Cyclops machines of theirs.. ’ Stenwold shook his head. ‘You weren’t there.’

‘For which I’m profoundly grateful. Worse luck, though, that you’re already proposing to go back, along with our Merchant Companies.’

‘We didn’t stop the Empire early enough before,’ Stenwold replied promptly. ‘If we can get to them while they’re consolidating in Three-city territory — or even at Helleron! — then we can win the war. If we leave them to come to us… the Sarnesh knew that was foolishness when they went out to meet the Wasps at Malkan’s Folly, Jodry. They nearly had the city the last time we let them march up to our gates.’

‘And what,’ said Jodry, with infinite patience, ‘do you propose to do about Solarno? You’ve heard the same reports as I have.’

Stenwold opened his mouth, then scowled. ‘I’ve heard far too many reports, and all of them contradictory. I hear reports about Spiderlands troops, and mention of the Aldanrael, but other people are saying the Empire is there.’

‘Yes, both at the same time,’ Jodry agreed. ‘We didn’t think of that one when we gave the Aldanrael a bloody nose, eh?’

At that point there was a polite knock, low down on the door, and then Arvi stepped in, with a brief bow towards the desk. ‘Master Drillen, I’m afraid there are visitors here for Master Maker.’

‘Tell them to wait,’ Stenwold growled, but Arvi, with an arch look indicating that he knew exactly who he took orders from, added, ‘It is Mistress Taki, and another gentleman who seems to have come straight from the airfield. It appears to be a matter of grave urgency.’

The two Beetle statesmen exchanged glances, the tension in the room tightening by another twist.

‘Send them in,’ Jodry decided, and Arvi bowed again, and backed out.

‘You’ve had no word, of course, from your fellow over Exalsee ways?’ Jodry enquired lightly.

Stenwold shook his head, tight-lipped. Word from Laszlo was long overdue.

Arvi reappeared, magically bearing a tray with a fresh bottle of Jodry’s favourite vintage, together with an extra pair of bowls. He nearly lost the lot when Taki pushed in past him, and behind her came the awkward figure of a short, pasty-faced halfbreed.

‘This here’s Master Taxus,’ Taki announced to the room in general. She took a full bowl when offered it, explaining, ‘He’s got a message, top-secret urgent kind of business,’ and then she downed the wine in one gulp, apparently washing her hands of the matter.

Stenwold eyed the newcomer, who stared balefully at him, and at practically everything else. ‘Word from Tark?’ he hazarded.

The halfbreed nodded, reaching into his knee-length flying coat and bringing out a creased letter, folded and sealed in black. ‘All yours,’ he grunted.

If you’ve come from Tark, tell me… But the letter was being thrust into Stenwold’s face, and it was plain that there would be nothing further from this Taxus until it was read. It must be some word, at least, about the Exalsee situation. Tark is not so far from them. Perhaps they’re seeking our aid, for when the Empire comes…

He broke the seal with his thumb and folded the out letter, revealing a missive written in an economic hand.

Master Maker

You will recall me from when we stood off the Vekken together, inside your city. You will recall that I took my men to Malkan’s Stand and fought the Wasps alongside the Sarnesh and your own citizens. Later, you supported my people when we returned to our city, with the occupying forces fleeing before us.

I betray my city in writing this. You must burn it when you have read it. Only because I trust you to do so have I gone so far against my instinct as to write this report to you.

We have received an ambassador. She came from Seldis and presented our king and his Tacticians, myself included, with new developments in foreign affairs. A confederation of Spider Aristoi houses, spearheaded by the Aldanrael, has signed treaties with the Empire for mutual defence, she said. As a result of this, an Imperial army was already marching west towards my city. We were not their target, you understand. We were simply in the way, and reckoned by the Wasps as hostile. War was thus upon us.

Our own orthopter scouts confirmed all she said. The Wasps were indeed coming, and with allies not marching under the black and gold. The Spider ambassador then made us what she called an offer and what I call an ultimatum.

Master Maker, the city-state of Tark has yet to recover from the damage the Empire inflicted in its conquest during the last war. Much of our city is not even rebuilt. Our armies are under strength, and we have no stores, no resources.

I am therefore bitterly sorry to tell you that the city-state of Tark has surrendered its independence. We have sworn ourselves as a satrapy to the Spiderlands. Spider-kinden Aristoi are already within our walls, quietly taking the reins whilst assuring us that nothing will change. The army that is now marching on your city will march straight past ours, and we will not raise a single blade against them. Our need to survive makes ingrates of us, and slaves also, I fear.

I am sorry, Master Maker, that Tark has repaid you poorly for your support. My people must live. If I did not remember you so much as a friend, I could not even have gone against my people so far as to warn you. I wish that my duty was looser about my shoulders, so that I could do more.

Forgive us.

Parops.

Stenwold looked up, feeling his fingers crumple and tear at the paper. Jodry was staring at him, and he wondered what expression his own face held just then.

‘Who’s died?’ Taki asked, not quite flippant, but not solemn either.

‘The Aldanrael have taken Tark,’ Stenwold said flatly. ‘This was.. an old friend sending me all the warning he could. You’re right, they’ll be coming up the coast like before.’ He was about to say more when his eyes fell on Taxus. ‘You… can at least take a message back to Parops?’

‘Back?’ the halfbreed demanded. ‘What makes you think I’m going back?’

‘Well, you…’ Stenwold frowned. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Maker — Master Maker, if that’s how it’s done — I don’t know just what you read there, but if you know we’ve got Spiders up where it hurts, then you know Tark’s not your friend any more, and your mate that wrote that, he’s not either, as soon as the ink dried. Ordering me on this fool’s errand was the last thing he did before he became your enemy.’

He left a pause for what he plainly considered an obvious conclusion, and none of them there managed to leap to it.

‘I see. I know how it is. Mixed blood, miscegenation, I know.’ He scowled at the lot of them. ‘Up here,’ and he jabbed at his temples, ‘I’m Ant-kinden. Where it counts, I’m one of them. Now, having delivered some sort of secret business into the hands of Tark’s enemies, you think I can go back there?’

And Stenwold did understand. He had known other Ant-kinden, in his time, who had turned their backs on their cities for their cities’ own good. Sometimes being a renegade and an exile was a badge of honour. ‘Parops ordered you…’ he murmured.

‘I volunteered,’ Taxus said shortly. ‘I knew what he was about, so I agreed. It needed to be done.’ He faced them down, the Flies, the Beetles, all of them: just under five feet of pugnacious attitude.

‘So what will you do now?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘Depends. If you’ll trust me for it, I’d rather like to fight some Wasps.’

Stenwold glanced at Taki, who was looking thoughtful.

‘We need every pilot we can get, Master Maker,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll make sure someone’s keeping an eye on him, but — we have so many unblooded fliers and so few who’ve actually flown for real. I saw him come in. His craft’s a piece of flotsam but he’s good with the sticks.’

‘He’s your responsibility,’ Stenwold told her. ‘Put him with the Mynans. Get him familiar with the Stormreaders. Soon enough you’ll all be shipping out to fight — although whether it’s north to Myna or east down the coast is anyone’s guess just now.’

Being a parasite was a precarious existence, but Lissart, even injured, was obviously well used to it.

She had the pair of them ensconced within the Spider-kinden baggage train the day before the combined army left Solarno, and since then she and Laszlo had almost been travelling in style, Liss spending the days rocking gently in a wagon, cushioned amidst the supplies, whilst Laszlo ran errands and faced off against other Fly-kinden.

‘To think that the only reason I’m in this fix is that I didn’t want to go work amongst Spiders,’ Liss remarked to him one night, as they lay close together in the wagon, surrounded by the whispering breath of sleepers. Her smile, just visible in the starlight, was wistful, so Laszlo kissed it gently. When he pulled away, her expression was the usual: happy, glad to have him there, and yet her eyes demanding to know, Are you mad? Don’t you know how untrustworthy I am yet? He knew, of course. He was in the jaws of the enemy here, a step away from exposure at every moment. Each day seemed a weird dream-run, sailing through treacherous waters without chart or compass, and yet he was alive and unrevealed each dusk, and so was she. The danger that she would betray him seemed only a small voice amongst all the clamouring perils that surrounded him.

They had been aided by the Spider army’s structure, for although the lady of the Aldanrael was their leader, few of the actual soldiers were sworn to her family. Instead there seemed to be a typically piecemeal construction about the Spiderland forces: a number of mercenary bands and Satrapy forces from several different cities, together with Spider-kinden units donated by various different Aristoi houses, few of whom seemed to be actual friends of the Lady-Martial Mycella. Two figures strode through this chaos and made some kind of order from it. One was Jadis of the Melisandyr, some small family that remained closely loyal to the Aldanrael, whose force of personality and — on one occasion — lethal response to an attempted assassination, kept the other Spiders under Mycella’s orders. Lissart had determined to avoid his notice at all costs. He looked, she said, like someone who remembered the names and faces of any who served under him.

Instead, they had inveigled their way into the camp of Morkaris, the mercenary adjutant. There was less discipline amongst the mercenaries, and also less jockeying for position between underlings. In their baggage train of clerks, entertainers, whores and factotums, individuals changed allegiance all the time, with few hard feelings. Everyone was in it for the money, and personal honour was less of a barrier. Laszlo had quickly identified a formidable Fly-kinden matron named Drasse as the woman to cosy up to, and after running errands for the woman for a day, he had found himself and Liss safely under her protection. Liss herself could charm the stripes off a Rekef colonel, when she wanted to, and soon Drasse had found her a berth on the wagon, and some medicine besides.

The wagon was a stroke of luck they had not known that they needed, for the army was not what either of them had expected. General Tynan and the Lady-Martial Mycella were moving fast.

The entire Imperial contingent travelled by automotive, as did their supplies, ammunition and the disassembled pieces of such machines that could not move under their own power, including considerable quantities of artillery. Wasp soldiers sat inside and on top of great wheeled transporters that belched smoke and steam, and ground up the miles mercilessly without ever tiring. Their Spider allies slowed them down a little, but far less than might be expected. The Apt amongst them, and the unluckier of the Inapt, were in similar conveyances, a motley fleet of various walkers, rollers and tracks dredged from every vehicle foundry from Chasme to Fort Tamaris. The rest had either brought mounts — an equally varied menagerie of horses, beetles, spiders and crickets — or travelled in wagons pulled almost universally by strong hauling beetles. Travelling alongside the supplies was a luxury, as it meant that Liss was not forever jostling elbows with dozens of others.

They had swarmed past Tark not long ago, and Laszlo had only teased out the fact of the city’s surrender in retrospect: not surrender to the Empire as conquerors, but a subtler and perhaps more permanent concession. Tark had become part of the Spiderlands, its king sworn to the Aldanrael as a vassal. Already the city was crawling with Spiders taking census of Mycella’s new gains.

Liss told him that Spider-kinden maps had always been ambitious, when it came to the Lowlands. Most of them marked out large sections of the coast as already being under Spider control. It seemed that Mycella was rapidly making that fiction a reality.

They had coursed on south past the hills of Merro and Egel, two interlinked Fly-kinden warrens whose loyalties in the past had been a feather for every wind. Nobody had shown any great surprise when the leading families of both had assured everyone concerned that, of course, they had always been part of the Spiderlands. The richly dressed little magnates had put up a very convincing display of confusion that anyone should even have to ask. Mycella had received their declarations of fealty and loyalty with appropriate magnanimity.

But this was different. The army had barely slowed for the Fly-kinden, but now Laszlo found himself at the coast, the dangerous forest of the Felyal at his back and looking out at the fortified island of Kes.

The Ant-kinden of Kes had a chequered history recently. The last time the Wasps had sent an army down the coast, the Ants had declared themselves uninterested, hiding behind their walls and their fleet, and saving the Empire the considerable effort of investing their island in siege. There had been much speculation amongst the followers of the current army — the Grand Army, as the Spider contingent was calling it, at least — as to whether Kes would represent the first genuine military engagement of this war.

The Ants had certainly not been keen to come out with either violence or diplomacy, but a telescope turned towards their island revealed that every artillery emplacement was manned, and the ships in the harbour were fully crewed.

General Tynan had not ordered his aviators into action, as many had anticipated. Instead he had apparently decided to take defensive measures against any Kessen attack by setting up his own artillery at the cliff edge. The engines that his engineers assembled, however, were of a scale that Laszlo had never seen before, enormous leadshotters that seemed to point more at the sky than anything else. He had surmised that they would drop rocks down on any Kessen ships that sallied forth from the Ants’ harbour.

The preliminary shelling of Kes had then lasted three hours, with the greatshotters finding their precise mark after only twenty minutes, to the great exuberance of Tynan’s Colonel Mittoc. After that point the dozen engines had spoken in a constant ground-shaking thunder, pounding solidly at their targets, cracking walls and sinking ships, launching flame-canisters over the docks and the city. The artillery on the Kessen walls had, of course, only a fraction of their range. There was no retaliation.

After the greatshotters had finally fallen silent, though remaining a menacing silhouette on the cliff for any Kessen observer, a small vessel had put out from the harbour.

An hour later, the entire population of Kes had understood that it, too, was become a satrapy of the Spiderlands. Spider ships were already coasting in, summoned by who knew what signal of Mycella. Soldiers and assessors were disembarking at the Kessen docks that no hostile force had ever taken.

‘We will come back,’ Tynan had told the Ant-kinden diplomats and, through them, their king. ‘If you rise up against our allies, then our engines shall never pause until your island city is just a stump of rock in the sea. We might have bombarded you until you begged me to send over my slavers. Think on how much more fortunate you are that the Lady Mycella wants you for her own.’

Laszlo had found a place quite close to the negotiations. He had heard the words plainly.

The army was moving again the very next day. The Imperial Second was known as ‘the Gears’, and General Tynan was not going to let them stop turning for anything, it appeared.

That night, however, Laszlo had decided that the time had come to risk everything. He had not told Liss what he was doing, in case she tried to stop him, or in case she pointed out what a stupid thing he had resolved on. Instead, while she slept, he skipped out from the wagon and flew away.

He was a sailor by training: he knew the seas and, more, he knew how sailors thought. Kes was not just a military power: it lived on trade, and there would be those sea-traders who would want to avoid the reach of the Aldanrael, for whatever reason.

Three times he let his wings carry him off the cliff, scouring the seas for sight of a sail, battling gusting wind and sudden squalls of rain before clawing his way back to land, before his strength failed. On the third venture, pushing himself further, risking more, he was lucky. A little Beetle-kinden steamer was out there on the waves, stolidly making its way towards Kes. He dropped down on to its deck, sending its crew scrabbling for swords and crossbows, and demanded, between gasping breaths, to speak to their master.

He had only moments to explain himself, but the news that the Aldanrael held Kes soon had the Collegiate skipper’s full attention. Every Beetle-kinden sailor knew how the Spiders’ tame pirates had been preying on the sea trade until Stenwold Maker put a stop to it.

The ragged message Laszlo delivered was wild, out of order, everything he could dredge from his mind about Solarno, Tark, Merro, Kes. He could only hope that it was enough, and would reach Stenwold in time to do some good.

Then, after a wistful thought about simply remaining on board, he took wing again and returned, dodging sentries and searchlamps, to get back to Liss’s side. He could not leave her, and there would be more to learn and to report on, before he was done.

He slept not at all that night, holding Liss close to him, feeling the terrible fragility of her and, beyond the wagon’s cloth walls, the commensurate fragility of everything else.