War Master's Gate

Eight

His name was Esmail. His name was Ostrec. He had two faces and two lives, one lurking invisible beneath the other, like a fish hanging in dark waters with its eyes fixed on the surface.

The waters ran deeper still, for that outer shell of Ostrec was itself a many-layered thing. Lieutenant Ostrec of the Quartermasters Corps: ambitious young officer, pushy, arrogant, competitive, all the virtues the Wasps so loved. No doubt his outmanoeuvred or fallen rivals had all wondered what his secret was. It was that behind the outer face of Lieutenant Ostrec lurked Major Ostrec of the Rekef, hunter of traitors. He had been on close terms with great men until recently, had Major Ostrec, but then there had been a culling amongst those grandees of the secret police, a sudden dying off of the Rekef’s leadership to isolate their General Brugan. His plots to control the Empress had gone awry, Brugan’s allies were dead, and the Rekef itself was lessened. And Ostrec? Major Ostrec had seamlessly transferred his loyalty to the Empress, and nobody in the know had been much surprised. Who would not have done so, under the circumstances?

Now he was Major Ostrec of the Red Watch, a company of the elite created by the Empress herself. Most assumed that its members were all ex-Rekef spies and killers, or similar terrors, but there was a stranger secret at the heart of it as the man behind Ostrec’s face knew only too well.

He knew the Empress was Inapt and a magician. She had hunted out Wasp-kinden with some faint touch of the old days in them — from mixed blood or some far-distant ancestor of power. These Wasps she had made her own, bound them to her by blood and named them her Red Watch. Each had a mere drop of magic in them, but together they fed their mistress by their deeds. Seda had come late to her power, by the slow decline of magic, but she was reinventing lost traditions at a frightening rate. She understood that darkness and fear and pain were not just tools of the arcane, they were weapons of statecraft.

So she had cast an eye over Ostrec, the duplicitous, and seen that spark strong within him, and made him hers, and never realized that here was a creature cunning enough to hide his true nature from her. She had never realized that Ostrec, the Quartermaster lieutenant and Rekef major, had been dead for tendays, and that the man she had taken into her closest circle was a spy and a killer of a very different kind.

His name was Ostrec. His name was Esmail. He was one of the very few left of his kinden, the Assassin Bugs who had fought and lost an ancient war against the Moth-kinden in ages forgotten to Apt history. He had been sent to the Empire by Moths of Tharn, but it was plain to him that those Tharen sages who had briefed him had lost out to bolder spirits, for Tharn was allied with the Empire now. He would be getting no further instructions.

They had briefed him to investigate the Empress, to find out what she was. More, they had briefed him to kill her.

He would be able to manufacture the opportunity, he knew, for Ostrec was trusted by the Empress. If he had been unconcerned with his own survival, then he could have done it already, but he had left family behind near Tharn, and he was not quite ready yet for the ultimate sacrifice.

More, he was not sure that he would do it, even if he could be sure to walk away from the deed. The frightening revelation was that the Empress was Inapt, and held a great deal of magical power, and if she was also capricious and wicked and ruthless, so what? These were not solely Wasp virtues, after all, and could be claimed by many of the great magicians of old. Looking on Seda, Esmail was only struck by how much the current crop had lost of their inheritance. For her part, she was young and vital and strong, and she did not hesitate to use her power. She had bound Mantis-kinden to her, destroyed her rivals and roused an Empire to war, and all this from being a timid girl living in the shadow of her brother’s displeasure.

She claimed that she would bring back the old days. Esmail, whose heritage and training were sunk deep in those lost times, reckoned that, if anyone could do it, Seda could.

He was having a difficult time working out where his true loyalties should lie, and in the meantime the Empress was not standing still. Here they were at the gates of the Mantis dream, and tomorrow the Wasps would march in to support their Nethyen allies, and Seda would march along with them to secure. .

He was not sure what, for she did not confide in anyone save the crooked Woodlouse-kinden Gjegevey. Power would be involved, though, that seemed beyond doubt. Something buried in the Mantis wood was calling to her. The thought of Seda with yet more power in her hands filled him with fear, and yet quickened his blood. What might she not do? What might she not bring back from those dead ages?

He would go with her into the trees tomorrow, he knew. He would go, and her Mantis bodyguards, and that creature Tisamon, which Esmail knew was no living man — another feat from the old stories that Seda had somehow recreated! With them would go the Empire’s best, the most skilled Pioneers that General Roder could lay his hands on. Behind them would come the scouts and trackers and Light Airborne of the Eighth Army, those soldiers best suited to fighting in such a dark and twisted place.

I will bring it all back, she had said, and the prospect of killing her was receding, day by day. Even though she did not really know him, he was becoming her creature every bit as much as Tisamon was.

She will destroy us all, he warned himself, yet there was much of him that could not make himself regret it.

When Seda emerged from her tent, General Roder was waiting for her and had been for some time. She could read a great deal in his half-crippled face about just how well that sat with him.

She noticed his eyes register Tisamon, and saw him master an instinctual flinch away — such good instincts he had. Still, here he was, so plainly something important was gnawing at the general — or at least something that he considered important.

‘Your Imperial Majesty.’

‘Ah, General.’ She favoured him with a smile. ‘I hope you are not here hoping to dissuade me from my jaunt?’ He had certainly tried to argue against her entering the Mantis wood, with fistfuls of reasons that to the Apt were entirely logical and persuasive. If that was his tune still this morning she would not be pleased, but she sensed something else had sunk its jaws into him.

‘I have received word from the Second Army, Majesty,’ Roder reported, holding out a scroll.

She waved it away. It would be in some Apt code, illegible to her even if she had been taught the cipher. But then, as Empress, she had people to read things for her. In such a fashion her Inapt nature went undiscovered even in the heart of the Empire. ‘Tell me,’ she instructed.

‘General Tynan informs me he is on the move, as per orders. The Second has resumed its march on Collegium.’

She had not doubted it. Tynan was a solid, reliable officer, experienced enough to cope with his recent reversals against the Beetles. Nobody ever said that conquering Collegium would be easy. A lie: many back in Capitas had claimed the Beetles would fall before Tynan as swiftly as their kin in Helleron had capitulated, but they were fools who did not realize that a warrior spirit was not the sole route to determined resistance. The Beetles were tough and ingenious and, even though Seda could no longer understand all their clever Apt ways, she was well aware that they could still throw myriad problems at General Tynan’s feet. His war would be fought by artificers just as much as by soldiers.

‘He. .’ A moment’s hesitation while Roder considered the words of a fellow general which had been meant only for him. ‘He is concerned about his air strength against the Beetles. He has a great deal of respect for their pilots and machines.’ Had Tynan’s actual words expressed something stronger, something approaching criticism? No matter: Seda had looked into Tynan’s face and soul. He would follow orders.

‘The issue is in hand, General,’ she told Roder, feeling a small degree of amusement that this part of Tynan’s fight — a key element of the Second’s strategy of which even Tynan was ignorant for now — was something that she could understand.

Still Roder stood there with the burden of something unsaid weighing him down. Seda sighed, feeling the pressure of her station and majesty: how to inspire awe in your underlings without all these awkward pauses while they searched their own words for treason? ‘Just speak, General. The forest awaits me.’

The general nodded. ‘It is a matter concerning the Second, Majesty.’ His gaze flicked to Tisamon, and then back to her. She found it remarkable that the eye in the paralysed half of his face was perhaps his most expressive feature now. ‘Tynan has the Spiders as his allies.’

Ah, there we are. ‘General, we are confident in our strategies and in those we send to war,’ she told him. ‘You should concern yourself with your own campaign.’ And she began to walk away.

‘No, Majesty!’ and he had put out a hand to physically stop her, whereupon Tisamon’s gauntlet blade was at his throat, and it was only because Seda had a swift enough mind to rein her bodyguard in that she was not in need of a new general there and then.

‘Explain yourself,’ she snapped, staring at his frozen, outstretched hand. Perhaps I do need a new general, after all. She had thought she had the measure of Roder’s rebellious thoughts and insecurities, but this was new.

‘Your Imperial Majesty,’ Roder said carefully, the razor line of steel still touching his neck, ‘do not trust the Spider-kinden. They cannot be trusted.’ His eyes entreated her, afire with the need to communicate. ‘I fought them in the last war, barely three years ago. They were our enemies then and they are our enemies now — save that they have a score to settle with Collegium. They were the Beetles’ allies once, remember! When Tynan and his Second are at their most extended, when the fight balances on a knife-edge, they will betray him for the Beetles again. Or else, when he has won, his men depleted whilst the Spiders hold back, they will destroy him and claim the spoils that are ours. Majesty, Tynan has left a chain of such conquests in his wake — Tark, Merro, Kes — and they are all gone over to the Spiderlands, not to the Empire.’

Seda stared into that half-mask face. What does he gain from this? This is because the Spiders poisoned him, is it? He hates them that much? Where has this come from?

‘Majesty,’ Roder said again, and it was not the soldier that now spoke, but the plain man beneath. ‘Heed me on this, I beg you. They are no fit allies for us, and Tynan is in danger every moment he marches alongside them. Ask him!’ Incredibly, he was pointing at Tisamon, driven to calling upon the least likely aid in his attempt to persuade her. ‘Ask your other bodyguards. Ask the Nethyen! The Mantids have known forever what the Eighth found out in the last war. I have seen my men poisoned and trapped, seduced from their duty, turned against their superiors. I have fought a war against them, and there is nothing of the soldier in them, no honour, no heart, just masks and more masks!’ He was baring his soul now, and the bitter venom in there startled her. She recalled how he had asked to be given the southern front, before the Empire had allied itself with the Spiderlands Aristoi. And that would have gone even more poorly than I thought, and we would even now be fighting around Solarno rather than most of the way to Collegium. And yet, and yet. .

The Spiders were an old Inapt power, and they had held onto that power when most of their peers from the Days of Lore had fallen into ruin. They controlled vast territories, cities of the Apt and the Inapt both, and just like Seda herself they made use of all the artificers’ machines without needing to understand them. A jolt of uncertainty shot through her. What have I overlooked? Overconfidence was always the scourge of rulers. Of course, the Spiders are clever — they have been playing for centuries the game I have invented for myself. So what is the true plan that the Aldanrael have hatched? Is Roder right?

She could not say, and that gaping chasm in her knowledge came close to frightening her. But Roder was right in one thing: she could not be certain of the Spider-kinden as allies. They were treacherous, and she must remember that, and take steps to protect the Empire from them should they turn.

‘General Roder,’ she began, and her very tone was enough to retract Tisamon’s blade and to dispel the tension that their little confrontation had been spreading throughout the camp. ‘You are a good and loyal servant of the Empire,’ she continued, ‘and I hear your words. Our allies in the Spiderlands have been true to us so far, but there will come a time when we will not need them, or they will not need us. It is well to be watchful, and perhaps Tynan is indeed too trusting.’

She saw him relax, and at last glimpsed the spark of motive there. Yes, he hated the Spiders for the injuries of the last war — both to him and to his army — but there was more. His concern was for the Empire and for its greater war. True, if Tynan fell, then Roder would find himself caught between Sarn and the Collegiates, but it was more than that. Roder wanted the Empire to win. She realized, then, how close she had been to turning him away, how her own exalted station, her personal ambitions, could have compromised the war. And they will do so, still, for I will brook no barriers, but I am Empress — as well as heiress to the Days of Lore. I must remember my people. She had a hollow, unhappy feeling that this would be harder and harder to achieve, in the days to come. I will be Empress and magician-queen both. I will rule as the Spiders rule. And if the Spiders challenge me, then. .

‘Captain Vrakir,’ she snapped, and one of her Red Watch came rushing over to do her bidding. He had been listed to accompany her into the forest, but now she had another task for him. ‘Commandeer an orthopter and fly to join the Second,’ she told him. ‘I will have sealed orders prepared for you. You are to act as adviser to General Tynan, with my full authority. Ostrec alone will suffice to represent the Red Watch in my escort.’

Vrakir saluted. He was a serious, intelligent man, formerly a lieutenant in the Fourth Army, one of the survivors of the Felyal massacre early in the last war. More, he was gifted: some great-grandparent had adulterated the Wasp blood within him, and she knew he had proved deficient with machines and maps, a poor representative of the Apt. He was no magician, of course — none of her Red Watch could have mastered the simplest magic — but he made a good vessel. There was just enough vestigial affinity within him that she could work through him, speak to him, even see through his eyes if she used all her strength. It would be like trying to force herself through the tiny holes of a sieve, but that was better than the solid wall presented by most Wasps.

‘I will have orders drawn up by the time you are ready to leave,’ she told him and, as Vrakir ran off, she turned her attention back to Roder. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘show me my escorts, your picked men.’

Seda knew that Ant-kinden armies were built about their famed heavy infantry, blocks of supremely disciplined, mindlinked men and women who had mail and swords, shields and crossbows that made up the grand majority of every Ant army the Empire that ever faced — for all that the individual city-states were usually at each other’s throats. They were slow to innovate, the Ants. All that intermingling of thoughts, which might have been a well-spring of invention, instead seemed to suppress any individuals with new ideas. Seda suspected that on the rare occasions an Ant with a different way of thinking was allowed any power, the world became aware of it rapidly. For that matter, she had been receiving some disturbing reports concerning the new Ant general opposing the Eighth.

Wasp armies, in contrast, had traditionally been built about the Light Airborne, soldiers armed with swords or spears and their stinging Art, and able to move swiftly about the battlefield, lacking the Ants’ iron discipline but swifter and more flexible. Wasp heavy infantry could not stand toe to toe with the Ants for long — not even the old disbanded Sentinels could have done that, whatever retired veterans might tell each other — but the Wasps beat the Ants repeatedly by outmanoeuvring them and by out-thinking them, by using the strengths of their Auxillians — and by allowing individual talent to count for more.

The Pioneers were a good example of this. They had been created during the Twelve-year War against the Dragonflies of the Commonweal, a foe who at their best had been as mobile and unpredictable as the Wasps themselves. Often the Commonwealers had taken inaccessible spots as their strongholds — badlands, hill-forts, or the hearts of ancient forests just like this. Often, too, there had been Mantis-kinden fighting alongside them. The Pioneers had been some of the most skilled individuals that the Empire could draw upon, perhaps the first ever occasion when the usual considerations of purity of blood had been allowed to slacken, when sheer ability had become paramount. And they had died, of course. Fighting the enemy’s war on the enemy’s ground, they had suffered a rate of attrition worse than frontline battlefield units, but they had done their job. No Dragonfly fortress or holdout had survived the Empire’s attentions, and in many cases it was the work of the Pioneers to bring in the rest of the army.

The war against the Lowlands had been a slow time for those veterans of the Commonweal, so far. The Lowlanders fought like the Apt should, with machines and with armies. The call had gone out though and, even as Roder’s Eighth had crossed the Imperial border, the Pioneers had been strapping on their gear, taking up their weapons. Now Roder had brought before Seda the best of them that he could offer. His expression was pained, for they were hardly the immaculate paragons of Wasp soldiery that he might want, but they were good. They knew their craft and, if she was to break off from the main force within the forest and pursue her own aims, she would need them. The forest would be against her, and half the Mantis-kinden in it, together with whatever force the Sarnesh could commit. And her of course, the cursed Beetle girl, Seda’s rival. Seda would need every advantage, including this ragged, disreputable trio.

There was one Wasp amongst them, and he was perhaps the biggest man Seda had ever seen, hulking head and shoulders over his peers as though he had some Mole Cricket blood in him. He was broad, too, bulked out with muscle, his bared arms massive, looking as though they could uproot every tree in the forest for her until she had what she wanted. Twin axes were sheathed across his back, each looking as though a normal man would need two hands to wield it, and he wore a long coat studded with chitin plates, with a dark metal breastplate beneath it, nothing of the black and gold about him. His name was Gorrec, Pioneer sergeant, and he was the closest to an Imperial soldier that she was looking at.

To his right stood Icnumon, who looked as though Gorrec could have crushed him in one hand. He was a slender, pale piece of work, his ash-fair hair worn long and tied back, his features sharp and slightly out of proportion, as so often with halfbreeds. He had Wasp blood in him but his father had been Mantis-kinden, which made for a very dangerous combination. He had his mother’s sting, and the spines of his father’s people speared out from his forearms. He was an assassin, Roder had explained, who had stalked the shadows of the Commonweal, playing hide and seek with Dragonfly scouts and executing enemy leaders within their own forest haunts. He wore no armour, just a loose, long tunic and cloak of mottled grey-brown. There was a short, recurved bow holstered at his back, and long knives at his belt, but Seda could tell far more than Roder could what the man’s real advantage was. Through some teaching of his father or secrets learned in the Commonweal, Icnumon had a touch of the magician about him: a few incantations and half-understood tricks to complement his Art, to let him stalk unseen in the darkness.

To Gorrec’s left was a shorter, squatter figure, and not what she would have expected among the Pioneers. Instead of a slender Inapt killer or a rugged Wasp, here was a solid, balding Beetle-kinden wearing a hauberk of reinforced leather that was one step removed from an artificer’s protective overalls. He had a snapbow over his shoulder, not the standard infantry model but the shorter-barrelled pieces that she understood the Light Airborne preferred for speed and ease of movement. This man was Jons Escarrabin, who had been born in Collegium a very long time ago, and who had fought on both sides in the Twelve-year War, graduating from captive to Auxillian to Pioneer. He looked like a mild shopkeeper, and had been personally mentioned in reports as a crack shot, an expert wildsman and a halfway decent artificer. He fought for the Empire for the same reason that a surprising number of mercenary types did, because where else would they get such a rewarding opportunity to practise their trades?

‘I shall take them,’ she declared. ‘General, begin moving your chosen forces into the forest. The Nethyen and their Moth-kinden masters are expecting you, and they shall serve your officers as guides and Auxillians, bringing you to the fray. No quarter for the Etheryen. No quarter for the Sarnesh. Drive them back wherever you meet them.’ Roder would have some inkling of the magnitude of the task, the size of the forest, its beasts, its darkness, no fit terrain for the Wasp-kinden, and yet they would do their best, despite it all, for her glory and that of the Empire.

And if those two glories diverge slightly, who is to know?

‘My retinue will be Gjegevey, Tisamon and my personal bodyguards, Ostrec of the Red Watch and your three Pioneers. I shall commandeer such others as I see fit from the locals and your forces as I need them. For yourself, Roder, while the Mantis-kinden are at war, there will be no support from the woods for the Sarnesh. You have waited long enough. Ready your men to march.’