War Master's Gate

Fourteen

The attack came at night, heralded by the most appalling sounds Thalric had ever heard. Only in retrospect could he bring himself to believe they had issued from human throats.

Night in the forest was more than just darkness and the sounds of the wood creaking, or of the multitude of unseen things that made the place their home. Huddled down, fireless, with Che and the others and a handful of Zerro’s scouts, the utter sightless blackness was like a solid thing, a weight pressing on his blindly open eyes. He could hear Che sleeping beside him, the rhythms of her breathing erratic enough that he knew she must be dreaming — and what dreams might come creeping in this place, he did not want to think. He was not sure how many others were even able to lay their heads down. The Sarnesh rose each morning looking as hollow-eyed as he himself felt, and Zerro let them rest out the first hour of dawn before having them move on. When they did sleep — when he slept — it was a troubled and intermittent business. He dreamt too, he knew, but he remembered none of it. And for that I’m grateful.

Worse was the fact that he had been in a place like this before, though only the unpleasant familiarity of the sensation had marked it for him: Like being watched, but by something huge. Like being surrounded by enemies I can’t see. Bloody Khanaphes all over again.

Someone moved nearby and his heart leapt. Within the camp. One of us. Surely it’s one of us. I’m so pissing blind here! He had a hand directed out into the void, fingers crooked. ‘Who?’ he hissed.

‘Amnon,’ came the rumbling reply, and no mistaking that voice. Why is it I end up travelling with so many people I don’t like, came another thought, although in truth Amnon had been a firm friend to him, historically, compared to Tynisa. I suppose I shouldn’t switch sides quite so often. But on the tail of that thought came: Better here than with Seda. He had been consort and regent for Seda, at the start of her reign, a convenient man with no power of his own, set up to mollify those Wasps outraged by the idea of a woman ruling over them. And if there are any such left, I’ll bet they’re shut up in Rekef cells.

‘Can’t sleep either, hm?’

‘This is a strange place,’ Amnon’s voice confirmed.

Reminds me of your home, and, even as he thought that, Thalric knew he could not voice it. When Amnon echoed, ‘Reminds me of my home,’ almost word for word, the mere coincidence seemed like evidence for some tightening supernatural noose.

‘Your “Masters”.’ Thalric fought hard to make the word derisory, but the darkness sucked the contempt from it, and his low voice imparted a kind of unwilling reverence.

‘There were no Masters. Or, if so, they were dead centuries before,’ Amnon declared. ‘It was all a trick, even if the Ministers came to believe their own lies at the last. It was simply a trick.’

For a long while Thalric said nothing, disentangling the conflicting tones within the big man’s voice. Surely that was the sound of a man who was trying to believe, and could not quite throw off the shackles of his upbringing. But Apt Amnon had since seen the wider world, and had decided that the old superstitions of his own people were no more than that. This was an inspiring story that might be taught smugly in Collegium, save for one thing. You poor bastard.

‘Che and I met your Masters,’ Thalric declared. It was cruel, but he could be a cruel man sometimes. He was not sure if it was that quality within him prompting the words, or some rarely surfacing need for truth.

Now it was Amnon’s turn for silence, until Thalric reckoned the man might never speak again without further prodding.

‘We went below your city and we met your Masters. They’re. .’ He had no clue as to Amnon’s expression; the man might have cut his own throat by now. And what could Thalric say, now he had started on this course. ‘They’re really fat. They’re fat, slimy, old, and they care piss-all for your people.’ I had forgotten till now that Che hadn’t said anything to the Khanaphir, when we came up from the catacombs. ‘So, you know what? You’re right. You’re absolutely right. It was a trick, and you’re better off without them.’

Still silence. Maybe Amnon had just walked away while Thalric was speaking. But then: ‘I. .’ and, after another dragging pause, ‘I must speak with Che on this.’

Sorry, Che. ‘Probably for the best, as I can’t claim to really understand it.’ Thalric found himself grinning into the darkness, unhappily aware that it was probably just the mean satisfaction of having ruined someone else’s night. Oh, yes, and sleep well on that. He had exceeded by some margin his actual antipathy to Amnon, now, and was left with the self-knowledge that all this needling was just because he himself felt so helpless.

Then the cacophony broke out: a hideous, confused yammering and screeching that seemed to come from all around them, sudden and shocking and close by. Thalric’s involuntary yell was lost in it, but then he was scrambling for a sword he could not find. Those were seconds of utter confusion for him, but in which the Sarnesh had pulled themselves together and drawn blade, and then the night flashed with the brief sear of a Wasp sting — not mine — and someone triggered a chemical lamp, throwing out a bright, greenish light that the Sarnesh all closed their eyes against.

He was briefly blinded all over again, looking too closely towards the lamp when it flared, but then the camp was being overrun.

Wasps. A few Mantids too, possibly, but the bulk of the attackers were Wasps, somehow already penetrating this far into Etheryen territory. Light Airborne make a better pace than plodding Ants, every time. Thalric threw out his hand to direct a sting. In that moment he caught the expressions on the faces of the enemy, as blinded and surprised as he had been — and not running to but from. This was a clash of ill chance that there had been no need for, but no way to avoid it now, and there looked to be a fair number of them.

His sting flashed, striking one down — the Sarnesh were shooting, bolts punching running Wasps from their feet. The attackers were already in the camp, though, and it was down to swords almost instantly. Thalric saw Amnon — a huge dark shape of nightmare in the unhealthy light — discharge a snapbow virtually into one man’s face and then club another down with the same weapon, before taking a sword from one of his victims to continue the fight.

Where’s Che? But of course the Beetle girl was already up and utterly in control, standing in the centre of the camp with drawn blade, and not rushing off anywhere or doing anything stupid. It’s as if I don’t know her any more. Tynisa passed by in a blur of speed, clad only in her shift against the muggy night, but her blade already dissecting the air about her.

Thalric remained at a crouch, stinging at targets of opportunity, trusting that the Wasps would not be expecting such an attack from their enemies, and so might overlook him. The sword-to-sword fighting was furious, with the Wasps already in a frenzy, panicking and dangerous. The Sarnesh met them calmly, outnumbered but fighting as one. He could hear Zerro’s high voice shouting orders, but could not make out what the Fly was saying.

Maure and Bartrer stayed with Che, practically hiding behind her, he saw, as though she was some sort of supernatural guardian. Ludicrous thought. And yet there was something there, a strength that had been growing in the girl, which made him think again.

Then a pair of Wasps tripped over him.

In that moment of confusion on their part — and because he knew all others of his kind were his enemies at this point — he killed one with a hand to the man’s side, sting scorching where the light armour left off. The other man hacked at Thalric’s head, so close that it was the crosspiece of his guard that gashed Thalric’s temple and knocked him back to the forest floor. He was already stinging blindly in return with one hand, even as his head rattled, rolling over and feeling the enemy’s stabbing blade pin his tunic rather than his chest. Then its wielder was gone, the sword left behind. He dragged it from the earth, seeing his attacker with a knife in his thigh, hands wide, looking around for his foes, utter despair on his face. Thalric killed him.

The Moth, Terastos, dropped to his knees by the corpse to retrieve his throwing blade. He looked a little scorched about his shoulder, which counted as a near miss for a stingshot wound. Hope that wasn’t me.

There was a knot of Wasps still up, backs against a tree, sword and sting against Amnon and Tynisa and some of the Sarnesh. By this time Thalric had stopped fighting. The outcome was not in doubt and the expressions on his erstwhile countrymen left a sick taste in his mouth: Men who do not want to be here.

He saw behind them, looming around the trunk into the lamp’s wan light, the pale shadow of the same mantis from before, its barbed arms reaching out, and then one of the Wasps was gone with a horrified cry, plucked from the midst of his fellows. That broke the rest and they tried to flee, but enough of the Sarnesh had crossbows reloaded to ensure that not one of them got away.

Thalric moved over to join Che, and indeed all of the non-Sarnesh were gathering there, their camp now split into two for no reason he could discern, save that the looming darkness seemed to work more towards division than unity.

‘The mantis is back,’ he murmured. ‘The beast.’

‘I know,’ Che acknowledged calmly, and he had the immediate and unworthy thought, And did she bring it here, after mastering it before? Another in the growing line of questions he wanted no answer to.

‘Zerro’s dead,’ announced one of the Sarnesh, and the rest were keeping their eyes on the trees. ‘Two more of ours also, and the Moth’s wounded.’

Thalric’s eyes located the Fly’s small corpse, sting-charred, with a short blade still clutched in each hand. He guessed the Fly had been done for by bad luck. The tide had turned against the Wasps quickly — they had not been ready for the fight, and the Sarnesh mindlink had given the Ants a cohesion that had proved fatal for the Imperial soldiers.

‘We’ll take stock in the morning,’ the Sarnesh decided, and one of the others put the lamp out, relinquishing all to the darkness.

After dawn, they discovered the Imperial camp — so close to them amidst the trees that it seemed insane that they had not realized it was there, but the forest seemed to have its own laws governing such things.

There were another dozen dead Wasps at the camp itself, meaning that their force had been much larger than the Sarnesh band. Nocturnal scavengers had been busy with them, so that the precise story was hard to unpick. A small party of Etheryen Mantids stepped out of the trees shortly afterwards, with the Roach girl, Syale, at their head — they would have caught everyone by surprise had Che not looked up a moment before. For a while, they regarded the intruders into their realm stonily, apparently only belatedly remembering that they were all on the same side.

‘The Mantids did this?’ one of the Sarnesh demanded of them, indicating the Wasp camp.

‘They slew some,’ Syale agreed. What happened to the others, she did not say. Thalric’s best guess — or at least the most palatable possibility — was that the Wasps had killed each other in the darkness after the Mantids loosed a few arrows at them. The forest killed them, was a thought he drove from his mind.

Argastos. There were good reasons he was chained where he was.

The Empress’s party was at camp, having already outstripped the Imperial soldiers currently making their unhappy way through the trees. The Moth, Yraea, knew that their officers would be trying to treat the forest like a regular battlefield, to draw up their plans and maps, advance their troops to meet the Sarnesh, whilst the Mantids of both sides flowed about them like streams eroding sandbanks.

The Tharen Moth wondered if any of the military minds on either side had ever asked to see a map of the forest. Perhaps the Etheryen had even given one to the Sarnesh but, of course, the Ants would not be able to read it. The Inapt did not represent land and space in the way that simple Apt thinkers required. No measurements and topography, no precise relationships between landmarks: Inapt maps concerned themselves with paths, with significance, with the mapping of meaning rather than bland reality. There would be nothing in such a map that an Apt eye could recognize, just as Yraea herself would carry away little from the dry, annotated charts the Apt called maps.

She had in her mind a clear picture of the forest, though — not as a map but as a branching journey, spiralling inwards, station by station. And at its heart: Argastos.

And are you watching this, old man? Yraea knew he was. She could feel his stony presence observing her, his dead fingers brushing against her dreams. She knew all about him, far more than she would ever tell the Wasp girl. He had been laid down as a guardian, so long ago, as recognition of his achievements and in punishment for his hubris. Centuries had passed since the Skryres of the Moths had needed even to think of their errant son. But now the Empress had his name on her lips: it was evident Argastos had been stretching out his power, reminding the world of his presence. Whether the girl knew it or not, Yraea was sure that he had called the Empress to her — and probably this Beetle girl as well.

Time to go secure the cage, she knew. He belongs where he was set. We do not want any once-Apt fool to carry Argastos away from here. And for that she must now reach that hidden place that was Argastos’s domain and also his prison.

It should not be so hard, for Argastos himself is working to ease the way. We might be able to just walk in. It has been known. .

‘But I do not believe it is wise for Her Majesty to just walk in,’ she reflected aloud, letting her companion in on her thoughts. The woman was a Loquae of the Nethyen Mantids, a leathery old creature who was still a warrior despite her age, possessing a little of the seer’s talents also. Yraea had crept away from the Empress’s camp without difficulty — a combination of subtle magic and her dark-piercing eyes — to meet this woman out in the unpopulated night between the trees.

‘My warriors say she is powerful, that she carries a great authority,’ the Loquae mused. Her own eyes were nowhere near as keen, but she would be able to see the shadow that was Yraea.

‘But she knows nothing,’ the Moth insisted. ‘That power she has stolen is put at the whim of a spoiled child. She has no history, no provenance. She has done nothing to earn what has been given to her. She is a danger to all of us.’

‘She wishes to bring back the old days, she claims,’ the old Mantis murmured.

‘She lies. Her days are new and without honour. Her armies have destroyed your cousins of the Felyal, and signed treaties with the Spider-kinden. What she seeks here is power for herself. Most likely she will fail even in that, but cause great harm nonetheless, both to your people and mine. What we have laid down in ages past is not to be meddled with by some Wasp girl who knows nothing.’

Yraea could see the Mantid’s expression, unhappy and uncertain: a terrible look for one of her fierce kinden to wear. ‘Servant of the Green,’ the Moth hissed, using the old title that her people had given the Mantis-kinden, ‘the Wasp cannot give you what she promises. She will only take and take. It is all she knows. She must not be allowed to enter within the heart of the wood. She would defile all she found there. Instead, let her smooth my way, and thus she will be of use, but only for that. You must gather your warriors and bind them to this purpose. The Empress’s companions will need to be dealt with as well. You understand?’

‘And the Skryres of Tharn, this is their decree?’

‘Yes.’ Some of them. Perhaps. Tharen politics had always been fluid, and the Empress of the Wasps’ new status as a magician of power had divided the Skryres all over again. A majority had agreed to join with the Empire — better that than another costly occupation like before — but how far to tread along the woman’s path was another question. Out here, beyond the reach of her immediate superiors, Yraea had come to her own conclusions. Stop Seda, secure Argastos in his chains. Maintain the status quo.

‘Well?’ she pressed.

Again a long pause, the woman’s expression of uncertainty only deepening. Yraea hissed with exasperation. ‘Servant of the Green, do you turn against us now? Are you unfaithful after all this time? Is this what the Mantis-kinden have come to?’

In the darkness, the old woman’s eyes flashed. ‘Of course not, and you are right in all you say, and yet. . my people hear her words. None has spoken of a return to the old ways for generations. We begin to despair. The Wasp’s false hope is like a blade turning inside us. Yet it is better than your offer of no hope at all.’

The rebuke stung. ‘If it could be done, do you not think we would do so? She lies. She cannot give you what she promises. Do not be misled by her,’ Yraea repeated. ‘Do not betray me, Servant of the Green. Your place is to obey.’

At last, the Loquae nodded. ‘I will speak to my people,’ she said, almost in a whisper, with more than a hint of defeat about it. She slunk off into the forest, leaving Yraea wondering just what was left of the Mantis-kinden at this frayed and Apt-ridden end of time.

Desperate, she decided. Whilst her own people had retreated to their mountain homes and learned patience, the Mantis-kinden had merely diminished as the years had gnawed away at what they had once been, and they knew it. The Wasp Empire’s presence forcing them to resume dealings with the outside world served only as a jagged and unavoidable reminder that they had no real place in it any more. As long as they obey me in this, they shall have served their purpose.

That night, Seda saw the gates for the first time.

She dreamt, but ever since her conversion to the Inapt world, her dreams had become more than mere fancy. She had seen the depths beneath Khanaphes through Che Maker’s eyes, in those dreams, just as Che had seen them through hers when Seda trod those buried paths herself. Now it seemed she woke from each night knowing some further scrap of information, some shred of lost lore or a new understanding of those around her.

In her latest dream she was in some part of the forest she had not seen — yet! — and in her mind arose the thought, the Heart of the Green. Here the land sloped up to a hill — a mound, rather, since it was the work of hands rather than nature. A barrow, some lost thought informed her: the resting place of the ancient, honoured dead. It had been surfaced with slabs of stone, but now with grass and ferns thrusting from between the cracks. It looked to her like the carapace of some long-dead armoured beast, or perhaps a vacant compound eye.

There were similar burial mounds in the North-Empire, in Hornet country, ancient relics of her own people’s distant ancestors that the Apt tribesmen still avoided from long tradition. These days such tombs were prey to treasure hunters, those wily enough to evade the locals, but she was willing to bet that no daring thief had ever returned alive from the barrow she beheld in her dream.

Set into the mound’s side was a gate, and this was what she was drawn to. The mound’s own shape had been built out to accommodate this portal, which was nearly as tall as the mound’s highest point. A trilithon of grey slabs formed its sides and lintel, but the twin gates themselves were layered with chipped scales of gilded wood that rustled faintly together, each one inscribed with elegant, potent sigils; as fine an entry way as any prince or emperor could command.

The name that came into her mind unbidden was Argax: signifying at once Argastos’s hall and his tomb. And perhaps more. What she sought — that which she had come out and risked herself for — lay within, and all she had to do was open those gates.

Surely she must want to gaze upon the face of Argastos, after all this time.

The dream took her feet and tried to send her forwards to those gilded gates, but no magician of her skill was so careless as to let dreams get the better of her.

You mistake me. She formed the words. I am not just some Apt peasant who has chanced upon power. I am the Empress of the Wasps. And she slapped away the tendrils that had been attempting to drag her forwards. Believe me, I shall come to you in my own time, and I shall come as Empress, not as servant. Others have made the same mistake, believing that I am here to learn, and to pay homage. I drank their blood. I can drink yours too, if you have any. And if you don’t, I shall yet find some way to consume you if you will not serve me.

She expected an instant response — almost certainly an angry one, but instead there was a cool measuring of her. She was not yet sure whether what she faced was a human mind or some echo of one, or just a facet of the forest itself, but it was old and cunning and patient, whatever it was. She could not provoke it so easily.

Come, then, she thought she heard it murmur. Come conquer Argax for your Empire. Mockery, but could she sense a sliver of respect there?

She forced herself to step back from the golden doors, and she became aware that she was not alone in her dream — or rather that this was the dream of Argastos and she was not the sole participant. Nearby she saw the Beetle girl, the Cheerwell Maker creature, but this time there was no immediate surge of hatred. Instead she saw that the girl had gone through the same experience, had shrugged off the obvious lure, and for a brief second the expression on the girl’s dark face must have mirrored Seda’s own.

I will destroy you, Seda declared, and the Beetle locked eyes with her, her gaze giving not an inch. The last time they had clashed, Seda had indeed nearly destroyed her, but they were both stronger and more skilled now. Any battle between them would not be decided so easily.

Looking into that hatefully familiar face, though, the expected rush of loathing or even of fear, did not come. In that dream of Argax, standing before the barrow of Argastos, Seda entertained the strange thought that, under other circumstances, here was the one creature in the world that might truly understand her. A sister? Save that all her siblings were dead, and the last practically by Seda’s own hand.

Still there remained the uncharacteristic and melancholy thought: I could have used a sister.