War Master's Gate

Nineteen

‘This is such a stupid idea,’ was Gerethwy’s informed opinion.

The night was unseasonably chill, or perhaps it was just due to the altitude. There were no clouds above, the stars clear as cut glass, and only the faintest sliver of moon to detract from them.

‘Wasn’t my first choice either,’ the airship’s master grunted. ‘Beats training on those deathtrap Stormreaders, though.’ His name was Jons Allanbridge and he seemed to be some kind of associate of Stenwold Maker, although he didn’t exactly speak of the War Master fondly. His vessel, the Windlass, was carrying the two Company volunteer officers and a fair number of their soldiers. Nobody had explained to Straessa that she would be one half of the Collegiate command team on this mission, and she had the unhappy feeling that possibly nobody had really thought about it either. Apparently the non-Mantis side of the operation would be spearheaded by the Mynans, and she and her people would just have to try and keep up. Although the overall plan might not be as foolish as Gerethwy claimed, the details really did seem to be lacking.

They put this one together in a hurry, and surely the Wasps’ll see us coming, and then. . But if the Imperial Air Force caught them aloft in these big, slow airships, that would be a death sentence for anyone who couldn’t take wing and fly. Gerethwy was right in that — all the artificers were in agreement that airships as a tool of war had had their day.

Until now, apparently, because heavier-than-air fliers just could not have carried this many people to the enemy.

There were a dozen other dirigibles blotting out the night sky around them, which were doing their best to be stealthy. They kept no lights, and were coasting on a westerly wind so that the nocturnal quiet was not defiled by the sound of engines. Even the enormous Sky Without, its elegant staterooms now the squatting ground of the Mantis warriors, was coursing through the upper air like a great, bloated ghost.

‘You’re sure you can even find the enemy? I never really appreciated just how much land there is until I saw it from up here,’ Straessa put in.

‘They’re coming along the coast, so it won’t be hard,’ Allanbridge told her. ‘More important for us not to overshoot.’ He checked his instruments. ‘Not much further, if reports can be believed.’

‘We’re going to get shot down. This is ridiculous,’ Gerethwy complained, from his post at the bow, but then a Fly-kinden messenger spiralled out of the sky to land at Allanbridge’s left side, making the man curse furiously.

‘Time,’ the small woman announced. ‘Down, now.’ Then she was off for the next ship: an old fashioned way of passing the word, but lamp signals had been judged too risky.

The other Company officer, a Fly-kinden named Serena from the Fealty Street Company, had come up on deck. ‘We’re going down?’

‘The easy way,’ Allanbridge confirmed. All around them, the airship fleet was descending, and there was still no sense that the Empire had noticed their coming.

‘Let’s go and get the troops,’ Serena suggested. ‘I’ll go over to the Sky and make some order there.’ At the end of those words, she was already standing on the Windlass’s rail, and kicked off with her wings flashing from her shoulders, catching the air and arrowing off towards the larger vessel.

‘They can’t not have seen us,’ Gerethwy muttered, as though bitter about Imperial failings.

‘Plan is to give them other things to worry about, lad, never you mind,’ Allanbridge replied, then added awkwardly, ‘And you try to get your hide and your mob back to us intact, right? Now get ready to jump off and secure us, why don’t you?’

Straessa went below decks to find the soldiers there mostly ready, strung out on that combination of tension, excitement and fear that she knew so well herself. Before they felt the Windlass’s keel scraping and bumping at the ground, they were out on deck and casting rope ladders over the side, even as Gerethwy fought with the anchor. The airship was emptied of troops with more efficiency than the Antspider would have bet on and, looking about, she could see other craft bobbing low, with swarms of Mantis-kinden flying or climbing from them, forming up into one turbulent, angry mob that was plainly itching to get at the enemy.

‘Over there, quickly,’ she ordered her people, and set a fast pace, well aware how the entire Felyen force might just vanish off into the night, leaving their allies too far behind to support them.

By the time she arrived, so had everyone else. She picked out the Mynans because their leader was already stalling the Mantis-kinden.

‘Kymene?’

The Mynan leader glanced towards her. ‘Your people are ready?’

Serena had made herself known by then, and Straessa nodded, shouldering her snapbow. ‘I hadn’t thought you’d be here yourself, Commander.’

‘Neither did Sten Maker,’ Kymene acknowledged. ‘Too late for him to do anything about it now, though, isn’t it? We’re waiting a signal. .’ And then, with a fierce look at the woman who led the Felyen, ‘Yes, we are.’

‘Your signal is late,’ the Mantis spat.

‘No, it’s not. Just listen,’ Kymene shot back. ‘Everyone, quiet and listen!’

Straessa shook her head, hearing nothing at all but not wanting to state the obvious, but Gerethwy squeezed her shoulder, cocking his head.

He was smiling — a little thinly perhaps but she was glad of any smile from him just the same.

And then she heard it, though scarcely a moment before the Stormreaders started passing overhead. The clatter of their clockwork engines was so much quieter than the noisy oil-driven motors favoured by the Empire.

They circled almost invisibly save where they occasionally blotted out the stars, and Straessa heard one coming in to land, the thunder of wind thrown up by its wings hitting them with shocking suddenness as the nimble machine cornered and hovered for a moment, before choosing its spot.

Kymene went running over and, without much thought, Straessa ran after her, Serena and the Mantis leader following on her heels.

The cockpit was hinged open by the time they got there, and the Antspider recognized the Fly-kinden pilot seated inside as the Solarnese, Taki, who seemed to be in charge of Collegium’s air defences.

‘You’ve about a mile of ground to cover still to reach their pickets,’ the pilot told them as they approached, and Straessa could hear the clockwork still ticking over, ready to take off again the moment the wings were engaged. ‘We’ll allow you a decent countdown and then move in to give them something to think about. But you’re going to have to make good time.’

‘We’ll be there,’ Kymene told her. ‘Just make sure you’re not late.’

The Fly grinned at her, then waved them away, and even though they were running back to the massed strike force, the downbeat of the Stormreader’s wings almost knocked them off their feet.

‘We run!’ the Mantis leader was shouting at her followers, and Straessa expected a great roar of approval that would probably be heard over in Capitas. Instead, the Mantis-kinden just moved off silently, the entire pack breaking into a ground-eating lope, leaving the others to catch up.

General Tynan made do with very little sleep, so he was still awake and poring over quartermasters’ reports when the camp around him suddenly exploded into life. He heard the Farsphex engines start up, and knew that the engineers would be dragging the cloaking tarpaulins off them even as the pilots crawled into their seats. A night attack. With the continued valiant resistance put up by the Imperial pilots and artillery, he had expected such a move. It was exactly the pattern that the Second’s own fliers had fallen into when dropping their bombs, denied free rein over Collegium during daytime.

Of course, the Beetles won’t have the same night vision as our Fly bombardiers had. And, of course, he had kept his camp without lights, despite the chill, to deny them any clear targets, but even a random bombardment would do its inevitable damage.

From the back of his tent, he heard Mycella stir, and she joined him moments later, swathed in a silk robe, even as the first watch officers rushed in to report. The first man had just time to salute before Tynan himself could hear the clatter of the enemy orthopters.

‘Our pilots?’ he snapped out.

‘Taking to the air, sir. Artillery as well, but we-’

The first dull boom signified that one of the Collegiates had been a little too enthusiastic, unloading surely somewhere far short of the confines of the camp. The soldiers of the Second and their allies would be rushing from their tents, scattering and spreading.

‘No dedicated bombers seen amongst them,’ the watch officer continued. ‘Just their Stormreaders, like before.’

The Air Corps will have to do its best, Tynan decided.

‘Sir, there was a report of airships, too, but-’

Just then the real bombardment started, a half-dozen explosions, and one close enough to punch in the wall of the tent, leaving the poles leaning at drunken angles, pulling the ropes from the ground. There were cries of pain on the air, and a secondary retort as something caught fire and went up. Tynan looked skywards, gritting his teeth. Luck’s the emperor of this battlefield. He knew the Airborne would be taking wing, but much of the army did not have that luxury.

‘What do airships signify?’ Mycella pressed him. Another explosion sounded further off, and he knew that the Stormreaders would be turning to make another approach, despite the best efforts of the Farsphex pilots.

‘If they start to position airships over the camp, we’ll give the order to scatter. They can carry more bombs than any number of orthopters. Slow, though, so we’ll have warning. And perhaps the Farsphex will manage to bring some down.’

‘Yes, sir, but I don’t think. .’ The watch officer flinched as another bomb landed somewhere off towards the coast. ‘They’ve not been seen again. . I’d thought’ — flinch — ‘our scouts must be mistaken.’

‘Then go and get me better intelligence!’ Tynan snapped, and the man backed out hurriedly. The Wasp general sighed and buckled on his swordbelt, more for the comfort it would give him than anything else.

‘Tynan, these ships. .’ Mycella began said pensively.

‘If there were any.’ But he found himself believing that there were. It would have to have been a very curious trick of the moonlight, otherwise. .

‘They can carry more than bombs,’ she pointed out.

Their eyes locked, communication passing between them as efficiently as through an Ant’s Art. In the next moment they were both shouting for their underlings.

‘Duty officer! Reinforce the perimeter. I want the reserve watch mustered now!’ And what a gamble — because if there’s a force coming for us, we must huddle close so as to repel it — and make ourselves easy meat for their bombs. And if we don’t. . But he found that he accepted Mycella’s intuition without question.

Meanwhile the Spider Arista had called in her man Jadis. ‘Have all our people to arms and ready to fight!’ she ordered. ‘Get the mercenaries up and ready. We’re under attack.’

Even as she said it, a Fly messenger fought her way into the tent and dropped down by Mycella’s feet.

‘Mantis-kinden!’ she got out.

Before they reached the camp, the Fly-kinden returned in her Stormreader, wheeling wildly over the Mantis onrush before setting down practically on top of Kymene’s people, the cockpit already open.

‘Here!’ she called, pitching her voice high over the crump of explosives beyond. ‘Map!’

Straessa struggled over, her chest heaving and already envying the solid endurance of the Beetle-kinden. The Fly proffered a tattered piece of paper, on which she had drawn a rough sketch of the camp’s layout — something she must have done while in the air — marking out whatever looked as if it needed blowing up. ‘Remember, strike fast, then pull out!’ she shouted to Kymene. ‘The airships will be coming in, and we’ll cover them while you get away!’

The Mynan woman took a second to stare at the scribbled map, committing it to memory. She made no promises about the retreat, Straessa noted. Then the Antspider found the map in her own hands, and Kymene and her squad were off again, and so must she be if she did not want to get left behind.

She picked up speed, an extra burst to try and make up lost ground. Ahead, the bright flare of a bomb going off revealed the great Mantis host as stark silhouettes. Beyond them, some of the Second’s camp was on fire, and there was a brief impression of a great many Wasps rushing about, in the air and on the ground, without having a clear idea of what was going on. Then. .

Straessa would remember this moment. She would dream of it: the Mantis-kinden of the Felyal hitting the Second Army’s camp. Not just as a mob of warriors and old men and children, not the last dregs of a culture casting themselves into the fire. In her memories they would be like a tide, a great cresting wave and, although the Wasps put a fair few soldiers in their way, nothing could stop them. They had come to finish their long history with the Second Army, one way or another.

They let nothing stop them. The Wasp sentries were hacked down within seconds, and even though the flashes of stings and the deadly needles of snapbow bolts kept darting out from amidst the camp, there was no suggestion of strategy from the Mantids, nothing so human as a fear of death, or even an acknowledgement of it. They ran and they flew as a great barbed host, and killed everyone they encountered, even as the Wasps pulled back to form up again deeper within their camp.

The air was alive with their arrows, and the night’s darkness to them was merely dusk. As the first reordered force of Wasps advanced to try and hold them, the wave broke, the Mantid onslaught fragmenting into war bands of a dozen or a score, each hunting its own bloody end in the streets of the tent city that the Second had built.

‘What’s first on the shopping list?’ Gerethwy shouted in Straessa’s ear. The bombing had stopped — and just as well! — but the camp was reduced to a chaos of random clashes of arms, with Mantids and Wasps hurling themselves at each other, neither quarter nor hesitation from either side. When Straessa’s squad halted at a crouch, quiet and still, they might as well have been invisible. The Imperials had other problems right then.

‘Fordyke, take a dozen and head left, that way. Velme, you cut left of centre, down that way. And you’ — and I have no idea who you are — ‘you’ve got straight on.’ And she parcelled out her command into tiny vulnerable pieces, just as the plan had called for, so that they could inflict the most damage for the least cost, for if the Wasps caught them all together, they would be butchered to a man. ‘I’m heading deeper in. Looks like something’s there needs setting on fire.’ She squinted again at the pilot’s map and hoped it wasn’t just an inopportune twitch of the pencil. ‘Use your grenades, but make sure you lob them away from your friends. Shoot every damn Imperial you see, and anyone else who isn’t a Mantis and doesn’t wear a sash. Blow things up. Questions? No? Get going.’

All said far too fast to allow objections, of course, and just as well because Straessa herself could feel fear gripping her by the throat, trying to throttle her words, and only by rattling them off that quickly could she get them out at all. The expressions of those Merchant and Student Company soldiers fool enough to volunteer were wide-eyed and horrified, and if she left them a moment they would just lock up, the reality of their situation clenching like a paralysis about them. But she shouted ‘Move!’ for her own benefit as much as theirs, and then they were all going, peeling off on their separate assignments, running as if all the ghosts of the Bad Old Days were after them.

She herself had the Dragonfly Castre Gorenn, who had brought a longbow that even the Mantids might envy. She had Gerethwy, who was holding his snapbow off-handed because he had lost his usual trigger finger in the last big fight. She had another half-dozen Beetles and Fly-kinden, and they were all waiting to follow her lead.

She went, feeling as though she had to put a shoulder to her fear and shove it out of the way by brute force, but she went anyway. There were Mantis-kinden fighting ahead, a handful of them cutting and leaping at Wasps who were trying hard to stay out of reach until reinforcements arrived. Straessa levelled her snapbow even as she ran, her aim shaking and bouncing as she tried to steady the barrel long enough for a shot. She loosed — but her target was already out of her sights, the bolt flying wildly off into the night. Then the man was dead, just pitching over without a Mantis anywhere near him, and she only heard the thrum of Gorenn’s bowstring as the woman’s second shot took an unarmoured Wasp in the small of the back. Straessa herself was trying to reload and recharge without slowing her pace, but the Dragonfly was already ahead of her, plucking another arrow from one of her two quivers, nocking and drawing, then letting her wings lift her from the ground, steady in the air for a heartbeat as she shot, then down and running again without missing a step.

As the Antspider’s little band passed the melee, Gorenn put five arrows into it, each one claiming a Wasp, and two of those victims picked out of the close fighting with the Mantids. The Dragonfly’s face was serene. The Commonweal Retaliatory Army, she had named herself, but Straessa had never taken her seriously before now.

‘Behind us!’ someone shouted, and she risked a glance over her shoulder to see a good score and a half of Wasps bearing down behind them — more intent on wiping out the Mantids than Straessa’s people, but that would only be a matter of time. Then one of her Fly-kinden had kicked off into the air, his wings propelling him back towards the enemy. The Antspider saw a flare as he dragged the fuse of a grenade over the rough catch-strip tab on his belt and, as he swung out of his dive, he left the grenade behind, arcing its way into the Wasps with the momentum of his flight. He timed it perfectly — the bright lash of it hurled the front dozen Wasps in all directions, with only some of them staggering to their feet afterwards. And then the Mantids had rushed them, just four now against so many, but Straessa had no chance to see how they fared. She had her own mission.

She heard the first explosion, one of the sabotage teams either being creditably fast or horribly premature. ‘Gereth, start the clock!’ she ordered. Now the sands were running, and she hoped that all her other teams were counting as well.

The seer said there would be fire and blood.

Mycella regularly had her fortune cast, and seldom paid much heed to it. ‘Fire and blood’ could mean just about anything — the daily Collegiate fly-overs, the continual just-controlled friction between the Empire and its Spider allies. . But this morning her seer had been insistent — not specific but very, very emphatic.

She had listened, this once, and given orders for more of her people than usual to be in readiness at all times, doubling watches, overlapping shifts. She had reckoned it nonsense at the time, but some deep instinct had compelled her.

Seeing what she saw here, she was not sure that she had done the right thing.

Hatred had a face, and that face was Mantis-kinden. She had always known that their people hated hers from time out of mind, and with a fervour that defied logic and offered no reasons. Back in the Spiderlands it had been a joke, those ravaging rustics in their primitive longships and shabby tree-houses. Whatever the Mantis-kinden had once been, they were that no longer — just an atavistic pack of malcontents squatting in their coastal forest between Kes and Collegium, menacing the nearby shipping and brooding over their obsolescence.

Now they had come in all their fury, and she saw that, just for this one night, they had recaptured the days of their old glory.

They came in a ravening wave, killing everything in their path, slaughtering the Wasp sentries who tried to deter them, killing unarmoured, just-woken Imperial soldiers scrabbling desperately from their tents, putting their hungry blades into every living thing in their path, combatant or not, Wasp or Auxillian or mercenary. Or Spider. Most especially Spider.

They were wild and fierce and had no plan, no strategy that she might have misdirected. All she was faced with was their hate.

Her soldiers, those brave men and women loyal to the Aldanrael and its tributaries, were flooding past her, clad in their armour of leather and chitin and silk, throwing themselves into the maw of that bloody melee, killing Mantids and being killed in turn — losing two for one at best, perhaps more. They were gallant and skilled, her soldiers, and they loved her and were loyal to her every inch as much as Tynan’s people obeyed him and revered their Empress. They knew, too, that they were not the born and honed killers the Mantids were, and yet they rushed in and fought, and they held the line even as their very presence — the hated Spider-kinden — drew more and more of the Felyen into the fight. Her people held out because more of them were still coming, rushing past her into the fray with grim desperation, decanting out their lives like spilt wine, just to keep the Felyen assault at bay.

‘Mistress.’ She heard Jadis urging at her side. ‘You must fall back. They cannot keep the Mantids back long.’

She shook him off, feeling his fear for her — not ever for himself — and drinking in the strength which that love and fealty gave her. She summoned up all her reserves of Art.

‘Servants of the Aldanrael!’ she called out, and her voice thundered over them all, friend and enemy alike. ‘Hold fast, Aldanrael! Be not afraid! I am with you! I shall take not one step back! Hold fast and make them pay in blood for every inch of ground! Aldanrael! Aldanrael and the Spiderlands!’

Her Art, the hidden strength of the Aristoi, washed over her soldiers, firing them with courage and giving them heart, quickening their limbs and staving off pain, so that for a moment the Mantids began actually losing ground. Then the arrows came in, feathering through the air towards her, and she stepped left and right in a graceful dance, and let Jadis’s shield take the rest — nimble as a young girl until one found her shoulder.

The silk and mail she had donned took the brunt, but it drew blood nonetheless, and Jadis was practically dragging at her arm, but Mycella stood her ground, just as she had exhorted her servants to do. ‘Hold!’ she called again, aware that the Mantids were trying to flank her forces; aware that the battle-lines were getting thinner and thinner. ‘For the Aldanrael, hold!’

Fire and blood, she remembered suddenly. And we have had the blood but was that little bombing really the fire? ‘Bring me Morkaris,’ she demanded. ‘Where is he?’

The mercenary adjutant was fighting at one end of the line, with a pack of his unruly Scorpion-kinden, but at Jadis’s shout he dropped back to join Mycella, still keeping half an eye on the conflict. His black armour was battered and scratched and he had a jagged, bloody gash across one cheek, but his eyes widened when he saw the arrow still standing proud of her shoulder.

‘There will be others,’ she informed him, calm and clear despite it all. ‘Beetles, Ants, the Apt — they will send artificers against the same targets their flying machines have been trying to destroy.’ Now she had thought of it, it seemed obvious. ‘Take your Scorpions and any other of the mercenaries you can gather. Spread them out. Send them to check the provisions, and the siege machines. Drive off any enemies you find there.’

Morkaris glanced from her to Jadis, and from Jadis to the ongoing battle, to the line that was being pushed closer and closer.

‘Obey the Lady-Martial!’ Jadis snapped at him, and the mercenary scowled and went to drag his Scorpions out of the fray.

Jadis of the Melisandyr had moved closer to her now, arrows rattling off his shield. ‘Lady. .’ she heard him start, but he added nothing, for to say more would be to question her.

‘We are buying time, Jadis,’ she told him gently, drawing her rapier with her uninjured arm. ‘We must hope that Tynan can order and rally his men in the space of time that we are buying him, because soon enough we will need him to return the favour.’

Ahead Straessa saw several automotives burdened with some bulky load. She was not at all sure she knew where she was on Taki’s map, and she was keenly aware that shortly the only relevant direction would be ‘out’, in any event.

‘There!’ she directed. ‘Set your bombs there!’

The two chosen artificers hurried forwards, and Straessa began looking round for the enemy, snapbow raised to her shoulder. Beside her, Castre Gorenn loosed a shaft that caught a half-armoured Wasp in the throat even as he stepped out from around the automotive, killing the man before he knew what was going on.

A skirmishing knot of Mantids passed by, briefly visible between the tents, Wasps converging on them on the ground and from the air. Straessa crouched low, Gerethwy beside her.

‘Come on, come on,’ she murmured impatiently, but she knew the bomb-setters would be working as quickly as possible, securing their explosives to the automotives at their most vulnerable points, setting their clockwork timers carefully.

‘Inbound,’ Gerethwy said flatly. ‘They see us.’

She saw just huge shapes moving in the dark, at first — far bigger than Wasps had any right to be. Then they resolved into Scorpion-kinden, a dozen at least, bearing down on them at a full charge.

Her snapbow jumped in her grasp and one of them stumbled and fell, while an arrow from Gorenn wounded a second. She saw Gerethwy fumbling with his weapon, teeth bared. Another two shots sounded from nearby, claiming one victim between them.

The Scorpions let out a hoarse roar of fury, almost upon them now. Straessa saw Gerethwy drag his snapbow up, missing his target at close range, then just swinging the weapon into the face of the leader, whipping his helmed head to one side. The Scorpion was already bringing down a halberd at him, too close, and he caught at the shaft desperately. His long-boned frame was surprisingly strong, Straessa knew, and for a moment he held the weapon off, and she leapt in with her rapier and found the thin mail under the big man’s arm, lancing through the links and provoking an agonized yell.

Another huge warrior loomed before her as she hauled on her blade to free it. She looked up to see a greatsword drawn back, and then the Scorpion’s head snapped sideways, an arrow standing out from the visor of his helmet.

‘Come on, Antspider!’ Gorenn was shouting. ‘More on the way!’

Straessa finally got her blade clear, and immediately lunged at another enemy, even as Gerethwy liberated the halberd and began laying about himself, sacrificing finesse for sheer force and speed.

‘Officer, we’re done!’ She heard the words but made nothing of them as she twisted aside away from an axe-stroke, her own thrust scraping off mail. Gerethwy’s halberd blade bounced off her opponent’s shoulderguard, and sent the man staggering.

‘Seriously, Antspider! Time to go!’ the Dragonfly yelled, while someone else shouted, ‘Clock!’ as though they were still at the Prowess Forum.

Belatedly the understanding stumbled into her mind that all this chatter meant that the bombs would shortly explode.

She measured her sword against the axe of her opponent, let his stroke fall short and then lunged, throwing her shoulder forward the way she always employed to out-strike her fencing opponents, this time gashing the Scorpion across the side of his neck and sending him staggering away.

‘Clear! Go!’ she cried, and did her best to obey her own order. Clock meant that it was time they were gone for good — too much time having elapsed since the first explosion. Time to try and extricate their fingers from the trap, or the airships would leave them behind.

Another enemy was upon her, though, before she could get more than three steps away — a cadaverous Spider in dark mail, whipping an axe at her double-handed. She tried to dodge back, fell over instead, so that the crescent blade scythed just overhead. Her reflexive stab caught him at the knee, but his armour turned the blow. He had his axe upraised again in one smooth motion, and she rolled aside frantically, but then he had turned, shoulder coming up, and Gorenn’s arrow struck the high neck-guard of his pauldrons, sending the Spider reeling but otherwise unharmed. Straessa seized her moment and scrambled away, but gained only another foot of ground before a Scorpion blade sliced down in front of her.

Gerethwy barged into the newcomer, knocking him aside, and the two of them went down in a tangle of flailing limbs. Straessa forced herself to her feet even as the Spider came back for her.

Then the explosives blew.

The artificers had done well, for the automotives were gutted in an instant. The force of the blast was mostly directed in and up, so that one machine’s entire weight of iron and brass and wood jumped five feet before coming down on its side, a second explosion slewing its back end towards the fighting. The rush of displaced air knocked the Spider over, and Straessa as well, slapping her to the ground with casual force and leaving her weak and dizzy with the impact. A moment later, though, long, lean arms had hauled her up, and she was in Gerethwy’s grip, being hurried away, as Gorenn’s arrows darted past, swift as angry thoughts, to discourage pursuit.

‘Put me down, you bastard, I can run as good as anyone.’ But she said it so quietly, mumbling through a mouthful of blood, that he didn’t hear her.

‘General, we’ve got them on the run!’

Tynan regarded Colonel Cherten narrowly. ‘Don’t give me that nonsense. They’re Mantis-kinden.’ The problem with the Intelligence Corps is that they underestimate everyone else’s. ‘What’s the situation?’

‘The saboteurs have fled, at least,’ Cherten amended. ‘All key resources are now under our control.’ Just then, another explosion retorted like thunder from somewhere in the camp and, under other circumstances, Tynan would have laughed at the timing. Instead he forcibly restrained himself from punching the colonel.

Hurriedly, Cherten went on. ‘The Mantids are still in the camp. Most of them are gathered up now, and the Spider-kinden are holding them. We’re mopping them up right now — infantry and airborne squads have surrounded them. They’re fighting to the last, of course, but with snapbows and stings we have them outmatched.’

And what bloody cost has this night brought us? ‘I want a full report of the damage: lost men, supplies and siege-’

Just then a sergeant landed nearby, stumbling slightly as he saluted. His armour was streaked with blood. ‘General, sight of airships coming in.’

And their damned orthopters too, of course. And we’ve formed up in nice big groups and there are fires all over camp to light their way. ‘Send out the order: break up every unit into skirmish spread, if they’re not actively fighting. And get me — Major Oski!’

The Fly had been skulking about a moment before and now he appeared at Tynan’s elbow as though brought into being simply by the use of his name. ‘Sir?’

‘I want everything you have aimed at the sky — I know their Stormreaders are too fast for you, but just make the air as busy as you can. Make their lives difficult.’

The Fly saluted, wings flashing from his shoulders to carry him away.

‘Now-’ Tynan started, and an arrow struck Cherten in the chest, bouncing off his armour but knocking him down. Tynan’s blade cleared its sheath, without need for thought, and his left hand jabbed out at a target he had not even consciously seen as the Mantids arrived.

‘Defend the general!’ someone shouted, but Tynan was too busy defending himself. His sting crackled, catching the onrushing woman a glancing blow that barely slowed her, and then he had caught her spear with his sword, beating it away as she raked him with her arm-spines, which squealed across his mail. One of his aides got a sword into her then — too close to risk a sting — but the Mantis woman seemed barely discouraged. There was clear knowledge in her eyes that she was fighting the Wasps’ leader.

She struck him in the chest with the shaft of the spear, trying to knock him back far enough for her to ram the point into him, but he flailed out and somehow seized her by the wrist. Furious, she pulled back, but a tug of war was not what he intended. The fierce heat of his sting charred her flesh to the bone and she hissed — such a small sound — and rammed the spines of her other arm at his neck, abandoning the spear altogether.

His aide got his sword into her back then, and practically levered her off his superior, while all about there was fighting. Surely there were no more than eight or nine Mantids broken from their main force, but they had struck the mother-lode of enemy officers to kill. Cherten was on the ground, one arm running with blood but still lashing out with his sting at any target that presented itself, and Tynan saw the Red Watch captain, Vrakir, fighting savagely with a Mantis swordsman, matching his enemy for three fierce exchanges of blows before getting a sting in that sent the man reeling back with his chest on fire.

Another Mantis came for Tynan with one of those bladed gauntlets, but by that time his staff had rallied, and a snapbow bolt cut the enemy down before he got close. In another moment the Spider-kinden were there, striking from the same direction the Mantids had issued from. Tynan saw Mycella’s bodyguard literally hurl himself into a pair of them, slender sword flashing, his shield and mail warding off their return strikes, and yet he moved nearly as fast as they did, for all the weight of metal he carried.

Then he saw her, striding through the fighting like a queen, the rapier in her hand stained with blood. Despite the attack, and despite the losses he knew his army must have suffered, the sight of her brought a smile to his lips.

The airships were coming for them. Straessa could see them descending, so silent and peaceful, as if they belonged to another world entirely, while behind her the Wasp camp burned and the fighting continued. One of the Stormreader pilots must have been watching for the first bombs exploding, then gone to fetch the transport straight away.

‘Let me down!’ she insisted, somewhat louder and clearer now. She was aware that some of her people were turning to shooting behind them. ‘Curse you, Gereth, put me down. I need to fight!’

‘With what?’ he asked. There was a flash and a boom from ahead, and she realized that some of the airship crew had brought smallshotters up to the rails and were now loosing, randomly into the enemy camp to discourage pursuit.

With supreme effort she wrestled herself out of Gerethwy’s grip, then had to lean on him when the ground proved unexpectedly uncooperative beneath her feet.

‘Wounded this way!’ called a shrill voice — te Mosca’s surely. ‘Wounded to me!’

‘Wounded here!’ Gerethwy shouted, and tugged at Straessa’s arm.

‘I’m not wounded!’ she snapped. ‘Just bit my tongue and a bit dizzy,’ but he was dragging her onwards anyway, and he was stronger than she was.

She tried to form a picture of the retreat — there was a scatter of Collegiates all over, on the ground and some in the air, making for the airships with all the speed they could muster, and some pausing to help those who really had been cut up. The numbers looked surprisingly hopeful. Did we actually get away with it?

‘Here with the wounded!’ Sartaea te Mosca called again, and then Gerethwy was hustling Straessa towards the curving hull of the self-same Windlass that she had arrived on — apparently someone had decided its hold would make a good infirmary.

She refused to end up in the hoist they had rigged up, instead climbing with fierce determination up the rope ladder, which made her head swim. Never stand near explosives again. Good rule to live by.

‘Is this all of you?’ Jons Allanbridge demanded, and she caught a brief glimpse of surprise on his solid, serious features. ‘Where’s the rest?’

The Mantids, she realized. The Felyen, they’re not coming back. They never were. A brief image, from the muster, of all those lean, grim men and women — the old, the young, children and babes in arms, all of them. All of them. The Felyal ends here. What have we done?

She staggered over to the rail, where one of Allanbridge’s people was hastily reloading the breach of his smallshotter. There were still a few trying to flee the camp, but she could see Wasps approaching, now, and she had the feeling that anyone who had left it this long had left it too late.

Stormreaders streaked over the Second’s camp, lashing down trails of piercer bolts and releasing the occasional bomb

‘Going up!’ Allanbridge shouted.

‘Wait!’ Three running figures below were just closing with the rope ladder.

The airship began to rise, but Gerethwy kept paying out the ladder to keep it within reach of them until all three had hold of it and were climbing.

She stretched out a hand and hauled up the first to reach the rail. Smoke-blackened beneath the ruined visor of a battered helm, it took her a moment to recognize Kymene. The two behind her were a pair of her Mynan saboteurs.

The two women just stared at one another, then the Mynan leader clasped Straessa’s shoulder in wordless solidarity.

‘The sky!’ someone was shouting. ‘The sky!’

The Antspider looked up, but saw nothing but the underside of the Windlass’s balloon. Then understanding came to her: the Sky.

The Sky Without was too late in departing, or perhaps it was just such a grand target that the Wasps had sought it out first. The immense airship still hung low to the ground, and Straessa could see Wasp airborne swarming over it, fighting on its decks, mad for revenge.

‘Hammer and tongs,’ whispered Allanbridge, next to her.

A moment later they saw a flash, something exploding below decks, towards the stern. Abruptly there was smoke pouring from the Sky’s hatches, and then Straessa could see fire glaring from the rearmost windows, working its way forward a cabin at a time. Soon there would be cinders alighting on the envelope, shrivelling the silk.

She sagged to the deck. Let it all be worth it. What are we, if none of this was worth it?

‘How bad?’ Tynan asked.

Mycella’s face remained calm, even as one of her healers attended to the arrow in her shoulder. They both knew that the wound was not what the general was referring to.

‘Almost half of my people, mercenaries and my own troops equally,’ she said softly. Tynan had heard how the fight had gone — how the Spider-kinden had simply not stopped throwing themselves into the fray, into that whirl of blades that the Mantis-kinden had put up — and how the Mantids had been happy to welcome them, given an opportunity to spill the blood of their oldest enemy. That sacrifice had saved countless Wasp lives and perhaps held the whole camp together.

‘The Empire will remember,’ he assured her.

‘Don’t make promises that you can’t keep,’ she replied wryly. ‘It’s enough that you yourself remember.’

Tynan turned to the Fly engineer. ‘Major Oski.’ All around them he could hear the sound of the Second Army counting over the cost, removing bodies and tending wounds, putting out fires. This was the crucial report, though.

Oski would not meet his gaze, which was a bad sign right now. ‘General, supplies are mostly intact. Splitting them up as much as possible, well, there was nothing there that made a decent target for them. Artillery. . sir, they took out most of our larger engines, and blew a couple of the firepowder stores, too. We have two greatshotters still in working order, one other that could be repaired if I’ve got two days. Of the rest, we lost seventeen of the ballistae we’ve been using against the enemy fliers, and Captain Bergild reports two Farsphex down as well.’

‘In summary?’ Tynan kept his voice level.

‘We’re going to take far more of a pounding from their air — our ability to keep them at bay has taken a serious beating. And, General — when we get there, we don’t have the engines to take down their walls. We’d have to assault with just the Light Airborne, and they’d have their orthopters harrying us all the time. . Sir, when you pulled back from Collegium the last time, well. . it’s not much different to that. I don’t see how we can take the city.’

Tynan felt a sick clenching within him. Not again! But they had been marching towards this moment ever since the order came. Where is that air support I was promised? His eyes met Mycella’s, and he saw her reading these conclusions from his face. She might not know the artifice involved, but she knew him.

‘The attack will proceed.’

Tynan started, suddenly aware of Vrakir standing beside him. There was a strange look to the Red Watch officer, a sheen of sweat on his brow.

‘Captain Vrakir. .’ Tynan started, but the man looked at him with such an expression that the general found himself unexpectedly silenced.

‘I speak with the Empress’s voice,’ Vrakir declared. ‘New weapons, new troops are coming. You will continue the march. Collegium will fall.’

In the resulting silence, Tynan merely stared at the man. It was as though a flash-fever had descended on Vrakir; as though. .

As though someone was speaking through him, something long-hidden rising to the surface at this time of need. He had the inexplicable feeling that, had he only asked an hour before, Vrakir would have known nothing about these new orders.

‘Sir.’ Colonel Cherten was now at his other side, one arm in a sling still spotted with blood. ‘You saw his papers. He carries the Empress’s authority.’

‘I will not waste the lives of my soldiers,’ Tynan said quietly.

Vrakir’s stare seemed to be fixed on something beyond him. ‘General, the Empress has full confidence in your loyalty and obedience.’

Something cold traced its way down Tynan’s spine — caused by the words and the weirdly distant voice combined. He was suddenly aware of Cherten being a Rekef man, almost certainly. . and how many others here? Who amongst his officers would oppose him, if he tried to steer them against this supposed word of the Empress.

And worse, he did believe it was the word of the Empress. He found within himself no doubt at all, and that scared him more than anything else.

‘Do not fear, General. You shall have your victory,’ Vrakir insisted. ‘Collegium shall fall to you.’

There were a lot of unhappy looks around then — not least Major Oski and Mycella herself — but Tynan had built himself a career based on loyalty first and foremost.

‘We march on,’ he confirmed. ‘Do what you can for the wounded, and get the army ready to move.’