Roven, for whom the edge of the firelight was a good deal closer, lit his lantern with patient care. When he stood he had a hand facing me. I spread my own, showing that I had nothing. He jerked his head the way Skessi had gone.
The arrow that had transfixed the Fly was dead white, both the shaft and the fletchings that were made from shimmering moth scales. I knew where I’d seen arrows just like that not so long ago. So did Roven.
‘I get it.’ He’d grabbed me before I could step back, snagged a hand about my collar and hauled me close. His face was uglier than ever up close, and his breath stank. ‘I get it,’ he repeated, shaking me for emphasis. ‘Your mate, the turncoat ’Wealer.’
I shook my head, but he was shaking it for me pretty hard, anyway, so he probably didn’t notice. ‘I don’t know how he killed Merric,’ Roven growled, ‘but he surely won’t get me, or the treasure.’ With contemptuous strength he threw me to the ground and fixed me in place with the threat of his open palm. ‘And as for you,’ he said.
And stopped. He made a sound then that I had never heard from a Wasp: a little, broken sound deep in his throat.
He turned from me and ran for the animals, stumbling and almost falling into the fire. He got to the beetle even as I struggled to my feet. He was wrenching at the big creature, but it dug all six legs in and would not move. I could just hear Roven’s voice shrieking at it, see his mouth opening and closing. At last he just tugged at the sacks. One of them tore open, spilling the wealth of ages over the trampled ground of the campsite. The other came away whole and he shouldered it with a supreme effort and was gone soon, obliterated by the snow, lurching away under his priceless burden.
I crawled back to the campsite, for the fire’s warmth more than anything else. Even before I got there I heard him scream. And scream. It went on for some short while. I just took the time to gather my wits. The plan seemed to be going ahead full tilt, but in ways I hadn’t really imagined.
When I looked up, he was there: Galtre Fael in a cloak of blown snow, right across the fire from me. I nodded wearily and reached to start gathering up the spilt loot.
‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Avaris, listen to me. Do not touch the treasure, not even one piece of it. Just go, Avaris, go. Please listen to me.’
A cold feeling came to me, but it was disappointment, not fear. I stood slowly, sensing the end of what few good times I had known. ‘Fael,’ I told him, ‘don’t.’ I reached down for a piece of treasure, a brooch worked into the shape of a beetle with spread wings.
‘Avaris!’ he insisted. ‘Not one piece! Please!’
‘Don’t play that one on me,’ I told him. ‘Fael, I practically invented the ghost scam. There’s enough for both of us to live like Princes-Major. Don’t try it on me. There’s no need.’ But I felt sad because, whether he tried it on me or not, we couldn’t trust each other now. Our partnership had just been killed as sure as Merric.
‘Avaris,’ Fael said despairingly, and his friends turned up.
Pale shapes with grey wings, but I can do better than that. Ancient armour, hollow eyes, the military prime of the Commonweal’s early glories, pearly bows and white arrows, crescent-headed glaives and long-hafted swords with inscribed blades. Behind them, and mercifully half-lost in the snow, some taller thing, some greater figure, man-shaped but pale and regal and ten feet tall, armoured in mail that would put to shame a sentinel for bulk or a merchant-lord for precious stones.
‘Fael . . .’ I remember very clearly my voice then, how it shook and twisted.
‘It’s too late for me,’ Fael said, ‘But they have let me intercede for you, for they were of my kinden once.’ His gesture took in the gaunt-faced warriors about him, but most definitely not the looming shadow behind.
And I fled then. I fled without ever having touched the smallest part of the greatest hoard I have ever seen, and I never saw Galtre Fael again, nor heard any word of him.
And I wonder, now . . . well, at this remove, I’m sure you can guess what I wonder. I wonder whether my friend truly spent his last free moments, while facing absolute annihilation, bartering for my continued life and health. And, if so, I cannot measure what I owe him in all the world’s riches.
But I wonder, too, whether the second plan, the plan Fael and I had devised, which contained the first plan we had explained to Roven and the others, I wonder whether that second plan might not have been part of a third plan known only to Fael.
And I will never know.
‘Tell me again.’ Varmen could feel himself getting angry, which was never a good thing.
‘No sign.’ The little Fly-kinden kept his distance, for all the good that would do against a Wasp. ‘Not a single soldier of them. Nothing, Sergeant.’
‘They said—’ Varmen bit the words off. He was keeping his hands clenched very deliberately because, if he opened them, the fire within would turn this small man into ash.
‘They said they’d be right behind us,’ said Pellrec from behind him, sounding as amused as always. ‘Didn’t say how far, though.’
‘Right behind us,’ Varmen growled. He stomped back to the downed flying machine. The heliopter had been a great big boxy piece of ironmongery when it was whole. When it struck the ground the wood and metal had split on two sides. What roof was left, shorn of its rotors, would barely keep the rain off. A rubble of crates and boxes had spilled out of it, some of them impacting hard enough to cause little ruins of their own.
The pilot had not lived through the crash, and nor had two of the passengers. Lieutenant Landren was, in Varmen’s opinion, now wishing that he was in the same position. The bones of his shattered leg were pushing five different ways, and there was precious little anyone could do with them.
‘Oh, we love the imperial scouts, we do,’ Varmen muttered. ‘Bonny boys the lot of them.’
‘You should have seen what hit him,’ the Fly said. The tiny man, barely up to Varmen’s waist, was supposedly a sergeant as well, but he was happy to hand the whole mess back to the Wasp-kinden. ‘Cursed thing came right down on the props, like it was in love.’ The corpse of the dragonfly was in smashed pieces around them, along with what was left of the rider. Did he know? Varmen wondered. Did he bring them down deliberately? Probably the stupid bastard thought he could fly straight through, ’cos the rotors were going so fast he couldn’t see ’em.
The ground around here was as up-and-down as anyone could wish not to get holed up in. The Dragonfly-kinden could be anywhere, and probably were. The red tint to everything told Varmen that the sun was going down. The unwelcoming hill country around them was about to get more unwelcoming in spades.
‘Where are they?’
‘I said—’
‘Not our lot, them.’
‘Oh, right.’ The Fly’s face took on a haggard look. ‘Oh, they’re right all around us, Sergeant. They cleared out when you got here, but for sure they’re still watching us. You can bet, if we know the Sixth Army isn’t coming, then so do they.’
‘Get fires going,’ Varmen heard Pellrec saying. Pellrec wasn’t a sergeant, but Varmen wasn’t a planner. They had an arrangement. ‘The Commonwealers see cursed well in the dark. Your little maggots are therefore on watch.’
The Fly sergeant’s face went even sourer but he nodded.
Tserro, that was his name. Remembering names was not a strong point for Varmen.
Stupid place to end up, frankly. For the cream of the imperial military, the spearhead of the Sixth Army, the very striking hammer of the Wasp invasion of the Commonweal, he had hoped for better. And it had all seemed such a good idea. Varmen was a professional soldier, after all: he was used to sniffing out dung-smelling errands and dodging them. This had carried all the marks of little risk and high praise. I’m such a sucker for the praise . . . Scouts have got into trouble again – like they always do – leaving a squad of Fly-kinden irregulars and a heliopter suddenly stranded. Go hold their hands until the army picks up the pieces. Sixth is heading that way anyway, won’t be
a day even. So off we trot with a little iron to give the scouts some backbone. Five sentinels and a dozen medium infantry slogging ahead of the advance in all our armour. Because we knew the rest were right behind us. They told us they were coming, after all. How can a whole army be lying to you?
‘Get all the luggage into some kind of front wall,’ Pellrec snapped, to get the infantry moving. ‘One man in three with a shield at the front, while the rest keep under cover and be ready to shoot out. Tserro?’
‘Here.’ The little sergeant was obviously still weighing who was supposed to be giving orders, and where the chain of command ran. He clearly accepted the fact that Varmen had not countermanded anything as his casting vote. ‘Where do you want us?’
‘Space your men so they can keep watch over every approach,’ Pellrec told him. ‘Bows and crossbows, whatever you have. When they appear, get in under the heliopter’s hull.’
Wings bloomed from the Fly’s shoulders and he skipped off to instruct his men. Pellrec leant close to Varmen. He was a proper Wasp-kinden beauty, was Pellrec: fair haired and handsome, and a favourite with any ladies they met that the army hadn’t already slapped chains on. Compared to him, Varmen was a thug, dark haired and heavy jawed and five inches taller. The two of them had come through a lot in the vanguard of the Sixth Army. Seeing Varmen’s expression, Pellrec laughed and said, ‘So, still glad you signed up?’
‘Enough of that,’ Varmen snarled. ‘We’re the Pride of the Sixth. Who are we?’
The one sentinel close enough to hear said, instinctively, ‘The Pride!’ and even Pellrec mouthed the words, grinning.
‘Sentinels, boys,’ Varmen said louder, in his battle voice. The words carried across and on past the wreck of the downed heliopter. ‘The pit-cursed best there is.’ He hoped that the Commonweal soldiers out there could hear him.
He stalked into the shelter of the downed flying machine to check on the man who was nominally in charge. Lieutenant Landren was conscious again, just now. The Fly-kinden quack the scouts had brought was crouching beside him, changing the dressings on his mangled leg.
‘What’s it look like, Sergeant?’ Landren’s voice was ragged enough for Varmen to know there would be no help from him.
‘Seen worse, sir,’ he said dutifully. ‘We’ll get through. Sixth is on its way, sure as eggs.’
‘We’ve made contact?’
A little sharper than I reckoned, after all. ‘Not so much, sir, but when we set out, they were right behind us. What’s going to have happened to them?’ And what in the pit has happened to them?
‘Good, good. Carry on, Sergeant.’
‘Will do, sir.’ Varmen grimaced as soon as he had turned away from him. His eyes met those of Tserro, the scouts’ own sergeant. The man was perched up under the heliopter’s fractured ceiling, stringing a bow with automatic motions, not even looking at it properly. His stare was made of accusation. Varmen scowled at him.
‘Three of my men I sent to the Sixth,’ the Fly hissed as the sentinel passed him. ‘One got far enough to know the Sixth ain’t coming. Two didn’t come back. Why’d the first man live to get through, Sergeant Varmen? You think perhaps they want us to know we’re stuffed?’
‘Shut it, you,’ Varmen growled at him. ‘Pell, how’s it coming?’
‘Oh, it’s arrived, Varmo,’ Pellrec told him. ‘Or at least, as much of it as we’re likely to get.’ He had made the best job of turning the crashed machine into a defensible position, with the broken sides of the heliopter to fend against airborne assault, and a jumble of crates and sacks to turn aside arrows.
‘Arken!’ Varmen snapped. The man he’d put in charge of the medium infantry clattered up instantly. From his privileged position at the front, Varmen had always regarded the medium infantry as a bit of a botched compromise: armour too heavy to fly in, and yet not heavy enough to hurl into the breach without losing more than you kept. Varmen’s chief memory of men like Arken was as a froth of shields and spears on either side of the sentinel wedge as the thrust of the imperial assault went home. He never seemed to see the same men in charge of the medium infantry twice.
‘All right, here’s the plan,’ Varmen told him, and loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. ‘What them out there don’t realize is that we’re exactly the right men for this job. Screw flying about like racking moths and Fly-kinden. We’re the armour boys, so we don’t need to go dancing all over the sky. We just need to stand and hold. Me and the lads will take the front. I want your lot in a line behind us. Sting-shot at anything that tries to come in above us. Anything that gets past us, or that attacks the scouts, take them on – sword and spear.’
‘Right you are, Sarge,’ Arken said.
I always remember the names, with the medium infantry, Varmen thought. Odd that. A dozen men in a dozen fights and I always know which name to yell, yet I can have a commanding officer for two years and still get it wrong.
‘Sentinels!’ he roared. ‘Get your racking kit on!’
They had hauled it all the way here, each man’s mail spread between three of the sweating medium infantry as well as the man himself. This was the Pride of the Sixth, the elite of the Imperial Army, the honour so many soldiers aimed at, and fell short of. The sentinels: the mailed fist. Let the light airborne rule the skies. Let the engineers hurl forth their machines and their artillery. When it came to where the metal met, you sent in the sentinels. Worst job, best kit, best training. None of Arken’s men could have endured wearing Varmen’s armour.
He helped Pellrec on with his, first: the long chain-mail hauberk, shrugged over the head in a moment of oil-and-metal claustrophobia; breast- and backplates strapped at the side, as the anchor for everything that came later; double-leaved pauldrons for the shoulders; articulated tassets that covered him from waist to knee. Armoured boots and greaves from knee to foot; bracers and gauntlets from elbow to hand. Each piece was spotless, the black-and-gold paint lovingly restored after each fight until not a chip remained. Each curve of metal slid over its neighbours until what was left was not a man but more a great insect, a carapace of armour over armour.
Moving swiftly and surely in his mail, Pellrec returned the favour, putting in place by practised motions the barrier that kept Varmen and the world decently separate. The other three sentinels were similarly clad now, hulking ironclads in imperial livery, their heads looking too small for their bodies. Easy to fix that. Varmen slung his arming cap on, tied it beneath his chin. The coif then slid over that, lopsided at first until he tugged it into place. Last came the helm, cutting down the world into a manageable slot, to be dealt with a slice at a time. The senses he had built up in training were already starting to speak to him, to tell him where the others were, where was a wall, where was open space – without having to look around like some backwoods farmer come to the capital for the first time.
He held his hands out. His shield was buckled on to one, and the other hand received the weight of his broadsword. There was no standard weapon for a sentinel. The man who could wear this armour was fit to make that decision for himself. Varmen’s sword was a cavalry piece, weighted towards the tip for a crushing downward blow. Pellrec fought with a Bee-kinden axe, short hafted and massive headed. He made a habit of breaking down doors with it, or sometimes flimsy walls. The others had their favourites: a halberd, a broad-headed spear, a pair of brutal maces. Varmen let his narrowed gaze pass over them, seeing metal and more metal, his faceless soldiers. Beyond them, the men of the medium infantry were looking slightly awed.
‘Pride of the Sixth!’ he shouted, his voice hollow and metallic in his own ears, drowning out their answering cry.
Getting dark out there. And they would come when it was dark. Dragonfly-kinden eyes were good. The fires that Pellrec had ordered to be lit barely held back the darkness more than a spear’s length. Beyond that he had to trust to Tserro’s scouts. Craven little bastards, the lot of them, but they know they’ll die right alongside us. No doubt the Fly-kinden were itching to tak
e wing and abandon the armoured Wasps to their fate, but this war had taught them that the Commonwealers were just as swift in the air as these scouts were. Any Fly that tried the air would end up on the point of an arrow in no time.
‘Movement,’ one of Tserro’s men spat out. Varmen’s heart picked up, that old feeling that had been fear when he was a raw recruit, but was now no more than anticipation. He and his fellow sentinels readied themselves, waiting for the onslaught. The darkness was thick with unseen spears and bows. Behind their metal-clad line, Arken’s men waited. They had their short-bladed swords drawn, but their free hands out, fingers spread. In their palms waited the golden fire that was the Wasp sting, that searing piece of Art that made their kinden so deadly as warriors. Tserro’s scouts nocked arrows, shuffling uneasily on their perches.
‘Coming in now,’ one of them announced.
‘How many?’ Varmen braced himself.
‘Just . . . Two, just two.’
‘What?’ But the guttering firelight touched on movement now. ‘Hold your shot,’ he snapped out, and even as he spoke one of the Flies let loose an arrow. ‘I said—’ he started, but then he saw what happened to the lone missile, and he swore, ‘Bloody guts and knives . . .’ One of the approaching Dragonflies had caught it, snatched it out of mid-air. It was a neat party trick, he had to acknowledge. Like to see them do it with sting-shot, though. That’d burn their pretty hands a treat.
‘What’s going on?’ he rumbled.
‘Maybe they want to surrender?’ Pellrec murmured from beside him. Varmen chuckled despite himself.
‘Close enough,’ he called out, clanging the flat of his blade against his shield to make his point. ‘Here to surrender, are you?’ It was always easier using Pellrec’s words. Pellrec was so much better at speaking than he was. A rattle of sour laughter came from the Wasps at his back.
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