Salute the Dark

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The man was Lineo Thadspar, still nominally Speaker for the Assembly of Collegium. The old man had weathered the Vekken siege but, with that conflict over, he had been fast fading. He had taken to his bed a few days before, barely a few hours after the scouts’ reports had come in.

  You knew, Stenwold surmised, and you couldn’t face it.

  Lineo was asleep and, without the energy that had burnt in him until very recently, he looked as old as his years at last. Stenwold did not have the heart to wake him. What would be the point, save to put more weight on a life already burdened and failing?

  Out of respect, the Assembly had not chosen a new Speaker yet. They would not, in any event, choose Stenwold. His much-loathed title of War Master had instead been confirmed once again.

  He smiled in relief at that thought. He did not want to head up the Assembly, for the very notion of tying his future to that room full of squabbling merchants and academics made him shudder. Yet they were frightened he would demand it. A War Master, however, was something that could be made and unmade at will. At the end of this business, if the Assembly was still in any position to do it, they would cast him off. He could not say that he minded very much.

  Just now his responsibility felt very heavy, and it seemed he had no shoulders to share it with.

  He stood up just as Arianna came in. One look at her face told him the news.

  ‘They’re here, then?’

  ‘Within sight of the walls. People want you to come and look. And yes, I know it’s not as though that will make any difference.’

  ‘Perhaps they think that I’ll see some vital flaw in their strategy just from how they pitch their tents,’ Stenwold said. ‘And I suppose if I was an Ant-kinden tactician, that’s just what I’d do.’

  She had asked him, only the night before, if he felt so very bound to stay here. She had known the answer, but she had asked him. It was not too late even now, her look said, for them to go.

  Go where? Where does the Empire stop, if not here?

  As he followed her out of Thadspar’s house, the sun shone very bright, endowing the white stone of the houses of the wealthy with a special radiance.

  There were a lot of people just standing about in the streets, as though they had all received a summons from some city magnate who had failed to appear. When they saw Stenwold, he realized that he had apparently become that magnate. They pointed at him and told each other that, now War Master Stenwold Maker was here, everything would be all right. He assumed that was what they were saying, anyway. Possibly they were telling each other that he was the wrong man for the job, and would doom them all. Possibly they were just commenting on the Spider girl who was young enough to be his daughter. On balance he would have preferred that.

  Up on the walls he found Teornis, who had yet to return to his own people despite sporadic reports received regarding the ongoing siege of Seldis. The Spider-kinden noble looked every bit as though the city at his back was devoted to his service, and the soldiers appearing along the east coast road were a parade in his honour. Stenwold envied him his poise.

  ‘We’ve come to the sharp end, then,’ Teornis said, quietly and for Stenwold’s ears only. On his other side were some members of the Assembly who fancied themselves as strategists, as well as Paolesce Liam, commander of the small Commonweal detachment.

  The Wasp army was not looking hurried. Detachments of airborne were lazily spiralling down and taking up position, and Stenwold could make out what must be automotives and beasts of burden following them up. The first few tents were being set, but if there was any great tactical lesson to be learnt from these activities it was lost on him.

  ‘Reports suggest their numbers to be in the region of eighteen thousand, with slaves as extra,’ Teornis said. ‘They came out of Felyal a little grazed, but nothing serious.’

  ‘You should leave now,’ Stenwold advised him. ‘You have your own battle to fight.’

  ‘It’s all the same fight in the end,’ Teornis replied. ‘Moreover, the Kessen navy has decided that the current political situation makes all Spiderland ships fair game for plunder. I don’t honestly see that I’ll be getting away from here in the near future.’

  ‘War Master,’ began one of the Assemblers, who taught engineering at the College, ‘they’ve come too close to establish their camp I think. If we let fly with light loads, we could bombard them. Just give the word.’

  Stenwold looked at the industrious Wasp soldiers, just starting to pitch their camp.

  ‘Let them get all their tents set up first,’ he suggested. ‘Then, if we decide to do it, we can put them to the most trouble possible. No point in making their lives easy.’

  ‘Someone’s coming to talk,’ Arianna observed, and Stenwold saw a party of soldiers heading towards the Collegium gate.

  ‘I can’t imagine that we have much to say to one another,’ Teornis drawled, his casual pose seeming for a moment too obviously studied.

  Stenwold shrugged. ‘We’re Beetle-kinden, so we always talk first – and plainly. We need to know exactly where we stand.’

  The leader of the Wasps introduced himself as General Tynan. He was a broad-shouldered man who must have matched Stenwold year for year, although those years had left him thinner and with even less hair. He and his escort were received in one of the gardens abutting the Amphiophos, an open space that was complete with mechanical fountain, tiered pools and a dozen antique statues representing virtues. By the fashion of that time, the said virtues were all young women wearing too few clothes, which inevitably inspired thoughts that were less than virtuous. The tastes of the time had clearly also favoured undergrowth, for the garden was thick with ferns and moss and creeping skeins of ivy. General Tynan took his time in examining his surroundings whilst his personal guards and officers, some two dozen in all, stood impassively nearby.

  ‘You’re not Lineo Thadspar, I take it.’

  ‘He is indisposed. My name is Stenwold Maker.’

  ‘Acceptable.’ Tynan nodded briskly. ‘My intelligence suggested that you would be managing the defence. You performed well against the Vekken, I am informed.’

  Stenwold shrugged, indicating with a gesture that the city was still here, and the Vekken were not.

  Tynan smiled. ‘We are not the Vekken, of course.’

  ‘I had not thought for a moment that you were, General.’

  ‘We have a sound record of defeating the Ant-kinden whenever we meet them,’ Tynan added. ‘Our forces have routinely proved themselves superior.’

  ‘We are not the Ant-kinden either,’ Stenwold pointed out. Somewhere hidden in the foliage, a clock began to sound the hour with intricate chimes.

  Tynan’s smile returned. ‘Remarkable,’ he said, strolling over to the mechanical fountain. ‘I am impressed by your city, General Maker.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Do not think that I am just some brute with an army. I read. I admire art. Your city here is beautiful, both in its society and its construction. Collegium will be a worthy addition to the Empire.’ The Wasp turned, his face now hard. ‘I have my orders, General Maker. Your kin in Helleron, when faced with this decision, became willing partners to our imperial rule. I am now offering you the same choice.’

  ‘That we surrender?’ Stenwold clarified.

  ‘Even so.’ Tynan made a small gesture that encompassed Collegium and all of its futures. ‘This city will not be able to stand against us. You will have hosted sufficient refugees from Tark to know how thorough we can be in bringing a people to its knees. I do not wish to see Collegium thus consumed by bombs and incendiaries. That would be a waste.’

  ‘We must decline your gracious offer,’ Stenwold said heavily, ‘or what did we fend off the Vekken for?’

  Tynan’s pitying expression suggested that domination by a provincial Ant warlord was an infinitely different prospect to inclusion in the all-powerful Empire. ‘General Maker,’ he said. ‘I will welcome any embassy from you, and I would advise you to send
one soon. You will surrender, in time. Consider how much of this city you will see laid waste before you do.’

  The imperial bombardment of Collegium had begun that same evening, just an introductory barrage delivered before nightfall. The walls had held firm: even the Vekken had done worse. Collegium artificers had already made their measurements for a nocturnal retaliation, but the Wasps must have had some reports from Vek because they moved their siege engines out of range at the end of the day, rather than leave them at the Beetles’ mercy. It would slow their artillery, having to find the ranges afresh each morning, but at least it would preserve them. General Tynan was clearly playing a careful game.

  The next day the air war began. Whilst the artillery of both sides thundered loud around the walls, the Wasp airborne commenced attacking the city. Stenwold recalled the words of Parops, about how the Wasps had drawn out the Tarkesh air support before firebombing the city into submission. He hoped here they could put up a sterner aerial defence.

  The snapbows helped, of course. Collegium soldiers, half-trained and untested, stood ready at the walls and on rooftops across the city, and shot at the Wasps as they dived overhead. Each neighbourhood and district deployed its own little force, though the College itself was the heart of the defence. Totho’s weapons, more accurate and far-reaching than crossbows, broke apart the first two Wasp assaults, but the afternoon saw a redoubling of the imperial offensive. The Empire committed two score of orthopters and heliopters to the fray to complement their innumerable soldiers, and the houses of Collegium began to come under direct bombardment. To counter them, Collegium launched its own flying machines, its heavy airborne and Paolesce’s Dragonfly-kinden.

  The Triumph of Aeronautics had positioned itself directly above the College, thus making itself the bastion of the city’s air defence. From its vantage point its heavy weapons thundered away at the orthopters and the enemy siege emplacements, whilst scores of snapbowmen and repeating crossbows picked continually at the light airborne. The airship’s wood-reinforced canopy shrugged off shot and sting both, and Collegium saw out that first full day of siege without the enemy gaining an inch of Beetle soil.

  The next day General Tynan unleashed the full force of his army. He brought in the remaining half of his artillery and flooded the sky with men and machines and 500 Wasp-riders. His heavy infantry marched in under their cover, alongside automated rams and drills. His Mole Cricket- kinden engineers rushed ponderously at the walls, holding great pavises over their heads to ward off the defenders’ shot. His Skater-kinden Auxillians attacked along the river-banks, penetrating all the way into the heart of Collegium, there spreading terror and confusion, setting fires and killing anyone they could catch.

  Stenwold took the command of the eastern wall, which was most heavily under assault. It was not because he desired the glory or did not fear the danger. It was because it meant he did not have to think about anything else while he bellowed commands at the defenders there. He spent the day with a snapbow in his hands, which he never loosed, but he directed the shooting of 5,000 Collegium irregulars onto the encroaching enemy. They loosed their snapbows at the infantry, the short bolts penetrating heavy armour without pause; they launched leadshot and explosive bolts at enemy automotives and siege engines; they dropped rocks and grenades on the Mole Crickets.

  Towards the end of the day, one of his officers came towards him, pointing and shouting. The Triumph of Aeronautics was moving.

  That was not the plan, and the Triumph’s captain had been at the war council. Stenwold watched helplessly as the monstrous airship drifted away from its mooring above the College.

  ‘Hammer and tongs,’ said the man beside him helplessly. ‘It’s coming down.’

  The Triumph of Aeronautics was on fire, was losing height even as they watched it. Those crew that could fly were bailing out, but most were Beetle-kinden and could not escape. The Captain was amongst them, still guiding the huge dirigible on its final flight.

  He took it beyond the city walls, out over the besieging army, and here he brought it low and then fired its powder magazine.

  The explosion almost hurled Stenwold off the wall. A great host of Tynan’s army had also been caught by it, scythed down like wheat, their siege engines broken to matchwood and their automotives sundered, the entire heart of the Wasp advance consumed in one terrible moment.

  In the concussive quiet after that explosion, the Wasps ended their assault for the day and returned to their camp

  Twenty

  ‘Don’t you worry that I might kill you?’ Tisamon asked. He stretched himself, flexed the metal claw of his gauntlet. The sand beneath his feet was newly spread. Across from him, Ult looked over a rack of weapons, finally choosing a pair of Commonwealer punch-swords, short blades that jutted from circular guards protecting his knuckles.

  ‘If you were a prisoner and I were your jailer, old Mantis, then I’d not be doing this without a few guards at hand, but we both know that ain’t so.’ Ult turned to him. This early, they had the little practice circle to themselves, for it was two hours before even the servants would wake. Beyond the guttering light of the torches Ult had distributed about this underground cell, it would be dark.

  ‘I might try to escape,’ Tisamon said, without conviction.

  ‘I might surprise you,’ replied Ult. ‘If you wanted out, though, probably you’d manage it. But you don’t.’ He stretched. Bare-chested, his hide was a lace of scars, some charting wounds which looked as though they should have killed him. His stance admitted nothing of his true age.

  ‘Do you think I want to be a performer in your circus?’ Tisamon growled.

  They had already talked about the way that most fighters, those who survived at least, came to love the sport and the approbation of the crowd. It could turn a criminal, a deserter or even a slave into a brief hero of the Empire.

  Ult advanced on him, carefully but not hesitantly. ‘You want to kill the Emperor,’ he said bluntly. In the beat of surprise following his words he lunged at Tisamon, getting in close, jabbing with both swords, then trying to bind aside the Mantis’ claw with one weapon. Tisamon gave ground, his blade cutting his opponent’s attacks out of the air as they came for him, then bringing Ult up short with a feint that gave him space to get sufficiently clear, out of the reach of the other man’s short blades.

  ‘And you yourself have no problem with that?’ Tisamon demanded. ‘A good imperial citizen?’

  ‘Only thing I’m good at is what I do,’ Ult said. ‘I don’t get myself involved in politics. You wouldn’t be the first who saw this business as a way to force an audience with an Emperor. It’s already been tried.’

  ‘Not by me, not yet.’ Tisamon started forwards, whipping out his claw at the Wasp, forcing him back. Ult parried calmly, hands just a blur, giving only as much ground as he needed to keep the blade away from him. He was better than Tisamon had thought, and with the advantage that the old Wasp had seen Tisamon fight a dozen times and measured his style.

  ‘I got no problem with putting you in that arena if I could, whoever you reckon you’re there to kill.’ Ult was breathing slightly fast as they disengaged. ‘I reckon if the man’s fool enough to let a pit-fighter get near to him, maybe it’s time for someone new.’

  ‘That’s treason, surely.’

  ‘So what would they do with me? Stick me in the ground with a bunch of animals and slaves?’ Ult changed his stance, blades out but held back, inviting attack. ‘You ain’t going to get him, ’cos it ain’t that easy. You think you’re good enough, but I reckon nobody’s that good.’

  Abruptly, Tisamon stepped out of his own stance, claw lowered. ‘And I’d prove you wrong if you’d only give me the chance. Is that the other way the Emperor protects himself ? By not letting the best of us fight in front of him?’

  The old Wasp shook his head. ‘Most of those who ever had a go were Wasps. Politics, right? You foreigners don’t get involved in that so much.’

  ‘Your Empire’s
mad.’

  ‘It ain’t my Empire.’ Ult replaced the Dragonfly blades on the rack. ‘Fine, so you’re very good. Maybe I’ve not had anyone better down here. Doesn’t mean you’re good enough to kill the Emperor. They’ll just end up seeing another foreigner put down. Why not? It’s what they go see the fights for.’

  Tisamon regarded him doubtfully, his clawed glove now gone from his hand. ‘You are an unusual Wasp.’

  ‘Not so much.’ Ult shrugged. ‘We ain’t all like what you’ve been dealing with – Rekef spies or army officers. You find after a while that it’s what you do, not what you are, that matters. When I did my time in the army, I had more in common with the rank and file of the other side than I did with the officers above me. Now I keep fighters for the pit, and I got more in common with them – and with you – than I have with them people who put me here. That’s why you ain’t going to kill me.’

  ‘I could,’ Tisamon said firmly, but his voice sounded hollow to his own ears, as though he was trying to convince himself. ‘It would not be easy, perhaps, but I could.’

  ‘Sure you could,’ Ult told him, seeming unconcerned. ‘But I know people like you.’

  ‘Put me in front of the Emperor,’ Tisamon said quickly. It was pleading, he knew, begging. He forced the next words out before his pride could intervene. ‘I must have come here for a purpose.’

  ‘World’s short on purpose, to my mind,’ said Ult, regarding the Mantis with sympathy. ‘I only get told what the Emperor wants to see. He doesn’t want to see any unbeatable Lowlander killing dozens of his men or hacking the legs off beasts. The anniversary fight is for him, for his pleasure, so if he don’t like it, it’s the end of me, far more than if one of the slaves takes a leap at him. What am I supposed to do, anyway – get you to fight yourself ?’