‘Your Rekef is so prone to plots and divisions,’ Seda told him. ‘I had hoped when I took the throne that ridding you of your rivals would cure the rot, but it appears that conspiracy is addictive. These men you see before you are mine,’ and the way she used the word spoke of far more than simple oaths and orders. ‘They have been chosen by me for the blood they bear, some last fading touch of a former age that lets me speak to them. They have bound themselves to me and, wherever they go, they shall speak with my voice. They are my Red Watch, and even the Rekef shall obey them. Is that not so, General?’
He could do nothing then, but apparently silence had doomed him to acquiescence, for Seda nodded, satisfied. Perhaps she had read the surrender in his mind. He would believe anything now.
‘Drink,’ she said, and brought the cup up to her lips, and Brugan felt his own arm move, as if accepting that it had no choice. In the square below, the Red Watch drank too, renewing their pact with the Empress, and all that she represented.
The Eighth Army under General Roder had been making determined but dragging progress towards Sarn, constantly plagued by the attentions of the Mantis-kinden. The forest north of them seemed to throng with inexhaustible numbers of the creatures, and all their unpleasant pets, and every night they would sally forth to plague him in some manner. The army carried its fortress with it, just as General Tynan had pioneered against the Felyal in the last war, constructing it every evening before dark, taking every wall down each morning by dawn. This on its own had slowed progress, but Roder was beginning to wonder if he should not have found a way to lay siege to the forest itself. The Felyal, with its warlike natives, was tiny in comparison, and these two Mantis holds of Etheryon and Nethyon fielded a formidable number of inventive and determined killers.
If they had offered a direct assault, then Roder had no doubt that he would have smashed them. Superior tactics and technology would have sent the savages packing without difficulty. Instead, the Mantids crept in, as ones and twos and small bands, their stealth and their Art evading the eyes of the sentries, however much artificial light the Wasps were able to call upon. They slipped into the camp and killed whoever opportunity put across their path, but they were subtler than mere assassins. In the same way as the Moths of Tharn had plagued the mine owners of Helleron for generations, so the Mantids destroyed everything they could find. Without a shred of the artificer’s craft, they were still able to damage vehicles, carts and artillery, to hole water and fuel barrels, and to lay thorny caltrops, snares and spikes for the unwary. During the day, after the army finally got underway, Mantis warbands would shadow them constantly, always on the lookout for an opening to swoop in, loose their deadly arrows and then retreat. They presented Roder with a perfect mathematical challenge. He could defend completely, arraying his men so that the Mantids did not even try an assault, but then the Eighth would proceed at a mere crawl. The faster he advanced, however, the more opportunities he presented to the enemy, and they took them without fail.
He had hoped for howling savages, but the Mantis-kinden here were cunning and patient, and he knew that behind them would be their Moth masters and military advisers from Sarn, which was being given plenty of time to prepare for his assault.
Still, even if he was slowed down, his progress was inexorable, and the casualties and damage had all been within tolerance. He had always known that the Eighth would have to run this gauntlet, even if he had not quite appreciated that they would have to walk it.
This morning, though, even as his army was dismantling the previous night’s defences, he heard the drone of a flying machine on the air.
The Sarnesh had tried one air attack, a tenday ago. Their machines and pilots were inferior to the Wasp Spearflights that Roder carried with him, but their mindlink made them troublesome opponents, even so. They had not adapted their machines for the sort of ground attacks that Roder knew the Imperial air force was carrying out over Collegium, and so the overall damage was slight, but there was every chance that the Ants would come back with something more effective. He had issued standing orders, so even now a dozen of his own aviators were rushing for their machines.
There was only a single flier incoming, though, and it came from the east, from home. The Spearflights escorted it in, and Roder saw that it was a new long-bodied machine, presumably one of the Farsphex model raiders that were committed to the Collegium offensive.
He knew that these machines carried would carry a passenger, but he did not expect the apparition that unfolded itself awkwardly out of the passenger compartment. Tall, hunched and lanky, grey skin banded with white, and bundled up in a scholar’s robe edged with Imperial colours, Roder recognized the Imperial adviser, Gjegevey. If asked to prepare a list of the last men he would expect to see out here, the ancient Woodlouse-kinden would certainly have appeared on it.
Once Gjegevey was tottering on his feet and moving out of the way, the pilot made himself known, and at that point Roder would not have been overly surprised to see the Empress herself. Instead, though, he saw a young man with a captain’s rank badge, the uniform of the Light Airborne adorned with red pauldrons and gorget, denoting some unfamiliar unit.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Roder asked, though with nothing pleasant in his tone. Men like Gjegevey unsettled him. The old creature had no fixed place in the world, being simultaneously a slave and a great power within the Empire.
‘Orders, General. I, mmn, bear the Empress’s word.’ Gjegevey extracted a somewhat creased scroll from within his robe, and Roder accepted it reluctantly.
When he had broken the seal, checked the signatures and read the contents, his face lost all expression. ‘This cannot be,’ he said flatly.
‘A temporary measure only, General,’ Gjegevey assured him, ‘but essential. Think of it as part of a greater plan, the, hm, Empress’s own.’
‘Impossible. I cannot give these orders.’
‘They are from the Empress’s own hand, sir,’ the pilot said, imbuing that ‘sir’ with precious little respect.
‘And who are you?’ Roder demanded of the young man, who had the sort of smug confidence he associated only with the Rekef.
‘I am of the Red Watch,’ the pilot replied. ‘I am the voice of the Empress.’
Roder stared at him, and Gjegevey added, in a low voice, ‘There have been changes back in Capitas. Believe me, these orders are not negotiable.’
The general sagged slightly, looking about him at his busy army. In a moment he was going to have to tell them, all of them, that they were to withdraw some several miles east and there make camp and wait for further orders. And all the while still within the Mantis-kinden’s reach.
Gjegevey, though, who had brought such bad tidings, already seemed to have forgotten him. Instead he was staring north towards the great, engulfing shadow that was the Etheryon- Nethyon forest, with a speculative expression on his face.
Thirty-Six
The tent of Chief Officer Marteus looked spartan, with merely a bedroll slung in one corner and a wooden stand for the man’s armour. No map table, for he held his plans in his head, and sharing them with others was not something he was good at. No chair even: he would sit on the floor with his soldiers. Only the fact that he had a tent to himself showed any indication of rank.
Straessa had been called in without warning at first light, and she was not sure whether she had done something wrong. Certainly there had been a fair amount of larking around amongst her troops, which she had hoped was good for morale, or some similar military virtue, for she was not the right officer to quell it.
‘Subordinate Officer the Antspider,’ Marteus acknowledged her with a nod. The renegade Tarkesh Ant was in full uniform: breastplate and buff coat, even the lobster-tail helm dangling from one hand as though he would don it any moment and charge off to war alone.
‘Chief Officer Marteus.’ Straessa could not say that she liked this man overmuch: he was distant and unsociable, as most Ants were in the company of o
ther kinden. Her respect for him, though, had only grown, for he was so much more the born warrior and logistician than the Collegium locals.
‘We’ll engage the enemy tomorrow, most likely,’ he told her. ‘They’re keeping a steady progress and, if they chose, they could hit us before dawn, or earlier. They made a fierce pace from Tark to the Felyal. We don’t know precisely what time they could manage, if they pushed.’
‘I understand, Chief.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Battle order, Sub. Bitter as it is to have to spell it out for you, but there’s none of you who could work it out for yourself or take it from my mind. It’s a simple plan, though. Just keep repeating it to yourself until it sinks in.’ He was overdoing the gruff, and that made Straessa nervous. ‘The automotives are going to form our wings, flying out left and right to assault the enemy in the flanks. Some will carry light artillery, others just troops. They will do their best not to engage the enemy automotives, for reasons you’ll understand full well.’
‘Yes, Chief.’
‘Their objective is the enemy siege train, specifically anything that looks like a giant leadshotter. That’s the word from the Mynans for what took their walls down. From what they say, the Second won’t need to get that much closer to Collegium’s walls in order to deploy them. As for our centre, you’re it.’
Straessa digested all this, standing very still, her face carefully calm, while she played it out in her mind against the backdrop of the desperate retreat from the entrenching works. The more she thought calmly about it, the more her insides churned and twisted, until her mouth came out with, ‘Hammer and anvil, Chief?’ She did her best to make the words sound casual, because that was how she preferred to think of herself, but the tremor emerged despite her best efforts.
‘As you say, Sub.’
‘Chief.’ I have fifty comrades who will follow me, and most of them are friends. ‘I can’t help noticing,’ fighting with each word to keep her voice level, hands clenched into tight fists, ‘that their hammer is likely to be their automotives, Chief, And our a-anvil is going to be us, Chief, flesh and blood.’ And she snapped her mouth shut because to say more than that would be to invite a sundering of her composure.
Marteus nodded briskly. ‘That’s the plan. You’re not to engage their machines, just get out of the way of them if you can, but there will be infantry and airborne coming right after them. They can’t take ground with just automotives. Their soldiers you will engage, and hold them off with pike and shot.’
‘And their… their automotives, Chief?’ Outside the tent she could hear singing, some of her people, no doubt, some filthy Fly taverna chant.
‘I’ve told you, don’t engage.’
But what about when they engage us? She tried to prompt him with her eyes but he was all business, having none of it.
‘Go instruct your troops, Sub.’
She just stared at him, and for a moment almost wanted to laugh. It had, she discovered, all been some dreadful mistake. She was not a soldier, after all. She was just a student with delusions of martial prowess — and what set of ridiculous circumstances had conspired to put her here, eh? Where was the department head now, so that she could apply to switch courses?
But Marteus’s level gaze had not wavered, and he was plainly expecting her to go and spread the word.
‘Chief, I don’t think you know what you’re… What do you think it’s going to be like when I tell them — my soldiers, my people — that we’re to be where the metal meets? That we’re standing at the sharp end?’
His expression — or lack of same — did not alter. ‘I know what it’s like, Sub. Now get a move on. I’ve got plenty more of you to see.’
‘Tonight you’ll understand everything,’ said Stenwold. He had kept the two students, Eujen Leadswell and the Wasp Averic, under watch all morning, without them showing any sign of suspicious behaviour. In the afternoon he had sent for them, and he was now heading for Banjacs Gripshod’s machine-gutted house, ready for the last act of the drama. Last night they had seen an inexplicable failure or betrayal, as the city was laid bare before the knives of its enemies. Tonight, though..
Tonight will go down in history, Stenwold thought unhappily. One way or another, and the ‘everything’ that the boys would understand might leave an altogether more bitter taste. If they see the reasons behind the sacrifices we have made then, if they understand nothing else, they will understand some of how difficult it is to lead. Let Leadswell choke on that.
The citizens of Collegium they saw out on the streets were picking their way through the city as though already living in hostile territory. Stenwold had spent the morning with Jodry, pointlessly going over and over each part of the plan, sending unnecessary orders to confirm to every well-briefed individual what he or she already knew. And each of them knew only their own small part, of course. The grand design remained invisible to anyone but Jodry and himself. Everyone in the city must guess that something was going on, just as the Empire must, but Jodry and Stenwold had kept their secret safe.
Stenwold thought back to his last look at the Speaker before he set out: the man had been haggard, that great weight of flesh hanging from him like chains, eyes red from drink and tears and lack of sleep. Marching swiftly through Collegium’s streets, Stenwold felt a sudden rush of affection for the man. These were hard times to be Collegium’s Speaker, all responsibility and no reward, but Jodry had risen to the challenge far better than Stenwold might have expected.
It all comes down, tonight. To win a war in one bold stroke, is that not the tactician’s dream? I’ll wager no war-leader ever foresaw the battle that we have planned.
‘Here,’ he snapped back at his two charges, nodding to the two Merchant Company soldiers on the door. They scowled narrowly at Eujen and Averic, but stepped aside to let them all through.
Once inside, Stenwold passed through the entrance hall that was one of the few untouched rooms in Banjacs’s house, pushing on until he came to the vast chamber that housed the machine, the mad artificer’s ultimate weapon. There were three of the College artificers there, along with Banjacs — the most that Stenwold and Jodry had felt they could trust without hestitation — and they were all hard at work on the machine when he entered.
He had expected that, for Banjacs’s life’s work was a delicate beast, and they would have no opportunity for a proper testing before they used it. The lightning batteries in the cellars beneath them would take tendays to recharge, according to Banjacs’s notes. That was why Stenwold and Jodry had taken the decision they had. That was why so much of Collegium had been laid out as bait for the Farsphex bombs.
Now Banjacs and the artificers tinkered and adjusted, calibrating the machine, testing each individual component of it because they could not test the whole. The three College Masters clambered over the brass and bronze and glass, toolbags slung over their shoulders as if they were just tramp artificers hired in for a construction project. Meanwhile the inventor himself was half-hidden within the works of his machine, metal panels hauled off and discarded on the floor around him. The air in the tall chamber crackled and snapped with errant flecks of power, and from every side there came a hissing and a humming as various parts of the colossal device were powered up for testing. Only when Stenwold called his name a second time did Banjacs push himself backwards out of the monstrous mechanical innards to sit up and glower at him.
‘What?’
‘How is progress, Banjacs?’
‘It will be ready, yes. You doubt me, Maker? I’ll show you all just how ready I am once night comes. My life’s work, and you come looking to find me wanting now?’ When Stenwold indicated the feverish artificers, Banjacs scowled furiously at him. ‘Go away. We must tune. We must adjust. Had you not imprisoned me then perhaps we might have time to sit about drinking wine like Master the Speaker but, as it is, we must work. We must be perfect. You have no comprehension of the delicacy of my creation.’ Beneath wild eyebrows his eyes bored into Stenwol
d. ‘All of Collegium shall know my name,’ he said, apparently not as a part of the conversation but just an externalized thought.
‘Master Maker,’ came Eujen Leadswell’s hushed voice, ‘what is going on? This is Banjacs Gripshod.’
‘So it is.’ Stenwold glanced back at him. ‘You see, Master Gripshod, how your fame is already spreading.’ The humour welled up in lieu of bleaker emotions, tainted by Stenwold’s assessment of Banjacs’s character and sanity. What frail things we put our faith in.
The Wasp, Averic, was staring at Banjacs, perhaps not recognizing the name.
‘Master Maker, you said we’d understand. I don’t.’
‘Tell them what your creation is for, Master Gripshod,’ Stenwold suggested.
Banjacs grinning was worse than Banjacs glowering. ‘With this, boy, I control the lightning — the greatest engine of its kind the world has ever seen. When active, it shall throw its force straight upwards, charging the very skies over the city. Everything above us will face utter destruction.’
Eujen’s expression was familiar to Stenwold, because he himself had worn it when this idea had first been revealed to him. If he had not had artificers go over the plans, he would not have believed it for a moment. He could see the student putting the pieces together steadily, and soon the boy would come to understand the chaos of the previous night, even if Stenwold suspected he would never condone it.
Banjacs was already nodding: the old artificer had fully understood the absence of Stormreaders the previous night, without ever having to be told, and had accepted the decision automatically. After all, it would give his machine a more suitable testing ground. ‘When the machines of our enemies have fully gathered over us, we shall annihilate them in a moment.’
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