Salute the Dark sota-4

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  In truth all the days since Myna had been days he was not entitled to. He should have been executed out of hand, but he realized that his crime was so immense, so unthinkably bold, that someone more than a mere major – the highest-ranking officer left in Myna – would now have to deal with him.

  And the chequered course of his career had given him insight into the might of Rekef politics, and General Maxin especially. Maxin would undoubtedly want to see the man who had removed General Reiner from the equation. There would be no handshakes or medals, however, and Thalric was under no illusions about that. He had done Maxin a greater service than perhaps any of the man’s actual underlings, but it was still not something that could be rewarded. Maxin would conveniently be able to wash his hands of the affair, luxuriate in the death of his enemy while condemning the executioner. Thalric guessed that this unexpected good fortune would put the man into a sufficiently indulgent mood to at least talk to him. Irony the third: If I had killed Reiner on Maxin’s orders, he would be forced to have me killed before I got back, in case I spoke aloud. There was absolutely no link between them though: no incrimination that Thalric could substantiate. Reiner’s death was a gift dropped unexpectedly in Maxin’s lap, and therefore so much the more to be relished.

  I am at least still alive, so I have that much. And in the Rekef they taught you to be resourceful.

  He became aware that a soldier was peering in at him through one of the barred windows.

  Thalric stared right back. ‘What?’ he demanded. His escort had remained oddly coy with him, staying clear and never speaking. Thalric guessed that this one man left on guard had seized his moment to satisfy his curiosity unobserved.

  ‘They say you killed a general,’ the man said, so quietly that Thalric had to hunch forwards to hear him. That took him to the end of the chain that led from the locked shackles on his neck and wrists to the interior wall of the wagon.

  ‘And a colonel too,’ Thalric replied calmly, seeing the man flinch at the… at the what? The sacrilege of it? Had the imperial hierarchy become a form of sacred mysticism now, like the mad obsessions of the Moth-kinden?

  What is a religion, after all, but blind faith in something entirely unproven? Yes, that theory seemed to fit.

  The soldier was still staring at him as though he had two heads, so Thalric clarified: ‘A Rekef general and a Rekef colonel, to be precise. What of it?’

  ‘Why?’ the man asked him, horror-struck.

  ‘Well, I’m a Rekef major myself. Perhaps I wanted a quick promotion,’ Thalric drawled. The utter shock on the wretched man’s face was quite enjoyable. ‘Come now, soldier, have you never wanted to kill your sergeant?’

  The sudden guilty flicker only betrayed what Thalric already knew, because of course every soldier in the Empire had thought about it, and no doubt others had put it into practice, but it was never admitted. The Empire had reserved a traitor’s death for any philosopher who pointed out that they were all still barbarians at heart, that the whole machinery of military hierarchy was not – as with the Ant-kinden – to complement their essential nature, but to restrain it.

  ‘It’s just the same,’ Thalric told the man. ‘It’s just a matter of scale.’

  The soldier was already backing away, shaking his head, as though insane treason was a disease he might catch.

  Thalric settled back. For a man with nothing but his continued existence to recommend him he felt curiously at ease, as though some old debt had at last been paid off, for all that it had taken up all the credit he had in the world.

  Nineteen

  Stenwold was unsure whether to be impressed by Collegium’s response or to laugh. Certainly it had all the hallmarks of people desperately doing the right thing without any real expertise, or even a clear idea regarding it. As the Buoyant Maiden drifted into the skies over the city, there arrived a succession of visitors to the airship: first a handful of Fly-kinden wheeling past it, ignoring Stenwold as he waved at them, and darting away to get out of range of any notional attack. But the customary curiosity of their race kept them in the air to watch, rather than returning to the ground to report, and so the next wave of airborne defence turned up spoiling for a fight. This was a dozen armoured Beetle-kinden with mechanical wings buzzing away in a blur, moving through the air with a surprising speed and grace. Stenwold recognized the design: namely Joyless Greatly’s one-man flying machines that had done such sterling service in the Vekken siege. At least one of them had survived the conflict, and Collegium artificers had since been industriously copying the design and improving on it.

  The leader of the heavy airborne, as he proclaimed his troops to be, landed on the Maiden’s deck with a sword in one hand and a cut-down repeating crossbow in the other. He looked as ferocious a figure as any Beetle-kinden had ever cut, and instantly demanded to know who they were. Jons Allanbridge, who found this reaction from his native city somewhat galling, proceeded to get straight into a row with the man and the exchange became sufficiently heated for the passengers packed below to come up to see what was going on. Because they were who they were, and in a foreign land, they came up fully armed and expecting trouble. There was very nearly a diplomatic incident as a dozen of Collegium’s new heavy airborne faced off against a score and a half of Dragonfly-kinden warriors with every apparent intention of hacking fearlessly through them. It was then that Stenwold was able to intervene and, thankfully, at least one of Collegium’s defenders now recognized who he was.

  Of course, in all the confusion, nobody had informed the city what was going on, and so Stenwold had just managed to make peace with the airborne when a long shape slid alongside the Maiden, and put it entirely into shadow. It was another airship, and not much smaller than the colossal Sky Without, but this one was brand new, coming straight from the Collegium foundries. Stenwold later discovered that the design of it had been kicking about Helleron for ten years, and had been repeatedly turned down on the basis that nobody in their right mind would have need for such a thing. It had finally been brought to Collegium by a Helleren exile, whereupon somebody had realized just what they were looking at.

  They called it the Triumph of Aeronautics, and they called this type of vessel a Dreadnought. The craft’s individual name spoke truest, though, for the city’s chemists had needed to concoct an entirely new kind of lighter-than-air gas just to keep the weighty thing in the sky. It was an armoured dirigible, a great wood-reinforced balloon beneath which lay a long, narrow gondola plated with steel. From his privileged vantage point on the wrong side of it, Stenwold could see two dozen open hatches, with a lead-shotter behind each, and he guessed there were other hatches in the underside to bombard any enemy on the ground. Meanwhile the rail bristled with mounted repeating crossbows and nailbows. It was certainly a magnificent piece of engineering, and it sent a shiver through him to think that it was something his people had made.

  By that time, the officer of the airborne had explained what was going on to the captain of the Triumph, and someone had the presence of mind to send a Fly-kinden messenger down to the city to stop them sending anything else up. It was in such august company that the Buoyant Maiden touched down.

  The city walls were lined with engines, Stenwold observed, and everywhere they went, every step of the way from the airfield to the Amphiophos, there was armed militia evident in the streets. The same kind of people who had been sent off to help the Sarnesh were now distributed all over Collegium, and most especially on the walls.

  She met him before he was three streets into the city: Arianna, rushing out of the crowd so swiftly that several of the Dragonflies drew their swords on her. Stenwold flung his arms about her, noticing her stricken expression.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she got out. ‘The news has been so bad, I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.’

  As he looked at her face, Inaspe Raimm’s prophecy came back to him, and he said, ‘There are no certainties.’ There were a lot of people waiting for him to move on, but he d
id not care. ‘I’ve missed you. I have missed you, but I’m glad you stayed here, safe.’

  ‘War Master, the Assembly-’ interrupted the commander of the heavy airborne. Stenwold shrugged him off.

  ‘Safe?’ Arianna asked him, and laughed, a wretched and unwilling sound. ‘I’d ask you where you’d been, if I didn’t already know. Sten, there’s a Wasp army marching east of here. It’s no more than three days away.’

  Passing into that familiar great chamber, he was at least relieved of one fear: there were not hundreds of Assemblers waiting there to pick his own news apart. That would come later, no doubt. In his mind, the Assembly of Collegium seemed a worse prospect even than the approaching Wasps. Instead there were only two people there, in that great amphitheatre: a fat Beetle man and a Spider-kinden Aristos.

  ‘Hello, Stenwold,’ said the Beetle, with a faint smile. His name Stenwold now recalled as Jodry Drillen, and instead Stenwold had expected to see the Assembly’s Speaker, old Lineo Thadspar. After a moment, Stenwold decided that question could wait.

  ‘Master Drillen,’ Stenwold said, and then, to the man next to him, ‘Lord-Martial Teornis.’

  The Spider nodded. He was wearing sombre colours, his features drawn, as if that indefinable varnish of Spider grace and charm had rubbed off in places

  ‘May I introduce Paolesce Liam.’ Stenwold gestured at his companion. The bulk of the Dragonfly-kinden were, he hoped, being billeted even then, but he had brought their leader along with him. Paolesce was a tall, slender man whose age was hard to tell at a glance, but whom Stenwold had pinned, after speaking with him, as being around the Beetle’s own years. He wore his gleaming armour still, standing with feet apart, gazing about with apparent equanimity at a city that must seem overwhelmingly strange to him.

  ‘Master Liam is…?’ probed Jodry Drillen.

  ‘Master Paolesce,’ Stenwold corrected, ‘is here as… as a gesture of solidarity. He has brought thirty soldiers. The Commonweal will, I hope, be raising a force to trouble the Wasps on their own border, but-’

  ‘But you thought we had more time,’ Drillen finished for him. ‘Didn’t we all.’

  ‘How…?’ Stenwold looked from him to Teornis. ‘The Wasps have come by ship?’

  ‘They came by land,’ the Spider said. ‘They simply didn’t stop for anything. Egel and Merro rolled over, as we knew they would. Kes declared itself uninterested in war, and most of the surviving population of Felyal is here, within Collegium’s walls, or north with your Prince of the Wastes.’

  ‘And,’ Stenwold frowned at the Lord-Martial, ‘what about your own people? What about the Spiderlands?’

  Teornis gave a smile, but it was painful. ‘Why, when their army was sufficiently far west, we sallied forth and attacked the garrison force they had left behind. We had a battle and, in short, we lost. We lost in a sufficiently flamboyant manner that enough of our army got back to Seldis to man the walls. Some of the mercenaries we hired fought a bloody enough rearguard that I managed to save my own hide. Seldis is currently under siege. We’re having our turn on the rack right now.’

  ‘The Sarnesh are probably fighting even as we speak,’ Drillen said softly. ‘If they fall, then the first we’ll know is another Wasp army marching south on us. We are now where the metal meets, Master Maker. The war, the real war, has finally come to us.’

  ‘And how far is this south-coast army from Collegium?’ Stenwold asked hollowly. ‘Three days? Is that accurate?’

  Teornis’ smile was sad and genuine. ‘At the pace they are capable of, that may even become two. War Master, you have arrived just in time for the war.’

  Stenwold stared down at his hands. It was something he had been doing a lot recently. He had always considered himself a practical man, a trained artificer who belonged to a kinden that made and built things, whether those things were machines or trade agreements. But he was beyond his range of ability now. He could not repair this crisis, or even patch it. Events had overtaken him, as he now sat at the bedside of a dying man, and waited.

  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 al
l 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.