Salute the Dark sota-4

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘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?’

  Laetrimae, thought Tisamon. Since sending him here, that shadowy and tortured woman had not reappeared to him. Could she have abandoned him? It seemed entirely possible, for perhaps she had simply sought to punish him for his pride. Laetrimae, you brought me here, and it must have been for this purpose or none at all. If you wish me to accomplish anything, you must give me the means.

  The thought echoed in silence.

  I care not how. He felt, abruptly, the oppressive weight of stone above, the walls around them, the fact that he was a prisoner, of his own making. He had put himself in the hands of fate, and it had let him fall.

  ‘Take me back to my cell,’ he said quietly. Ult nodded, saying nothing. His old face was all understanding.

  It was on the way back to his cell that Tisamon saw the key that fate had provided, but instead of triumph it plunged him into the depths of black despair. He was still reeling from the sight as Ult got him to the door of his cell, but there he stopped, unwilling to step inside.

  ‘Ult…’

  ‘What is it?’ The Wasp trainer’s eyes narrowed, aware that something was wrong.

  ‘Your new prisoner…’

  ‘Which one? We’ve all kinds of new faces here.’

  ‘The Dragonfly woman,’ said Tisamon, feeling something hollow in his chest.

  ‘Oh, the mad one,’ Ult replied dismissively. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Let me see her,’ Tisamon requested, and his voice shook.

  Ult stared at him suspiciously. ‘What’s got into you?’

  ‘I… know her. Let me see her,’ Tisamon insisted.

  ‘You know her? I don’t like this,’ the Wasp said. ‘How can you know her? Unless this is some kind of trick?’

  ‘No trick,’ Tisamon said. ‘It may not even be coincidence. She may have tracked me here, followed me. She’s good at that. I must speak with her.’ Suddenly he felt himself genuinely a prisoner, being denied this one request. Up until then the bars, the guards, the tasks, none of it had really confined him, because he had no wish to be elsewhere or do otherwise. Now he had a desire that only Ult could grant, and he was a prisoner.

  Ult let his breath out. ‘Not in the same cell, and not alone. I’ll be there too. You want to speak with her? You do it so I can hear. I’ll put you in the cell next to hers.’

  ‘That will suffice,’ stated Tisamon, as calmly as he could. Something was turning over in his stomach, though. I am being brought to trial, at last. It was his own doing, of course. He was the master of his fate, and his hand alone had piloted his life on to these rocks. Even now he could have ignored this grotesque turn of events, but he had already put his hand into the jaws of the machine, waiting for it to bite. Why spare himself now?

  She did not look up as they reached the cell beside hers and Ult unlatched the door. The current occupant, a scarred Ant-kinden man, was taken out. He stood tensely, looking down, like a mount being readied for riding. Tisamon stepped into his place, holding to the bars that separated this small piece of captivity from hers.

  They had taken her armour from her, and her blade, and instead they had dressed her in slave’s clothes just as they had with him. He wondered if she had submitted to it so readily. Why was she here?

  ‘Mienn,’ he began, and then again, ‘Felise Mienn.’

  From beyond the bars, in that part of this underground realm that was nominally free, Ult watched them both. It was a long time before the seated figure looked round but, even when she glanced back over her shoulder, she said nothing. She did not need to. Her expression was wounding enough.

  ‘How did they catch you?’ Tisamon asked her softly. He forced himself to meet her gaze, and knew that her imprisonment had been by her choice just as it had with him. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked her. ‘Why did you let them take you?’

  The slightest, bitterest smile touched her lips, and she said, ‘You think I came here after you?’

  He had been so ready to now take responsibility for her that it was as though he had suddenly stepped into thin air. He held on to t
he bars to keep on his feet. ‘But… why? If not that, why?’

  The smile was widening, like something tearing. ‘Why, Tisamon, because I had nowhere else to go. I cannot be with my own people. I have been told as much from the highest authority. I would have gone to the Lowlands, but… what have I left to me there?’ Her voice shook while uttering the last few words. Abruptly, she was on her feet and facing him. Her beauty, her grace of movement, stunned him as on the first time he saw her.

  ‘I know what I am,’ he said. ‘You cannot understand… I have betrayed so many…’

  She cut him off silently with just the slightest movement that, for a moment, he could not identify. Then he realized that her thumb-claws had flicked out, ready to fight.

  ‘Do you think I care about your history of self-indulgence?’ she asked him quietly. ‘Do you think anybody cares, apart from you? Do you expect me to understand? Yes, I know – you lay with some Spider-kinden, and then she died. How is that my burden to bear? How am I now the victim of your desires?’

  ‘I know what I am,’ he heard himself say, again.

  ‘You do not know what you are,’ she spat at him, approaching the bars that separated them. ‘You are beautiful, Tisamon, you are beautiful and deadly and bright, but you are cold and barbed like an arrow, that hurts most when it’s drawn out.’ She was so close that he could have touched her, had the bars suddenly lifted away.

  Oh I have done this badly, he reflected, and for just one moment the mists of his own pride lifted and he saw how he could have been quite happy, just in staying by her side. Atryssa would not have understood, but of course Atryssa, being dead, would have made no comment.

  ‘You wish to fight with me again,’ he said, and it fitted so neatly into the plan that he looked around for that other woman who had entangled herself inextricably with his life.

  She was there, like a writhing dark shadow in the corner of his cell. Laetrimae shuddered and hung there as though suspended on hooks: woman and mantis and savage thorns all intertwined. He glanced quickly at Felise, then at Ult, realizing that neither of them could see her. Laetrimae was present for his nightmares only and, when he looked back at her, she nodded once.