The Air War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Once the Ants were committed to their charge, Roder sent detachments of Light Airborne out – not over the enemy, where they might be picked off, but in solid groups landing to the left or right flank, shooting directly into the sides of the enemy formations.

  The Ant-kinden tacticians knew all this, of course. They were able to send detachments left and right to chase off the flanking forces, although the Wasps always came down out of reach, shooting even as they landed. They were able to exhort their soldiers onwards into the flaying lash of the massed snapbows, in the knowledge that, if they could only gain the first earthworks, the Empire’s soldiers would surely fold, and the Ant infantry could rush through and reach the incessant greatshotters behind. By then, though, some of the last surviving Sarnesh pilots had relayed their views of the Wasp camp: trench on bank on trench, no fit terrain for armoured soldiers to clamber over into the barrels of snapbows. And, of course, the Wasp Airborne would be able to hop from trench to trench with ease.

  There was a moment, a fulcrum moment, when the casualties mounted to such a level, within mere yards of the first earthworks, that even the tacticians suffered a crisis of faith. The cost was too great. Hearts as solid and dutiful as iron broke in that same moment. They felt every death, and it was too much.

  They tried again over the next few days, sometimes with reinforcements, sometimes with new orthopters, but they never came as close as on that first day. The knowledge of what awaited them blunted each successive attack, never quite able to grasp the nettle now they had felt its sting. Meanwhile, the Wasps made the best use of their undisputed ownership of the sky to send their Spearflights, and even some airships, out to bomb the Sarnesh camp and to bedevil any advance.

  On the twelfth day, even as another attack was aborted before it even reached snapbow range, the inner walls of Malkan’s Folly suddenly caved in, changing from impregnable fortress to stone eggshell in a minute of cracking and dust. It was enough. The Sarnesh army fell back, and continued falling back because the greatshotter artillerists were already gambling with new calculations, trying to chase them back towards Sarn.

  As one of the younger armies, the Eighth had not yet earned a name for itself but, with the fortress fallen and the Ants in full retreat, Roder put out the word. From now on, the glorious Eighth Army would be ‘the Hammer’, just as Tynan’s Second was ‘the Gears’ and the fallen Seventh that Malkan had commanded – that Roder had now avenged – had earned the name of ‘the Winged Furies’.

  The men of the Eighth were ecstatic, and Roder let them celebrate because he did not want them thinking too much about what was to come. The game only got harder, the further west they marched. Partly this was because of supply lines. Partly it was that, the closer they got to Sarn, the more the Ant-kinden themselves could complicate a day’s travel. Mostly, however, it was the great brooding mass of trees that would shortly eclipse their northern horizon.

  This was the joke, the limitation of the Sarnesh tactical view on the world. Ant-kinden were self-sufficient, in this case actually to a fault. Their great fortress, in which they had placed so much faith, was the least of Roder’s worries, for the land beyond it was guarded by a threat he took far more seriously: the Mantis-kinden.

  In the last war, the Mantids of the Felyal, on the southern coast, had essentially destroyed the Imperial Fourth Army, and when General Tynan had marched that way with his Second, he had taken a great many precautions to ensure that history did not repeat itself. His advance had been slowed by the need to fortify every night, until he actually got the Mantids where he wanted them, killed their warriors and burned their forest.

  The Etheryon was the largest single forest north of the Alim, containing two separate Mantis holds and a population several times that of the Felyal, and all of them killers by nature who could walk as silently as the breeze and see in the dark. Roder had dealt with his fill of assassins when he had fought the Spiders at Seldis, but it was a matter of recent record that enough Mantis-kinden could assassinate an entire army. It was going to be a long road to Sarn, and that was even before he considered the surprise the Ants themselves had managed to leave for him.

  After the fortress fell, the Sarnesh relief force had quit the field, but the defenders of Malkan’s Folly had not. Those who had survived – an uncertain number, and Roder had no way of finding out just how many – were still there because, of course, the Ants had undermined their own creation with cellars and tunnels and subterranean barracks, and probably a living ant-colony as well, full of vicious three-foot biting insects ready to scuttle to their masters’ bidding. The fortress had fallen, but its architects had the last laugh: it still fulfilled its function as a threat that Roder was unwilling to leave at his back. For all he knew, those tunnels could run all the way to Sarn itself.

  He had conferred with Ferric on whether sustained greatshotter bombardment could cave the earth in on the whole nest of them, but the engineer was not optimistic, and the idea of sending troops into those tunnels to try and root an unknown number of Ants, quite possibly many hundreds of the tenacious bastards, was not appealing as a use of either time or materiel. Ants couldn’t see in the dark, but their mindlink would give them a good enough picture of their surroundings, built up from a consensus of sound and touch and shared proximity.

  Roder let his men celebrate – save for those drawn as sentries, of course – because it was an excuse not to move on while he wrestled with the main problem. He did not want the Eighth to realize that they were not yet done here.

  Then, on the dusk of the second day, his visitor arrived. The first he knew of it was a watch sergeant bursting into his tent, as he sat with plans and notes regarding a tentative assault with sappers.

  ‘Sir!’ A smart salute. ‘Someone here with papers, sir.’

  Roder knew what that normally meant – some off-the-books Imperial dignitary, Rekef likely as not, come to make his life more complicated. He suppressed his sour look and nodded tiredly. ‘Send him in,’ he said, clearing up his papers.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but he’s . . . I don’t think he wants to come in, sir.’

  ‘But he has papers.’

  ‘The seal of the Empress, sir,’ the sergeant said, plainly awed by the thought.

  Roder stood sharply. ‘Show me,’ he ordered.

  The visitor stood on one of their embankments, looking out at the ruin of the Folly, and Roder’s pace slowed as he appreciated just what the wind had blown into his camp. Not a Rekef man, not some Consortium profiteer or Slave Corps major, not a Wasp at all. In all his years of soldiering, he was willing to bet that a figure like this had not graced an Imperial camp, or at least not with official papers.

  A man, he could tell, tall and slender, but the rest was just armour – and what armour! Roder knew a little of the collector’s trade, and what he was looking on would have driven a half-dozen rich men back in the capital mad with greed. A full set of sentinel plate, enamelled black and gold, but not Imperial craftsmanship. The ancient Inapt smith who had wrought this had worked to an alien aesthetic, crafting something elegant and spined and deadly, producing a carapace more than a suit of armour.

  There was a clawed gauntlet on the newcomer’s hand, its narrow blade folded back along his arm, where the armour was slit so as to allow the barbs of his Art to jut out. As Roder approached more and more cautiously, fearing some lethal trap set by the Etheryen Mantids, the figure’s free arm thrust towards him, with crumpled papers proffered in its gauntleted fingers.

  Roder had no intention of getting that close, but the sergeant pattered ahead of him and retrieved the documents, handling them as though they were gold dust. Roder glanced down at the seals, and then again. The Empress’s highest recommendations, he thought. Her own personal seal. Nobody so important as to merit all of this would risk themselves by coming out to visit an army in the field. Until now.

  One of the Empress’s bodyguard, he realized, for he had seen that band of Mantis-kinden at the palace, but were
they not all women?

  ‘I give you welcome to the camp of the Eighth Army,’ Roder said carefully, watching for the slightest suggestion that this figure was about to turn on him. ‘Can I ask your purpose here?’ The so-impressive credentials gave no hint of it, simply expressed the Empress’s utmost trust and faith in the bearer, who was identified only by the armour he wore. Could be just about anyone in there . . .

  The armoured Mantis raised an arm and unhinged the metal claw, letting it flick out to point towards the shattered shell of Malkan’s Folly.

  ‘You’ve come to see the result of the battle for the Empress?’ Roder hazarded.

  For a moment the helm turned towards him. In the failing light there was the suggestion of a ghostly pale face beneath the raised visor, and the man’s stare had a cold force that sent Roder back a step.

  Then the Mantis was striding forwards, towards the edge of the camp and then beyond it, heading for the fallen fortress, and for its hidden defenders waiting in the darkness below.

  That night, some of the sentries reported hearing screams.

  Twenty-Two

  ‘She certainly makes a good show,’ Colonel Harvang commented. For once he was not eating, although his fleshy lips twitched and moved when he was not speaking, as though still savouring something.

  The senior members of General Brugan’s conspiracy were meeting in the palace itself, a room buried deep in the cellars, one of a complex of chambers that the Rekef traditionally used for storing useful prisoners and parting them from their secrets with the aid of machinery. It said a great deal about the Empire that such concerns were already in the architects’ minds when the edifice was first planned.

  General Brugan grunted. He had been with the Empress last night, during another of her debauches. He felt physically drained now, as he always did, and the blood that so obviously fed her seemed only to leach something vital from himself. He had tried, so very hard, to see it all as just the ruler of the Wasps exalting in her power, but he knew that it was more, and that he would never understand.

  He shuddered, visibly enough that Harvang raised an eyebrow.

  ‘These tapes . . .’ Colonel Vecter was poring over his reports, and had not noticed. ‘These cloth things the halfbreed makes . . .’ If a machine was not intended for excruciation, he had little time for it. ‘They take her voice all over the Empire, inspirational messages to the troops. I have good reports – morale and fighting spirit all kept high. The personal touch.’ He tutted. ‘General, I was unsure why you were so insistent on keeping her, rather than simply replacing her, but I think I understand. It is a bitter thought but the Empire does need her.’

  Brugan stared at him. Oh, you do not understand. The intrinsic division within him warred constantly. He hated Seda, he feared her: she was unnatural, terrifying, something from the old stories. Yet he could not live without her. The best compromise he could make was to possess her, control her. He could diminish her into a proper example of Wasp-kinden womanhood, and so regain some vestige of control over himself.

  They had not brought many of their confederates here; this was Rekef territory after all, and outsiders were seldom welcome. Only Harvang’s man, Ostrec, was here to listen in, and that only because the conversation would eventually turn to his orders.

  ‘We have our people mostly in place,’ Vecter continued. ‘The palace is under our control, and we have Colonel Sherten in the city garrison. There’s Major Hasp of the Slavers, and Knowles in the Consortium. No serious inroads into the Engineers, but then they’re not a political force yet.’ He looked up brightly. ‘Time to sound the advance?’

  ‘We still haven’t touched her,’ Brugan said. The others looked at him blankly, but he knew he was right. Seda seemed to move in another world, a different medium. She had her dubious advisers: the old Woodlouse, passing Moth ambassadors, odd slaves and servants who came and went and disappeared, so that even the Rekef could not keep track of them. The conspirators could control all the soldiers they wanted, but they would not even approach Seda’s secret world.

  He could not explain this to them. He could barely explain it to himself. He knew, though, that if he was to triumph over her, if he was to become Seda’s master, then he must strip her of that orbit of counsellors, those frauds and shysters who whispered mysticism into her ears.

  ‘Ostrec,’ he growled, and the major started in surprise. ‘Your work.’

  ‘I have been in her presence two or three times, sir,’ Ostrec reported. ‘I have seen her notice me, perhaps more than notice, but . . . nothing more. I have felt myself on the point of some breakthrough for a tenday or more.’

  ‘Your breakthrough has come,’ Brugan told him flatly. ‘She has sent for you.’

  This was news to everyone and that in itself was a sour point. Ostrec was ostensibly from the Quartermaster Corps, but Seda had given the command to Brugan himself. So does she know he’s Rekef, or not? And such an offhanded command it had been. ‘She said she wants to see more of you. At night.’ The words were painful to spit out, and his manner was putting the two colonels on edge. ‘The museum, you know it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ve not visited but I know where it is.’

  ‘You’ll go?’

  Ostrec frowned, the perfect picture of a dutiful Wasp. ‘If you so order it, of course, sir.’

  Harvang made a noise, more of hoarse breathing than anything else, but enough to draw their attention. ‘Sometimes men go to visit the Empress there and never leave. Just as sometimes slaves – or those of a higher station – are summoned to her at the palace and likewise are not seen again.’

  ‘The servants . . . ?’ Ostrec ventured.

  ‘Oh someone must be doing it – taking away the bodies, cleaning up the mess, after whatever it is that actually goes on,’ Harvang said heavily, and his glance towards the general was keen: I know that you know more than you let on. ‘There seems to be a hidden cadre within the palace, and we have not been able to infiltrate it – we cannot even see what to infiltrate. Is it just those cursed Mantis bodyguards doing all the work? Who else does she use? She’s called you, my boy, and either you’ll die of it or you’ll find out something useful. You understand?’

  ‘I believe I do, sir,’ Ostrec replied calmly.

  He was a handsome young man, Brugan thought sourly. Was the Empress motivated by something so commonplace? He thought not, but he could never be certain. I hope he dies.

  ‘I feel,’ said Seda, ‘like a child who has only just learned to read – so very late! – and now they tell me all the libraries burned down before I was born.’

  The book beneath her hands was ancient, pages of cracked and tattered vellum on which the faded ink was barely legible, scuffed and rubbed away, and in places there were the tracks of beetle larvae and the blackened edges of old burns. Of the original text perhaps only half remained intact.

  ‘I have come into my inheritance. I have gone to the ancient wardens of the beginning times and exacted tribute from them. I stride into the sunlight to enter into my kingdom and . . . dust and ashes. Where has it gone?’

  ‘Five hundred, hm, years, your Imperial Majesty,’ came the soft, careful voice of old Gjegevey. Pale in the lamplight, the gaunt and hunchbacked Woodlouse-kinden loomed behind her. Grey-skinned and tall, at least a hundred of the years he spoke of weighed on his shoulders, but his were a long-lived kinden. And even he could not remember the real days of magic that had passed away so long ago, and so completely.

  The shutters were drawn, and Seda had ordered servants to nail blankets up across them, sealing out the sun. The fragile Moth-kinden text that she was trying to piece her way through seemed merely blank in daylight. Only guttering flames would reveal the faint scratching of its secrets.

  ‘The Moths themselves,’ Seda murmured, ‘they come to my court from Tharn, and think to teach me. I would learn, truly I would, but either they are too close-handed with what they know or . . . Gjegevey, they speak mostly politics, no different to any
ambassador or courtier. What of their great plans for the world?’

  ‘They are what the times, ah, have made of them,’ he ventured. ‘And their great magics perhaps come at too great a price, hm? Majesty, you have no doubt heard the same, hrm, rumours from Tharn as I. The magic they raised to, ah, evict your brother’s troops, it has, hm, left a stain. Deaths, madness . . . I gain the impression that many of their Skryres did not, hm, survive the experience. And this was the greatest magic our times have seen, undertaken by some of its, hem, most skilled practitioners.’

  ‘So I should think smaller?’ she snapped over her shoulder, scathingly. ‘I should content myself with their scraps?’

  ‘If that were my, hm, advice, would you follow it, Majesty?’

  The look she gave him was answer enough. ‘It cannot all be gone.’ The book was a history, but the ancient histories of the Inapt made for tortuous reading for one brought up only on lists of battles and generals. Everything was allusion and metaphor, or perhaps it was not metaphor but myth. Or perhaps the myths were being set down as absolute truth. Nothing was plain, or else everything was plain and nothing was believable. ‘Were the times so very different back then? Monsters and fires from the sky, and conjuring the bones of the earth? What happened to it all?’

  ‘Theories differ.’ When Gjegevey spoke, his voice held more sadness than usual, a reverent and wistful tone. ‘My people, hm, these days we mostly believe that it is simply that magic’s time has waned, and is still waning, as the turn of the moon leads to darker nights, so some great and, hem, invisible wheel has taken us away from those days when a magician might, ah, hold the world in the palm of his hand. Some day it is to be hoped the, eh, wheel may turn all the way, and magic shall wax once more. For now, though, we are left with only shallows where once the sea rolled.’

  ‘Poetic, but a mixed metaphor,’ Seda grumbled. With nobody else was she so informal as with Gjegevey. He had been one of her earliest supporters but, more than that, he had been someone who had been willing to associate with her back before her brother’s death, when the executioner’s shadow hung constantly over her. She was fonder of him than she would admit. ‘So tell me some other theory . . . no, I know it. The Apt.’