They nodded. Salma drew
his sword, painted with weaponblack, and Totho put a magazine into the top of
his repeating crossbow. Skrill clasped both of them on the shoulder, a weak
gesture intended for what comfort it could give, and then she was off into the
night, swathed in her cloak, following the long road to Collegium.
The Wasp camp was lit by
picket lamps, a ring of them, twenty yards out from its furthest-flung tent and
spaced widely. There were some sentries standing a little in front of them,
mere silhouettes to the approaching raiders, and yet others who patrolled along
the whole perimeter. Beyond the lamps, after an interval stretch of clear
ground, the tents of the camp itself started. Now it was dark there was little
activity within.
Grief
in Chains is somewhere in one of those tents.
Or ‘Aagen’s Joy’, as she
had last called herself. Something twisted sourly inside him at that thought.
He saw that several of
the Ants had gone, and he moved to ask Basila, but remembered at the last moment
that he should not speak.
It was going to be a
long night.
There was a sentry out
there. Salma wondered at first why they had not attempted to sneak through
between the widely spaced guards, but guessed that then the chances of
detection would be doubled. The Wasps would know precisely their own perimeter
and would leave no gaps.
Another sentry was
moving past him now, and Salma watched his progress. The man should probably
have been beyond the lights and looking out, but he was walking within them, and
so unable to see a thing of the night, but obviously too sullen about his
tedious duty to care.
And then he was past,
trudging on his way and, even as the patrolling soldier passed the next light,
a man rose up out of the night and shot the stationary sentry in the throat. In
fact two bolts hit him, the second striking beneath one eye, and he toppled
without a word. Quickly a pair of Ants materialized to grab him and then
dragged him back to their main group.
Salma heard steps
approach behind them, and turned to see a tall Spider-kinden in a short tunic
approaching. He looked profoundly unhappy.
‘You understand your
task?’ Basila whispered to him, and the man nodded. Salma realized he must be a
slave of Tark. He was taller than most Ants, though, and slave work had
broadened his Spider-kinden physique, so when he started to don the dead Wasp’s
armour Salma understood. A missing sentry would raise questions. Still, as he
and the others dashed through the ring of light into the darker shadows of the
camp, Salma wondered what they had promised him to make a slave do such a
thing. Did they offer him freedom or had he a family under threat? Salma would
never know.
The camp was vast, and
even at night there were plenty of lone figures moving about it. Many were soldiers,
some were slaves of the Wasps or perhaps Auxillians. Basila’s little band moved
in a series of stops and starts, far more quietly than Salma would have
expected. Each tent shadow offered sanctuary, and the dim lights of the
sleeping camp were enough for them to find their way. Even Totho seemed to be
managing some kind of stealth.
They were making their
way gradually around the periphery of the tents, where the least nocturnal
activity was. There were lamps glowing through the walls of some of the tents,
and low voices talking inside. Salma heard the rattle of dice from one and
someone humming an unfamiliar song inside another. These barracks-tents would
be carpeted with Wasp soldiers, he guessed. Perhaps others would house the
Ant-kinden the Empire had suborned or those giants who last night had carved
through Tark’s city wall. It would be best, Salma thought, if none of those
great creatures were met with tonight.
Miraculously, they had
not been spotted. By the ring of lights there were sentries staring outwards,
just as their Spider-kinden decoy would now be staring outwards, but the lamps
would blind them to what was going on in their own camp.
There was a scuffle
ahead but it was over before Salma had a chance to see. A Wasp-kinden had
walked within arm’s reach of them and paused, casting a bemused glance into the
shadows. Basila and another had grabbed him, stopped his mouth and stabbed him
into silence. They stowed the body under the eaves of a tent and carried on.
There were lights all
over the airfield, so Salma could see the monstrously pale and bloated ghosts
that were the airship balloons. They were floating high already, straining at
their steel cables, ready to fly at the dawn, no doubt. Totho had tried to
explain them to him, how they were not just hot air but some
complicated-sounding alchemical air that was better, and which did not need to
be hot before it could lift them. Salma had understood none of it.
The Ant-kinden had
explosives, he knew. The plan called for them to creep aboard each of the
airships and plant them with decreasing fuse lengths, so that they would all
explode more or less simultaneously and give the Wasps no warning of their
intent. Again, Salma had to take all this on faith as it was beyond his
understanding.
They paused again, but
this time the shadow they borrowed was cast by one of the heliopters, its
squared-off side as high and broad as a poor man’s house in Helleron. There was
movement and noise from just the other side, the rattle of metal on metal and
the occasional curse as some Wasp-kinden artificer worked into the night to get
the machine in his charge back into the air. Salma shuffled forwards until he
was almost beside Basila, seeing now the broad, well-lit expanse of the field
the Wasps had cleared for their flying machines. They had a dozen great lamps
to enable the artificers to work, so there were precious few shadows from this
point on, just an overlapping plain of harsh artificial light.
The artificers were out
in force, and other personnel, too. There were scattered soldiers, men checking
the tension of the airship lines, and others counting off stacks of equipment
piled beside the aircraft hulls.
Salma realized there
were too many people here for the plan to work: they would be spotted the
moment they left the heliopter’s shadow.
Basila was waiting
motionless and he wondered if she was simply hoping for all those people to go
away. If that did not happen, as it would not, would they be found here at dawn
by the Wasps, still patiently waiting by this downed heliopter?
Totho touched his
shoulder and made a motion of counting on his fingers, then a gesture around at
their companions.
He tallied heads quickly
and sure enough they were a man short.
A moment later something
went
Whoomp!
a distance away, but still within the
camp, and there was a flash of flame. A second’s eerie silence and then the
shouting started.
Most of the soldiers
took off immediately, running towards the disturbance, and a surprising number
of the artificers too, just going to see what the fuss was about.
Basila already had her
crossbow in her hand, and Salma actually saw her counting off the seconds:
two . . . three . . . four
. . . and then she was off,
running into the light and letting the bolt fly at the nearest man.
And Arianna ran. At
first, she ran.
But she knew that
running, though it put distance between them, would leave a trail that Thalric
could follow. Even at this late hour there were enough people who she jostled,
or who stared after her: a young Spider-kinden woman pelting down the street,
her pale robes spotted red.
She ducked into a side
street, tried to calm herself.
He would be coming for
her. She had left him no choice.
She could not believe
that Hofi was dead. Scadran she had not known so well, but Hofi . . . She could
not say that she had liked him. It was not something that came up, in their
business. She had known him for a year, seen him every few days. He was a part
of her life and now Thalric had snuffed him out.
She peered back around
the corner, seeing only a dozen or so Beetles going about their late errands.
Of course Thalric would not be on the street. He would be at roof level,
winging his way towards her. She looked up, scanning the sky with wide eyes,
but there was nothing.
She had to get indoors.
There must be a taverna near here. She moved off, trying to keep to a
respectable walk, one hand folded demurely across her breast to cover the worst
of the blood. She must have looked like a madwoman, for the locals started when
they saw her and quickly got out of her way.
Finally there was a
taverna ahead. She could go inside, shield herself from the sky. If they had
rooms to hire she could hide out, offering a little extra to keep her secret.
She was almost at the
door when she saw him. He was still a hundred yards down the street, but she
recognized him instantly. Thalric, in his long coat, with the sword scabbarded
beneath it. He began to walk towards her in a patient, purposeful way.
She skittered backwards
and took the next side-alley, aware that he was between her and the better
parts of town. She was heading into that district where they had ambushed
Stenwold, and it had been chosen because the locals cared little about any
commotion. Certainly the death of a single Spider girl would excite no
curiosity.
She picked up her pace.
Glancing behind her she could no longer see him but she had a sense of motion,
of being tracked. He was in the air again, she guessed, and could follow her
easily, tracing her hurried dashing from street to street as he glided silently
over the rooftops.
She stopped under the
eaves of a run-down house. Her eyes were good in the dusk, but they seemed to
have failed her now. They conspired with her ears and her mind, putting a
hundred pursuers on her trail. Certainly she thought she heard the soft blur of
wings above, so that he could even be on the very roof of this place, waiting
for her next move. And yet surely was that not him, the shadow in the alley
across the way? The whole city now seemed to be hunting her.
There was a distinct
scrape from up above, and such imaginings fell away. Someone was above her, and
who else could it be?
He
might not know I’m here. He might not know I’m here.
She hugged herself,
trying to keep the panic in, but thinking only of Thalric’s careful, patient
style. He would wait all night.
He
might not know I’m here.
But then her nerve
snapped and she bolted and, as she broke cover she heard the flash of his
energy sting, felt the heat but not the hammering shock of it, as it scorched
the muddy flags of the street over to her left. She was running blindly then,
and knowing he could fly faster than she could run, but run she did, as fast as
she could whip her legs to motion, until she could go no faster. Then she
struck against something – something put hard in her path without warning – and
she was thrown on the ground. Her head spun from the impact but she forced
herself to look up and see.
And she saw his face,
and it was the face of Tisamon, cold and utterly without mercy. His claw was
over his hand, raised idly to finish her.
Arianna screamed, she
could not stop herself, and she covered her eyes.
Tisamon was surprised at
himself, because he had wished to see this, the traitress cowering at his feet,
utterly defenceless, but now he had it, something drained away inside him.
There had been no fight.
He had been expecting a fight.
As that thought came to
him he looked up, and Thalric landed not ten yards away, sword drawn, and their
eyes met. The shock of recognition was a physical thing, two-edged and cutting.
Tisamon remembered the fire and pain, the injury he had still not entirely
shaken free of. Thalric, for his part, remembered the wounds he had taken, the
wounds he had given, and how Tisamon had simply refused to die.
For a long moment, with
Arianna whimpering at the Mantis’s feet, they stared at one another. Tisamon’s
offhand, as though it had a life of its own, had plucked a dagger from his
belt. He had sought them out particularly, those daggers, after the fight at
Helleron, and paid a heavy purse for them.
‘She is mine,’ Tisamon
said. ‘I claim her.’ As he was speaking a Beetle-kinden pair, a man and a
woman, stepped out into the alley, glanced from him to Thalric, and retreated
hurriedly back indoors.
Thalric’s mind was at
war with itself. This was the one confrontation he would normally have baulked
at. He had come far too close to dying because of this man, and who knew
whether his daughter was lurking nearby? He had a sense, as he was hunting
Arianna down, that his were not the only feet on her trail. He had that sense
again now, even with Tisamon before him.
Who else is there
and where are they?
He feared. A bitter
realization that, but he feared.
Still, he was a soldier
of the Empire. He took a step forward and spat a bolt from his palm at the
Mantis.
Tisamon hurled himself
aside, though the fire scorched his shoulder. But just as Thalric had loosed
the bolt the Mantis’s hand had flicked forwards and he now saw the Wasp stagger
as the dagger struck. A glancing blow, for Thalric had seen the silver flicker
coming, but it had been flying straight for his face and, as he dodged, it cut
a line across his temple, above his ragged cheek where Arianna had clawed him.
He made to launch another bolt, but Tisamon had a second knife in his hand even
now, sending the edged darts spinning out one after another, driving Thalric
back, back, then up to a rooftop, almost to the limit of his sting’s range.
Tisamon had a hand full of knives, little hiltless throwing pieces, and there
was no way to tell how many he still concealed.