At the periphery of the
Wasp encampment, sentries patrolled outside a regular ring of lit torches,
stopping to exchange a brief word whenever they met. They relied on the fires
behind them for their night-vision, because Wasp-kinden were day creatures.
The first arrow came out
of the night without warning, silent on chitin-shard fletchings, burying itself
in a soldier’s neck above the line of his armour. He gaped at it, spear falling
from his hand, and fell, and the two sentries nearest to him just stared.
The sound of three
hundred shafts splitting the dark air was just a whisper, just a whisper, until
they struck.
General Alder heard the
first screams as he emerged from his tent. ‘What—?’ he started, and stopped,
the words drying on his lips. He could see, through the line of tents, the
torches of the west perimeter and they were winking out, and there was now a
wave of darkness surging into his camp. A wave of dark bodies that could see
clearly by the waning of the moon and held blackened steel in their hands.
He heard officers try to
sound the alarm, to call them to the defence, but he heard none of them even
finish the sentence. Arrows were slicing down around him, punching randomly
through the sides of tents, or picking off men as they struggled, half-armoured
or even unarmed, into the open.
‘To me!’ Alder shouted.
‘Form on me!’
‘Form on the General!’
Maan added his voice. ‘All troops form up and—’ Then he was down, clutching at
an arrow that had gone so far through him it had pinned him to the ground.
There were soldiers
enough, though, some in armour and some near-naked, and he saw the flashes of
stings crackling into the tide of the attackers, and caught split-second
revelations across their line. They were spread out, no disciplined block of
troops, and he was aware of Wasps trying to form a line ahead of him, to defend
him. It would not be enough, surely, though he still had no idea who was
attacking his camp.
The Spider-kinden, it must be.
He noticed the
Ant-kinden of Captain Anadus formed up with more discipline, but they now were
making a slow retreat, shields locked and manoeuvring between the tents, losing
men to arrows even as they did so. If there had been more of them left from the
siege of Tark then perhaps they could have made a difference, but now all that
Anadus was trying to do was leave.
The invaders struck the
Wasps’ half-formed line and Alder’s soldiers began to go down. He raised his
blade and lunged forwards, parrying a rapier as it snaked towards him and, with
a skill that belied his years, binding under the enemy thrust to drive the
blade into his opponent. There was a further volley of flashes as several of
his men fired their stings at once, and looking down he saw the face of a
Mantis-kinden man ashen in death.
Mantids?
he thought, utterly bewildered.
From the woods beyond
Merro? What have we done to provoke them?
All around his camp was
falling. The Mantids were in amongst the packed artillery now, firing whatever
they could with oil spilled from the Wasps’ own smashed lanterns. Major Grigan
and his artificers were being hacked down even as they ran to douse the flames.
‘Form up on me!’ Alder
shouted again, feeling his voice hoarse with the smoke that was heavy on the
air. He saw another group of men trying to join up with his own, with Colonel
Carvoc at their head, but they were getting whittled away like wood. They were
still ten yards away when Carvoc himself reeled back with an arrow through him,
and his squad immediately disintegrated.
Alder’s sword came up
swiftly, catching the curved blade of a claw as it sliced down on him, but then
a spear drove into his side, shattering ribs and embedding itself deep into his
body. He cried out and tried, with his last strength, to kill the man – no, the
woman – before him, but the spear-wielder pinned him to the ground, stamping on
his chest to free the spear-point and, as she passed over him with barely a
pause, the Mantis woman stabbed again, this time through his throat.
‘We asked them how many
warriors Felyal could muster, all told,’ Tynisa explained to Stenwold, ‘and
they thought about a thousand or fifteen hundred, meaning everyone except the
children, really. And they agreed that even a thousand warriors could not hold
off the army of Wasps that was out there, if it attacked, since it was an army
of about twenty, thirty times that number.
‘And then we asked them
how many Wasps they could kill if
they
themselves
attacked. Attacked without warning, at night, after a long wait had left the
enemy distracted, bored . . .’
‘And they thought about
thirty each,’ Tisamon finished, and he was smiling now, a particularly Mantis
smile.
*
And across the field of
the Wasp encampment the warriors of Felyal raged, and where they found Wasps or
their allies they killed, never slowing or stopping or giving their foe any
time to realize that the force that attacked them was barely an army at all. A
mere warband a fraction of their size, but that ravaged through their tents
with a ferocity born of long years of smouldering grudges against the Apt
masters of the sunlit world.
They left nothing
untouched. They were Mantis, so they took no prisoners, they kept no slaves.
They expected no mercy and they gave none. When they came to the tent of
Mercy’s Daughters, Norsa faced them in its doorway, unarmed, and for a moment
it seemed that she would turn them aside, but they were mad for blood, and not
known for leniency, and neither healers nor wounded escaped their blades.
Those soldiers who
escaped, for the Mantids were not equal to their boast in the end, would make
conflicting and broken reports to their interrogators, and none would forget
that night. Even those that questioned them would thereafter sleep uneasily,
their imaginations fired by the dreams of blood and shadows, as though the
night itself had teeth and they had fallen into its jaws.
Of the soldiers of the
Fourth Army, the Barbs as they had been known, scarcely one in four survived.
Stenwold shook his head
at this news. The Wasp army that had been ready to rampage up the coast was
gone. Teornis had already told the story of how it had been held back, first by
the Lord-Martial himself, and then by a close cousin of his whose face would
pass, when suitably made-up, for Teornis’s own, with a mere two hundred men. He
had only hinted at other plans for the Fourth Army, because he did not wish to
boast about matters still in the brewing.
Stenwold found that he
was grinning at Tisamon. ‘You chose a good time to show Tynisa her heritage.’
Tisamon did not smile in
return. ‘They will not fight for Collegium, Sten – but they will fight. The
south coast road has gatekeepers, and the Wasps will come again.’ The thought
of that future was grim in Tisamon’s eyes, and Stenwold was about to find some
reassuring words to offer when Arianna plucked at his robe.
‘Stenwold!’
She was staring back up
the steps leading towards the Amphiophos entrance, which still saw a fair
traffic even at this hour.
‘What is it?’
Assassins
, he thought instantly.
Who
has she recognized?
‘Stenwold, you want
Thalric, don’t you?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Get soldiers, as many
as you can,’ she hissed. ‘If you want him, you’ll have to fight for him. Now,
or it will be too late!’
Soldiers?
When I have Tisamon.
‘With me,’ he growled, rushing back up the steps,
and Tisamon was instantly in step with him, claw hinging out. He heard Tynisa
and Arianna behind, knew that his ward would have her rapier clear. He felt
much safer with these escorts than with a score of Parops’s Ant-kinden.
‘What is it? Tell me?’
he demanded, as they clattered through the corridors of the Amphiophos.
‘I saw her!’ Arianna was
saying. ‘She’s here for him!’
‘Who?’ Stenwold demanded,
out of breath already.
‘The Dragonfly! Tisamon
knows!’
And she was suddenly
ahead of them, standing before the guards of Thalric’s suite, a Dragonfly
woman, her cloak thrown back to reveal scintillating armour. The Beetle-kinden
guards clearly did not know what to make of her, seeing her possibly as one of
Teornis’s foreign troops. They had their shields half-up, frowning, and
abruptly there was a long, straight sword in the woman’s hands. The curtain to
Thalric’s chamber was drawn half-back, as though Felise had first tried to
simply walk between them.
‘Let me pass,’ she
demanded, in the tone of a final warning.
Stenwold shouted,
‘Stop!’ skidding to a halt beyond reach, or so he hoped, of that oddly-styled
blade. Instantly she had shifted stance, the arc of her sword now covering the
guards and Stenwold both, and for a second there was silence as the tension in
the woman coiled up to a crisis.
‘Lady Felise.’ Tisamon
had come to Stenwold’s shoulder, claw at the ready, but there was a strange
expression on his face.
The Dragonfly stared at
him, something changing behind her features.
‘Lady Felise,’ Tisamon
said slowly, ‘we have met. Do you remember?’
‘Did we fight?’ she
asked, almost in the voice of a child.
‘You gave me that
honour,’ said the Mantis, giving the words special meaning only for him and for
her.
Something shifted behind
her face again, something trying to be heard, but then again it was that
perfect mask, beautiful and terrible all at once, and the guards clutched at
their maces and raised their shields. ‘I have found my prize,’ she said coldly.
‘He is within this room. I will not let anything keep me from him. Not even
you, Mantis.’
Tisamon’s voice was a
whisper. ‘What . . . what’s in the room, Sten?’
‘Tisamon, please—’
‘Because I
know
who she’s hunting, Sten.’
There
are better and easier ways to break this news to Tisamon
, Stenwold
reflected. The dreadful tension of the Dragonfly woman was like a shrill sound
at the very edge of his hearing. Bloodshed was imminent.
‘He’s here,’ he confirmed.
‘Thalric is here. He gave himself up. He claims the Empire has cast him out and
tried to kill him.’
‘Does he indeed?’ said
Tisamon, without sympathy. ‘This woman wants Thalric dead, Sten. She wants to
cut his throat and probably dance in his ashes. I have no issue with that,
myself.’
‘We . . . need him,’
Stenwold whispered. He could see the Dragonfly, Felise, standing perfectly
still, focusing inwards and inwards.
I have seen that look
before, in Tisamon
. There was another there as well, hanging back further
down the hall, a long-haired Spider with a wry smile. Stenwold could see how
they had gained access: the two of them, travelling together on this day, would
seem like just more of the rescuers from across the seas.
‘What is this?’ Felise
demanded, taking a better grip on her blade. ‘Fight me or stand away from me. I
will have his blood. I will have the blood of any that stand in my way.’
It was a gesture that
always seemed a good idea at the time but never quite worked out so. Stenwold
stepped forward and walked towards her. Past the two guards he caught a glimpse
of Thalric inside his room. Something had gone out of the man, some hope of a
last chance.
‘Stenwold,’ the Wasp
said, half warning, half imploring, ‘remember Cheerwell—’
Without warning the
woman’s sword was at Stenwold’s neck. He looked into Felise’s eyes and saw
madness gathering there like stormclouds.
This
was not a good idea.
‘I am Master Stenwold Maker of Collegium. This man’
– his nerve almost failed – ‘is in my care. Why do you wish to kill him?’
The blade jumped, the
edge cutting an inch of shallow blood. ‘Ask him,’ she hissed. ‘Master Stenwold
Maker of Collegium. If it is not enough that his people have raped my homeland
and slain my people in their thousands, ask him what it is that he has done
against me.’
Remember
Che
, the thought came. Thalric might be his only chance of seeing the
girl again. ‘Thalric?’ he asked faintly.
‘Stenwold, you need me.’
‘Only if I can trust you
for the truth,’ Stenwold said flatly, and he saw something pass across
Thalric’s face. Here was a man in a trap of his own making. The Wasp knew what
would now happen even before he spoke, and in that fatal moment Stenwold
finally recognized some virtue there, beyond all the principles the Empire had
built in him, because despite what would follow he said, ‘I killed her
children, Master Maker. The Empire wanted a certain noble Commonweal bloodline
extinguished, and so I went into her castle and killed all her children. She
had no sword then, when we surprised her. She was taken for a slave. I suppose
she escaped.’ Thalric’s voice sounded flat, sick.
Stenwold pictured Che,
either dead now or incarcerated in a Wasp cell, or at the mercies of their
artificers, and he looked into Felise’s face and reassessed her. This was the
face, he decided, of a mother who had loved her children and who now wanted
solely to avenge them.
I
have no right
, he knew, and he gestured to the guards, who stepped back
in evident relief. Felise spared him one more brief glance before passing through
the doorway.
Her captors had found a
little cluster of farm buildings nearby, stone-built and solid, with a big
storage cellar that they had cleared out, throwing away everything not
immediately edible or useful. Che hoped that the farming family who had once
lived here had been given the chance to flee before the black and gold storm.
In the cellar their
artificers had been busy even before the battle, and wooden beams from a
dismantled house had been used as bars to mark out a pen that would hold a
dozen prisoners at most. A few dried stains of reddish-brown suggested she was
not the first.