Wasp armies, in contrast, had traditionally been built about the Light Airborne, soldiers armed with swords or spears and their stinging Art, and able to move swiftly about the battlefield,
lacking the Ants’ iron discipline but swifter and more flexible. Wasp heavy infantry could not stand toe to toe with the Ants for long – not even the old disbanded Sentinels could have
done that, whatever retired veterans might tell each other – but the Wasps beat the Ants repeatedly by outmanoeuvring them and by out-thinking them, by using the strengths of their Auxillians
– and by allowing individual talent to count for more.
The Pioneers were a good example of this. They had been created during the Twelve-year War against the Dragonflies of the Commonweal, a foe who at their best had been as mobile and unpredictable
as the Wasps themselves. Often the Commonwealers had taken inaccessible spots as their strongholds – badlands, hill-forts, or the hearts of ancient forests just like this. Often, too, there
had been Mantis-kinden fighting alongside them. The Pioneers had been some of the most skilled individuals that the Empire could draw upon, perhaps the first ever occasion when the usual
considerations of purity of blood had been allowed to slacken, when sheer ability had become paramount. And they had died, of course. Fighting the enemy’s war on the enemy’s ground,
they had suffered a rate of attrition worse than frontline battlefield units, but they had done their job. No Dragonfly fortress or holdout had survived the Empire’s attentions, and in many
cases it was the work of the Pioneers to bring in the rest of the army.
The war against the Lowlands had been a slow time for those veterans of the Commonweal, so far. The Lowlanders fought like the Apt should, with machines and with armies. The call had gone out
though and, even as Roder’s Eighth had crossed the Imperial border, the Pioneers had been strapping on their gear, taking up their weapons. Now Roder had brought before Seda the best of them
that he could offer. His expression was pained, for they were hardly the immaculate paragons of Wasp soldiery that he might want, but they were good. They knew their craft and, if she was to break
off from the main force within the forest and pursue her own aims, she would need them. The forest would be against her, and half the Mantis-kinden in it, together with whatever force the Sarnesh
could commit. And
her
of course, the cursed Beetle girl, Seda’s rival. Seda would need every advantage, including this ragged, disreputable trio.
There was one Wasp amongst them, and he was perhaps the biggest man Seda had ever seen, hulking head and shoulders over his peers as though he had some Mole Cricket blood in him. He was broad,
too, bulked out with muscle, his bared arms massive, looking as though they could uproot every tree in the forest for her until she had what she wanted. Twin axes were sheathed across his back,
each looking as though a normal man would need two hands to wield it, and he wore a long coat studded with chitin plates, with a dark metal breastplate beneath it, nothing of the black and gold
about him. His name was Gorrec, Pioneer sergeant, and he was the closest to an Imperial soldier that she was looking at.
To his right stood Icnumon, who looked as though Gorrec could have crushed him in one hand. He was a slender, pale piece of work, his ash-fair hair worn long and tied back, his features sharp
and slightly out of proportion, as so often with halfbreeds. He had Wasp blood in him but his father had been Mantis-kinden, which made for a very dangerous combination. He had his mother’s
sting, and the spines of his father’s people speared out from his forearms. He was an assassin, Roder had explained, who had stalked the shadows of the Commonweal, playing hide and seek with
Dragonfly scouts and executing enemy leaders within their own forest haunts. He wore no armour, just a loose, long tunic and cloak of mottled grey-brown. There was a short, recurved bow holstered
at his back, and long knives at his belt, but Seda could tell far more than Roder could what the man’s real advantage was. Through some teaching of his father or secrets learned in the
Commonweal, Icnumon had a touch of the magician about him: a few incantations and half-understood tricks to complement his Art, to let him stalk unseen in the darkness.
To Gorrec’s left was a shorter, squatter figure, and not what she would have expected among the Pioneers. Instead of a slender Inapt killer or a rugged Wasp, here was a solid, balding
Beetle-kinden wearing a hauberk of reinforced leather that was one step removed from an artificer’s protective overalls. He had a snapbow over his shoulder, not the standard infantry model
but the shorter-barrelled pieces that she understood the Light Airborne preferred for speed and ease of movement. This man was Jons Escarrabin, who had been born in Collegium a very long time ago,
and who had fought on both sides in the Twelve-year War, graduating from captive to Auxillian to Pioneer. He looked like a mild shopkeeper, and had been personally mentioned in reports as a crack
shot, an expert wildsman and a halfway decent artificer. He fought for the Empire for the same reason that a surprising number of mercenary types did, because where else would they get such a
rewarding opportunity to practise their trades?
‘I shall take them,’ she declared. ‘General, begin moving your chosen forces into the forest. The Nethyen and their Moth-kinden masters are expecting you, and they shall serve
your officers as guides and Auxillians, bringing you to the fray. No quarter for the Etheryen. No quarter for the Sarnesh. Drive them back wherever you meet them.’ Roder would have some
inkling of the magnitude of the task, the size of the forest, its beasts, its darkness, no fit terrain for the Wasp-kinden, and yet they would do their best, despite it all, for her glory and that
of the Empire.
And if those two glories diverge slightly, who is to know?
‘My retinue will be Gjegevey, Tisamon and my personal bodyguards, Ostrec of the Red Watch and your three Pioneers. I shall commandeer such others as I see fit from the locals and your
forces as I need them. For yourself, Roder, while the Mantis-kinden are at war, there will be no support from the woods for the Sarnesh. You have waited long enough. Ready your men to
march.’
The drone of Imperial machines was all that was left in the sky now. The deceptively quiet Collegiate Stormreaders had been and gone and, from his position dug into a hollow
alongside a handful of Spider mercenaries, Morkaris could not have said how much the new Farsphex had helped. He had heard a fair number of bombs going off, for all their efforts.
Cautiously he crept out of the hollow. Morkaris was a cadaverously thin Spider-kinden, seeming pale as the grave in his articulated black mail, with a double-handed axe across his back that
looked too heavy for him to wield. He had been a mercenary all his adult life, though, fighting for every coin and at every station, from lone warrior to captain, from captain to captain of
captains. Now he had signed on with the Aldanrael family as their adjutant, the man who kept all their varied mercenary forces in line – and damned if he wasn’t regretting it.
I should have stayed in the Spiderlands
.
The last few days had been a harsh lesson about how well the sort of war he was used to travelled. The Spiderlands Aristoi fought all the time, with various levels of deniability, and
mercenaries were a common commodity over there, with a good company never short of work – sometimes taking the coin of three families in as many days – sometimes all on the same day, or
even in the same battle. In the Spiderlands, war was something Morkaris understood. Here, though . . . between the Collegiates’ cursed flying machines and the Wasps’ own murderous
devices, he was feeling old and out of his depth.
‘Chief,’ one of his men said, and he looked up to see another Spider approaching, and not one he was pleased to see, either. There had just been an attack, with the Collegiates
quartering the sky and dropping explosives on any target that presented itself, and here was Jadis of the Melisandyr, his full armour gleaming as though the man had sat polishing it throughout the
bombardment.
Jadis was commander of the Aldanrael’s regular forces, hence Morkaris’s opposite number, chief rival and constant foil. Here was a man born with all the advantages Morkaris had been
denied: good looks, good family, respect that didn’t require the daily shedding of blood . . . Morkaris spat wearily as the man strode over.
‘You’re a hard man to find,’ Jadis told him.
‘I like to think the Collegiates say the same. What do you want?’ Morkaris demanded. ‘Worried about my health?’
The two men sized each other up, not for the first time, as the mercenaries moved out in a loose semicircle behind their leader. Jadis had come alone, but nothing in his pose or expression
suggested that he was remotely worried about his safety.
If I thought that was just arrogance . . .
Challenges between individuals of comparable rank was not uncommon in Spider armies. Just as Morkaris was here to keep the infighting of the
mercenaries at an acceptable level, so he himself could kick up some trouble if he wished, and had Jadis been the powdered major-domo he would have expected, then perhaps a little accident might
have been arranged. Jadis could
fight
, though. The Melisandyr trained their sons well. When the Felyen Mantis-kinden and their allies had attacked the camp, Morkaris had witnessed the man
at work: sword and shield and mail, protecting his mistress. The sight had been an education.
‘We’re moving,’ Jadis told him flatly. He was sharp enough to know just what Morkaris thought of him, and not to care overmuch. Being liked by mercenaries was plainly not an
ambition of his.
‘Who’s we, and where to?’
‘All of us. To Collegium.’
Not entirely unexpected, but no more welcome news for that. ‘And once they pull the army together, what about the Collegiates? What do we give them, save for a target?’ Morkaris
pointed out. His hands itched for the haft of his axe, just on general principles.
‘A moving target, at least,’ Jadis replied. ‘Those are your orders. Get your rabble together. What’s left of it.’
Morkaris grimaced despite himself. It was no secret that, regardless of all he could do, more than a quarter of the mercenaries had deserted, companies and individuals deciding that living under
daily bombardment had not been what they signed on for. To keep those who remained, he had personally fought four duels in the last few tendays. Whether going on the march under that continued
aerial assault would help morale at all was an arguable point.
‘The new machines will help, they say,’ Jadis offered. ‘They will keep off the worst of the attacks.’
‘If they don’t just explode, like the last lot,’ the mercenary spat. The fate of the Second Army’s last fliers was well known by now.
‘This will not happen, they say,’ Jadis continued implacably.
Morkaris scowled. ‘I may not understand their machines, but I can still count. The new fliers are very few.’
‘This is irrelevant. Gather your companies for the march, or be ready to explain your failure to the Aldanrael.’ Not quite a challenge, not quite a personal insult and nothing that
Morkaris could not ignore, but still . . . for just a moment the mercenary wondered about quitting, which would certainly mean taking on Jadis then and there. The odds were too wide open, though,
and he was still owed pay.
Instead he decided to stick a knife in where he knew the man’s mail didn’t protect him. ‘Oh, well, if the Wasps say to Herself that they’ve won the skies back, who am I
to argue? If Herself’s that won over by the Wasps, then tell her that her mercenaries will be ready for the march, no worries.’ The barb went home and Morkaris saw the other man twitch
a little. ‘After all, no point arguing with you. You’re not the one she listens to any more.’
Jadis’s face remained very set, but he was a Spider Aristos and master of his own emotions. It was an open secret that his mistress, Mycella of the Aldanrael, was bedding the Wasp general,
and it was similarly known that Jadis was eating himself with jealousy about it. There was barely a flicker, though, to betray the man’s feelings. In spite of himself, Morkaris was impressed,
for here was Aristoi reserve at its finest. Shame that it wouldn’t save any lives when they got close to Collegium.
‘Listen, Jadis,’ he pointed out, feeling weary and old with the tedious predictability of the statement. ‘The Wasps don’t like us, and they can’t be trusted, and
they don’t share power. Tell me she knows this. Tell me that her . . .’ For a moment he nearly descended into an insult, an indelicate remark about Jadis’s blessed mistress, and
that would have meant a duel whether Morkaris felt ready for it or not. ‘Tell me that her coming to an
accommodation
with the Wasp general is all about her twisting him around to do
her bidding. Because my men have been talking.’
‘Mercenaries.’ One word to dismiss all that Morkaris and his followers were, but any mercenary captain learned to read his employers, and he could see the slightest flicker deep in
Jadis’s eyes.
‘She had just better be in a position to sell him out before he does the same to us,’ the mercenary adjutant muttered. ‘And yes, we’ll march. We’re ready. As ready
as we’ll ever be.’
General Tynan had rough hands, not the hands of a man in command but those of a man who did things for himself. He had a soldier’s scars, where a Spider in his position
would have skin unblemished and smooth as silk. Spiders knew how to avoid fights they could not win, mostly, although her own family’s great battle against the Empire had given the lie to
that, as had her subsequent campaign against Collegium. Against the Wasps, she had lost countless soldiers. Against the Beetles she had lost family. The greatest loss had been the esteem of her
peers. The Aldanrael family was not what it had been, which had led to Mycella being here at the head of an army in a last-ditch attempt to regain by brute war what they had lost.
Leading an armed force was not a position of great honour for the Spider-kinden, since they gave it over to their menfolk and their Hoipolloi. Great ladies of great families did not dirty their
hands with such business unless they were as desperate as Mycella had become. It had been the only path left to her: to take up the mantle of Lady-Martial, to sail for Solarno with her force of
loyal followers, allied minor families and a rabble of mercenaries, and it had almost destroyed her pride. On the ship, she had contemplated ending her own life, because that would at least have
won a moment’s approval of her peers.