We could have done with the Collegiates pressing their advantage after they drove the Second off
, one of Milus’s peers mused.
A relief column from the Beetles would be very
welcome now.
For the record, the Collegiates have done their best with what is available to them: superior artifice and inferior warriors
, Milus stated firmly. It was not his place to speak thus,
but he had little care for propriety now. It was all part of that same eccentricity of mind that saw some Ants exiled and a very few raised high. He had made few friends and yet, to date, nobody
could disagree with his methods or his results.
Within the mental space between him and the Court hovered a dream of their forces, represented simply and surely: the Sarnesh main army, the citizen militia, the auxiliary militia from the
Foreigners’ Quarter, the makeshift warriors from Princep – present but palpably unhappy to be so – and several hundred Mynan warriors who had fled the fall of their city –
basically the great majority of their remaining land army. Of the non-Sarnesh forces, it was only those same Mynans that Milus had any great faith in, and even then they were an expendable
resource. They would fight well, but their long-term aims did not necessarily chime with those of Sarn. Best therefore to spend them now.
We cannot see that there is anything more that can be done. We have gathered all we can, made every preparation.
That was the voice of the King himself. All about Milus, the wall was
crowded with engines, every piece of artillery mounted and ready to strike at the enemy as they approached. Much of it was antiquated, but Milus was bleakly aware that this would not matter,
because even the most modern Sarnesh engines possessed only a fraction of the range of the new Imperial machines, if the Mynans could be believed.
So, therefore, attack.
A bitter but inescapable conclusion, the same decision that had won the last war, and then cost them so dearly at Malkan’s Folly.
Beneath the ground stretching before Sarn, the ant-nest was digging at the behest of its Art-gifted handlers: creating a network of reinforced tunnels with sally points ready for Sarnesh troops
to spring out of, into the midst of the enemy, and some of those tunnels ran for miles. Explosive mines had been set, as well, and a large force of Sarnesh scouts and wildsmen was already lying in
wait, hidden as best they could in the hope of catching the enemy in the flank once battle was joined. The Imperial advantage in technology would have to be matched by Sarnesh superiority in
discipline and organization.
I have done my best
, he reflected, in that quiet corner of his mind fenced off from all others.
Circumstances have been inopportune, but I have played the hand I was dealt as well
as anyone could.
If the Mantis-kinden had only held firm, if the Moths had not lost control of their Nethyen lackeys, then this would all be very different. Burdened with a hostile northern front, the Wasps
would be far slower to advance; and the Ancient League and Sarn together could have taken them, just as they had at Malkan’s Folly the first time. But the Nethyen had turned, and now Milus
was having to expend Sarnesh blood in the forest just to make sure that the Wasps did not gain control of it. He had read Sentius’s reports, that it was becoming a bloody business in there
– for the Wasps and for Milus’s soldiers, but most of all for the locals. They were falling on one another as though they had been waiting five hundred years for this opportunity.
Could they not have waited one year more?
And yet even there he had done his best. He had reinforced the Etheryen and there was still some chance that battle would be won, although by that time there might not be enough Mantis survivors
to make useful allies. He had even sent that deranged Beetle girl in, Maker’s niece. The Mantids obviously respected her somehow, and surely that had been the right thing to do for she could
hardly make matters worse.
And of course there was his own ‘special adviser’ regarding the Inapt: the Fly halfbreed Lissart, as her real name was. Milus spared her a thought, incarcerated now in the secure
cells beneath the Court. She was an intriguing, damaged creature. The interrogator’s art had yielded a surprising bounty of Imperial practice and information from her but, being an erratic
little monster, there were still secrets to plumb there, especially as to who might have sent her to spy on him in the first place. However, if this battle could be won, there would be both the
time and the machines to fillet out what she knew. She could be a valuable asset indeed if the war could be carried further east.
If he could defeat the Empire in front of Sarn.
I have done all within my power.
And still the Eighth Army was drawing closer, although constant Sarnesh ambushes had slowed its advance to a crawl. It was Milus’s faint hope that Collegium might manage a decisive strike
against the Second, and be able to send a force north just in time – perhaps some of their new orthopters to counter the crushing air power that the Empire was able to field.
And still final confirmation from the Court did not come. He badly wanted it to approve. He wanted his city’s full confidence.
In the end, he realized that such total confidence simply did not exist. There was doubt and fear rooted deep in the Court. Not doubt in him, Milus – for he had truly done all that was
possible to give his city every chance of survival. No, it was doubt in the odds, doubt that even all this mustered strength, all this strategy, could win the day.
They have taken Tark. They
have taken Kes.
Those cities were the traditional enemies of Sarn, their peers who had for centuries held the balance of power in the Lowlands. Now the hungry Empire had swept the map
clean.
Within the privacy of his own head, Milus considered the future. This was his hour, he knew, and he was history’s man. In his own mind there could be no room for doubt. What was the use of
it? The King and his Court wasted their thoughts on the possibility, or even the probability of defeat. To resist was all: to resist and to triumph, odds be damned.
I would rather see my city
in ruins and every one of my people dead than for us to lose. If the Mynans thought like me, perhaps they would never have lost their city to the Empire. Or they would be dead, with their honour
and pride still intact.
We will win.
Milus could countenance no other choice, if only because he would be dead himself before the Empire claimed his home.
And when we have won, when I have brought about
that future, then Sarn will recognize me.
The current King had not been in office long, but he was no young man. Milus, strange and slightly disaffected Milus, had never been a contender for
the throne but, with a victory over the Empire under his belt, who would say no?
I am only glad that I have lived to see times such as these. How I might have been wasted otherwise!
The Second Army’s new arrivals very nearly failed to arrive entirely. A Farsphex and two Spearflights, they appeared at the tail end of a Collegiate air attack, in danger
not so much from the retreating Stormreaders as from their fellow Imperials, who simply saw them as
enemy
. Only a rapid reassessment by the first attacking pilot,
after
his
initial run, managed to call the rest off. Long before she landed, Bergild had already begun cursing the fools who let non-mindlinked aviators blunder about the sky. The Collegiate air attacks had
grown more and more frequent as the Second neared the city. They appeared twice, sometimes three times a day at random intervals, and occasionally at night, although the Beetles were plainly not
keen on flying after dark if they did not have to. The link shared by the Farsphex pilots gave them a far better mental map of a dark sky. In response to this escalation, Tynan had his army march
and camp in dispersed formations as much as possible, individual elements of it operating almost independently. The entire force covered square miles of countryside, with supplies being spread out
across each individual infantryman, leaving only the remaining artillery pieces as tempting targets. Fly-kinden messengers shuttled constantly between the army’s constituent parts, carrying
orders to pick up the pace, to slow down, to pull in or fall back. Thankfully, the Beetles had shown no signs of wanting to risk another field battle after the last one went so badly for them.
This new marching order slowed them a little, but they managed it, despite nobody having ever tried such an advance before in recorded history.
There are few forces in the world that could
achieve this without simply disintegrating
, Tynan considered with a spark of pride.
Stab me, but I’m not sure which other
Imperial
armies could manage it, for that
matter.
He had an automotive available, but for the moment he was marching alongside his men – it was good for morale and it stopped him becoming a target. The illusion of being just another
soldier was somewhat tarnished by the constant stream of Flies and Wasps who dropped down around him to report or to receive orders, but he did his best to pretend.
I remember when I used to do
this for real.
And he did remember, but only just.
In the aftermath of the Collegiate attack, he saw the new arrivals being escorted down by Bergild’s pilots, in slow looping circles over the far-spread army until they found a suitable
landing site. Tynan eyed them:
News from home?
A mixed blessing normally, but right now he was desperate for some kind of explanation, some magic reversal of the picture that would present
him with the tools for a successful siege of Collegium. He had insufficient air support, precious little artillery, and supplies by air and sea were easy targets for the Collegiate orthopters.
This must be it
, he decided. ‘Find me Cherten, Oski – and get me Captain Bergild, if she’s down yet’
Captain Vrakir of the Red Watch had a way of staring at Tynan that made the general’s scalp itch. He had no need to present himself and salute, for the fact of his presence imposed itself
gradually until it was impossible to ignore.
Tynan sighed. ‘Sound a general halt and let the trailing companies catch up. Double watch for the Collegiates coming back.’ And his messengers sprang away to pass on the word.
Stopping an army so spread out was the hardest part. It was easy for hundreds of men to simply march off without realizing that they were inadvertently deserting.
He considered sending for Mycella, but he wanted to hear this for himself first. Under her scrutiny, he found his own ignorance of the Empire’s wider plan a hard thing to bear.
He had his little court of officers assembled soon enough: all those he had called for save Bergild – and with Vrakir as well, unsummoned and unwanted but impossible to get rid of. The
captain of aviators appeared at the last moment with the new guests in tow, and at first glance they did not seem to be the answer to Tynan’s hopes. One was a young lieutenant with Red Watch
mail, who sought out Vrakir and started murmuring to him without even acknowledging the general’s presence. The other . . .
He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, but there his resemblance to a soldier of the Empire stopped. He had a sash dyed black and gold about his waist, but no other nod to the uniform. Instead he
had a long leather coat, patched more than once, and a cuirass of chitin scales, as though the armourer’s craft had not intruded these last few centuries on wherever he came from. A cord
about his neck was strung with a selection of barbs and spines and shards that Tynan recognized as being trophies from dead animals. The man himself, though he might have passed for a civilized
Wasp if he had been cleaned up and dressed properly, must be from the northern hill-tribes, the half-savages who still eked out a barbarous living in the way that Tynan’s own
great-grandfather might have done. He had a gaunt, unshaven face, and his pale hair was long and ragged and filthy.
He was not Tynan’s idea of the man who might drive the enemy from the skies, nor was he the obvious solution to any other problem currently facing the Second Army.
‘What is this?’ the general demanded.
The newcomer managed an approximate salute. ‘Captain Nistic, sir.’ His voice was hoarse and scratchy, as though from disuse.
‘Captain?
’ Tynan reined himself in before he said something unwise, but if this man had earned a captain’s badge, then something had gone badly wrong back home.
‘It should have been major, sir, but they wouldn’t have it,’ this Nistic agreed. Now he had spoken more than a couple of words, there was something definitely odd about him,
something unhealthy that made Tynan uncomfortable. He made no eye contact, and it almost seemed that he was carrying on some other conversation inside his head.
And this was a captain!
‘General.’ Vrakir broke away from his conference to step over to Nistic’s side. ‘Captain Nistic here is in charge of the force that Capitas is sending to defeat the
Collegiate fliers.’
‘Is he now?’ Tynan stared at the two of them. ‘Perhaps you could explain to us just how that’s to be accomplished.’
‘No, sir,’ Vrakir said smartly. ‘The captain’s mission is one of utmost secrecy. Orders are that you simply meet Nistic and be informed that his troops are on their way.
Estimated arrival is in a tenday, by which time I would think the Second will be outside Collegium’s gates.’
With no air support or artillery and precious little capability of maintaining a siege.
Tynan locked eyes with Vrakir. ‘These are the Empress’s orders?’
‘I speak with her voice, sir,’ the Red Watch captain declared, not forcibly but firmly. ‘You are to bring the assault against Collegium, and their air forces will be dealt
with.’
I should demand to see those orders
, Tynan considered, but he knew there would be nothing written down. Perhaps the newly arrived lieutenant had not even brought any orders, but they
had come to Vrakir from the same place all the rest of the Empress’s words seemed to emerge from – some space within his own mind.