From the vault of the heavens came the promise of salvation. The sight was so startling that Sandric stood straight up, and cover be damned. It was another airship.
Another casualty of the storm, he decided, that had only now given up its fight with gravity – it was a rotund little craft, a small merchantman perhaps, handling badly and plainly in
trouble, but the envelope looked mostly intact. He could hear the moan of its engine as it fell sideways overhead, seen through the gap in the foliage punched by their own descent.
A moment later his wings coalesced about his shoulders, and Sandric threw himself straight up, desperate to follow the stricken vessel’s flight and already fumbling for his pilot’s
instruments. He was in time, too – although the craft had moved further than he had thought it would in the moments it was out of his sight, and away from the line he had thought it was
taking. Still, he saw it come down, far off in the forest, and he knew that they had to reach it – it was pure, distilled hope.
Then he was yelling, and a moment later Corver and Vrant spilt out onto the canted deck, swords in hand and ready for trouble.
Neither of them understood what he meant, at first. The import of it escaped them.
‘So some other poor bastards came down, so what?’ was all Vrant thought of it. ‘You want to go conquer them for the Emperor, or can we just get out of here?’
‘Yes, yes we can get out of here,’ Sandric said, his voice shaking with the effort of talking down to these army thugs. ‘But not as we are. Our envelope – the
balloon
– is completely opened up – just rags of it left. But it looked as if this other ship, it had a fair spread of canopy left – maybe it even carried a
spare.’
Corver was frowning. ‘But . . .’ He waved his hand at the shattered stern
‘Seriously, sir, give me a balloon I can patch up, and some time, and I can float us out of here – it won’t be pretty, but we’ve got the gear and the chemicals to brew up
some more gas, and it doesn’t matter if the hull’s full of holes – it’s not as if we’re going to sink because of it. Getting to the other crash is the most important
thing in the world, right now.’
‘If their balloon is intact,’ Corver finished. ‘If.’
Sandric’s shrug managed to indicate all the violent green about them and the great distance to anything resembling Imperial civilization.
‘Bit weird, having another airship about,’ Vrant muttered.
Sandric shrugged. ‘It was a big storm. Probably downed ships all over this part of the Lowlands.
Please
, sir.’
Corver nodded, looking up at the sky. Late morning already, not long before noon. ‘How sure are you that you can find the site?’
‘I took a compass bearing when I saw it go down,’ Sandric confirmed.
‘Then we go now.’
Back in the Twelve-year War Corver had been ordered to chase some fleeing Commonwealer troops into a forest, which had turned out to be a Mantis-kinden hold not marked on any
of the ink-still-wet Imperial maps. The Mantids, who had not so much as lifted a finger to help the Dragonfly troops in the battle just concluded, had taken the invasion of their privacy very
seriously indeed.
It was not the fighting that had marked Corver, but what came after. As they had hunted him through the trees, as his wounds had run fever through him like a hot knife, he had heard the screams
of the men the Mantids had captured – probably soldiers from both sides for all he knew. He had staggered through a night strung with other people’s torment and then . . . and then . .
.
They had herded him to one of their places, where a worm-eaten idol had been reared up, crooked arms grasping wide. He had turned at bay then, the world about him a fever-dream of whispering
voices and blurred images, but they had not come for him. Instead he—
He had not
.
He had
not
heard the voice. That had been his wounds and his delirium.
Now he was back in the green again, back in the land of the Mantis-kinden. Before Sandric’s revelation some part of him had already given up – surrounded and besieged, there had been
no hope for them. Now the pilot was offering him a slender lifeline, but it involved going
out there
, and facing . . .
If he had not made the call to depart then and there, reflexively and without thought, then his fears would have got the better of him, and he would have crawled into the airship’s wreck
and never come out. He knew that he was not thinking clearly, as an officer should, but he had no other options.
‘Sterro!’ he snapped out. ‘Get your scrawny arse out here, or we leave you behind.’
There was a hurried scrabbling from within, and then the Fly hauled his skinny little frame out of the hold, making suspiciously heavy weather of it. When he presented himself before Corver, his
leather coat hung with the bulked-out heaviness of mail. Every pocket bulged.
Seeing the sergeant’s glower, the Fly scowled furiously. ‘What? So we’re supposed to leave it there?’
‘It’s the army’s money,’ Corver stated.
‘And how’s the army going to see it again?’ Sterro demanded. ‘Look, sir, we’re in the latrine here, right in it. It’s just us, no Emperor, no Rekef, no
generals. We have to look after ourselves.’
Corver opened his mouth, but Vrant had already made a move for the hatch. At the sergeant’s challenging stare he shrugged. ‘Just a purse-full, eh? Think of it as a bonus for having
to put up with Ordan.’
‘Be quick about it then,’ Corver snapped. Part of him was raging at the poor discipline, the rest just bitter because he had left himself no dignified way to back down and grab a
double-handful of retirement fund himself.
Sandric had made no move to follow. ‘Sir, movement in the trees.’
They were crouching low in the next moment, using the rail and the slope of the airship as cover. Corver squinted and stared, and after a while he began to see it too – nothing so
identifiable as a human form, but he knew they were out there, and in force this time.
‘Think they’re working up the courage?’ Sandric asked him.
‘Mantis-kinden don’t need to do that. They’re stupid enough to charge artillery.’ He remembered the war, though – when the Mantids fought it was seldom as part of
the Commonweal battle host. They came and went by incomprehensible rules of their own, attacking when least expected, but passing up on some obvious opportunities too. Rituals and superstition,
Corver supposed.
‘Get up here now, we’re pulling out,’ he called, and Vrant had appeared the moment after, sword in hand even as he clambered out of the hatch.
‘Sandric, which way?’
The pilot consulted his compass and pointed.
‘On three, then,’ Corver decided, and then an arrow sprouted from the deck near his hand, almost magical in its suddenness, and he was going, sliding down the slope of the airship
and over the rail, and the rest following him, jumping and gliding to catch him up.
The Mantids moved on them immediately: a scattered flurry of fleet, lean bodies moving through the trees from behind and both sides, spearheads and swords glinting momentarily as they crossed
stray shafts of sunlight. Corver had meant to move into the trees like a soldier, alert and wary, but he was running almost immediately, and the others struggling to keep up. Sterro flapped along
at the rear complaining, getting briefly off the ground with desperate stutterings of his wings before the weight of his sudden enrichment brought him down again.
An arrow cut past Corver, from nowhere and into nowhere, existing for him only in the moment that its swift flight crossed his path. There were whoops and yells from around them – then the
crackle of stingshot as Vrant turned his Art on them – directing a palm backwards and lashing out blindly to make the enemy keep their distance.
And yet they
were
keeping their distance, and this frightened Corver more than anything. It was the Commonweal all over again. The Mantids were playing with them. Had they wanted the
Imperials dead then a few well-placed arrows would have accomplished it, and Corver knew full well how good a shot the average Mantis archer was.
Abruptly he stopped, Sandric almost cannoning into him, Vrant barrelling past before skidding to a halt. Sterro practically dropped at his feet. Corver had his sword in hand, his off-hand
directed outwards, and the other Wasps quickly joined him, standing shoulder to shoulder and facing away from one another.
‘Sir?’ came Vrant’s taut question.
Corver peered between the trees. There was a complete canopy above them, and it was as dark as twilight down here. For a moment he could see nothing of the Mantids, just the overwhelming
undersea gloom of the space between the trees, the shimmer and dance of flying things and the scurrying in the undergrowth.
Then he saw one: a tall, lean man in clothes the colour of the forest, bearing a bow as tall as he was, standing motionless, watching. Abruptly he could pick out at least two dozen of them, men
and women bearing bows and swords and spears. They were unarmoured, probably barely counting as warriors by Mantis reckoning, but they were quite enough to make an end to some lost soldiers of the
Empire.
They began stalking forwards – not running, but a slow, deliberate advance, and wherever Corver looked, in that quarter, he saw them slipping between the trees, bowstrings being drawn
back, spearheads dark and thirsty.
‘Go,’ he decided. The word forced itself from him without his consent. A moment later he was on the move again – less of a frantic rush, because he was too tired and bruised
for it now, but hurried even so. He knew without looking that the Mantis-kinden would be effortlessly keeping pace.
Ahead, the forest grew only darker, the trees closer together and the branches overhead just heavier and more intricately interleaved.
They battered their way another few hundred feet, tripping over roots and dodging about trunks, and each of them feeling an arrow aimed at the small of their back. In Corver’s mind was the
demand,
How far do they want to drive us, before they strike?
Certainly they would strike – probably to pick off one or two of them before running the survivors further. They were a
cruel people, the Mantis-kinden. Every Imperial soldier knew it.
Sandric tripped and fell, cursing, tangled in briars, almost vanishing into an abundance of undergrowth that was abruptly about them past knee-height. The trees around them had become larger
– trunks broader than a man was tall – and further apart to compensate. As Vrant hauled the pilot to his feet, Corver glanced up, seeing patchy sky for the first time in what seemed
like two hours. Clouds rolled there, although it seemed impossible that there could be another storm brewing so soon.
‘We left them behind,’ Sterro declared.
Corver opened his mouth for a scathing denial, but he was scanning the trees back the way they had come, and the pursuit – which should have been on them by that time – was nowhere
to be seen. Then he saw that the Fly-kinden was pointing.
They were there, the Mantis-kinden, but they were holding their ground – at least two score of them now, clustered between the trees, watching.
Vrant swore wearily.
‘Sandric, do you have the first idea where we are, relative to that new crash?’
‘Well yes, sir, I . . .’ The pilot consulted his compass. The fact that they had surely gone madly off course in their flight was present with them, unspoken but universally
acknowledged.
‘Get yourself up there and take another look,’ Corver ordered him.
Sandric looked as though he was about to argue, but then his wings whisked him up, kicking and twisting to avoid the branches.
Sterro sat down, dragging a water bottle out from one of his many pockets. After a deep swig he surprised Corver by handing it around.
The Mantis-kinden did not disperse, but kept their distance – not a bow was drawn back, despite Corver’s estimate that they were still within longbow range.
Just waiting to make
sure we don’t double back
, was the miserable thought in Corver’s mind right then.
A minute passed before Sandric dropped clumsily back down again, indicating a new course.
‘We’ll make it by dark?’ Corver asked him.
‘I’m sure of it,’ said the pilot who had no experience of long treks through forest.
It had not escaped Corver’s notice that the direction Sandric had indicated was into the thickest undergrowth, and more heavily shadowed, but perhaps that was just his luck coming into
play once again. That the shadows seemed oddly independent of the canopy cover above . . . he shook himself. This wasn’t the Commonweal. This wasn’t
that
forest, and besides,
there had been no voice, not then, not now . . .
Making off at the whim of Sandric’s compass proved one thing: the Mantis-kinden had not been simply keeping their distance. They really had stopped, and in a very short time indeed they
were out of sight, taken away by the trees and the underwater gloom. At that point Corver just knuckled down and marched, because there was no way at all that giving himself a chance to think about
things was going to help.
Kicking and pushing through the ever-denser undergrowth played havoc with any sense of time or distance, and the forest that loomed on every side seemed always the same. When Vrant called out
his warning, Corver realized he had no idea how far they had come.
‘Movement!’ the big man had snapped out, and Corver peered between the trees frantically, trying to spot . . .
Nothing, there was nothing.
Then they were upon him. He saw just a flurry of motion, barely anything registering of the body that made it, and a blow clanged off his upraised sword. His hand flashed in instant response,
and he felt in his gut that he had scored a hit, but the undergrowth swallowed any body hungrily, and then there was movement all about them. Vrant roared and struck – he had always been good
with a sword – and Corver saw the shadowy forms of two lean men attacking him – then falling back as the furious Wasp soldier hacked at them. An arrow struck Sterro in the flank,
knocking him sideways with a yell, then he righted himself, his ill-gotten gains acting as a coat of mail. A moment later the Fly simply vanished into the ferns, very little discretion required to
overcome his meagre valour.