The wait was something he had not thought of, before. There was an appalling, stretched-out moment, between Chefre’s people taking wing and his hearing their signal, in which he sat in his saddle with nothing to do. Prince Salme Dien, the commander of armies, had finished his shift, and Salma the warrior, the battle-leader, had yet to go on duty… and he now waited while the horses stamped nervously, feeling his men around him shift and try to even out their breathing.
‘Salma.’ The faintest touch at his shoulder, and he turned in the saddle.
She was there, his luminous lover. He had told her not to come, but she, of all his army, took no orders from him. She hung in the air, her skin streaked with colours, radiant wings beating.
‘You should not…’ he started.
‘How could I not?’ she responded. ‘I know what you go now to do.’
‘Please, this is hard enough…’
She reached out, took his head in her hands and darted in to kiss him as he leant down in the saddle, her lips soft against his. He felt her tears on his cheek. They ran down her face and glinted and sparkled over her faintly radiant skin.
‘I will never abandon you,’ she assured him. ‘Never. As you were there for me, I shall always come for you.’
He shook his head, with no words to express what he felt. I love her so much, he thought. How can I do this to her?
The Butterfly-kinden gazed along the line of nervous animals, the horses, the beetles, the crickets and spiders, the miscellaneous grab-bag of rideable monsters that they had drawn from everywhere. She looked at their riders, too: untested, awkward, half-skilled.
‘I feel your belief, my prince,’ she whispered. ‘It is the strongest thing here.’
‘Then it will have to suffice,’ he said, his cheer sounding slightly fragile, his face expression brave for those around him. She laid a hand on his, where it rested on his saddle pommel.
‘Share your belief with me,’ she told him. ‘Make me believe.’
Salma sensed her presence as a halo that reached out from her, imbued with her gentle magics. She had enchanted him before, but she needed no such arts to secure his love now. Still, though, she touched his mind, the essence of him, and she brought her other hand up to the muzzle of his steed.
‘Be strong,’ she whispered. ‘Share the faith and be strong,’ and he knew that she was speaking not to him but to the horse.
Speaking to all the horses, to every riding animal standing and stamping or chittering there in the dark, waiting for the signal. It was not like his people’s magic, but the Butterfly-kinden had their own arts, born of the sun, born of light and hope.
‘Be brave,’ she murmured. ‘Be true. You will not lose your way. You will not turn aside from danger.’ She was shining now, despite the cloak she wore, so that he was terrified that the Wasps might mark her, but still she spoke softly to his horse, and he felt the animal shift its stance beneath him, something strong and iron-like entering it. All down the line, to either side and also behind him, the nervous shuffle of animals quietened, replaced by a watchful patience, an anticipation.
And at last she again looked up at him, with her face like a sunrise. ‘Come back to me,’ she whispered, and stepped aside from his mount.
He heard the first bang even as she did, the first firepowder charge exploding. Chefre would be coming in from the side, her airborne rabble streaking over the Wasp camp, attacking indiscriminately, dropping ignited grenades, loosing arrows, crossbow bolts and fire-arrows, even slingshot. The Wasp soldiers on duty – he could almost see them in his mind’s eye – would streak into the air, their stings lighting up the night with a network of gold tracery. Some of Chefre’s people would die but the rest would keep moving: a great, chaotic cloud passing back and forth over the vast Wasp camp.
There was no more time for thought, nothing to wait for now. He kicked his heels into his mount’s flanks and launched forward, the first man to the battle, forming the point of the wedge. False heroics, he knew, for in this fight it would be those at the rear who would be most at risk.
But they had formed a decent wedge after all, which was something that had never quite come together as he drilled them. He saw the flames of the Wasp perimeter straight ahead of them. Somewhere behind him, there was the scream of a horse missing its step, going down. They were charging in the dark and some of the other riders could not see as well as he could. It was something he had anticipated and been unable to solve, and he knew that his plan could not survive too many unsolved problems.
Behind the cavalry came the infantry, running as fast as they could: and hiding amongst their number were the Sarnesh engineers whose skilled job would be the point of all tonight’s festivities. It had been their arrival that had finally decided Salma. It meant that Sarn was not throwing his own people away needlessly as an expedient way of whittling down the enemy. Sarn had sent almost 100 highly trained artificers, who would almost certainly not survive the night. Sarn was allowing him the responsibility of a true tactician.
He had a brief view of a Wasp sentry standing almost exactly in his path, turning from the confusion within the camp behind him – several tents already ablaze, swift work on Chefre’s account – to see 500 of horse and other beasts thundering down on him. The man’s wings flared instantly but he was only at head height when Salma’s first lance drove into him, the weight of his dying body ripping the shaft from the Dragonfly’s hand. Salma and his men were fortunately armed to the teeth, much of it through the unintentional benevolence of all the Wasps they had caught and killed. Most wore repainted Wasp armour, and they carried two or three lances each besides crossbows and swords. Salma himself had a holstered shortbow, ready strung, that he now hooked out into his hand. To either side of him the lance-wedge was driving itself through the scattered Wasp watchmen, but ahead of them the main force was mustering, men rushing into place both on the ground and into the air. The Wasp airborne were meanwhile being harried by Chefre’s utter shambles of a squadron, their formation constantly being broken and re-forming. Chefre’s Flies and Moths were not real warriors, their attacks causing more nuisance than real threat, but they were too insistent to be ignored. The Wasps already in the air kept trying to pin them down, but they were not a force of soldiers to stand together. They were individuals, and had to be chased and caught one by one. It looked as if that would take all night.
Spears were now levelled amongst the Wasp lines, firmly grounded against the charge. Salma sent off his first arrow but, even as he did so, was beaten to it by at least a score of his men, shooting crossbows and snapbows into the massing enemy. Sting-fire came right back at them. Salma knew that many of his soldiers were falling but, so long as they were not stopped, so long as they kept moving, then they were not beaten.
The archery from his riders had been concentrated towards the point of the wedge, and Salma saw a good number of Wasps go down before it. Was it enough? Only one way to find out. He took up another lance, bow clutched for a moment in his reins-hand, and let his mount dictate the timing of its leap, plunging down on to the Wasp lines with thundering hooves and lance and a great shout. An enemy spearhead streaked past his face, his second lance was torn from his hand on the impact, and then he had smashed past the front rank, broken the Wasp order, and there were 400 and more riders following right behind him.
He pulled his sword out, a heavy Hornet-kinden blade with the weight loaded towards the tip, and simply laid about him as his horse charged on, feeling the jarring shocks as men fell beneath its hooves. Others tried to fly at the last moment, nerve failing them. At every split second he was fighting a different man, just time for a single strike, whether hit or miss, and then was carried past them, galloping deeper into the camp. The enemy spears tilted and skewed, the sheer weight of thundering cavalry breaking the Wasps’ will to stand. Hooves trampled them remorselessly, while the mandibles of insects sheared and cut. They were scattering even as the cavalry struck them, and those who could not take to the air in time were simply ridden down.