Salma was clear of the Wasp lines without warning, charging down a thoroughfare between tents, and the soldiers he saw were half-dressed or unarmed, coming out to see what was going on, and then throwing themselves up into the air or just to one side in utter panic. All the while Chefre’s scattered airborne were taking every opportunity to evade their pursuers and bombard the ground again.
From across the camp a thunder roared, and for just a second the entire place was like day, lit up bright white and then red. Salma closed his eyes against it, trusting his horse would manage. He himself had no idea what had happened.
Time to turn, though. He wheeled his mount along another avenue of tents, safe in the knowledge that every Wasp possible would be watching him, believing that he, Salme Dien and his cavalcade, formed the attack. Beside him, Phalmes was grinning fiercely.
‘Firepowder store!’ he screamed over all the noise, though Salma could still barely hear him. ‘Chefre must have hit it!’
Behind the cavalry, his infantry must have already fallen on the broken Wasp defenders, taking them apart in savage desperation. Time was everything, now. Salma and Chefre and Morleyr’s little force had been all simply to catch the eye, like a flashy brooch, whilst the infantry got the engineers to the engines and then let nature take its course.
He did not even turn to look back at his riders, as he twisted in the saddle to loose another arrow. He knew that they would be falling, shot from both sides, from behind and above, by Wasps who probably did not realize quite what was happening but knew an enemy when they saw one. His people were busy dying, and his only hope was that they had all known, as he had, what they were getting themselves into.
Many had families and friends who were under the care of Sarn now. Their safety was what this was about, and surely it was a nobler aim than personal survival.
They were running out of room, though. Enough of the Wasp camp was now aware of them and was trying to box them in. Salma turned this way and that, knowing that with each turn he had fewer riders behind him.
Time for a last-ditch attempt to escape, he decided. He would just have to hope that by now the Sarnesh engineers had got their work done.
The next clot of soldiers that barred his way he did not turn aside from. With his last lance couched in his arm he simply rode straight into them. They scattered at the last moment, many of them too late. One man, in his hurried flight, slammed a knee into Salma’s shoulder, rocking him back in the saddle. The lance, unbloodied, flew from his hand, but he managed to stay on horseback, charging in what he hoped, after all the twists and turns, was the direction of the camp’s closest perimeter.
At least they all know this part. From this point on, their work was done and it would be everyone for himself. Wasp sting-bolts crackled and danced past him, each one lighting up a single strand of the night.
One struck his horse.
He felt a lurching shock run through the animal’s very frame, not the shock of impact but the animal’s own pain and fear. It reared up, and he had a brief sense of other riders flashing helplessly past him, and then another shot struck the wretched beast, whether sting or bolt he never knew, and it pitched sideways. He knew enough to get himself out of the saddle and into the air as the animal crashed to the ground.
The air was full of fire and light, but a calm voice in his head reminded him We have been here before. That had been the camp outside Tark, but the principles were the same. In the air he became a target for every man within thirty yards. He nevertheless tried to ascend, but then found that there were Wasps all about him and no sign of Chefre’s people. Fled. I hope they fled. He had his sword out, wounding the three closest to him, and then a blade coming from behind and below opened a shallow cut on his leg and, with the sense that he was totally surrounded and about to be cut apart, he dropped from the air.
He landed running, forcing away the pain, knowing that he was too far now from the camp’s edge to escape. There were Wasps all about him, but most were too surprised at the sight of this single running enemy in their midst to react. The rest formed a growing tail of pursuit, hounding him through their camp. Despite the pain, the deaths, the certainty of his end, he was grinning because the situation was so utterly ridiculous.
Amid all the noise, he missed the voice shouting his name. It was only when Phalmes’ horse flashed in front of him that he realized that someone was trying to rescue him.
‘Away!’ he shouted. ‘Just go!’ but Phalmes was returning for him, riding back towards the pursuing Wasps with his sword raised, a mere black silhouette now against a backdrop of leaping light.
And Salma skidded about the corner of a tent and saw the flames. The sight stopped him: a field of fire, a whole quarter of this tent city roaring in conflagration.
‘Salma!’ shouted Phalmes again, as he must have been doing for some time, and he was reaching down from his mount when a sting caught him in the chest. Salma saw his face contort, the force of the blow punching him out of the high-ended saddle. The horse slewed about, dragged by the reins, and then Phalmes released it, and it fled.
As the Wasps arrived, Salma knelt beside him, the thunderous flames fierce against his face. He would have liked a last word, for the Mynan bandit had been a good friend to him. Phalmes’ words were done, though. He was gone.
He was in good company, at least, for the ground was covered with bodies. Salma saw dead Wasps, in and out of armour, occasionally the bodies of his own motley following, and the scattered forms of the Sarnesh engineers. The fires ahead leapt and roared about complex skeletons of wood and metal, about the wagons of parts and ammunition, all the paraphernalia for bringing a city’s walls down. It was like a forest on fire, but it was a forest of engines, burning their wood, their fuel, their firepowder. The Sarnesh had done their work, and only the morrow would tell whether they had done it well enough to justify all this waste of life.
The Wasps approached him carefully, but he put down his sword, laying one hand on Phalmes’ chest. He suddenly felt very tired.
Twenty-Two
There was a certain status to being brought in alone. Prisoners who came to Capitas in droves, such as escaped slaves, prisoners of war or manpower tithes levied on the subject races, were processed as a commodity, consigned to a group fate, enslaved, executed or sent to the fighting pits, recorded in quantities rather than names. How many thousand lives and dreams had been buried in such a manner, Thalric could not even begin to guess. That fate was not to be his, though. He had come in as a celebrity, a single prisoner with a heavy escort, flown in for the last tens of miles at great expense and with indecent speed. He was being accorded the treatment he had earnt.
Those prisoners whose circumstances merited something more than a humble clerk signifying their doom with a woodcut stamp were brought to the Armour Square, far enough into Capitas to be within easy sight of the top tier of the imperial palace. The square itself, which would have made a very serviceable marketplace, was instead lined with buildings commandeered by the imperial government. There were factor houses for the merchants of the Consortium, offices of military administration and requisition, the chief stockade of the Slave Corps, and this place: the Justiciary. It was a low, uninspiring edifice, staffed by slave clerks overseen by Wasps whose careers were dire enough to see them end up there. It dealt with the disposal of prisoners.