Give me some way of getting an army on an orthopter, was Taki’s only thought in reaction to that.
‘Chief!’ She saluted cheerily, because the Antspider was always fair game to annoy.
‘Just “Officer”,’ the halfbreed woman growled. She was in charge of the Collegiate detachment, but plainly had not wanted to be. She was a victim of the tendency of Beetle leaders not to be soldiers themselves, so that Leadswell and Reader and the rest were all back in Sarn.
‘We had reports of fighting from you and yours, pilot,’ broke in Kymene, the Mynan commander and nominal overall tactician. ‘Report.’
As Kymene was not on Taki’s annoy list, the Fly woman nodded more soberly. ‘If they didn’t know we were coming before, they surely do now. Three Farsphex came to check us out.’
‘You drove them off?’
‘Downed one, chased the others way. They’ve not lost any of their skill, but our new craft are the business, Commander.’
‘Good to hear it,’ Kymene nodded. She had brought with her just about every Mynan out of Sarn, all of them desperate to shed Wasp blood. For them, retaking Collegium was merely a link in the chain that would bring them home. Even Taki, whose interest in non-aviators was minimal, had marked that a fair number of Kymene’s followers were not soldiers by trade, just those who had been able to escape the Wasp assault on their city. Which is likely to make things messy if there’s a real fight.
Again, that was not normally her department, but Taki was well aware that the Imperial Second could swallow up this expeditionary force and still be hungry afterwards. So let’s hope there’s a plan.
‘How are our pilots performing?’ This came from Commander Lycena, leader of the Sarnesh soldiers grudgingly released by Milus to march south. She was a reserved careful woman, plainly more concerned about keeping her own people alive than the eventual fate of the city they were marching on. Which probably helps balance out any excess enthusiasm on the part of the Mynans.
‘Good, Commander. They work together well. They need to think round the sky more, though. It’s hard, I know, with them not having the Art—’
‘Perhaps later for the details?’ Kymene interrupted. ‘What can we expect from their air power now?’
Taki shrugged. ‘If word from Collegium still holds, they’ve not had much more delivered, which gives us parity, perhaps even the advantage. But we’ve no bombers, and they might have all sorts of other tricks, like those hornets they flew against us last time, so it’s going to be a ground war again. Or they might get another twenty Farsphex delivered tomorrow, in which case we have a problem.’
‘What other intelligence from Collegium?’ Kymene enquired.
‘Sperra was in yesterday,’ the Antspider confirmed, ‘and it sounds as if we’ve managed to get the Wasps wound up about us, no matter that we don’t have enough people here to . . . you know, actually take the walls.’ Taki heard the woman’s voice trail off pointedly. ‘I mean, there is a plan, right? We’re not just here because the Wasp artillery’s getting rusty?’
Kymene’s smile in response was hard. ‘Yes indeed, there is a plan.’
Straessa and Lycena exchanged glances, and the Mynan woman held her hand up.
‘Yes, there is a plan. No, it goes no further than the inside of my head right now.’
‘That’s a plan one assassin away from a shambles, then,’ Straessa muttered, loud enough for all to hear.
‘Then it’s lucky that it’s not my plan, and doesn’t need me to work,’ Kymene retorted. ‘Let us just get within sight of Collegium’s walls.’
Seventeen
They were heading upslope, struggling over ground riven with crevasses, littered with plates of shale that slid from underfoot like the loose pages of stone books, a half-dozen suddenly shifting and clattering away to smash below, all hope of stealth gone. That was when the Worm found them.
It was Messel who gave the alarm, Messel whose light tread, advancing on all fours as much as on his feet, had not dislodged so much as a pebble. Abruptly he was turning in the fickle light of Thalric’s torch and pointing behind them. ‘Beware!’
Tynisa turned, catching her balance on the treacherous stone, and then having to drag her rapier from its scabbard. She had felt the minute twitch as the bond between them had reached to bring it to her hand, and then nothing, as the deadening air of the Worm descended on her.
Thalric cursed nearby, casting his torch down to gutter on the canted stone, and lighting a second bundle of fungus with a flare of his sting. She had already lost sight of Esmail in the gloom.
Orothellin’s voice boomed out, ‘We are almost there. Onward still!’ And Che’s reply: ‘What good will that do us, now they’ve found us?’
‘Keep moving’ won’t suffice this time. Tynisa’s eyes had wrung all they could from Thalric’s light, and she spotted those scurrying forms rushing at them from the gloom, far faster and surer of foot than anyone not born down here could be.
‘We will hold them off,’ she declared, speaking for she knew not who.
‘If we can outdistance them . . .’ Orothellin tried, and then, ‘The Hermit, he will be able to lead them off, even make them forget, I swear it! Only . . . drive them back, slay such of them as are here, and we may find sanctuary! Cheerwell, please!’
From that last plea, and the following shower of sharp-edged fragments, Tynisa realized her sister was descending to help – if help was the word.
‘Che, you get up there,’ she snapped over her shoulder.
‘But—’
‘Not this time, Che. We’ll deal with them and catch you up, but go!’ And then, to Thalric, ‘How many, do you think?’
His own eyes had picked them out now, and the flash of his sting seared the corner of her eye. She saw one figure fall, burning, and then another stagger, armour glowing with its own molten fire. For a moment the Worm coiled about itself, and Tynisa remembered that she had not seen so much as a bow down here. Then one of them was whirling something about its head, and she cried, ‘Slings, Thalric!’
He cursed, and then was gone, kicking off into the dark air to make himself a harder target. Which left only her.
She reckoned there were between a dozen and a score of them, and a handful had held back to spin stones at her, too small and fast for her to see or react to in this gloom. The rest were surging forwards, fanning out. They carried shortswords, two apiece, and their pale, slack faces sent a shudder through her.
Thalric’s sting exploded amongst them again, striking one down from their midst and momentarily lighting up the rest – and she leapt.
Footing would have been a problem had she been aiming for those shifting plates of stone, but she struck with both heels against the chest of one of her enemy, sending the man skidding downhill on his back, legs kicking. Then she was following him, propped on hip and one arm, ripping her keen blade across two sets of hamstrings and bringing it up in time to fend off the single sword that was quick enough to reply.
Their formation flowed and then they were after her, which was a relief as she had planned to stop there and hold them, but the flurry of broken shale was carrying her further down towards the slingers. Again Thalric’s sting lanced down, striking wide . . . then again, flaring at the stone.