Later, when the trembling had subsided and he had come to terms with what he had learned, he took his Art to his own flesh, keener and more precise than any knife, drawing red, raw sigils to complement the mark the Hermit had already laid on him. He gritted his teeth and illustrated his skin with careful spirals. His magic would fail him, but those marks, and his understanding, would serve to let him pass beneath the notice of the Worm. Or, if they would not, he would die, but it seemed to him that the Worm meant the death of everything, above and below, sunlight and darkness.
He had failed to kill the Empress of the Wasps when the chance had been given to him, but he could make up for that. He could kill the Worm god.
Twenty-Nine
The Sarnesh army was already on the march eastwards. The Imperial force that had been camped out to dissuade the Ants from just this sort of move was packed up and retreating – leaving a network of traps and buried explosives, and moving slowly enough that the Ants could not just steam all the way to Helleron unopposed. The Imperials had recognized the superiority of the Sarnesh force, however, and that was before Milus’s allies were taken into account. The liberation of Collegium was the trigger that released the Sarnesh war machine.
There had been some dissent, back home, silent concerns voiced by other tacticians and commanders. Was Sarn being left too exposed? Should they not hang back now that their city was free of threat? What would this march eastwards achieve?
The destruction of the Empire, Milus had told them. No more threat from the east. No more strong Wasp power to overshadow us. Total victory. And if Sarn gains from that, if it is we who fill the power vacuum, then so be it. That had persuaded many of them, and to the rest he had said, If you do not agree, replace me, for this is my plan. That was not how Ant cities or Ant armies were run, but he had a strong and charismatic mind that used consensus as a tool to get what he wanted, rather than as a decision-making process. Every time he interacted with the Royal Court of Sarn he put his career on the line: Replace me or let me do my work. He had sufficient past success to vouch for him, and he found that the rest of his people were scared. The Wasps had come so close, had smashed their fortress at Malkan’s Folly, had enslaved other Ant city-states. In the face of extinction, they had found allowing Milus the reins the least unpalatable solution.
Now he had the army moving east and repairing the Helleron railtracks as they went. Milus was not going to stop at that mythical line that cartographers used to delineate the edge of the Lowlands. There was a city out there called Capitas that was supposed to be the greatest in the world, and he intended to visit it with an army at his back.
Tactician, the Mantids are here.
First order of business: the Sarnesh army alone would not suffice. His people were disciplined, well armoured and equipped, the best soldiers in the world, but the Empire had far more – both their own and their slave soldiers, the Auxillians. Sheer numbers would crush little Sarn on its own.
But Sarn was not on its own. Stenwold Maker was even now approaching with every Collegiate willing to bear arms, with soldiers from Vek and Tsen – of all the madness! – with warriors of kinden that Milus had not even known existed. The old Beetle had come through at last, and Milus was grudgingly impressed, for all that the man’s tactical sense plainly left something to be desired.
And now there were the Netheryen, as they had taken to calling themselves. Since the Mantis civil war, or whatever it had been, the forest kinden had been quiet, making no attempts against either Empire or Ants. Now, and at last, they had deigned to send out some ambassadors.
The sight of them, relayed through his scouts, was something of a surprise. He had expected perhaps one sullen warrior, or a knot of them, bitter and resentful and wanting somebody’s blood. Instead they had actually mustered something that looked like an embassy. There were about a score of them, and some – older women mostly – who were robed like diplomats, or perhaps wizards, for all he knew. They were still armed, of course, and no doubt they would be effortlessly lethal with their claws and rapiers and bows, if still rather permeable to snapbow shot, for all that.
They had a couple of Moths and, through his vicarious sight, Milus watched the way they stood, interested by the changes. Everyone knew the Moths normally told the Mantids what to do, but that had fallen apart with all the fighting in the forest, and now a pair of Moth-kinden were plainly trailing after the Mantids in a rather submissive manner, like beggars hoping for crumbs.
And there was a monster . . . or a beast, anyway. Milus had heard of the great forest mantids. Chiefly he had heard that they never left the forest, for which everyone elsewhere was duly grateful. Here was one, though, towering over the mere humans around it, stalking with measured, stilting strides, its killing arms folded demurely close to its thorax.
He went to meet them: what man wouldn’t who was interested in building his personal legend? He strode forwards without fear, well aware that he was within range of that barbed reach, their blades and the spines of their Art. At the same time his mind was reaching west, through the string of scouts he had left behind, so that he could talk to the King and his court instantly. It was a method of communication that was going to become less efficient the further east he travelled, but right now he could speak to the city with only a handful of seconds’ delay.
He faced the Mantis delegation boldly, even staring into the faceted, judgmental gaze of the great insect itself.
‘So,’ he asked them, appearing casual, in control, ‘what do you want?’
Negotiations after that were swift and businesslike, and that was also a surprise to many of his people, if not to Milus. Mantids were mystics obsessed with the past, with grudges, perverse beliefs, taboos. Milus himself had felt the wind change back when they were fighting each other. He had heard all the same reports from his rangers within the forest but, as he himself thought a little differently to most of his kinden, he had drawn slightly different conclusions. Either they will destroy themselves or they will come out as something changed and honed. And here they were.
One of the old women spoke for them, but she conferred with the others and even, it seemed, with the insect. The language she used was not that of prophecy and magic. She spoke of borders, recognition, payment. The Mantids had always loathed the idea of slavery – how relations had improved with Sarn, when the Collegiates had persuaded the Ants to give up that institution! – and now this old woman was saying that they would no longer be slaves even to their own past. They had no Aptitude, no industry, no technology, but they were bartering their skill and reputation into becoming a modern power of sorts. For the first time in centuries, the Mantids were looking outwards.
Even Milus felt a chill at that. Who knew where that would steer the history books? After the Wasps were obliterated, their Empire dismembered and its best parts carried back to Sarn in triumph, he could see that this Netheryon might become a problem if not well handled. For now, though, he argued fiercely with the Court back home, negotiated keenly with the Mantids to see how much give there was in them – little, for they had not changed that much – and hammered out terms that were just this side of acceptable for all concerned. As for the future, we can look to that when we need to. And, who knows, if we give them enough of what they want, then perhaps we can make them part of our destiny. We will have to find a word for that destiny that is not ‘Empire’, though. The word is too debased.