‘And she helps you in this, does she? Somehow there are still secrets you’ve not already prised from her?’ After all, none of this was exactly revelation.
‘She heard a great deal about various Imperial personalities while she was in their employ. She has a good ear for gossip, and I may wish to ask her about whoever we end up against next.’ Milus held up a hand. ‘Are we two truly on the verge of coming to blows over one Fly-kinden turncoat?’
‘You tell me.’
Milus obviously wanted very much to show Stenwold that he appreciated the man’s spirit in taking this stand. He got the expression slightly, discernibly wrong, though. ‘What would you do if I refused?’
‘Be gravely disappointed in you. And I’d remember.’
The conversation balanced on a razor’s edge, and Stenwold waited to see which way it would fall.
‘Let’s get to Helleron,’ said Milus dismissively. ‘It won’t be long. From there this army will become an arrow pointing straight at Capitas, and the Helleren will have better and more up-to-date news than anything the Fly girl can tell me, and they’ll sell it more willingly, too.’
Stenwold nodded heavily, aware that he couldn’t necessarily trust the man, but aware that even though he needed Milus, so Milus needed him a little, too. That would have to do, and at least he would have something to tell Laszlo.
The next morning the Sarnesh began mustering for the assault, but they were certainly taking their time over it. Colonel Brakker was not sure whether this was meant as a taunt to try and get the Empire to abandon its position and attack, or whether the Ant tactician was having second thoughts about committing his forces. The first seemed vanishingly unlikely and the second too good to be true, but Brakker’s makeshift team of subordinates could offer no alternatives.
What it did mean was that he had plenty of chance to study the structure and arrangement of the Lowlander force, and to redeploy accordingly. The Sarnesh had taken the centre for their own, along with what he took to be Beetles and a rabble of other kinden in Collegiate uniforms. There was a big wing of Mantis-kinden on the Sarnesh left, which he guessed would be swift and mobile enough that the fortifications would not slow it down much, and they were so scattered that snapbow volleys would have only a limited effect on them. The enemy’s right was more of a plodding anvil to that hammer: mostly non-Sarnesh Ants and the red and black of Myna.
Keeping the Mantids back would be key to holding his position here for any length of time, Brakker surmised; it was no enviable task. He had heard plenty of horror stories about that kinden – how they had annihilated the old Fourth Army near Merro, and the grim, savage fighting that followed the Eighth’s incursions into the Netheryon quite recently. And, of course, the Eighth was lost, too – General Roder and his entire army massacred to the last man by the Sarnesh and their allies.
It gave Brakker a cold feeling just to think about it. He had never been intended as a field commander. He thought too far ahead, and too broadly, and it seemed to him that even in the last war the Empire had not been put in quite this position. Eighth gone, Second – the mighty Gears! – in full retreat, and ‘hold until further notice’ is the word from Capitas.
In his heart, Brakker had already begun to fear for the Empire and his kinden.
He would do the best he could with what they had given him. He must hold.
A quick decision, then: who would face the razor storm of the Mantis charge? He would concentrate his snapbows against the solid Sarnesh centre, where they would be most effective – and most especially he would place the new recruits there, where their more experienced brothers would give them heart. The logical choice for facing the Mantids was his Auxillians – the Ants, the Grasshoppers, the Bees. He spared the Maile detachment to fend off the enemy’s comparatively weak right, placed the men of Vesserett, of Jhe Lien and of Monas to sell their lives as dearly as possible against the Mantis left.
As he gave his orders, the Auxillian officers glanced at one another. He assured them that, once the Sarnesh were pinned, he would spare Wasp troops to back them up. Even as the words spilt out of him, everyone present knew that they were nonsense. This was not a battle for winning. Only for holding.
Then the Sarnesh and their allies were visibly on the move, and the artillery began speaking loud on both sides.
The first orthopter droned overhead, Brakker’s own Farsphex rising to meet the superior numbers of the enemy. A moment later the bombs began to fall.
Taki skimmed over the Imperial positions, noting just how much refortification they had managed in a relatively short time. The Stormreader she piloted was sluggish and bumbling, a profoundly unsatisfactory flying experience because of the load of bombs it carried. By Milus’s orders the combat flying would be undertaken by the Sarnesh pilots this time, allowing them to chase the handful of Farsphex about the sky and thus hone their skills in what should be a relatively safe air battle. She and the Collegiate and Mynan aviators had been left with the heavier Stormreaders, bombing craft refined by the skills of Willem Reader from the jury-rigged machines the Collegiates had used against the Second Army.
And doesn’t that seem a long time ago now? she reflected.
She had wanted to know why they hadn’t been bombing the Wasps for all they were worth every day since the Sarnesh began heading east. A Sarnesh pilot commander had explained that they didn’t want the Imperials just to run and keep running. Milus wanted his battle. He wanted to start cutting away slices of the Imperial forces. Hence, Taki and her pilots had maintained their aerial presence, even dropped the odd piece of ordnance, but they had held back: a war of shadows and misdirection to draw the Wasps to this place and this fight.
Now she unloaded the last of her bombs – holding only half a dozen, the Stormreaders were far less effective bombers than the Imperial machines that had rained fire on Collegium – and turned on a wingtip to head home for more. She marked out in her mind the arrangement of the enemy, where she might want to come back and spread some love. Only the centre, though. Those were Milus’s orders and, like most of the man’s plans, not to be questioned.
The Sarnesh were coming on in open order so as to deny Brakker’s snapbowmen a chance for a solid charge-stopping volley, but the bolts were flying fast both ways, the closing gap between the two forces shredded by shot. Brakker’s men had cover, and so far were getting the best of it, but the Ants would soon turn that around if they could get in close.
Because he was an administrator and not a warleader by nature, Brakker was very focused on the centre of the battle – the part of it that contained himself – and had been assuming that someone would tell him if other parts of it were not going according to plan. When the Mantis-kinden screamed unopposed into the Wasp right flank, he was completely unprepared, unable to formulate an order for one vital minute during which hundreds of his soldiers were killed in their trenches and dugouts.
By that time the Sarnesh were in full advance, pelting across the broken ground as fast as they could in their heavy mail, with felt-backed shields held high.
The Auxillians? Brakker had time to wonder. Did they chew through the Auxillians so fast?
He had far too many underlings clamouring for his attention right then, but he needed to see the field for himself, discern how it had all gone wrong. With a strangled grunt, he kicked into the air, Art wings carrying him above the throng.