But I’m an officer in the Coldstone Company with an urgent message . . . only she felt that wouldn’t count for much with this crowd. Perhaps not with Maker either, right now.
Then she could hear distant shouting from across the camp, and a moment later another Fly – one of the Collegiates whose name Straessa should really know – dropped down right in the middle of Stenwold’s gathering, almost getting herself killed several times over. She was urgently insisting, ‘War Master! You have to come now!’
Stenwold stood up immediately, and a moment later he was following the Fly as she set off, Laszlo and his crew of pirates trailing after them.
Hearing a clatter of steel, Stenwold quickened his pace, feeling a multitude of old wounds tugging at him. He was keenly aware of Paladrya at his elbow, unarmoured and almost unarmed, horribly vulnerable if the camp erupted into fighting. Is it the Wasps? But he knew it was not. He was pushing on between the Sarnesh tents, and the Ants were not forming up, not rushing to repel an assault. They were all alert, though. Whatever drama was playing out was in all their minds. He sensed their eyes on him, the word of his approach rippling out ahead of him.
In front he saw a brief flurry of motion, heard more swords clash – a shout of pain, raised voices. One was a woman’s, louder than the rest. A voice he knew.
‘Hammer and tongs!’ he swore and started running abruptly, lumbering along with the dumb force of a ram, hoping Paladrya could keep up. Behind him, Laszlo’s people whirled in the air like a trailing tail.
Kymene! Then he saw her, held by half a dozen Sarnesh, wrestling with them furiously. There were a lot of Mynans there with drawn blades, facing off more Ants, and more arriving moment to moment from both sides, save that Sarn had so many more to draw on. Kymene was spitting, shrieking like a madwoman at – yes, at Milus. Of course, at Milus. The tactician was standing aloof, a few paces away from her, his own sword still in its scabbard. His expression was one of mild, almost scholarly interest.
‘What is going on here?’ Stenwold demanded, finding a pair of Ants moving to block his path. He slammed into their shields, but they braced against him and fended him off with that surprising strength of their kind.
‘Stenwold!’ Kymene shouted, and then got out something more that he missed, save that it was to do with her city.
Then the Ants were letting him through at some unheard order from Milus, and he stumbled forwards, aware that the Tidenfree crew was now holding back and, he hoped, Paladrya along with them.
‘Release her!’ Stenwold demanded. ‘This is insane!’
Milus gave a wintry little smile. ‘I am afraid I cannot allow attacks on my person, War Master – whether from enemies or supposed allies.’
‘Attacks?’ Stenwold looked at Kymene, seeing her scabbard empty – disarmed by the Ants or had she actually drawn on the tactician?
‘Stenwold, Myna is rising!’ Kymene shouted. ‘We have to march for Myna, now!’
He blinked at her. ‘Well, of course—’
‘That is not the plan,’ Milus pronounced. ‘I have one destination for this army, Master Maker, and you know that. It is Capitas.’ The cool boldness of that statement was sobering. ‘We will cross into the Empire south of the Darakyon. We will not detour north for the Alliance lands. When the Empire is on its knees, all its cities shall then be free. I play no favourites.’
A good speech. Stenwold had to admit that it was compelling logic. If Milus believed Capitas could be taken, then the Empire could be shattered all at once. Unless the garrisons from the north head south to take us while we’re committed . . .
‘Stenwold!’ Kymene insisted. ‘My people are taking to the streets now! There is an uprising in Myna now! You know how large the Wasp garrison there is – if we do not go to aid them, they will be slaughtered!’
The horrible twisting feeling inside Stenwold was nothing less than impotence, because Milus’s logic still held. There would have been a time for the Mynans to throw off their chains, but this was not it. ‘Kymene . . .’ he said helplessly, and she read the thought on his face.
‘Ask him!’ she spat, fighting with her captors again, almost breaking free. ‘Ask this flat-faced Ant bastard what he’s done.’
Milus’s expression admitted nothing, but Stenwold sensed the mass of assembled Mynans reaching the point where they would just lay into the vastly greater number of Sarnesh to get their leader back and, at all costs, he had to stop that.
‘Enough!’ he yelled out, using his Assembler’s voice that had silenced dissenters in the Amphiophos for a decade. ‘Release her. She’s hardly about to attack anyone with her bare hands.’
The pause that followed was plainly Milus weighing the options, and then abruptly Kymene was free, shaking off her captors, her eyes still glowering bloody murder at the tactician.
There was something in Milus’s face, something that all the Ant stoicism in the world could not quite hide. It was an admission that there was more to this business than his smooth words might suggest.
‘A messenger arrived, half dead, from my city,’ Kymene hissed between gritted teeth. ‘He came in a heliopter that had been riddled with shot, and almost crashed it coming down. He told me that my people were rising against the Wasps.’ She drew a ragged breath. ‘He was asking where we were. Why we weren’t at the gates to help them.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘Help me, Kymene. What’s going on?’
‘He sent people to Myna.’ She jabbed a finger at Milus, as though it could kill. ‘While he was making deals with the Auxillians to sell their Wasp masters, he sent men to my city. He said that his army was coming, and that now was the time. Ask him, Maker! Hear him deny it, then come listen to my poor aviator’s tale.’
Stenwold glanced between her ravaged features and Milus’s infinitely composed ones. But why would he . . .? came to his lips and was instantly banished, because he thought that he was starting to see.
He settled on simply ‘Tactician?’
The Ant met his gaze without a shadow of guilt, surrounded by tens of thousands of his kin who would implicitly understand and approve of all he had done. ‘It was necessary to clear the way to Capitas.’
‘Because of the garrisons in the Alliance states,’ Stenwold filled in for him. ‘You needed them occupied.’
‘And any other forces still positioned north of our route. I am hoping for widespread revolt across the Auxillian cities as we near Capitas, too. The aim of this war is to win, War Master. The Wasps are a formidable adversary, you must admit.’
‘And Myna is our ally,’ Stenwold replied heavily. Kymene was shuffling from foot to foot ever so slightly, as if counting every minute in the blood of her people.
‘The Mynans will win their freedom eventually, whether now or after the Wasps are defeated,’ Milus explained dispassionately. ‘I will not allow the Empress more time to strengthen her defences, nor divide my forces to attend to secondary objectives.’
‘You think the Mynans will fight for you now?’ Stenwold demanded.
Milus shrugged slightly as if in a brief token of regret, not for what he had done but at being inconveniently discovered. ‘There are not so many Mynans. It is unfortunate, but apparently unavoidable.’
Stenwold eyed Kymene. Milus was correct: there were simply not so many free Mynan soldiers with the army. Enough to save the people of Myna from the Wasps’ wrath? Probably not.