After that the discussion became more technical, and Stenwold sat back and watched as the former First Soldier, whose introduction to modern artifice was only a few years old, now tutored those who had lived with it all their lives. This was a part of the war that Stenwold felt himself well rid of. Perhaps in his younger days he would have thrown himself into the planning of it. Now he felt just like the Khanaphir; time and progress moving at a pace that he could not keep up with. He could not do it all. He had to trust to people like Amnon, Marteus and Taki each to hold up their own corner of the war.
Afterwards, he let them drift away, Jodry, Kymene and the others. Night was drawing in. Already the Great Ear would be primed, the airmen and women waiting for the call, their machines wound and ready. Stenwold the historian had a great sense of history, not momentous but merely inexorable. Could we ever actually defeat the Empire? Should we have mobilized the Lowlands and struck at them while they dealt with their own internal problems, the ink on our treaty still wet? And then what? By the time we finished fighting them all the way across the Empire, what would we create? How many of those freed subject cities would be at each other’s throats, and blaming us. Or would we take the Empire’s place, forcing them to accept our grand enlightenment down the barrel of a snapbow?
Where is it going to end?
Someone cleared their throat, and he looked up to see Praeda hovering in the doorway.
‘Master Maker, I told Berjek I’d pass on a message for him. As a favour, really.’
‘It’s about his brother?’ Stenwold divined. The problem of Banjacs Gripshod had not gone away, but just now nobody cared enough to grasp the nettle. ‘Jodry went to speak to him a while back, I know.’
‘He wants to speak to you, Berjek said,’ Praeda told him. ‘Specifically to you. I’m sorry, Stenwold, but Berjek… I just said I’d ask. Now I’ve asked. That’s all.’
‘If I should somehow ever find a moment spare then perhaps I’ll go and see him,’ Stenwold told her, ‘although I can’t honestly think what he might have to say to me.’
‘Here they come!’ Scain relayed the news for Pingge’s benefit, and a moment later their Farsphex fell sideways in the air, breaking formation smoothly even as the Imperial machines broadened their net, ready to take on the Collegiate fliers as they came in. They were still miles from the Beetle city, and the enemy’s ability to home in on their attacks was being hotly debated by the engineers back home. Meanwhile intelligence from the spies in Collegium was drying up — either the Beetles were keeping a better watch or they were simply keeping more secrets from each other.
Pingge stared out into the night through her open hatch, watching for the telltale ghosts of movement that would resolve into those vicious, nimble two-winged orthopters the Collegiates built. Before her was the ballista she had recently been saddled with, and if any target presented itself in the small arc of their vessel’s left flank that she could actually shoot at, then possibly she might get off a bolt at it. There was a rack of the explosive-tipped ammunition within arm’s reach, and it terrified her. One spark, from a stray piercer bolt striking the hull of the Farsphex, say, and they might all go up. For the marginal advantage it gave, the risks seemed ridiculous. The Beetles always seemed to be gaining ground technologically, though, and the Engineering Corps was just as keen to load their vaunted new pilots with every new toy they could devise. One day we won’t get off the ground, for all the advantages they’ve given us.
They pitched violently, and she heard Scain curse. A scattering of bolts sprayed them, punching through the outer hull, but none of them making it through the second inner skin that protected the pilot, the bombardier, the engine and the fuel tank. Just so long as they don’t hit the wings or just shoot me directly through this stupid open doorway I’ve got here. Then she nearly swallowed her tongue because a Collegiate flier had blurred past, in her sights for a fraction of a second, but gone before she could react, leaving her pointlessly swinging the ballista after it.
She could not remember when she had last slept properly. There was a part of her mind insisting that she should be dropping dead from exhaustion by now. The Chneuma was a merciless mistress, though, goading her on as though it had a handful of hot pokers lodged inside her. The Wasps took far more of the stuff than their Fly-kinden subordinates, too. She didn’t want to think about how Scain would be feeling.
They lurched in the air again, and she had a sense that they were pulling further off from the fray. Looking out into a chessboard of cloud and moonlight, she caught sight of orthopters driving at one another, looping and turning, but they were some distance away. Are they off course, or are we?
‘Hey, sir, what’s up?’
Scain was silently concentrating on flying, pulling them ever further away. Pingge risked putting her head and shoulders out, the wings a thunder above her. There were other machines close by, but not fighting. All of them were simply putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the conflict.
And ahead lay geography that had practically written itself on to the back of her eyes: the coast, the harbour… Collegium.
‘Sir?’ she tried again.
‘Nishaan’s holding them,’ Scain rattled back, tensely. ‘We’re giving the city all we’ve got before they realize we’re mostly past them.’
Pingge reflected drily that the Wasp woman named Nishaana had mysteriously lost the feminine ending of her name since she had made sergeant. ‘New targets, sir?’
‘Use your discretion. Industry and residential,’ Scain reported to her. ‘Attacking their means and their will to fight. You know the drill.’
‘Right you are, sir.’
One of the Collegiate pilots had said to Taki, ‘I even dream about flying now,’ and her immediate thought had been, I always dreamt of flying, every night — it’s just that those used to be good dreams. All of her life all she had ever wanted was to fly. All her other ambitions — the respect of her aviator peers, her victories in dragon-fights over the Exalsee, her status within the city — remained secondary and inextricably bound up with that one thought. Now she wanted to spend a tenday on the ground, not to touch the control stick of the Esca Magni, not to view the world through the glass of her cockpit, not to have her heartbeat fall into step with the beating of her orthopter’s wings.
The Great Ear had sounded off early that night, and strongly, and she had already been trying to calculate the enemy force incoming even as her Art wings dropped her into place in her pilot’s seat. All about her, the other pilots of her airfield, and her shift, were scrambling for their machines. Around half of them were veterans like Edmon, the other half with only a flight or two to their name, and at least two for whom this would be the acid test, their first combat.
Taki had always thought of herself as young; fighting in the air was a young woman’s game, after all. Reflexes decayed like everything else, and eventually experience could no longer offset the loss. She still wondered why Corog Breaker had not been killed yet. The old Master Armsman had a warrior’s heart, but she could measure his years in the handling of his machine, that extra second’s lapse in time before he reacted. His glider wings had saved his life twice now.
Looking at the new pilots sent to her by the College, she felt old now, as if the gap between her days and Breaker’s was slender compared to what separated her from the tyros. Not just raw time, of course, but distance measured in that compressed and saw-edged period she spent in the air, pitting her skills against the enemy and betting her life on it every time. It was a bastard of a way to grow old, but she was beginning to feel it was the only way that she ever would.
The drone of her own craft’s Ear increased suddenly, and she spotted the enemy formation as moonbeams darted across them. She held off signalling until she saw them breaking up, splitting off from the pack in readiness, and then sent terse flashes of light towards the fliers on her left and right, the coded orders now coming as naturally as speech. Left climb, separate off, attack. Right with me, follow, guard. She had to hope that they had understood her, as she was beginning her attack run even then.