For a moment he thought that she would recline on her side, as Spider Aristoi supposedly did, languorous and impossible to speak to in a civilized manner. Instead she simply sat, like any army officer might, leaning a little against the couch’s low back. ‘We’re doing something new, General, and therefore we set the rules. Let us do so in a way that will not have us at each other’s throats before we reach Tark.’
‘Fine,’ Tynan said shortly. Dropping down onto the other couch, he was aware that he was still studying her blatantly, but then he was a Wasp man, and women were set to be wives and mothers of soldiers, in his culture. Having travelled more than most — admittedly with an army at his back most of the time — he was aware that this belief was not shared by the rest of the world, but then the superiority of the Empire over the rest of the world was a subject beloved of Imperial philosophers. Here, before him, was the product of the exact opposite belief.
‘Colonel Cherten told me you’d be a man,’ Tynan observed. ‘He said men lead Spider armies because the women consider it beneath them.’
‘Then perhaps we are honouring you, for I know Wasps know of no higher office,’ she replied drily.
‘Was the last clash between you and Collegium so personal that you had to see the business ended yourself?’ he pressed.
She glanced from her wine over to their subordinates. Colonel Mittoc was explaining something to the others in his rough voice, some detail of how to transport his new artillery toys, no doubt, and the two Spiders were listening with some interest.
‘General, you were closer to the mark before,’ Mycella said softly.
Tynan raised an eyebrow, not committing himself, and she went on, ‘To lead an army is no honour in our culture. Yes, the duty would normally devolve on some son or nephew.’ When he made no comment she let her expression fragment a little, so that he could see behind it. ‘There was a trade dispute, nothing greater than that. Collegium killed a niece of mine, and then a son. I led an armada against it, more ships than have sailed from the Spiderlands in generations, the grandest venture of the modern age. We turned back. Can you imagine? We were not even defeated. The defences of the Beetles were such that we had no option but to turn back or lose everything. Even now, we will be marching the long coast with you, rather than taking to the waves. What does this suggest to you?’
‘That you were not well received when you returned home,’ Tynan suggested. ‘But you are the head of your family, are you not? Who could discipline you?’
‘I am the Lady of the Aldanrael,’ she confirmed, ‘but I am sure that your people are no more tolerant of public weakness and failure than are mine. So it is that my house is laid low, our holdings stolen, our name a jest on every lip. So it is that, to preserve my family’s very existence, I have chosen this path: the path of the Lady Martial. No great triumph amongst my kinden, no great standing, and yet honour enough, and that you will understand. There is honour in taking the sword by the blade when it is presented.’ At last she smiled, and he almost felt he had been holding his breath for it. ‘Beware me, General, for I am a desperate woman. I have so very little left to lose.’
Seventeen
The fixed-wing Sweet Fire had stopped for fuel on a Helleren airfield, and Stenwold had taken the chance to sample the mood of the city, while other Mynan stragglers arrived and joined up with Kymene.
He found little to surprise him, and much to disappoint. Nobody cared about the fall of the Three-city Alliance. Indeed, many of the merchants were already rubbing their hands over simpler access to Imperial markets. There were plenty of Wasps on the streets, mostly Consortium men. The road for the Empire’s return had been well and truly paved.
He returned to find Kymene taking reports. Some dozen or so pilots had dropped down onto the Helleren airfield now, with more expected, their scatter of ungainly and damaged craft drawing derisive comments from the locals.
‘It sounds as though those of our soldiers who got out have headed for Maynes,’ she told him.
‘You’ll join them?’ Stenwold asked.
‘I’ve sent word to them to get clear of Alliance lands altogether if they can. If we can’t stand, Maynes won’t. They were prouder than us about buying in outside weapons and machines. They have almost nothing to put in the air.’
‘Come to Collegium,’ he suggested.
She looked at him levelly, a half-circle of airmen watching this exchange silently. ‘Will your people fight again, Maker?’
‘If they will not, then I’ll go with you to Sarn, or wherever else we must, until we find someone who will.’
‘Satisfactory,’ she agreed.
Another orthopter skimmed overhead, making the Mynan airmen jump and twitch for the safety of their machines. It was Taki’s Esca Magni, though, looking decidedly more chipped and battered than when Stenwold had seen it last. The Fly-kinden herself looked dead on her feet as she levered herself from her cockpit.
A ragged cheer went up, for the Mynan airmen had all seen her efforts in the skies over their city, and the sound of their applause transformed Taki from a weary refugee into some shadow of her past self: the Solarnese air-duellist. She managed a grin for them, and then was striding forward to clasp hands first with Edmon, then the short Bee woman beside him, then going round the circle, dismissing Kymene almost as an irrelevance.
‘Someone get me wound again,’ she called out to nobody in particular. ‘Or are we putting down roots here?’ Stenwold could see how tired she must be, but either she was putting on a brave face or her pride would not let her acknowledge it.
They flew east next, not straight for Collegium as only Taki could have managed the journey in one leg, but navigating for Malkan’s Folly, the new fortress that marked the most westerly point that the Imperial Seventh Army had reached in the last war. Stenwold needed to warn the Sarnesh.
Malkan’s Folly had been the project of the Sarnesh since shortly after the war because they, like Stenwold, had known the day would come when the black and gold would look westwards once again. The Ants lacked something of Collegium’s ingenuity, but they were united in a way their Beetle allies were not. When the King of Sarn and his tacticians set their minds on a project, then progress would be rapid, all hands turning to the task.
The fortress was a great slope-walled monster of black stone, rising to a jagged crown of towers. There had been some talk of raising a series of smaller edifices, as a line to cut across the path of any Wasp advance, but the cost would have been great, the utility small. The Ants knew that it would be impossible physically to stop an enemy force with fortifications, given how mobile Imperial armies were. The impediment that Malkan’s Folly offered was logistical. A whole army of Ants could be stationed there, well provisioned, unassailable, sallying forth at will to disrupt enemy supply lines or to attack the Wasps in the flank or the rear, coordinating with the main Sarnesh army with that impeccable ease that only Ants, with their interlinked minds, could muster. With that plan, Malkan’s Folly became an obstacle no general could afford to circumvent.
Taking the fortress was reckoned to be near-impossible, according to the Sarnesh engineers. All four faces of it were studded with leadshotter emplacements, and angled so that the weapons’ arcs overlapped and covered every inch of ground. Windows were narrow — enough for a snapbowman to shoot out, but not enough to allow ingress to the Light Airborne. Beneath the building itself was a network of tunnels and cellars containing ammunition and provisions enough to last out a siege. Beyond the fortress, if an army hoped to rush past the position and leave it behind, was land watched over by the Mantids and Moth-kinden of the Ancient League, other allies from the war who were more than capable of tying down an Imperial force with skirmishing, ambush and assassination until the Ant forces closed from behind.