‘All of you!’ he snapped at the men still present. ‘Get men to defend the baggage train — the munitions, fuel stores, automotives, supplies. Go, go!’
A runner came in, and nearly got himself killed by some of the more eager soldiers keen to guard their general now that he had no immediate need of them. Thankfully the long march with the Spider-kinden had given their allies just enough familiarity to slow the Wasps’ instinctive responses.
‘General, message from the Lady-Martial.’ The Spider was a lean, long-limbed youth, presumably picked for his running speed. ‘Large force of Mantis-kinden are in the north-camp.’ He was breathing heavily, forcing the words out.
‘Lieutenant!’ Tynan called, on the good officer’s principle that there was always a lieutenant within earshot. ‘Get me-’
‘General, no. We have them contained. I am to say that the flank is secure. My lady urges you to look to the east. Our spotters have seen other movement there.’
East? That’s their quickest route to the supplies and vehicles. ‘Already being taken care of,’ Tynan told him. ‘What do you mean “contained”?’ Even as he asked it, one of the tower lamps flared up, casting a bright white glare across the camp, Tynan looked about for the other two towers, finding one standing but dark, the last one.. He blinked, for the easternmost tower was down, somehow. The attack there must be fiercer than he had realized.
‘We know about fighting Mantis-kinden, general. We have numbers and we can see in the dark as well as they.’ The Spider messenger bowed. ‘I must rejoin my lady.’
Tynan waved him away. ‘You heard him,’ he growled. ‘Get men over to the east. Form up and sweep the vermin out of camp — and take some prisoners.’
‘But, General, we’re to trust these Spiders to hold?’ one of his bolder officers demanded.
‘We’re marching to war alongside them, so we’ll have to lean on them eventually. Now’s better than before the Collegiate gates,’ Tynan snapped. ‘Now move!’
How close did I just come to dying? a tiny voice said at the back of his mind, but he was a soldier and he fought it down.
All around them, in the maze of alleys and pathways running between the tents of the Spider camp, the fighting twisted and turned. There seemed to be Mantis-kinden everywhere, singly or small packs of them, and wherever the attackers went they met the Spiders, sallying forth to defend their own. That the Mantids wanted nothing more than to shed the blood of their most hated enemies was abundantly clear. This was no line-against-line soldier’s engagement, but a mad whirling skirmish, hundreds of individual duels and brawls, small bands of Spiders against smaller number of Mantis-kinden, whilst the more heavily armoured mercenaries formed up into solid units that became reference points for the fluid, unpredictable conflict going on around them. The Mantis-kinden were the deadlier, practically berserk, swifter than sight and utterly intent on blood. The Spiders gave before them, surged in on flanks and from behind, feinted and feigned and lured them into ambushes. The toll on both sides was fearsome.
Laszlo and Lissart dashed from shadow to shadow, tent to tent. The nearest edge of the camp was where the Mantis-kinden were coming from — so no escape to that quarter for certain. Instead they were forced further into the camp, looking for some other way out.
Then the tower lamp flared on, and its blinding glare froze the two Flies in their tracks, instantly feeling guilty as though the whole business was aimed only at them. It was an impartial beacon, though, and it stripped away half the hiding places they had been counting on, exposing them under its fierce fire. Above them and before them were Wasp-kinden, the night shift assembling into detachments and deploying, ground or air, wherever the sergeants sent them, the day shift donning their armour as swiftly as they could.
‘You! Identify yourselves!’ a Wasp sergeant snapped at them, palm forward and plainly keen to remove any further complications the night might offer him.
‘Messengers from the Aldanrael,’ Lissart shot back at him. ‘Which way to the general?’
For a second the man was not buying, but then he nodded briefly, gesturing further into the camp, seeing they had nothing more than knives on them. They passed through the Wasp ranks, constantly jostled and pushed as the soldiers formed ranks.
‘We need to get a good look around,’ Laszlo stated. ‘From down here it’s impossible to guess where we can make a break for.’ He glanced up, but the sky was busy with Light Airborne and Mantis-kinden both, and flying into that kind of meat-grinder did not appeal to him.
‘Head for the tower!’ Lissart told him sharply.
‘What?’
‘Just go!’ She shoved him towards the light, her face looking pale and strained. Even as they passed through, utterly beneath the Wasps’ notice, a surge of fighters broke away from the fighting about the Spider camps — more Mantids but others, too: Flies, Beetles, Ants, in a ragged but determined mob. They were making for the functioning tower, and the Wasps were instantly on to them, the Airborne taking to the sky whilst stings and snapbows began to rake into the attackers even as they rushed in.
The pair of them ran, or Laszlo ran and buoyed Liss up enough for her to match his pace. Hiding was out of the question now — speed their only friend, which got them to the foot of the tower without challenge.
‘Up,’ she instructed him. ‘See what the blazes is going on, won’t you? Find us a way out of this mess.’
Even as he ascended, she turned sharply, jabbing her hand out just as a Wasp would, and he caught a flash of fire from the corner of his eye. I hope that wasn’t one of ours, came the thought, and then he felt a wrenching sense of dissociation because, of course, nobody out there was one of theirs. There were just two contending groups who might have good cause to kill the pair of them.
He was not the first up the tower, for a dozen Wasp snapbowmen were already perched there, taking long-range potshots at any enemy target that came close enough. They glanced at Laszlo, but he made a grand show of not being up to anything suspect, and apparently he passed muster. Businesslike, with nothing in his pose admitting guilt, he took a good look to all quarters, just as if he were up the topmast back on the Tidenfree. There was fighting to the east as well, a vicious melee swirling about the Imperial supply wagons there, and he guessed immediately that everything else was probably just to cover getting that strike in place. The Wasps were all over that part of the camp, though, ground and air, and the fighting was dwindling and dwindling, the remaining attackers a diminishing ripple as the Wasps stamped them out.
Then there was a savage roar, and a plume of fire launching high into the air as something exploded. It had come from the very midst of the fighting, and Laszlo flinched despite the distance. The lamp immediately above him was hot enough to slick the back of his neck with sweat, but he almost kidded himself that he could feel an extra wash of boiled air from that eruption to the north.
It’s not my business, he had to remind himself, turning his attention elsewhere, because the attack was plainly running out of steam, and the camp would be impossible to get out of once order was restored.
Moments later he had picked his compass direction and he dropped from the tower top, finding Lissart swiftly and pulling her after him. Freedom or death, he thought dramatically, though it was probably not too far from the truth.
In the aftermath, Colonel Cherten made his report: a mere hundred Mantis-kinden and around twice as many of various other insurgent kinden had fallen in or near the Spider tents, with perhaps a miscellaneous hundred breaking free and retreating in the direction of the Felyal. They were all from the forest or nearby communities, Cherten believed, who had seen the Empire burn their homes once, and had obviously thought they might make a difference with this sudden strike. Under cover of their noise, a determined band of Mynans had come in from another direction, attacking the towers and then turning towards the supplies. They had been utterly ruthless, fearless, each one selling his life as dearly as possible. As well as the towers, they had managed to ignite one fuel dump, which in itself made a spectacular end to most of the Mynans who had survived to that point, and a painful number of Tynan’s soldiers as well. The sabotage only went to prove Colonel Mittoc’s wisdom in ensuring that their fuel and munitions were not all kept in one place, as Imperial policy would normally have dictated.