One less. And they could hardly spare it. Her thoughts rallied the others, spurred them on. The Empire is counting on us.
Her father had possessed the same poisoned gift: that mindlink Art whose known practitioners had been rounded up and executed just a generation before, by the Rekef secret police. Never tell, he had insisted. You must never let them know. But when she heard what the Empire wanted her kind for, she had turned herself in to the Engineers without a second thought.
Give me back the sky, had been her only desire,
The intervention of the other Imperial machines came as a surprise, not a part of her mental battle plan at all. They had most of them not been ready for immediate launch but, the moment the Stormreaders had been spotted, the ground crews would have been working towards it. Now that uneven clutter of old Spearflights and the flying rabble of the Spiderlands was all about, still not quite evening the numbers, but complicating matters for the Collegiates. The Stormreaders outmatched them badly, but there had been a clock ticking ever since the attack started. Most Stormreaders had a limited fighting range, and their forays over the Second Army were on a strict leash — and the more they had to fight, the more spring-stored power their clockwork hearts used up. The older Imperial machines could refuel when they needed it, and the Farsphex had been able to fly from the Empire to fight over Collegium itself, and then return in safety, so efficient was their fuel.
Her pilots called it in all at once, the moment the Stormreaders began flashing their signals to each other. Fall back, she instructed. No heroics. They could not risk losing another Farsphex to a sudden ambush. Defence of the army was all.
She pictured the pilot who had died, not so much the face as the feel of his mind. What they would do when they got closer to Collegium, when the Stormreaders would be able to fight for as long as they needed, she did not know.
So I hear that command has a plan: the thought of one of her fellows, filled with discontent.
We can only hope, came her reply.
Ten
‘The problem, basically, is that the Mantis-kinden never fought a traditional battle in their lives. When we fight, we go in, we take and hold land, consolidate, press on. Them? They attack, kill, fade away. They don’t stay where they were. Their only strongpoints are their actual holds, which are basically villages built into the trees, which you could pretty well miss if you walked right through them — until they killed you, anyway.’
Tynisa nodded, remembering her journey to the Felyal with her father. He had been bringing her there to see her people’s way of life. Since then she felt she had run into more than her fair share of the Mantis way, and yet here she was again.
The speaker was an Ant-kinden named Sentius, placed in command of the Etheryen relief force by Tactician Milus. He was a lean, weathered Sarnesh with some grey in his dark hair, and he had ventured into the forest before to liaise with Sarn’s allies.
‘The Etheryen tell me that they won’t attack holds, and the Nethyen won’t either. Now, I reckon that’s likely to change soon enough, either because someone starts losing or because your Wasps won’t know the rules. For now it’s a blood-pissing chaos in here. There’s basically a whole third of the mid-forest that’s full of war bands from either side all running about lying in wait and jumping out at each other, and both sides are striking out towards the other side of the wood — so we’re only a hundred yards in and still I’ve got scouts out,’ he went on. ‘And then there’s me with my men, and at least we can get as split up as you like and still know where we are, but I reckon that I’ll be losing whole squads within a day or so, once the Nethyen get wind of us — and our friends will be doing the same for the Wasps, too. And then I have you lot to cope with as well. All of you.’
Overhead, the canopy was near full. The world beneath was cast in shades of dark green and pale grey, lanced by errant sunbeams. Just a hundred yards in, as Sentius had said, there was no mark of axe on any tree, but instead great bloated forest giants that three men could not have stretched their arms around, and growing far closer together than seemed reasonable, each one muscling up against its neighbours for room. The space between them was like some mad architect’s fantasy, a vaulted, irregular colonnade that unravelled in every direction into the gloom. All around them were Sarnesh Ants, stepping carefully through the undergrowth that somehow clawed itself a hold here despite the poor light: great sprays of ferns, twisted nests of brambles, the jutting shelves of bracket fungus, and slender capped spires of mushrooms half the height of a man.
‘Civilians,’ Sentius pronounced, giving the word that special contempt unique to military men. His gaze raked the assembly, barely pausing on Che and her followers. Tynisa understood that they were already accepted, by order of Milus himself. The rest, however. .
The Roach girl, Syale, was no surprise, and in truth she seemed to pass through these woods with an ease that surprised even the Mantis-kinden. Or perhaps she just had no common sense, of course, but it was plain that the Sarnesh were not going to keep her out. The ambassador from Princep Salma was here to stay.
The ambassador from Collegium was a more contentious figure, though. Helma Bartrer, Master of the Great College and representative of the Assembly, seemed oblivious to any hints. Instead she had attached herself to Terastos, the Moth-kinden nominally representing Dorax, and she was not to be dislodged short of physical force. Any such attempt would be complicated by Amnon, her vast and unsubtle shadow.
‘Listen to me,’ Bartrer told Sentius sharply. ‘I am an expert in the history of the Etheryen and their culture. I have studied these matters for longer than you’ve held a sword.’
‘I’ve got experts, Mistress Bartrer,’ Sentius told her with admirable mildness. ‘I have him-’ Terastos. ‘And I have her-’ Che, to her plain surprise. ‘More to the point, I have every cursed Mantis who lives in this forest and isn’t actively trying to kill me.’
‘And you have me,’ Bartrer finished, with great finality. ‘Believe me, before this is done you’ll be glad of me. Tell him, Mistress Maker.’
Che started in surprise, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. ‘I. . why?’
Helma Bartrer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Because I know what you’re after here. And, believe me, you need me.’
There was some unheard signal from down the line, and Sentius abruptly blanked the entire conversation from his mind. The Sarnesh, who had been making a cautious advance, were instantly seeking cover, then freezing to stillness with crossbows and snap-bows at the ready.
Che and the other ‘civilians’ crouched together in the midst of an overarching stand of ferns. ‘What are you talking about?’ she hissed at Bartrer.
‘Oh, I hear a lot.’ The College woman seemed almost hostile. ‘You reckon the Empress is coming here — or is here right now. You reckon she wants something in these woods, that’s the word I hear, but you don’t know what that something is. Even though you’re Inapt now, I hear.’ That last comment seemed the crux of the dislike in the woman’s voice, and yet Tynisa could not see it as merely the Apt dismissing their forebears. Instead she read something like envy in Bartrer’s tone. Live long enough with history? she wondered. Like most Beetles, Bartrer would be Apt, making the study of the Inapt a maddeningly frustrating business.
Che looked from face to face. ‘I assumed that if there’s something here the Moths would know.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Terastos.
The Moth grimaced. ‘Some scraps perhaps. I am no Skryre, and my masters are jealous of their learning, And many of the texts in Collegium are lost to my folk, despite our demands for their return.’