Milus regarded him with an expression now turning to pity. ‘And he will be overjoyed that his allies are so committed to the war that he has lived for most of his life. I know Stenwold Maker well enough, from one meeting and three score reports. Stenwold Maker hates the Wasps. So do I, and therefore so do all who serve under my command. Stenwold Maker and I need each other, and we understand each other, and he will not care that an Imperial whore and spy is assisting me. Tell him I will let him have a report of what she knows. But go now. Your continued presence is inappropriate, and I am sure your pilot wants to see her home as soon as possible.’
Laszlo twitched twice, his impulse to attack the man being murdered before it could get him killed. He wanted to say something like, This isn’t over, or warn Milus that if he harmed Lissart, then. . But he had no ‘then’. He had no Lissart. He had precisely nothing.
Such oaths he swore only inside his head, where Milus could not tear them apart with his cold logic.
‘Argastos.’ Seda pronounced it with care, as she would any name of power. Thus far she had travelled within the general Wasp forces that were pushing into the Nethyon to support their Mantis allies — or that was the claim. Seda was unsure how much they could accomplish that the Nethyen would appreciate, but at least poor General Roder would get a clean battle with the Sarnesh, while the Lowlander Mantis-kinden writhed in their death throes. Such a useful kinden. If only the Etheryen would bend the knee to me, then I could save them. But she had not been able to approach them in person, and the Nethyen messenger bearing her offer reported that the Etheryen had taken it badly. Fatally, apparently, but perhaps there was only one sort of ‘badly’ that the Mantids knew.
When this is over, I will save some. I will transplant them to the Empire and make them mine. Did my people think they feared the Rekef? How much more would they tremble at the thought of Mantis-kinden secret police?
Seated at her fire were Gjegevey and the Tharen Wasp, Tegrec, serving as her chief advisers on this forest and its history. In this, Seda knew, the abominable Beetle girl would have an advantage, being leagued with the Doric Moths from whom Argastos surely sprang. For all that Seda’s people might ransack the Empire’s libraries for every mention of the name, the Maker girl would already know it all. Curse her!
A sudden savagery in her expression had apparently silenced the two of them, so she gestured irritably for them to continue.
Tegrec spoke first. ‘This story goes back a long way, you understand, to the great wars of the Inapt world. And if you know Moth histories, you know that they aren’t written as anything an Imperial historian would recognize. Almost no dates even in the Moth reckoning, place names given as metaphors, fact given as allegory, or the other way round. Any Apt reader would take it for some lurid fiction. Even we, with our. . advantages, run into a cultural barrier. Even modern Moths-’
‘Get to the point,’ Seda ordered him flatly, and he swallowed nervously.
‘There was a man named Argastos, and he was a Skryre, and he was a warrior, and he led a Mantis war-host and raised the greatest army the world had ever seen.’ He said it as if he was reciting a text.
Seda stared at him. So swift on my own thoughts comes this? Some great magician, she had expected — for what else would make a Moth’s name live on? — but a war leader? I like him better already.
And across the vast darkness of the forest, yet still intolerably under the same night sky, she knew that Che would be having the same guarded conversation with her no doubt far better informed advisers. .
Terastos had prevaricated but now they had set up camp for the night, Che was not to be denied. ‘She is after something,’ she insisted, not needing to name the Empress for them. ‘And Maure and I, we know that there is a knot of darkness in this forest, at the very heart of it. So tell me.’
The Moth started and stopped several times. ‘My people fought many wars, long ago,’ he would say. Or, ‘It is written that a sole name once ruled all you can see.’ And he was getting nowhere, to Che’s increasing frustration. It was as though there was something he was trying to say, but a key word — a name — could not be forced through his teeth.
Unticlass="underline" ‘Why, then, surely you are talking about Argastos,’ Helma Bartrer declared, half putting him out of his misery, half archly establishing her credentials as expert.
Terastos reacted like a man released from a stranglehold, some spell broken by the simple mention of the name. ‘There was a man named Argastos that made this place his own,’ he admitted weakly. ‘But we do not. . we did not speak of him. Nobody has spoken of him for a very long time.’
Che glared in exasperation, then looked somewhat reluctantly to Bartrer. ‘So speak,’ she said.
Bartrer gave a smug little smile. ‘There were wars, back then. It’s as difficult as getting money out of a Helleren, to work out what they were about, but they had wars. This Argastos was a Moth, a magician, a warlord. This was early, too. He’s named in a codex that lists the victorious war leaders of this particular scrap, and there are names from all over, and some that even read like Mosquito-kinden Blooded Ones — Sarcads as they called them. So if it’s true that the Moths and Mosquitos actually did rip into each other, then this Argastos was before that. Really early, then. There were Woodlouse-kinden names, too, all given high honours, and that’s about the last you hear of them in the histories as amounting to anything important. Spiders and Mantids side by side, Dragonfly noble families. . Others I never could pin down. Basically, my reconstructions suggest that this Argastos was the brightest star in a gathering of war-leaders from pretty much everywhere the Moths could call on. And he lived right here in this forest. In fact he’s described in two distinct ways: like a great Moth magician, and like one of the Mantis Loquae — their speakers and leaders — so he may have been a halfbreed, or he may have been just a Moth with an unusual talent for fighting. A Weaponsmaster, maybe.’ Bartrer nodded familiarly at Tynisa’s sword-and-circle brooch. ‘But when they fought — whoever it was that all these people fought — he gets the most of the credit. He was a hero, a great man. At that time, anyway.’
‘Those few mentions of him that we have, hm, found,’ Gjegevey explained, ‘seem to fall into two camps. He led the armies of the Inapt, and led them to victory, at great cost.’
He thought he was being clever, Seda considered, but she could read every wrinkle in his face. She let him speak because there was no point challenging him about it, not when the answers were written so plainly. ‘So he was a great man, remembered in song and story,’ she murmured.
‘Hm, yes,’ the old Woodlouse agreed, ‘but other sources speak poorly of him. We, ahm, believe that relations between Argastos and the other Skryres deteriorated later. . or that is our best, hm, reading.’
‘Books that speak directly of him are simply not to be had,’ Tegrec complained. ‘Probably the Tharen Skryres keep them hidden. They do a lot of that. But some texts from — I don’t know — generations after the man’s time, perhaps? They mention him obliquely — he’s used as a metaphor for pride and ambition, for turning on his betters. For. . some sort of corruption — questionable magics, that sort of thing.’
‘There is a play, even,’ Gjegevey added, ‘wherein it is, ahm, declaimed that, “Like Argastos, I have won for you the world, and gained but spite,” or some such.’
But Seda was still considering what Tegrec had said. ‘I was unaware that the Skryres considered any magics questionable.’
‘I think. .’ Tegrec swallowed again. ‘To read my own thoughts into what is left unsaid, I wonder if he was not held to blame for doing the Skryres’ will. It would not be the only time they had made a terrible thing happen, and then found it convenient to hold their own agents accountable.’