‘Right,’ he croaked, the acoustics of the room carrying his nervousness to the very back. ‘You know why you’re here, I suppose.’
He had a speech prepared, but one of the students was already standing. Eujen recognized him as Howell Graveller, a year older and one of Eujen’s frequent detractors, who had mocked him when he tried to advocate peace with the Wasps, and yet had not come forward to volunteer for the Company when Eujen had started to talk about fighting. And he’s now going to walk out. And they’re going to follow him, all of them. They don’t take me seriously, and why would they? And what am I supposed to do then? Have them arrested or something? Go squeak to Stenwold Maker that my soldiers won’t do what I tell them?
But Graveller was still standing there, shuffling from foot to foot, glancing sidelong at his fellows. ‘Look, Leadswell,’ he said, after an awkward moment. ‘I just wanted to say. . this Student Company of yours, we’re grateful for it, we really are.’ His accompanying gesture defined the ‘we’ as those closest to him, his little clique of cronies. ‘The conscription. . we could have been stuck in Maker’s Own or the Coldstone or something, right now. This. . at least this isn’t the front line.’
Eujen stared at him for a long moment, then took up the snapbow from the lectern, aimed at Graveller’s chest and shot him.
The harsh snap! echoed about the lecture hall like the end of the world, along with Graveller’s agonized gasp.
They had all frozen, and Eujen noted who had leapt up to act, who were still stupefied in their seat, finding himself already sorting them into grades and categories of soldier. ‘The next one,’ he said quietly into the utter silence that had gripped the room, ‘will be loaded.’
Graveller looked as if he had pissed his robes. ‘But why?’ he got out.
‘Because a Wasp will be holding it,’ Eujen explained. And now I have my audience, and they’re taking me seriously, and none of them even glanced at my Wasp friend Averic when I said that. I would win golden honours in rhetoric from that sentence alone, were a Master here to mark me.
‘Listen to me,’ he explained to them. ‘This is not the alternative to fighting for real. You are all going to learn how to fight, to use one of these, and to work together. You’re going to learn how to build barricades, how to shoot from cover, how to patch wounds, how to use artillery, and a whole lot more. And you’re going to learn as much as you can as fast as you can, faster than any of us ever had to learn basic mechanics or the Collegium-Helleron social deficit, because the Imperial Second Army is on the move right now. And if you don’t know what that means, then go to the library, get out a map and measure the distance between the Felyal and here, because that’s how much time you have.’
They were still staring at him as though he was some horrible dream brought on by too much bad wine.
‘Barricades and. . what else?’ someone asked, her voice petering out.
‘Don’t you understand what this is for — the Student Company?’ Eujen spat out. ‘The others, Outwright’s, Maker’s Own and the rest, may well go out to meet the Second in the field — wiser heads than mine decide that, and I’m glad of it — but we’re the last line. When we commit to the fighting, we will be on the walls. If that’s not enough, we will be on the streets, in the marketplaces, in the courtyards of the College itself. Because we are Collegium’s final hope — and I’m cursed if I’m going to let that fail because you all thought this was the easy class to take.’
In their eyes he read their accusation of him, echoing Graveller and his friends’ taunts of yesteryear. ‘Oh, yes, I know I was always for reaching out to the Empire, and I will maintain unto death that we could have handled the Wasps better, and even avoided this war entirely had our elected masters possessed the will to do anything other than agitate. But the war is here, now. It takes two for peace, and so now we need to break the back of the Empire’s advance to the point where peace becomes even a possibility, and to do that we need to stop them. We need to stop them out there, if we can. We need to stop them right here, if we cannot.’ He looked at them and felt despair. And where the plague were you lot, when I called for volunteers? ‘I’m not some Makerist firebrand frothing about a just war. I’m talking about the survival of all that we are. Your city, your history, casting Lots, classes in the College, drinks in the taverna: all those things that we all took for granted just a year ago.’ He turned. ‘Officer Averic.’
The Wasp stepped forward and Eujen noted, with almost scholarly interest, the ripple that went through them all as they tried to adjust.
‘Tomorrow morning, one hour after dawn, you will assemble in the Briar Quad to commence training,’ Averic told them. ‘If you have access to weapons, bring them, please. Equipment is at a premium.’ He glanced at Eujen for approval, got a brief nod. All words that Eujen himself could have said, but it was important for the new recruits to know which faces to take orders from, even when those faces bore pale Wasp features.
When they had filed out, with expressions ranging from stunned to incredulous to determined, Eujen sagged forward against the lectern.
‘Well done, Chief Officer,’ the Beetle girl commended him, laying a hand briefly on his shoulder. Her name was. .? Not a good start for a chief officer, he realized, because he could not recall it.
‘Now we have to work out how we’re even going to train them,’ he moaned.
‘I, ah, took the liberty of finding some veterans — old fellows from the first war with the Vekken. They haven’t used snapbows, but at least they’ve fought. And one of the artificing Masters can come and teach us about artillery. And. . I thought we could improvise, after that.’ She drew most of herself up, seeking for a military bearing. ‘Is that all right?’
Ellery Heartwhill, that was her name. ‘That’s superb,’ Eujen told her, and she beamed at him a little too eagerly.
‘I can get someone from the Merchant Companies to train them with snapbows,’ a new voice sounded from the door, making all three of them jump. Eujen twitched up to see none other than Stenwold Maker himself standing there.
‘How much did you hear?’ he demanded of the older man, as though he had been caught plotting some sort of sedition.
‘Enough,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘You did well.’
I didn’t do it for you. But to Eujen’s surprise, the words remained locked up in his mind. Now was not the time. ‘Any help in getting them ready would be appreciated,’ he managed.
‘War Council will be meeting tomorrow. .’ A moment of calculation on Stenwold’s part. ‘Let’s call it noon. You’ll be ready for a break by then, though I’m not sure I can promise you one. I’d give you an agenda, except it would be out of date by dawn.’
Eujen nodded. Surely there’s an old Inapt saying, ‘May you get what you ask for.’
Taki brought her oft-repaired Esca Magni down messily on the airfield, the rest of her flight skewing their Stormreaders to a halt around her. She slapped up her cockpit lid and kicked herself out of her seat, her wings carrying her halfway across the field, battered by the wind of the landing orthopters.
A quick glance about located a familiar figure in Willem Reader, artificer and aviation scholar — and current object of her ire.
As she approached, she could see him counting the surviving sets of wings, and he met her grim expression with one of his own. He was a small-framed Beetle-kinden — though still bigger than herself — with a mild face set off by a small moustache. Perhaps no man’s image of a great war hero, but his orthopter designs were all around them.
‘We should have had them!’ she exclaimed to him, as she touched down. ‘Even with the Farsphex screen, we had several clear runs at their supplies!’