She saw Stenwold Maker within, sitting on the tiered seats as though waiting to watch a practice match. The sagging bulk of Jodry Drillen lurked in one doorway, speaking to another couple of Assemblers, and at least a score of others were already sitting in small cliques and factions, some there to speak and some to listen. She recognized the small form of Willem Reader, the aeronautics artificer, and a few others she could put a name to. One was Helmess Broiler, Collegium’s least favourite son in many quarters, and a man often claimed to be on the Imperial payroll. The Prowess Forum was public, though, and many people had come to see the leaders of their city’s armed might. A morale exercise, then, more than anything. No state secrets here.
She ticked off the banners, seeing the various chief officers and other military leaders arrive and assemble beneath them: five Companies and four others, nine men and women to direct the battle.
The Companies first. Red scarab was the badge of Maker’s Own, and their chief officer, Elder Padstock, was the senior military figure there. Through the Gate was their motto, and Padstock was known to be a fervent, even fanatical supporter of Stenwold Maker.
Madagnus himself was standing beneath the banner depicting a white helm in profile — not the original Vekken design but an Imperial infantry helmet now, for reasons of politics. Their motto, and Straessa’s own, was In Our Enemy’s Robes, after the original inhabitants of Coldstone Street had taken arms and armour from Vekken dead to throw back the invaders.
Outwright’s Pike and Shot had a wheel of pikes and snap-bows as its device, whose intricacy must have left the embroiderers cursing. Outright Victory or Death went their words, and the original Outwright had indeed died defending Stenwold Maker from Imperial assassins. His nephew, someone-or-other Outwright, looked far too young for the job, but his soldiers had elected him out of fondness for his martyred uncle. Beside him stood sweating Remas Boltwright of the new Fealty Street Company, his banner simple crossed crossbow bolts, his words To End the Quarrel. He was doing his best but, like Outwright Junior, he did not look the soldier.
Eujen Leadswell stood at his shoulder, beneath the purple banner displaying the open book. He and Averic had been devoting every waking moment to turning their rabble of malcontents into something approximating a fighting company, but some wit amongst the students had seen to it that the words Learn to Live had been added to their flag. In Straessa’s experience it was entirely possible that Eujen, beneath them, had not even noticed. So very focused, always.
And curse me, but he looks the part. Eujen Leadswell, student of social history and outspoken detractor of no less a man than Stenwold Maker, stood straight-backed and proud in his breastplate, and if any had been ready to mock the idea of the Student Company, or to slight him for his political beliefs, they held their tongues now.
I am not going to cry. But, looking at him, Straessa felt so very aware of how fragile he was, just as any man or woman was fragile. One bolt, one sword, and all that young promise would be gone.
The others came as no surprise, those defenders of the city who were not formally part of the Companies. She saw, standing beneath a sky-coloured banner without device or motto, the little Fly-kinden pilot who was everyone’s darling after the Wasp Air Corps had been brought down last time.
Kymene the Mynan leader had her city’s red arrows on black, one pointing up, one down, expounded by the words below them: We Have Fallen. We Will Rise Again. Straessa had a lot of time for Kymene save that she had always felt that the woman was so fiercely opposed to the Wasps that she might get a great many people killed for it one day.
Some close-faced, midnight-skinned Vekken stood, with no banner at all, representing that company of his kinsfolk who had come reluctantly to the aid of their new — and only — ally. Lastly, beneath a plain green flag, there was a Mantis-kinden woman Straessa did not know, standing for the Felyen exiles within Collegium, those last tatters of the Felyal hold destroyed by the Second Army on its last advance.
And that’s it, thought the Antspider. That’s all of us, Beetle and non-Beetle, citizens and guests. These nine are the hope of the city in miniature.
By that time the crowd was quite large, packing themselves in at every door, concerned men and women of Collegium who were ostensibly here to see history performed, but in reality just wanted to be told that everything would be all right.
Twelve
Sergeant Gorrec of the Pioneers was crouching low, his huge frame almost tucked into the tangled roots of one of the vast old trees, while all around him the Mantis-kinden were fighting.
It had come on very suddenly. The three Pioneers chosen to spearhead the Empress’s expedition had been carefully breaking new ground, pressing deeper into the forest, and there had been some Nethyen Mantids with them, keeping pace. Gorrec hadn’t liked that, but they weren’t part of his chain of command, and he was cursed if he was going to go crying to the Empress about them. They had faded in and out: now gone from his sight, then a moment later there would be a full half-dozen just ghosting between the trees. No friends of mine. But friends weren’t something that Gorrec was overly supplied with. A man didn’t go into the Pioneers because he liked the company.
Then the other Mantids had turned up and everything had gone rapidly out of his control, if control was something he had ever actually had. There were Mantids everywhere, leaping out and trying to kill one another, and then instantly gone, sometimes leaving a body behind, sometimes not, as though their own irresistible momentum would not allow them to keep still long enough to finish the job. Gorrec saw the fight around him in frenzied slices, the dim air beneath the canopy briefly flaring into a vicious skirmish of blades and then falling still again, the combatants gone. He had his axes ready, those two huge Scorpion-made pieces with their curved hafts, which could be thrown some distance if the wielder was a man as big as Gorrec. So far he had not struck a blow: in the blur of those brief, deadly pairings he found he had no way to tell friend from foe. To him, the Etheryen and the Nethyen Mantids looked just about the same.
He would have followed Icnumon if he could. The halfbreed was Mantis as much as Wasp, and he seemed to have no difficulty knowing whom to kill — either that or he simply did not care. Keeping up with Icnumon was like chasing smoke, though, and Gorrec saw less of him than of the Mantids themselves.
Crouching in his hiding place, eyes almost useless in the gloom, with opponents that were here one moment and gone the next, he had been honing his other senses. When the sudden rush came at him out of nowhere, he was ready for it, kicking away from the tree with one axe arcing back to cleave the air between him and his attacker. Thank you for letting me know which side you’re on. For all he knew, this could be a Nethyen Mantis who had turned coat, or maybe all the Mantids were his foes now, but for the moment being attacked was all the identification he needed.
His heels dug furrows into the forest floor as he changed direction, twisting suddenly to meet the oncoming Mantis. He had a fleeting image of a rangy man in greens and browns, trying to bring a spear down on him, but his own sudden reversal — and the sheer speed with which a man of his size had moved — gained him time enough to bat the needle point aside and bring his other axe about in an attempt at cutting the man in two. The Mantis leapt over the scything blade, dragging his spear up to skewer Gorrec like a fish, but the Wasp was still moving, letting his impetus carry him out of the spear’s path and bringing both axes about so that they nearly crossed. There was a moment when the Mantis should have backed off, but the man’s face was twisted with rage and loathing, finding this intruder in his people’s hidden halls, and he just drove on forwards. The spearhead gouged a shallow line across the Wasp’s shoulder, despite all Gorrec’s weavings, but then came the moment when the two axe-heads were just too large, too fast, to be avoided, taking up all available space about the Mantis warrior. Even then the man almost won free, diving through a gap that seemed too small to let a Fly through, but Gorrec and the twin axes went back a long way, and they knew each other well. Just as the Mantis was almost clear, there they were again, and this time their victim had nowhere to go.