There were similar burial mounds in the North-Empire, in Hornet country, ancient relics of her own people’s distant ancestors that the Apt tribesmen still avoided from long tradition. These days such tombs were prey to treasure hunters, those wily enough to evade the locals, but she was willing to bet that no daring thief had ever returned alive from the barrow she beheld in her dream.
Set into the mound’s side was a gate, and this was what she was drawn to. The mound’s own shape had been built out to accommodate this portal, which was nearly as tall as the mound’s highest point. A trilithon of grey slabs formed its sides and lintel, but the twin gates themselves were layered with chipped scales of gilded wood that rustled faintly together, each one inscribed with elegant, potent sigils; as fine an entry way as any prince or emperor could command.
The name that came into her mind unbidden was Argax: signifying at once Argastos’s hall and his tomb. And perhaps more. What she sought — that which she had come out and risked herself for — lay within, and all she had to do was open those gates.
Surely she must want to gaze upon the face of Argastos, after all this time.
The dream took her feet and tried to send her forwards to those gilded gates, but no magician of her skill was so careless as to let dreams get the better of her.
You mistake me. She formed the words. I am not just some Apt peasant who has chanced upon power. I am the Empress of the Wasps. And she slapped away the tendrils that had been attempting to drag her forwards. Believe me, I shall come to you in my own time, and I shall come as Empress, not as servant. Others have made the same mistake, believing that I am here to learn, and to pay homage. I drank their blood. I can drink yours too, if you have any. And if you don’t, I shall yet find some way to consume you if you will not serve me.
She expected an instant response — almost certainly an angry one, but instead there was a cool measuring of her. She was not yet sure whether what she faced was a human mind or some echo of one, or just a facet of the forest itself, but it was old and cunning and patient, whatever it was. She could not provoke it so easily.
Come, then, she thought she heard it murmur. Come conquer Argax for your Empire. Mockery, but could she sense a sliver of respect there?
She forced herself to step back from the golden doors, and she became aware that she was not alone in her dream — or rather that this was the dream of Argastos and she was not the sole participant. Nearby she saw the Beetle girl, the Cheerwell Maker creature, but this time there was no immediate surge of hatred. Instead she saw that the girl had gone through the same experience, had shrugged off the obvious lure, and for a brief second the expression on the girl’s dark face must have mirrored Seda’s own.
I will destroy you, Seda declared, and the Beetle locked eyes with her, her gaze giving not an inch. The last time they had clashed, Seda had indeed nearly destroyed her, but they were both stronger and more skilled now. Any battle between them would not be decided so easily.
Looking into that hatefully familiar face, though, the expected rush of loathing or even of fear, did not come. In that dream of Argax, standing before the barrow of Argastos, Seda entertained the strange thought that, under other circumstances, here was the one creature in the world that might truly understand her. A sister? Save that all her siblings were dead, and the last practically by Seda’s own hand.
Still there remained the uncharacteristic and melancholy thought: I could have used a sister.
Fifteen
The land lying south of the Etheryon-Nethyon forest, the great road that General Roder’s Eighth Army would have to travel, had been turned into an invisible labyrinth.
Both sides were still awaiting the outcome of the clash within the forest — at the mercy of whoever became the winners there, who could then strike with impunity at either the Ants or the encroaching Wasps. Neither side was letting the dust settle, though. Roder had his orders, and Tactician Milus had sent his city’s forces to meet him.
But not in pitched battle, because the Sarnesh had already suffered a costly defeat against the Eighth at Malkan’s Folly. For now, they maintained faith in their forces and their allies within the forest, hoped for a better opportunity for their great stand, and held the bulk of their soldiers back at Sarn itself.
Imperial flying machines still made their forays that far — Spearflights and a handful of Farsphex making the Sarnesh nights a nerve-racking lottery of fire. The Sarnesh air force itself could coordinate impeccably in the air, but their machines were old: orthopters whose design had scarcely changed in eight years. They could have held their own against those bulky old heliopters the Empire had relied on at the Battle of the Rails, but even the benefit of their mindlink barely made them the equal of the fleeter Spearflights. Inevitably, the Farsphex smashed them from the air.
On the ground, Milus’s tactic was to slow down the Empire as much as possible, hoping for a flanking attack from the Etheryen to the north, or even from a victorious Collegium to the south. He was no fool, Milus, and he could see that his people were right where the metal met. The future histories of the Lowlands were his either to write or be relegated to, depending on the decisions he now made.
Since the Imperial Eighth had begun its advance from Helleron, from before either the fortress fell at Malkan’s Folly or the Nethyen Mantids turned on their own kind, the Ants had been at work on the overgrown, broken ground south of the forest. Wasp scouts would have spotted neither earth-moving machines nor large working parties, but instead there had been small bands of soldiers, camouflaged as best they could. Some had been engineers, others snipers picked for their skill with a snapbow. They had their own scouts as well, and a scattering of bold Fly-kinden for long flights and night work, but their most valued men and women had been the sapper-handlers.
Theirs was an ancient trade, and their tool was known as the First Art. Long, long ago, when the lives of men had been short and cheap, at constant hazard from the beasts they shared their world with, some few of them had found a way to reach across the chasm between man and insect, and so become the first kinden. At first they had only begged, but much later, there were negotiations, demands, orders. Nowadays that old Art was a rare thing, but ascendant mankind still lived alongside the beasts and drew inspiration from them in the form of Art. There had always been tunnels undermining Sarn, but not dug by the hands of men.
In that contested country east of Sarn, a band of Ants was crouching in a dugout, each of them touching the mind of their officer, whose periscope was even now spying out the Imperial advance.
Leading edge is composed of alternating blocks of infantry — close-packed, armed with spear and snapbow. . and war automotives. I see several of the new design, those woodlouse-looking machines. Artillery, supplies and non-combatants too far back to see. The words were acknowledged by a Sarnesh relay post to the west and would be passed on, together with an approximation of what the officer saw, all the way back to the tacticians.