A silence descended on the square, all eyes looking to Grief. When she finally spoke, her words were tight with outrage.
‘This is not Sarn, and you are here as our guest, nor our master. Salma-’
‘Is dead!’ Milus broke in. ‘And he died like a soldier. Did he do that so that you could all live like peasants? Well perhaps. I don’t know Commonwealers. But listen to me. I am not here as your guest. I am here as your guardian. Sarn is fighting to keep the Empire from your doors, and, yes, you will send your soldiers.’ After all, they can stop snapbow bolts as well as anyone.
And that last thought came straight from Milus’s mind to Balkus.
‘But I look around me and I see so many able bodies,’ the tactician went on. ‘And I will have them. Even the placid Beetles of Collegium have been conscripting their citizens into the military. How would I be serving my city if I overlooked this great resource at our very doorstep?’
He looked about him, before locking eyes with the Monarch again. ‘Let me tell you what will happen. You will send me a minimum of fifteen hundred men and women, armed and armoured as best you can — and we’ll make up the difference in equipment. We have the surplus. You’ll send me a further five hundred, along with them, who have useful skills of some sort — craftsmen, doctors, engineers, as you say — not philosophers or musicians or any such nonsense. And, no, this is not a matter for your committees. I am telling you how it will be.’
There was an angry rumble amongst the crowd, but he quelled it with a glare.
‘And if you do not,’ he went on, ‘then, if Sarn survives, you can be sure that we will remember that you held back on us in our time of need, and in the war’s aftermath you will see us again, and we will not be coming as your guests. If you live safe in Sarn’s shadow, then you will fight at our call. And, of course, if my city should fail for want of help, then you can preach your philosophy next to General Roder’s Eighth Army and see how far it gets you.’
He waited for Grief to speak, but the Monarch’s words had been blown away.
‘And some specifics. Him.’ He pointed at the Wasp, Aagen. ‘He’s an Imperial diplomat and officer’ — and, as Grief rallied herself to speak, he hurried on — ‘and, yes, he’s a renegade. All the better. I want a full report on everything he knows about the Eighth and its capabilities. I want him sent with your people, too, to advise on Imperial procedures. And if I don’t see him there. then my interrogators will come and get him. You don’t know how much slack I’m giving you just by not taking him away with me right now.’
Balkus thought that a small, hard smile crossed Milus’s face, but that was just within his mind.
‘And I won’t have a traitor to my city commanding your troops. You’re to replace him. Of all your armed might, his is the one face I don’t want to see. Traitor once is traitor ever.’
‘Bastard,’ whispered Sperra. ‘Pox-ridden son of a whore. What the pits are we going to do?’
Balkus could already see it on the faces of the Monarch’s advisers, even if the woman herself remained impassive. We’re going to do just what they ask, because they’re right and we have no damn choice. He wondered if they could even manage to scrape together fifteen hundred fighters from Princep’s motley population.
‘Well, seeing as I’ve just been relieved of command,’ he whispered to her, making sure to keep his mind shut tight, ‘I’m cursed well going to go tell Sten Maker what’s just happened here, and I suggest you go with me.’
‘Sir, this feels too much like a trap to me,’ Colonel Cherten murmured, as they descended the uneven path towards the beach.
General Tynan frowned at his intelligence officer. ‘You don’t trust our allies? You’ve had some evidence that they’re not sound?’
Cherten’s eyes narrowed. ‘No, General, but they’re Spiders, and they are renowned for playing both sides. If something happens to you-’
‘Then you or one of the other colonels will take over,’ Tynan briskly finished for him. ‘That’s why we have a chain of command.’ And, because Cherten was really starting to annoy him, he added, ‘And it’s not as if Mycella hasn’t had plenty of chances to do me harm.’
He saw the colonel’s face tighten immediately, and then the other man skidded on a loose stone so that Tynan had to catch his arm. Cherten was indeed very, very bitter about the fact that there was someone closer to his commanding officer than he was. But, to be honest, if he got as close to me as Mycella is, he’d have to discipline himself for unsoldierly behaviour, Tynan reflected with a spark of amusement. And, Empress knew, amusement was something in as short supply as rations right now.
Ahead of them, just moving out on to the crescent of stony beach, were Mycella and her people: her immaculately armoured bodyguard Jadis, a handful of her soldiers, and then a squad of burly Scorpions led by that emaciated mercenary adjutant of hers. Tynan himself had brought a half-dozen heavy infantry — who were finding the footing hard going — and there were a half-hundred of the Light Airborne atop the cliffs, ready to swoop down at need.
The Second had been making dragging progress since the loss of the supply airship. Such a huge assemblage of soldiers needed constant resupply to keep moving, and their previous advance on Collegium had stripped the land of any worthwhile forage. Food, clean water and wine had been rationed instantly, but they had also lost several supply automotives to the Collegiate bombers and, at the best of times, keeping much in reserve was logistically impossible. He had naturally sent one of their faster orthopters back east with an urgent request for aid, but how long that would take to arrange was a matter of guesswork.
And, of course, the Collegiates had not held off their attacks, although Major Oski had managed to get a creditable ground defence going, improvising all manner of artillery answers to the slow-flying bombers, so that further damage was at least being mitigated as much as possible.
Then Mycella had come to him and told him she had something to show him.
As always his thoughts, as he had looked on her, were mixed. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, she was clever. Yes, the fact that they were lovers was by now common knowledge about the camp — though, to Tynan’s surprise, his standing amongst his soldiers aside from Colonel Cherten had only gone up. They viewed Mycella of the Aldanrael as their general’s conquest, for all that he suspected the Spider troops saw things quite the other way round.
But she was a Spider, and there was a grain of truth in Cherten’s words. Could all this be an elaborate ploy? Yes. Could she be about to switch sides and declare for the Collegiates? Entirely possible. Could she lie to him with every word she spoke as they lay together? Of course.
But they were co-commanders of a force that would destroy itself in civil strife the moment its two leaders turned their backs on one another. Never before had an Imperial army worked in partnership with another power. If sleeping with a beautiful woman is the price for that, I suppose I’ll just have to pay it. He gave another snort of stifled laughter, to more suspicious looks from Cherten. And solid rumour names him as Rekef, but then Rekef writ doesn’t run like it used to. And Imperial generals had always been a little proof against the Rekef whilst actually commanding their armies.
His feet crunching on the gravel of the shore, he stared out at the grey breakers of the sea. ‘So what’s going on, Lady-Martial?’
‘A gift for you, General,’ she replied, flashing him a smile. She was almost girlish when she did so, for all that she was probably ten years his senior, and he was no young man. But the Inapt, they always seem able to stretch out their youth, whilst we spend ours all at once.