Her Scorpion mercenaries had taken up station over to the left, the waves lapping their feet. Tynan sent his own infantry to the opposite side, so they could glower at each other.
‘Sir, a sail.’ Cherten pointed suddenly.
Tynan squinted at the horizon, unhappily aware that his eyes were not the equal of the colonel’s. It took a count of ten before he could make out the little dark triangle, and by then Cherten was announcing more.
‘What’s going on?’ the general demanded.
Mycella explained ‘I made the decision when we nearly lost the supply airship previously — when it came in that time just as the Collegiates were attacking. It was plain that supply was going to prove a weak spot, so I sent some orders back to Kes and Merro, demanding boats.’
‘I thought that you didn’t want to use boats,’ Tynan growled. After all, a grand Spider armada sent against Collegium had turned back because of some unspecified sea defences that had plainly shaken the Spiders very badly.
‘Believe me, if we had sailed up the coast like last time, we’d all be on the sea bottom by now,’ Mycella told him with some force. ‘But the Collegiates aren’t sinking every ship in the sea just for fear of us, and so. .’
‘That’s a fishing boat,’ Cherten declared disdainfully, as the closest vessel tacked for shore. The vessel did seem very small, Tynan had to agree.
‘To avoid notice, and to make a landing at a place like this, compromises had to be made,’ Mycella confirmed.
‘Are you telling me that we can resupply by sea,’ Tynan breathed.
‘We are about to do just that,’ she said. ‘I have a dozen such vessels out there, loaded high with whatever would survive the trip, that are just waiting for my word before finding a cove to beach in. And they will keep coming like this until the Collegiates work out what we’re up to and target them as enemies.’
‘And then?’
‘And then they will be sunk without trace, and we will only realize it when they fail to turn up,’ she confirmed grimly.
There was a scraping sound as the first boat arrived, and the crew jumped overboard to drag it up the beach.
‘Morkaris, get her unloaded,’ Mycella’s bodyguard snapped. The mercenary adjutant glared at him, but had his Scorpions move in the next moment, so Tynan signalled for the Light Airborne to come down and pitch in.
We eat for another day, and then another. . and soon Collegium.
Sixteen
The Empress was unhappy, and that made her dangerous.
They were well and truly separated from the Wasp forces now. Whilst the Imperial soldiers were doing their best to make violent contact with the Sarnesh, in support of the Nethyen, Seda was following a different path altogether. By Apt maps, Yraea knew, they should have been travelling the same road — the soldiers heading west to fight, Seda bound westward for the forest’s dark centre. Such are the limits of an Apt mind. For, of course, Seda’s true direction was inwards, and nothing so prosaic as to be found on a compass rose.
In was not an easy direction to travel, though. In had its own defences.
Argastos was willing the way open, Yraea realized, just as she knew that there had been visitors into his domain in recent memory. The forest itself, though, was resisting him, and so was the collective will of the Mantis-kinden. Had Seda somehow slipped in here alone, then perhaps she could have navigated her way unimpeded to Argastos’s very gate. Now the forest’s temper was up, outsiders were roaming its halls with bared steel and the Mantids were fighting. All the old doors that might have hung open had been barred shut. Those who wished to pass on into the heart of the wood must either follow the correct path or be very lucky — or luckless, like those Imperial scouts from the last war she had heard mention of.
So far, luck had eluded the Empress. She had passed and re-passed, leading her followers over the same trails, seeking the invisible doorway into the deeper forest that she could plainly sense but yet not open. Such power within her, and yet she is ignorant. She does not understand how things are done.
Yraea, however, understood all too well, for she needed to make her way into the forest’s heart, as well, to put Argastos back in his place. Old shade, you are grown too strong and too unruly, to have dared call out to this stupid Wasp girl. Your masters must needs discipline you and remind you of your task.
That carried with it an uncomfortable feeling, because Yraea had dreamt of Argastos only the night before — as a presence watching her, unseen, his mind like a thorn in her own. So old was he, he should be nothing more than a purpose now, with barely a shred of personality left. Yet what she had sensed had been all personality, something far more complete than any ghost had a right to be. Even the spectre of Tisamon, the Empress’s ridiculous bodyguard construct, was less whole than what she had sensed Argastos to be.
I may have a fight on my hands, once I reach him. It was a daunting thought, for she would be on her own when she did so. The plan was swiftly falling away from anything envisaged by her masters back in Tharn.
The Empress had halted, staring angrily at the surrounding forest and trying to sense how it was denying her. Crippled by her lack of learning, she kept just bludgeoning about the trees with her will. Yraea watched her contemptuously, though none of that registered on her face. Such a waste of strength, though! Well, all the more reason to deal with the woman soon.
The others took this opportunity to rest their feet. The three Pioneers — big Wasp, Beetle and that dangerous-looking half-breed — took up watch, for this part of the forest was very much contested ground and there had been a few run-ins with the Etheryen. As for the rest, both the old Woodlouse and the Wasp magician Tegrec just collapsed, looking worn out. All this walking was not something they were used to, and the forest was heavy going. Can I spare either of them?Yraea considered. The old man was too loyal to Seda, surely, so he would definitely have to go. Tegrec was supposed to be of Tharn now, but he was still a Wasp. The whiff of the Empire still hung about him, and she found that she could not trust him, even though she quite liked him as a person. Of the rest, the Empress’s bodyguards and that Ostrec character, with his Red Watch badge, all of them would have to die.
Especially Ostrec. Looking at him now, Yraea felt a strange shiver of uncertainty. She was well aware that Seda had sought out Wasps with some latent Inapt heritage as recruits for her Red Watch but, despite that, Ostrec seemed strange. Something about him did not quite match what Yraea thought she saw.
Dead, she decided. I’m all for secrets, but let that one die with him.
Tonight the Loquae and her Nethyen would come. They would even come as allies, so Seda would have no reason to suspect until it was too late. The forest would swallow Imperial ambitions, as it had swallowed so much else.
With Zerro dead and their numbers diminished, the remaining Sarnesh were uneasy about simply pressing on, but Syale had news for them on that front as well. The Roach-kinden girl obviously intended to travel with them for a while, though plainly not out of any concern for her own safety.
‘There’s a fair body of your lot that I can guide you to. Sentius is with them.’ The direction she indicated seemed to be just about the same as they were already taking. To the unhappy Sarnesh this news was pure gold, though, and none of them was willing to question it, simply agreeing to accompany the girl and her Etheryen companions. Che, though, had misgivings, and made sure she was at Syale’s side to voice them.