These days a War Council was whenever Stenwold, Jodry or both of them could round up a few other people from a changing list to validate their decisions. Or that was what it felt like, much of the time.
On this occasion, once Stenwold had prised the Speaker away from his own responsibilities, he was able to get hold of the Mynan leader, Kymene, and Chief Officer Elder Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company. Padstock looked attentive, as she always did when Stenwold was present, an idolizing that he was always uncomfortable with. And yet it was so convenient to have someone he knew would vote with him whenever he and Jodry quarrelled, and so where did that leave him, when he did nothing to discourage her? Kymene looked as though she had better things to do than sit through yet another committee — the Mynans not being great respecters of the Collegiate way of doing things. Like the Mantids, they wanted to kill Wasps.
Twenty words later, after Stenwold had explained the situation, she was all ears.
‘No, no, no,’ Jodry was saying immediately. ‘We can’t just let our defenders sally off on their own recognizance! We need them here for when the Wasps come. It’s not. . it’s not as though they’ll have long to wait.’
‘Jodry-’ Stenwold started, and the Speaker stared him down.
‘You’re considering it,’ he accused.
‘Jodry, listen to me. Akkestrae is right: the Felyen aren’t exactly at their best fighting against a mechanized enemy from behind walls. Or even a running battle in the streets, if things get to that.’ Unlike Jodry, he did not stumble when he said the words, for all that he felt a lurch in his stomach on uttering them. ‘After all,’ he added drily, ‘they wouldn’t run, and then they’d die. Mantis-kinden, Jodry: one on one the best killers the Lowlands has, and they would be wasted, diluted by fighting a war our way. I’ve been looking into the siege at the end of the last war — and we had a fair number of Felyen with us then. By all accounts they accomplished little — shot some arrows, killed Wasps on the battlements — but the real war was being fought all around them with orthopters and airships and snapbows and artillery.’
‘We’re talking about hundreds of swords just taken out of the city — a pointless waste of life!’ Jodry exclaimed.
‘Who are we to-?’
‘You will not say, “Who are we to judge”!’ Jodry snapped. ‘We are Collegium. We value life even if the Mantids don’t. Even if nobody else in this pox-ridden world seems to!’ He looked about the table, feeling himself one man alone. Padstock, of course, was taking Stenwold’s line, and Kymene. .
‘We support them,’ she said, quite simply.
That was more than Stenwold had expected, and for a moment he sat silent while Jodry goggled. Of the four of them, Kymene had the best mind for strategy, by his reckoning, and that included the sort of hard-edged strategy that came with casualties already worked into the maths.
‘You fight a good defensive war, you Collegiates. You fight a thinking man’s war. But I’ve seen what happens when they get to your walls and start work on a city.’
‘Different city, different walls,’ Jodry said. ‘Even you’ll allow our engines are better than-’
‘Than ours? Yes. Than the Wasps’? You can’t know that, and you’re a fool if you’ll stake all on testing it in the field.’ She spoke with fire but without anger, the same woman Stenwold remembered rousing up the resistance in Myna years before. ‘The air attacks are all very well, but I talk to my pilots and their gains are limited — too few machines, too many Wasps, and the Gears don’t slow. They keep on coming. But you know this.’
Jodry glowered at her, but said nothing.
‘And now the Mantids are set on marching out and striking at the enemy,’ Kymene declared. ‘Do you really think you’ll stop them going? Do you think they’d thank you, if you tried? I know their mind on this, for my own people come to me every day complaining that they want to fight now.’
‘You’d go with them?’ Stenwold broke in.
‘Gladly.’ Her answering gaze was calm and sane.
‘The Mantids will want to launch a night attack. Your people can’t see in the dark like they can.’
‘The Mantids can’t set explosives like we can,’ she countered.
The other three digested this silently.
There is precedent, Stenwold reflected. Salma’s Landsarmy against the Seventh, in the last war. But the cost. .
Elder Padstock cleared her throat, watching Stenwold carefully for his reaction. ‘There are those among the Companies who can see in the dark, War Master. Spiders, Flies, halfbreeds. .’
‘Now wait,’ interrupted Jodry, ‘even if they can, and even if your Mynans could keep up, I might just about believe that a few hundred Mantis warriors could bring the fight all the way to the Wasp perimeter after dark. But the rest of you. . Come on, think, will you?’
‘I’m not even convinced the Mantids could manage it,’ Kymene allowed. ‘The Wasps will keep a good watch, and their Spider-kinden allies see well in the dark.’
‘Well, what then. .?’ Jodry put in uncertainly.
‘So we bring them in supported by our troops, and we provide a distraction so that they’re on the Wasps before the Second even knows it. And we let them run wild, as they will — for there’ll be no controlling them — while our people strike at those same targets that the Stormreaders have been trying to get their bombs to. And then perhaps we get out again. Anything’s possible.’
Jodry opened his mouth again, but the cast of his expression had changed. He had been a man vociferous in opposition, now he was on the edge of a chasm, staring fearfully into it but becoming resigned to the drop.
Before he could voice the question, Kymene answered it. ‘By air. We do it by air. The Mantids won’t like that but, if it gets them to the Wasps faster, and means they can shed more blood, then they’ll live with it.’
‘We need more than the four of us, to make this decision.’ Jodry’s voice was hollow. ‘The Assembly-’
‘Hasn’t met since this action started, not in any real sense,’ Stenwold told him. ‘And if we’re to make this happen, we need to start now. You’re the Speaker, I’m the War Master, and we have the authority. Or if we don’t, who’s going to tell us so?’
Jodry was still shaking his head, holding on by his fingertips to the trailing edge of his lost argument, but his words had run dry.
‘I’ll speak with Akkestrae,’ Kymene announced. ‘Chief Officer Padstock, would you ask for volunteers from the Company soldiers for a night attack? No more information than that, at this point. Master Maker, Master Drillen, perhaps you would see what airships you can commandeer.’
‘Brace yourself,’ Averic advised, hand extended.
The Beetle girl behind the shield looked scared to death, cringing away, so that, when the Wasp student’s hand flashed fire, the impact nearly took her off her feet. The watching members of the Student Company recoiled collectively — not at the light or the crackling sound, but at the very concept. This, this was the symbol of the Wasp Empire, if anything was: their killing Art.
Straessa and Gerethwy, off duty this morning, had come out early to watch the students train. The Antspider tried to see how Averic took it: the way they looked at him as though he ate children. That old familiar closed expression held sway on the Wasp’s face, though, the same that had got him through a year’s study at the College before the war broke out.
‘Every one of my people can do this,’ the Wasp explained. ‘Some are stronger at it, but every single Wasp becomes armed from the moment this Art begins to show. But I have to concentrate — even a soldier with a score of battles under his belt must concentrate — and so it’s not ideal for close-in fighting much of the time. Unless, of course, your enemy falls back from you, like you’re falling back from me right now. Give me room, and you give me the advantage.’