She had listened, this once, and given orders for more of her people than usual to be in readiness at all times, doubling watches, overlapping shifts. She had reckoned it nonsense at the time, but some deep instinct had compelled her.
Seeing what she saw here, she was not sure that she had done the right thing.
Hatred had a face, and that face was Mantis-kinden. She had always known that their people hated hers from time out of mind, and with a fervour that defied logic and offered no reasons. Back in the Spiderlands it had been a joke, those ravaging rustics in their primitive longships and shabby tree-houses. Whatever the Mantis-kinden had once been, they were that no longer — just an atavistic pack of malcontents squatting in their coastal forest between Kes and Collegium, menacing the nearby shipping and brooding over their obsolescence.
Now they had come in all their fury, and she saw that, just for this one night, they had recaptured the days of their old glory.
They came in a ravening wave, killing everything in their path, slaughtering the Wasp sentries who tried to deter them, killing unarmoured, just-woken Imperial soldiers scrabbling desperately from their tents, putting their hungry blades into every living thing in their path, combatant or not, Wasp or Auxillian or mercenary. Or Spider. Most especially Spider.
They were wild and fierce and had no plan, no strategy that she might have misdirected. All she was faced with was their hate.
Her soldiers, those brave men and women loyal to the Aldanrael and its tributaries, were flooding past her, clad in their armour of leather and chitin and silk, throwing themselves into the maw of that bloody melee, killing Mantids and being killed in turn — losing two for one at best, perhaps more. They were gallant and skilled, her soldiers, and they loved her and were loyal to her every inch as much as Tynan’s people obeyed him and revered their Empress. They knew, too, that they were not the born and honed killers the Mantids were, and yet they rushed in and fought, and they held the line even as their very presence — the hated Spider-kinden — drew more and more of the Felyen into the fight. Her people held out because more of them were still coming, rushing past her into the fray with grim desperation, decanting out their lives like spilt wine, just to keep the Felyen assault at bay.
‘Mistress.’ She heard Jadis urging at her side. ‘You must fall back. They cannot keep the Mantids back long.’
She shook him off, feeling his fear for her — not ever for himself — and drinking in the strength which that love and fealty gave her. She summoned up all her reserves of Art.
‘Servants of the Aldanrael!’ she called out, and her voice thundered over them all, friend and enemy alike. ‘Hold fast, Aldanrael! Be not afraid! I am with you! I shall take not one step back! Hold fast and make them pay in blood for every inch of ground! Aldanrael! Aldanrael and the Spiderlands!’
Her Art, the hidden strength of the Aristoi, washed over her soldiers, firing them with courage and giving them heart, quickening their limbs and staving off pain, so that for a moment the Mantids began actually losing ground. Then the arrows came in, feathering through the air towards her, and she stepped left and right in a graceful dance, and let Jadis’s shield take the rest — nimble as a young girl until one found her shoulder.
The silk and mail she had donned took the brunt, but it drew blood nonetheless, and Jadis was practically dragging at her arm, but Mycella stood her ground, just as she had exhorted her servants to do. ‘Hold!’ she called again, aware that the Mantids were trying to flank her forces; aware that the battle-lines were getting thinner and thinner. ‘For the Aldanrael, hold!’
Fire and blood, she remembered suddenly. And we have had the blood but was that little bombing really the fire? ‘Bring me Morkaris,’ she demanded. ‘Where is he?’
The mercenary adjutant was fighting at one end of the line, with a pack of his unruly Scorpion-kinden, but at Jadis’s shout he dropped back to join Mycella, still keeping half an eye on the conflict. His black armour was battered and scratched and he had a jagged, bloody gash across one cheek, but his eyes widened when he saw the arrow still standing proud of her shoulder.
‘There will be others,’ she informed him, calm and clear despite it all. ‘Beetles, Ants, the Apt — they will send artificers against the same targets their flying machines have been trying to destroy.’ Now she had thought of it, it seemed obvious. ‘Take your Scorpions and any other of the mercenaries you can gather. Spread them out. Send them to check the provisions, and the siege machines. Drive off any enemies you find there.’
Morkaris glanced from her to Jadis, and from Jadis to the ongoing battle, to the line that was being pushed closer and closer.
‘Obey the Lady-Martial!’ Jadis snapped at him, and the mercenary scowled and went to drag his Scorpions out of the fray.
Jadis of the Melisandyr had moved closer to her now, arrows rattling off his shield. ‘Lady. .’ she heard him start, but he added nothing, for to say more would be to question her.
‘We are buying time, Jadis,’ she told him gently, drawing her rapier with her uninjured arm. ‘We must hope that Tynan can order and rally his men in the space of time that we are buying him, because soon enough we will need him to return the favour.’
Ahead Straessa saw several automotives burdened with some bulky load. She was not at all sure she knew where she was on Taki’s map, and she was keenly aware that shortly the only relevant direction would be ‘out’, in any event.
‘There!’ she directed. ‘Set your bombs there!’
The two chosen artificers hurried forwards, and Straessa began looking round for the enemy, snapbow raised to her shoulder. Beside her, Castre Gorenn loosed a shaft that caught a half-armoured Wasp in the throat even as he stepped out from around the automotive, killing the man before he knew what was going on.
A skirmishing knot of Mantids passed by, briefly visible between the tents, Wasps converging on them on the ground and from the air. Straessa crouched low, Gerethwy beside her.
‘Come on, come on,’ she murmured impatiently, but she knew the bomb-setters would be working as quickly as possible, securing their explosives to the automotives at their most vulnerable points, setting their clockwork timers carefully.
‘Inbound,’ Gerethwy said flatly. ‘They see us.’
She saw just huge shapes moving in the dark, at first — far bigger than Wasps had any right to be. Then they resolved into Scorpion-kinden, a dozen at least, bearing down on them at a full charge.
Her snapbow jumped in her grasp and one of them stumbled and fell, while an arrow from Gorenn wounded a second. She saw Gerethwy fumbling with his weapon, teeth bared. Another two shots sounded from nearby, claiming one victim between them.
The Scorpions let out a hoarse roar of fury, almost upon them now. Straessa saw Gerethwy drag his snapbow up, missing his target at close range, then just swinging the weapon into the face of the leader, whipping his helmed head to one side. The Scorpion was already bringing down a halberd at him, too close, and he caught at the shaft desperately. His long-boned frame was surprisingly strong, Straessa knew, and for a moment he held the weapon off, and she leapt in with her rapier and found the thin mail under the big man’s arm, lancing through the links and provoking an agonized yell.
Another huge warrior loomed before her as she hauled on her blade to free it. She looked up to see a greatsword drawn back, and then the Scorpion’s head snapped sideways, an arrow standing out from the visor of his helmet.
‘Come on, Antspider!’ Gorenn was shouting. ‘More on the way!’
Straessa finally got her blade clear, and immediately lunged at another enemy, even as Gerethwy liberated the halberd and began laying about himself, sacrificing finesse for sheer force and speed.