This must be it, he decided. ‘Find me Cherten, Oski — and get me Captain Bergild, if she’s down yet’
Captain Vrakir of the Red Watch had a way of staring at Tynan that made the general’s scalp itch. He had no need to present himself and salute, for the fact of his presence imposed itself gradually until it was impossible to ignore.
Tynan sighed. ‘Sound a general halt and let the trailing companies catch up. Double watch for the Collegiates coming back.’ And his messengers sprang away to pass on the word. Stopping an army so spread out was the hardest part. It was easy for hundreds of men to simply march off without realizing that they were inadvertently deserting.
He considered sending for Mycella, but he wanted to hear this for himself first. Under her scrutiny, he found his own ignorance of the Empire’s wider plan a hard thing to bear.
He had his little court of officers assembled soon enough: all those he had called for save Bergild — and with Vrakir as well, unsummoned and unwanted but impossible to get rid of. The captain of aviators appeared at the last moment with the new guests in tow, and at first glance they did not seem to be the answer to Tynan’s hopes. One was a young lieutenant with Red Watch mail, who sought out Vrakir and started murmuring to him without even acknowledging the general’s presence. The other. .
He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, but there his resemblance to a soldier of the Empire stopped. He had a sash dyed black and gold about his waist, but no other nod to the uniform. Instead he had a long leather coat, patched more than once, and a cuirass of chitin scales, as though the armourer’s craft had not intruded these last few centuries on wherever he came from. A cord about his neck was strung with a selection of barbs and spines and shards that Tynan recognized as being trophies from dead animals. The man himself, though he might have passed for a civilized Wasp if he had been cleaned up and dressed properly, must be from the northern hill-tribes, the half-savages who still eked out a barbarous living in the way that Tynan’s own great-grandfather might have done. He had a gaunt, unshaven face, and his pale hair was long and ragged and filthy.
He was not Tynan’s idea of the man who might drive the enemy from the skies, nor was he the obvious solution to any other problem currently facing the Second Army.
‘What is this?’ the general demanded.
The newcomer managed an approximate salute. ‘Captain Nistic, sir.’ His voice was hoarse and scratchy, as though from disuse.
‘Captain?’ Tynan reined himself in before he said something unwise, but if this man had earned a captain’s badge, then something had gone badly wrong back home.
‘It should have been major, sir, but they wouldn’t have it,’ this Nistic agreed. Now he had spoken more than a couple of words, there was something definitely odd about him, something unhealthy that made Tynan uncomfortable. He made no eye contact, and it almost seemed that he was carrying on some other conversation inside his head. And this was a captain!
‘General.’ Vrakir broke away from his conference to step over to Nistic’s side. ‘Captain Nistic here is in charge of the force that Capitas is sending to defeat the Collegiate fliers.’
‘Is he now?’ Tynan stared at the two of them. ‘Perhaps you could explain to us just how that’s to be accomplished.’
‘No, sir,’ Vrakir said smartly. ‘The captain’s mission is one of utmost secrecy. Orders are that you simply meet Nistic and be informed that his troops are on their way. Estimated arrival is in a tenday, by which time I would think the Second will be outside Collegium’s gates.’
With no air support or artillery and precious little capability of maintaining a siege. Tynan locked eyes with Vrakir. ‘These are the Empress’s orders?’
‘I speak with her voice, sir,’ the Red Watch captain declared, not forcibly but firmly. ‘You are to bring the assault against Collegium, and their air forces will be dealt with.’
I should demand to see those orders, Tynan considered, but he knew there would be nothing written down. Perhaps the newly arrived lieutenant had not even brought any orders, but they had come to Vrakir from the same place all the rest of the Empress’s words seemed to emerge from — some space within his own mind.
And yet when Tynan had complained to Colonel Cherten about the maddening influence of the Red Watch his intelligence officer had become very solemn very quickly. ‘Don’t cross them, sir,’ had been his hushed advice. ‘I hear word from Capitas — they really are the Empress’s voice there, now that she’s off with the Eighth. You remember how it was with the Rekef at the end of the last war — men being arrested for treason, from soldier up to general, and most of them never to be seen again? And you remember how it was always the Rekef man you didn’t see who was the dangerous one, how the open Rekef officers at least trod carefully? Well, the Red Watch are all out in the open, and even the Rekef’s scared of them now — and, believe me, there’s a whole mess of high-ranking Rekef who haven’t been seen recently.’ Cherten’s eyes had been wide. ‘A general’s rank badge won’t save you, Tynan, if you go against them. For me, I intend to do exactly as they say, just as if they were the Empress herself.’
But Tynan was still a soldier, an officer, a man with thousands of subordinates depending on him. ‘Unacceptable,’ he stated softly, feeling Cherten twitch beside him at the word. ‘I cannot go into battle blind.’
There was a physical force in Vrakir’s stare that was now wrestling with his own, trying to get him to look away. But Tynan was an old campaigner, with the force of will to bend an army to his purpose, and he held firm. ‘Once he has carried out his orders here, Captain Nistic is no doubt returning to his “troops”, who are somehow approaching us without being spotted by either our own scouts or the Collegiates. Well, then: Captain Bergild, can your pilots spare you a day’s absence?’
The woman tensed immediately on being drawn into the confrontation, but she managed a ‘Yes, sir,’ because there was plainly no other suitable answer as far as Tynan was concerned.
‘Good,’ the general pronounced, still matching Vrakir stare for stare. ‘Then you will take Major Oski and escort Nistic back to wherever he happens to be going. Our major of Engineers will take a look at whatever reinforcements we can expect, and report back to me. This is my order as a general, and if the Empress herself were here I’d tell her the same. I will win this war for her, if it can be won. I will take Collegium, if it can be taken. But I will not be crippled by my own side.’
He felt his palms itch for stinging, so kept his hands clenched into fists, noting how Vrakir was doing just the same. And what a web of mutiny that would be, if we just killed each other stone dead. He well knew he was sowing a great deal of trouble to harvest later, just as if he had gone about tweaking the nose of the Rekef back when they were at the height of their power and paranoia. But here and now, he could stand on one unshakable fact: he was the general of the Second. The Empire needed him more than it needed this cold-eyed man with his red badge. Let Vrakir nurse his grievances in silence and look to tomorrow. Today’s victory was Tynan’s.
‘Very well, sir,’ the Red Watch captain said softly, and finally blinked.