‘Scouts!’ someone called, and Stenwold watched a haze of Light Airborne rising up from the Second Army, which was still deployed in a somewhat dispersed formation. A scattering of flying Wasps darted through the air — too few for an assault — and spent twenty minutes overflying the earthworks, but none of them getting close enough to the walls to become a target. As they returned home, Stenwold fancied they had something of a downtrodden air.
‘We going out there to poke them?’ Madagnus asked.
‘You’re keen?’
‘Not me. Give me walls and artillery any day.’
Stenwold nodded. ‘Eminently sensible. We’ve no plans for a serious sortie, now that the Vekken are back. The Stormreaders will keep on at them, though.’
‘Scouts!’ someone called out again, and then, ‘Just the one!’
Stenwold frowned quartering the sky to try and find the errant enemy but, before he did, the original spotter had added, ‘Carrying a flag — black and gold.’
‘Going to stick it on the College and then tell us we’re conquered?’ Madagnus suggested.
‘They want to talk.’
‘Don’t blame them. I don’t see they’ve got any other way in but sweet-talking.’
‘Keep the artillery in readiness. It could just as easily be a trick,’ Stenwold warned the Ant. ‘Someone bring the messenger to me! I want to hear this.’
Collegium’s full Assembly had not been brought together in any one place since the start of hostilities, Stenwold recalled. Certainly not since Imperial bombs had destroyed much of the Amphiophos, formerly the heart of government in the Beetle city.
They had returned to old haunts, though, despite the devastation. Jodry Drillen had summoned them, and here they were, at least two-thirds of the Assemblers who had been present there to hear the declaration of war. This part of the ruin was partially cleared, creating an uneven floor to speak from, and the gathered Masters of the College and merchant magnates, the townsmen and gownsmen of Collegium, now sat on broken stone and tumbled walls, finding a place for themselves wherever the devastation allowed it. It was a melancholy sight.
Jodry stood before them, a great, sagging hulk of a man, his formal robes creased and stained, having been stored uncleaned by a man who had not thought to need them, and whose servants had mostly gone to serve their city instead.
‘You have heard,’ he addressed them. Without walls, his voice was a lost thing denied its customary authority. ‘I have given you the best picture I can of our circumstances.’ Indeed he had already trotted before them a whole string of experts to report on the city’s fortunes. Madagnus had discoursed on the wall engines, barely a slur to his words. Elder Padstock had reported, in a smart military manner, on the troops of the Merchant Companies. Willem Reader had spoken of Collegium’s air strength and successes. There had been others, too: the city’s stores, its walls, the latest noncommittal word from Sarn. Stenwold gazed all about him at faces he had not seen for some time. They looked worn: older and more haggard, testimony to sleepless nights and days of unaccustomed strain and labour.
‘They have offered to meet with a delegation from the city,’ Jodry explained. ‘You’ll have heard that, and I’ll call for a vote in a moment. I don’t honestly imagine we’ll refuse, though. Collegiate citizens not fond of the sounds of their own voices? Of course we’ll talk. The reason we’re here, after all this time, is to do a little cribbing and prepare some answers ahead of the moment. There aren’t many topics likely to come up, after all. We can second-guess most of them.’
Stenwold let him talk, eyes still moving from face to face. Some met his gaze with a nod or a wan smile, while others avoided it, or simply did not look at him at all.
One man locked stares with him, frankly hostile, and the expression on his solid, sour face suggested, How did you let it come to this? Hardly a fair question when Stenwold might ask, in return, How much of this did you help bring about? The man was Helmess Broiler, long a political adversary of both Stenwold and Jodry, but more than that. Stenwold knew well enough that the man had been in the Empire’s pocket, and possessed other transient loyalties that were not in the city’s best interests. He had kept mainly to his townhouse until now, for word had filtered among the Companies of what sort of man he was, and they had made their feelings plain on several occasions. But here he was, like a cursed object in an old story, always turning up when least wanted.
Stenwold tried to read in his expression just what Helmess might know of the Empire’s prospects, but either the man was as clueless as everyone else or he could hide his knowledge all too well.
After the gathering, Stenwold retired to converse with Jodry, as the two of them had so often before. Their appropriated study now was a wall short of the set, and roofless to boot, but beggars must take what they were given.
‘You’ll go, of course,’ Jodry pressed him.
‘It’s about time I renewed my acquaintance with General Tynan, yes,’ Stenwold agreed.
‘I’d like to lay eyes on the man myself. After all, there’s supposed to be some benefit in knowing your enemy.’
‘You’re not going,’ Stenwold said firmly. Seeing Jodry’s outrage begin to bloom, he raised a conciliatory hand. ‘This could easily be a trap, and eliminating the two of us together would be too tempting. I would greatly prefer it, let’s say, if you stayed on the walls and watched the general through a glass.’
Jodry summoned all his authority, jowls quivering, but then he subsided. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right at that. Eight, though? You’ve some names in mind?’
The War Master nodded. ‘Enough.’
There was a pause, then: ‘Look, if it’s worrying you, why don’t you stay home and I’ll go for once.’
That brought a faint smile to Stenwold. ‘No. Tynan and I. . when we spoke at the end of the last war, we understood each other. If anyone can get through to him, it’s me.’ It’s just that. . Stenwold had been at war with the Wasps for almost two decades more than anyone else in Collegium, but these last years spent facing the Empire’s actual assaults, its repeated attempts to devour the Lowlands entire, which could be repulsed but seemingly never ended. . And here they were, full circle, as the blind determination of the Second Army, the Gears, came grinding towards their gates yet again. I just want it over with. More and more, in those few moments of private time that life allowed him, he was thinking of the sea — of Paladrya and the sea. To escape from all this. To be free. .
The votes been had passed without difficulty, motion after motion, so that Jodry had seemed less a statesman and more a ringmaster, trotting out each proposal to do its trick and then pass on. Still, there had been a surprising number of abstentions, and Stenwold could see his own tiredness in those faces — not of people who objected or opposed, but those for whom simply getting here had removed their last drachm of public spirit; who had been hammered by war and loss until they could not bring themselves to fight any further, not for any cause.
A hasty exchange of Fly messengers hammered out a location that resulted in one solitary soldier of the Light Airborne planting a flag out there amongst the earthworks, on a patch of cleared ground that would be in plain sight to both sides.
Stenwold flew out by orthopter, so as not to give the Second any assistance in navigating Collegium’s end of the earthworks. Crouching in the belly of a cargo flier that nonetheless looked fleet enough for a quick getaway, he fought off the tides of weariness that were already threatening to sap his concentration. Around him, his picked team were restless and tense — and armed, of course. Wasps never went unarmed, so bringing snapbows and swords had been non-negotiable.