‘Surely you must flee now, Salma,’ she said to him. ‘Their army, all their other soldiers, will be coming.’
‘That’s precisely what I need to know.’
There were warriors of Salma’s ragtag army passing back and forth all the time – busy hurrying the injured away or rushing in from other engagements. Salma peered through them until he saw a squad of horse cavalry galloping in.
‘Phalmes!’ he cried, and the Soldier Beetle reined his horse in, skidding slightly on the loose sand and stones.
‘General!’ the Mynan acknowledged. It was a title that Salma did not want, a Wasp title, but to his men he had become a general, and there was nothing he could do about that.
‘Where is their main force now?’ he asked.
‘The harriers have done what they could,’ Phalmes reported. Prized of Dragons noticed how his horse panted. Phalmes must have ridden miles back and forth today.
‘We’ve pulled out?’
‘Broken, almost. We’re gone, though.’ The harriers had been squads of men designed to make the far flank of the Wasp army assume that it was the main point of attack. They had been instructed to sow as much confusion as possible, while the real assault would come at the opposite corner of the advance.
‘We need to finish here. How do we stand?’ Salma asked.
‘You need to see for yourself,’ Phalmes said. ‘There’s only one group standing here, but they won’t budge.’
‘Show me.’
Phalmes wheeled his horse, and his men – mostly his original bandit followers from before he met Salma – rode after him. Salma’s wings flared and he coasted over Phalmes’ head, and Prized of Dragons let her own bloom into the air in a rainbow splendour of dancing light to follow him.
Phalmes’ words were instantly clear. The Wasps had been thrown off this side of the valley, killed and scattered or simply retreating in good order. Smoke from burning automotives still thickened the dusty air. Only one band of black and gold remained, a few hundred men surrounded by a loose cordon of Salma’s people. Prized noticed that only a few of them were Wasps.
‘Auxillians, Salma,’ she observed. ‘They are Bee-kinden.’
‘I see them.’
‘We have little time, General,’ Phalmes reminded him.
Salma nodded, walking forwards. He saw a few crossbows lift, but trusted to his reactions and the obvious threat of retribution to safeguard him.
‘Who commands here?’ he demanded.
There was a stir amongst the soldiers, and then an old Wasp-kinden walked forth. Salma, who had been hoping that these would be unattended Auxillians ripe for desertion, grimaced.
‘You must be the Lord of the Wastes,’ the Wasp said, his clear voice cutting across the distance. ‘I am General Praeter of the Sixth Army.’
There was a stir through Salma’s troops at that news. A general? A real Wasp general!
‘General,’ Salma said, aware that, all the time, the rest of the Wasp army would be moving. ‘I have one chance to offer you and your men. Surrender now, throw down your arms, and I will spare you.’
‘I must congratulate you on your conduct of this war, Commonwealer,’ General Praeter said, with all the time in the world. ‘I see now how little of resources you had, and how far you have marched on it.’
‘Will you surrender?’ Salma demanded of him.
‘You know I will not.’
Salma ground his teeth. ‘Then I call upon your Auxil-lian troops gathered here. You have no reason to stand and die for your oppressors. You may join us, or simply go back to your homes or wherever you choose, but you must drop your arms, and do it now. I have not the time to give any of you a second chance. Why die for the Empire when you can live for your own people?’
Silence then, with the Bee-kinden staring at him. Not a one of them moved, and Salma read quite clearly the pride, the almost tearful pride, on General Praeter’s face.
‘You have your answer,’ said the Wasp. ‘You must come and take us.’ He walked back into the ranks of his men, who closed their shields protectively after him.
‘Salma, their army will have regrouped by now. We have no time.’
I cannot let them live, Salma thought coldly. Not with a general. Ah, the things we must do in war.
‘Bring up the snapbowmen,’ he said quietly, and Phalmes galloped off without hesitation, crying out the order.
‘I am sorry, General,’ Salma said, stepping back. ‘For what it is worth, I salute you.’
‘Come away,’ Prized of Dragons advised him, one hand on his shoulder. ‘You do not wish to see this.’
‘No, I do not,’ Salma agreed. ‘That is why I must.’
The new king did not meet with him, which Salma took at first for a bad sign. He had come to Sarn as fast as he could, wearing a horse out to make the distance, and with two of Phalmes’ ex-bandits acting as escort. He had left Phalmes himself to hold the Landsarmy together until he came back.
Out there, the Wasp army was stalking forwards, making good time despite the constant attacks of Salma’s people. The death of General Praeter had halted them for two days, while General Malkan made the necessary reorganization, but now they were ploughing forwards again.
He had met with the Roach-kinden, Sfayot, after entering Sarn, hearing the old man’s account of how the refugees had been treated. Phalmes might order his army, but here was his nation: three times as many non-combatants led by an elderly Roach.
The meeting in Sarn was barely a council of war, more of a military briefing. The time for idle talk, rather than orders, was almost done. The room was small, with a single table hosting a mere dozen of them. These were not the statesmen or the leaders on whose words war was unleashed or reined in, but rather the commanders who would enact the war itself. Here was Salma of the Landsarmy himself; Balkus, Parops and Plius the foreign Ant-kinden; Cydrae, a lean, hard-faced Mantis woman commanding the Ancient League warriors, along with a silent Moth-kinden in layered armour who did not give her name; a fat Beetle-kinden man representing something called the Sarnesh militia that was a force of irregulars put together of their own volition by the inhabitants of Sarn’s Foreigners’ Quarter. To these were added a single Sarnesh woman, a tactician from the Royal Court, with grey-speckled hair. Salma had been hoping for the King himself.
But of course the King will be listening. That would have to be enough. Salma nodded a greeting to Parops, whom he had not seen since the ravaged streets of Tark.
‘Commanders,’ the Sarnesh said, addressing them all equally. ‘They are upon us. The fight is, by our estimates, a tenday away at most.’
‘Probably less,’ Salma interrupted. ‘By my reckoning.’
The Sarnesh woman regarded him without expression. Am I expendable now? Have I outlived my usefulness? In the face of that blankness, concealing all the thoughts of the city of Sarn, he felt himself shrinking: from a prince and a military leader to a mere brigand and retainer of the greater Ant city-state.
Then she said, ‘You are more soundly placed to know, tactician.’
He almost missed it, although the other Ants at the table went quite still on hearing the word. What was in a word, though?
‘My people say that you have cared for them well,’ he said. ‘I was not sure, after the death of the Queen, how we might stand.’
She was expressionless, still, but surely he was used to that from Ants: expressions or visible mannerisms did not come naturally to them. He had no other clues.
‘The movement of the crown is not succession, but continuity,’ the tactician said. ‘The King was party to the agreement made with you and your forces, and he considers himself bound by it. We understand that you have been doing good work in the east. You received our Lorn detachment, we believe?’
A hundred Sarnesh soldiers, that was all that they could spare him. They had clearly expected him to meet the Wasps nose to nose, and for all to die in a glorious waste of time. He hoped he had not disappointed them by surviving and by not losing a man of their Sarnesh suicide force.