Praeter was older than Malkan had expected, and his short-cut hair was liberally dusted with grey. He must have been quite an old lieutenant, at Masaki. He was relatively slight of build, neither tall nor broad of shoulder. The two Bee-kinden soldiers who clanked in alongside him were barely shorter, and much more heavily set. He wore a simple black cowled cloak over his armour.
‘General Praeter,’ Malkan acknowledged.
‘General Malkan.’
Malkan had expected resentment from the older man forced to serve under the younger’s guidance, yet Praeter’s manner was anything but, which triggered a current of unease.
‘Alone, General,’ he suggested. ‘I think we should speak alone.’ His pointed glance took in the two Bees, without deigning to acknowledge his own intelligence officer.
Praeter frowned, glancing back at his men.
‘I did not ask you here to have you murdered, General,’ declared Malkan, with hollow good humour.
The older man nodded to the two Bees, who ducked back out of the square-framed tent that Malkan commanded from. Nevertheless the sound of the two of them taking up stations outside the door was pointedly clear.
‘They’re obviously fond of you,’ Malkan noted.
‘We’ve been through a lot,’ Praeter agreed, expressionless.
‘How many of them? Bee-kinden Auxillians, I mean?’
‘Two thousand, one hundred and eight.’
Malkan glanced at his intelligence officer, his smile brittle. ‘General, are you quite mad? Surely you’ve heard the news from Szar. What happens when your Bee-kinden troops hear it too?’
‘They have already.’
‘Have they?’
‘Unrest in Szar,’ Praeter said. ‘Their queen dead. They know it all.’
‘And you’re not worried?’
‘No.’ Without ceremony, Praeter drew off his cloak. The armour beneath was not the banded mail of the Empire but a simple breastplate, half black and half gold. ‘That’s why they’ve sent us out here, to keep us away from Szar, though there’s no need.’
‘Is there not?’ Malkan asked.
‘With respect, no. My men are loyal.’
‘They’re Auxillians nevertheless, General. You surely can’t say that they’re as loyal as the Imperial Army.’
‘They are more loyal,’ Praeter said simply. ‘Nobody understands the Bee-kinden – not even after we conquered their city. The inhabitants of Szar were loyal to their queen. It was a commitment that they never even thought to break. When we had the queen, we had them too. Now the queen is dead, they have no reason to obey us. That is the root of Szar.’
‘But your men are different?’ Something’s wrong here, Malkan was thinking. Praeter was like a man with a sheathed sword, just waiting for the moment to present it. All this talk of Auxillians was just a prologue.
‘They have sworn an oath to me,’ Praeter said, ‘and they will not break it. An oath from Masaki, which binds them and their families, their fighting sons, to me.’
‘And if you die, General?’
‘You had better keep me alive, General Malkan.’
Malkan nodded. Here we go. ‘I must admit, General, that I had expected a frostier man to stand before me. After all, it’s a rare senior officer content to serve beneath someone twenty years his junior.’ That ‘twenty years’ was a deliberate exaggeration, but not a flicker of annoyance crossed Praeter’s face.
‘Why, General Malkan, you mistake me,’ he said blandly. ‘I have no intention of doing so.’
Malkan carefully raised a single eyebrow.
Praeter smiled shallowly. ‘Perhaps this will explain.’ He reached for a belt-pouch and retrieved a folded and sealed document, which Malkan took cautiously.
Men have encountered their death warrants like this, he was aware, but he opened it without hesitation, seeing on the wax the sigil of the palace.
In a scribe’s neat hand, there were a few brief lines written there: This commission hereby grants to General Praeter of the Imperial Sixth, known as the Hive, on account of his seniority and notable war record, joint command over the Sixth and Seventh armies, for the duration of the campaign against the Sarnesh.
Malkan peered at the signature. ‘General Reiner,’ he said slowly.
‘Of the Rekef Inlander. He is most kind,’ Praeter said flatly. Malkan felt the situation now balanced on a fulcrum. The Sixth were settling themselves in, the Seventh were already established. A single word from him and things could get bloody. Bloody and potentially treasonous. The mention of the Rekef, the Empire’s secret service, had charged the air in the tent as though a storm was about to break.
‘You are aware that I was installed in this position by the grace of General Maxin,’ Malkan said. ‘Also of the Rekef Inlander.’
‘Do you have his sealed orders to confirm that?’ Praeter asked him expressionlessly.
Well, no, of course not, because since when did Rekef generals actually put their own cursed names on such things? Since when was that the drill? But the answer to that was since now, he supposed, because here was Reiner’s own name, clear as day. Malkan had been distantly aware of the Rekef’s internal squabbling, but he had never thought it would come to bludgeon him out here on the front. Don’t they know there’s a war on?
‘Well, General,’ he said, with brittle brightness. ‘Do you have any orders for me, or shall I have my intelligence staff brief you on our present situation?’
Three
Balkus shuffled, shrugging his shoulders about and looking uncomfortable. ‘Remind me again why I’m doing this?’
Stenwold looked the big Ant-kinden soldier up and down. ‘Because you’re desperate for a reconciliation with your own people.’
Balkus spat. ‘Not likely. They’d lynch me.’ He shifted his broad shoulders, trying to settle the new armour more comfortably.
‘They won’t. You’re not turning up at their gates as some kind of renegade,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘You’re arriving there as the field officer of a Collegiate relief force, Commander Balkus.’
‘Commander Balkus,’ the Ant mused. ‘Hate to say it, but a man could get to like the sound of that.’
Stenwold shrugged. ‘You wanted it, I recall.’
Balkus scowled. ‘You get tired of being on your own. It’s in the blood,’ he muttered. ‘Never thought I’d end up going home, though.’ He bit his lip.
Stenwold reflected that all the renegade Ants he had ever known who had turned their backs on their home and people, they were each of them still chained to their heritage. Growing up with a mind full of the thoughts of others left a big, empty gap when they set out on their own. How many of them were drawn back, eventually, for all that it would usually mean their deaths?
Balkus was obviously thinking on similar lines. ‘And they’re fine about it, are they? My… the Sarnesh?’
‘They know all about you. I’ve sent word to them, saying who I’ve put in charge.’
‘That isn’t the same!’ Balkus objected. ‘Look, I don’t want to go up that rail-line only to find they’ve just been sharpening the knives.’
‘We’re at war now, and the Sarnesh understand that they have to put aside their preferences,’ Stenwold replied. ‘And you have more experience than anyone else in the army here.’
‘Well, you’ve got that right,’ Balkus grunted.
‘Shall we inspect the troops, now?’ Stenwold asked. The Ant nodded gloomily and led the way out of the hall of the Amphiophos, Collegium’s seat of government. While Stenwold had been in Sarn, arguing diplomacy, Balkus had been training troops here at home. Collegium had never possessed a standing army and, although the recent siege by the Ants of Vek had created hundreds of veterans, it was short of full-time soldiers. Balkus would not normally have been considered officer material in anyone’s book, but he had a loud voice, and he was an Ant, meaning warfare in his very veins. What he had so far made out of the recruits they had given him was nothing to compare to a properly regimented Ant-kinden force, but it was something entirely new to Collegium.