If they had offered a direct assault, then Roder had no doubt that he would have smashed them. Superior tactics and technology would have sent the savages packing without difficulty. Instead, the Mantids crept in, as ones and twos and small bands, their stealth and their Art evading the eyes of the sentries, however much artificial light the Wasps were able to call upon. They slipped into the camp and killed whoever opportunity put across their path, but they were subtler than mere assassins. In the same way as the Moths of Tharn had plagued the mine owners of Helleron for generations, so the Mantids destroyed everything they could find. Without a shred of the artificer’s craft, they were still able to damage vehicles, carts and artillery, to hole water and fuel barrels, and to lay thorny caltrops, snares and spikes for the unwary. During the day, after the army finally got underway, Mantis warbands would shadow them constantly, always on the lookout for an opening to swoop in, loose their deadly arrows and then retreat. They presented Roder with a perfect mathematical challenge. He could defend completely, arraying his men so that the Mantids did not even try an assault, but then the Eighth would proceed at a mere crawl. The faster he advanced, however, the more opportunities he presented to the enemy, and they took them without fail.
He had hoped for howling savages, but the Mantis-kinden here were cunning and patient, and he knew that behind them would be their Moth masters and military advisers from Sarn, which was being given plenty of time to prepare for his assault.
Still, even if he was slowed down, his progress was inexorable, and the casualties and damage had all been within tolerance. He had always known that the Eighth would have to run this gauntlet, even if he had not quite appreciated that they would have to walk it.
This morning, though, even as his army was dismantling the previous night’s defences, he heard the drone of a flying machine on the air.
The Sarnesh had tried one air attack, a tenday ago. Their machines and pilots were inferior to the Wasp Spearflights that Roder carried with him, but their mindlink made them troublesome opponents, even so. They had not adapted their machines for the sort of ground attacks that Roder knew the Imperial air force was carrying out over Collegium, and so the overall damage was slight, but there was every chance that the Ants would come back with something more effective. He had issued standing orders, so even now a dozen of his own aviators were rushing for their machines.
There was only a single flier incoming, though, and it came from the east, from home. The Spearflights escorted it in, and Roder saw that it was a new long-bodied machine, presumably one of the Farsphex model raiders that were committed to the Collegium offensive.
He knew that these machines carried would carry a passenger, but he did not expect the apparition that unfolded itself awkwardly out of the passenger compartment. Tall, hunched and lanky, grey skin banded with white, and bundled up in a scholar’s robe edged with Imperial colours, Roder recognized the Imperial adviser, Gjegevey. If asked to prepare a list of the last men he would expect to see out here, the ancient Woodlouse-kinden would certainly have appeared on it.
Once Gjegevey was tottering on his feet and moving out of the way, the pilot made himself known, and at that point Roder would not have been overly surprised to see the Empress herself. Instead, though, he saw a young man with a captain’s rank badge, the uniform of the Light Airborne adorned with red pauldrons and gorget, denoting some unfamiliar unit.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Roder asked, though with nothing pleasant in his tone. Men like Gjegevey unsettled him. The old creature had no fixed place in the world, being simultaneously a slave and a great power within the Empire.
‘Orders, General. I, mmn, bear the Empress’s word.’ Gjegevey extracted a somewhat creased scroll from within his robe, and Roder accepted it reluctantly.
When he had broken the seal, checked the signatures and read the contents, his face lost all expression. ‘This cannot be,’ he said flatly.
‘A temporary measure only, General,’ Gjegevey assured him, ‘but essential. Think of it as part of a greater plan, the, hm, Empress’s own.’
‘Impossible. I cannot give these orders.’
‘They are from the Empress’s own hand, sir,’ the pilot said, imbuing that ‘sir’ with precious little respect.
‘And who are you?’ Roder demanded of the young man, who had the sort of smug confidence he associated only with the Rekef.
‘I am of the Red Watch,’ the pilot replied. ‘I am the voice of the Empress.’
Roder stared at him, and Gjegevey added, in a low voice, ‘There have been changes back in Capitas. Believe me, these orders are not negotiable.’
The general sagged slightly, looking about him at his busy army. In a moment he was going to have to tell them, all of them, that they were to withdraw some several miles east and there make camp and wait for further orders. And all the while still within the Mantis-kinden’s reach.
Gjegevey, though, who had brought such bad tidings, already seemed to have forgotten him. Instead he was staring north towards the great, engulfing shadow that was the Etheryon- Nethyon forest, with a speculative expression on his face.
Thirty-Six
The tent of Chief Officer Marteus looked spartan, with merely a bedroll slung in one corner and a wooden stand for the man’s armour. No map table, for he held his plans in his head, and sharing them with others was not something he was good at. No chair even: he would sit on the floor with his soldiers. Only the fact that he had a tent to himself showed any indication of rank.
Straessa had been called in without warning at first light, and she was not sure whether she had done something wrong. Certainly there had been a fair amount of larking around amongst her troops, which she had hoped was good for morale, or some similar military virtue, for she was not the right officer to quell it.
‘Subordinate Officer the Antspider,’ Marteus acknowledged her with a nod. The renegade Tarkesh Ant was in full uniform: breastplate and buff coat, even the lobster-tail helm dangling from one hand as though he would don it any moment and charge off to war alone.
‘Chief Officer Marteus.’ Straessa could not say that she liked this man overmuch: he was distant and unsociable, as most Ants were in the company of other kinden. Her respect for him, though, had only grown, for he was so much more the born warrior and logistician than the Collegium locals.
‘We’ll engage the enemy tomorrow, most likely,’ he told her. ‘They’re keeping a steady progress and, if they chose, they could hit us before dawn, or earlier. They made a fierce pace from Tark to the Felyal. We don’t know precisely what time they could manage, if they pushed.’
‘I understand, Chief.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Battle order, Sub. Bitter as it is to have to spell it out for you, but there’s none of you who could work it out for yourself or take it from my mind. It’s a simple plan, though. Just keep repeating it to yourself until it sinks in.’ He was overdoing the gruff, and that made Straessa nervous. ‘The automotives are going to form our wings, flying out left and right to assault the enemy in the flanks. Some will carry light artillery, others just troops. They will do their best not to engage the enemy automotives, for reasons you’ll understand full well.’