Vargen's men made a fierce spectacle at this distance, but Thalric had heard the scouts and the spies report. There was a core of Wasp-kinden, mostly the garrisons of Tyrshaan and neighbouring Shalk, that would fight to the death. Dying in battle was preferable to dying in the fighting pit or at a public execution, especially given how inventive the new Empress had become. The bulk of Vargen's force were Auxillians, though, who had less to gain from victory, less to lose from defeat. Those solid blocks of armoured Tyrshaani Bee-kinden would see no reason to throw themselves on to the pikes of the enemy on behalf of their usurper lord. They now made dark squares against the tawny ground before the city walls: halberdiers, crossbowmen and masses of the interlocking hexagonal shields that the Tyrshaani favoured. The Bees were no match for the trained and keen soldiers of the Empire, either singly or en masse. Their only battle virtue was an implacability of spirit that Thalric suspected they would not be deploying today.
Vargen had placed a quartet of solid-looking automotives in the vanguard of his force, but Tyrshaan had always been a backwater, and their boxy, six-legged design was now twenty years old. By contrast, the punitive force had brought orthopters, snapbows and mobile artillery.
'I make it five of theirs to four of ours,' said a lieutenant next to him, peering through a spyglass. 'Not counting the Flies.'
'Well, who would?' sniffed Colonel Pravoc, the Imperial commander. 'So we outnumber them four to five. Good.' He gave Thalric one of his sickly smiles. Pravoc was a lean man who looked as though he lived primarily off ambition and a joy in the downfall of others. He had been chosen for this role because he was an able battlefield commander, and because having a mere colonel sent to oppose him would throw the self-made General Vargen into a rage. Altogether, Pravoc was a man of few words and fewer compliments.
'I trust it all meets with your approval,' he said, a flick of his fingers encompassing the might of the Imperial army that was falling into place around them.
'I'm not here to approve,' Thalric told him.
Pravoc's answering look said, And why are you here? but he was too much concerned with his own future to say it. The presence here of the Imperial Regent had inspired rather than shaken him. 'They'll be marching for us soon, according to our spies.'
Thalric shrugged. 'I'll leave you to your command, Colonel.'
He went to look over the black and gold of Pravoc's divisions: the usual array of light airborne waiting behind shieldwalls of the medium infantry which were supplemented, now, with snapbowmen. Those slender new weapons were about to make a sorry mess of the Bee-kinden armour, Thalric decided. It was just as well the Empire had suffered its crisis before the weapons had spread to the provinces.
General Vargen was not unique, of course. There had been a full score of provincial governors, mostly in the East- and South-Empire, who had decided to strike out on their own. A few had banded together to make little realms – Empirelets? – Emporia? – of their own, but most had been stubbornly solitary. It had been the succession that had provoked it, and Thalric was surprised it had not turned out worse. Emperor Alvdan the Second had died with no legitimate children, nor even a living bastard, having been so ruthless in dealing with potential threats to his power that he had put into danger everything that his father and grandfather had built. The rescuing hand, when it arrived, had been that of his sister, now Empress Seda the First. That had not sat well with many, because in the Empire men held power and women served. It was a tradition that went back to when they had all been squabbling tribes stealing each other's wives. There had never been a woman soldier or merchant or chieftain, and certainly there had never been a woman as ruler.
Seda had done her groundwork, though, and her allies were formidable. In the end, the central Empire including Capitas, Sonn and the neighbouring cities had bowed the knee to her. The West-Empire was lost for the moment to rebellion among the slave-races, and with it any dreams of conquering the lush expanses of the Lowlands. That could wait, however. Men like Vargen could not.
Vargen, like all his peers, had not believed that Seda's rule would hold. He had staked his future on her grip failing, on more and more turning against her. She was, after all, only a woman.
Thalric chuckled bitterly over that attitude. He, of all men, knew Seda, and how she had grown up with a knife at her throat every minute of every day and night, the only surviving relative of the paranoid Emperor Alvdan. It had taught her a certain outlook: Seda had become a woman of iron and Thalric would not want to cross her. If he had his time again, he would make sure he had nothing to do with her. The offer she made him had seemed too good to be true. Only now, when he was too close and had learned too much, did he understand how it was exactly that. How many men envied him: Imperial Regent, most important man in the Empire, and even sharer of the Empress's bed? It meant nothing, however. It meant that he was a mere figurehead, a man for the Empress to parade in front of those who expected to see a man close to the seat of power. He had no power, only an awful knowledge. He knew Seda now, when it was too late.
He was here to oversee the extinction of the traitor Vargen and the return of another piece of the Empire into the proper hands. He was here, as a sign of the Empress's favour, to inspire Pravoc and the rest, and to remind them that they were fighting for the true Imperial bloodline.
The thought made him twitch.
He was also here because, lately, he had seized any opportunity to be out of the presence of the Empress herself. He was a man in his middle years, a veteran of the battlefield in his youth, a veteran of the games of the Rekef for two decades and more. His skin bore the burns and scars of his history like medals. He had survived where others had fallen. He had killed with his blade and his sting and his bare hands, started and quelled rebellions, tortured women and slain children, hunted and been hunted. He had done all of this and Seda was still just a slip of a girl, barely of age, yet he feared her like nothing else. His skin crawled at the thought of her.
He heard a horn sound, way out on the plain, as Vargen's host began its slow advance. He saw the dust start to rise from hundreds of feet, as compact formations of Beekinden started to trudge forward. To left and right, Vargen's Wasps moved out in loose order, ready to take to the air, and behind and around them was a great mass of Flykinden from Shalk, Vargen's other conquest. They were not reckoned a dependable asset on a battlefield, Fly-kinden, but these wore striped leather cuirasses and carried bows. Thalric suspected that Vargen was depending on them to pin down the Imperial airborne until the crossbows of the Bee-kinden could be brought to bear.
That prompted a smile: Vargen's tactics were sound, his politics less so. Thalric had already seen the little figure of the Shalken ambassador skulking into Pravoc's tent, confirming that the Flies always knew where their best interests lay. At a certain point in the battle they would vanish like last night's bad dream, leaving Vargen exposed on both flanks. Thalric had no doubt of their commitment, just as he had no doubt that their abrupt disappearance would come only when the battle turned against Vargen. Fly-kinden had an impeccable sense of survival, and the skill was in knowing how to use it to one's own advantage.
He next heard the orthopters starting up their engines. Pravoc had only a dozen of them, but they were all new-built Spearflights, which were swiftly becoming the workhorses of the Imperial air force after their achievements over Solarno.
And didn't we lose Solarno? And since when did we ever have an 'air force'? But progress was the watchword, now. Battles against men like Vargen were small change in the pocket of history. Every strategist within the Empire knew that one day they would be turning towards the Lowlands again, looking for a more worthy adversary. The battle of Solarno had at least taught them that mechanized air power was a solid part of their future.