The fliers lifted off in an almost simultaneous leap, their pilots casting them low over their own troops, and then reaching for height as they turned to approach the enemy. There went a new breed of Wasp soldier: the warrior-artificer who lived at speeds Thalric could barely imagine.
The flying machines now banked over the insurrectionist army, and a little cloud of the more optimistic enemy airborne rose to try and confront them. Thalric barely heard the first explosive as it landed, saw only the plume of dust and smoke arise over the army's right flank. The steady, slogging Bee-kinden advance faltered there as a hole was punched into one of their tightly packed squads. The battle had started.
At a signal from Pravoc, the loyalist shields began their cautious advance. It was a slow pace, almost an amble. They were more than happy to let the Tyrshaani do all the walking. Thunder spoke from behind Thalric, a single cough that rattled the ground, and another great geyser of dust flowered from thirty yards in front of the enemy advance. The mechanized leadshotters were finding the range in a leisurely manner.
Thalric turned back to his tent. The Imperial camp was close behind the Wasp lines but, unless Pravoc's reputation was merely hot air, the battle should only move further off towards the doomed city once the Tyrshaani got into snapbow range. It was not that Thalric had no stomach for watching an Imperial victory, although perhaps that thought did not fill him with the same joy it once had. It was just that the inevitable grinding of Pravoc's workmanlike battle tactics was unlikely to provide enthralling entertainment. Outside, the leadshotters thumped again, two or three of them in unison, so that the wine jar and bowl rattled on the table. Thalric stared over at his armour, set out for him by some diligent menial. He was supposed to have someone around to dress him in it, as a mark of his rank. The thought made him irritable: as a soldier, he could shrug his way into a banded cuirass without flunkeys.
He had no need for armour at all, of course, but there would be men of the Empire fighting and dying, so it seemed wrong to eschew it. Being without it with a battle nearby made him feel naked.
He put on his special undercoat first. This was long force of habit, although the copperweave shirt was not the torn and battered piece that had saved him in Myna, in Helleron and Collegium. The stuff was murderously expensive, but rank had some privileges, after all. The undershirt did not rely on the copperweave alone, either. There was an extra layer beneath it, for occasions when mere metal would not suffice. Over the copperweave, that was so fine and fluid that it would be almost undetectable, he pulled on his arming jacket and his cuirass, shrugging it out until the plates hung straight.
Now at least I look like a soldier.
He felt better for that, since Seda's court was full of men who did their best to look anything but. Thalric hated them all, both individually and collectively.
He turned for the tent flap and saw the assassins.
They were so clearly such that, in other circumstances, it would have been funny. He had caught them in the act of creeping in, two Wasp-kinden men in uniform with drawn blades and narrowed eyes, wearing expressions of horrified guilt. It must have seemed to them that he had been somehow expecting them, that he had carefully armoured himself in preparation for them, then waited patiently until they entered the tent.
His sword was still attached to his civilian belt lying on the ground. With a convulsive movement he ripped it from its scabbard, slashing a wide arc across the rear of the tent. If this had been a simple soldier's tent, that would have been it: the freedom of the sky open to him in an instant. He was no longer a simple soldier, though, and this tent was made out of carpets and needed three men to carry. His blade barely cut into it as the two assassins rushed towards him.
One loosed a sting bolt from his open hand as they charged in, but the other assassin was so eager that he nearly caught it in the back. The shot went wild and Thalric tried to bring his sword back into line to parry the quicker man's incoming thrust. He twisted aside as he did so, but the man's blade went home anyway, digging in at his side where the regulation armour plates did not cover him. The sword dug in hard, but skittered off the copperweave mesh underneath. That trick isn't going to save my life for ever, Thalric considered. Someone's going to stab me in the face eventually. Meanwhile he was putting an elbow into the man's ear and thrusting his palm forward at the second killer, almost in the same moment. They loosed together, crackling bolts of energy lighting up the tent's dim interior. Thalric felt the heat as he ducked, letting the stingshot sear past his face. His own shot punched the man across the shoulder before it scorched its way into the tent fabric, which promptly started to smoulder. Now he had a chance to look he saw that, behind him, it was actually on fire.
Who in the wastes made this tent? It's a deathtrap!
Abruptly none of them much wanted to be inside it, and yet the two assassins were giving him no leeway. The swordsman had recovered from the blow enough to try and stab again but, this close, Thalric was able to trip him and then stamp on him hard before barrelling for the tent entrance. The second man got in his way and they tumbled over each other through the tent flap. Thalric punched him in the face by instinct, then called up his sting before finding that his sword had already run the man through, slipping between the plates of his mail.
Feeling light-headed, Thalric got to his feet, the sword-hilt greasy in his fingers. He heard the other man approaching from inside the tent and turned to catch him, hearing distantly a sharp 'snap' but not recognizing it for what it was.
Something slammed him hard in the gut and he went over, mind turning utterly blank. There was quite a lot of pain, and he felt a warm wetness of blood. Breathing was difficult, as though a strong man had kicked him under the ribcage. It was all he could do to stay conscious, keep his eyes open. He heard footsteps running closer.
The second assassin emerged from the tent, looking singed and angry. He glanced past Thalric at the newcomer.
'Took your time,' he said – and Thalric shot him under the chin, cutting him off without even a scream, the killer's face vanishing in a sudden inferno. Thalric rolled over, feeling a brutal stab of agony in his side. The third man went stumbling away from him, his face slack with shock, feeding another bolt into his snapbow.
Thalric extended an arm towards him, but the pain made his head swim and he missed his chance. As the snapbowman finished his fumbled reloading and raised the weapon, Thalric gritted his teeth and hurled himself away on to his good side.
His impact with the ground and the impact of the bolt came at the same time. The metal bolt ripped across his left arm, opening a shallow line across his biceps. He gritted his teeth, clinging to consciousness, and loosed his sting over and over. The first three shots went wild, but the man was idiotically trying to reload again rather than watching his enemy or using the weapon his Art had given him. Thalric's fourth shot burned him across the leg and he dropped to one knee, spilling bolts across the ground.
Thalric hissed in pain and then shot him in the chest. Under other circumstances he might have wanted the man alive, but just now he simply was not up to the bother. Feeling the drain on his body's resources he put another two searing bolts into the corpse just to be sure.
He sat down abruptly, hearing the tent crackle merrily behind him. The bruised ribs from the thwarted sword were nothing, and the gash on his arm would mend well enough. With shaking hands he reached for the first snapbow bolt, lodged in his stomach. He kept his eyes closed, because he could not bring himself to explore the wound any other way than by tentative probing.