Lissart had known something about Roder, at least, and he would question her again after he retired to his tent. He had ordered her brought along for a number of reasons: she could advise on anything unexpected the Empire might do, or she could even be used as a bargaining counter, perhaps. In the hidden darkness of Milus’s mind, where his fellows were not allowed, there was also the reason that she made him feel better: a tame Imperial agent he could bully and intimidate, and yet a woman who possessed a quick, biting conversation that none of his kin was likely to reward him with. And also expendable — useful but ultimately expendable. What more could a man ask for?
His commanders were reporting in, one by one, confirming their readiness, their part within the plan — whether that plan called for a battle now or tomorrow. Milus himself had obsessively pored over the reports of the first clash between his people and the Eighth at the siege of Malkan’s Folly. There the Wasps had been securely dug in, and the Ants had tried their traditional frontal assault against that well-defended position. Here, however, the Eighth had been marching to meet them, so would have only the most cursory fortifications. Here also, the Ants were ready to disperse over an enormous area and come at the Wasps from all sides, giving no target for the Wasps to mass their superior artifice against. . well, perhaps one target, but that was all part of the plan. Attacking in open order like that would be suicide for any other kinden and, because he was not so trapped in the usual thinking of his kinden, Milus was still concerned about the rush of casualties that his men would suffer when they did form up in the moments before they struck. Even with perfectly linked minds, it was a formidable piece of manoeuvring to get right, and there would be an uncomfortably long period when the Ants were still not quite together, and yet were packed close enough for the Wasps to unleash everything they had.
But that was the plan, and he had no better one. If he was lucky, his distraction would draw a lot of Imperial attention and buy his soldiers a little more time, saving a few lives. Sarnesh lives, of course.
There was one section of his army that would not be attacking in open order — because it lacked the hard discipline required for such niceties. They would go marching in shoulder to shoulder — or as close to that as non-Ants could ever manage. They would form the centre of Milus’s attack. If he could have painted targets on them, he would have done so.
Tell me about Roder, he had encouraged Lissart. And, with a little encouragement, she had. Was he a clever man? She wouldn’t say clever, precisely. Not a stupid man and nobody’s fool. He was a solid planner of battles but not a man to rely on untested ingenuity. That had proved to be a strength when he had been fighting the Spiders at Seldis. It was a fool’s game to try and out-weave Spider-kinden, after all — your clever plans would turn out to be part of their even more devious ones. Instead, he had trusted to the known capabilities of his troops and his armaments, and beaten them on the field deftly and brutally, before moving to invest their city. He had left precious little room for all their vaunted plots and trickery.
Milus could predict, therefore, that Roder would understand exactly how the Ants intended to come at him. And yet, at the same time, a tempting target for the Wasp artillery would not go unheeded, for even if those close-grouped soldiers were not Sarnesh, they were still a threat. All those Mynans, all that rabble from Princep Salma, they would still kill Wasps if they got close to them. Roder could not ignore them, therefore.
That they would die in their droves did not concern Milus. It was a battle, after all, and non-Sarnesh casualties did not overly worry him.
And there was one more thing he had learned from Lissart. Roder carried a grudge born from a narrowly failed assassination attempt outside Seldis.
Every Spider-kinden that Princep had vomited up for military service — and there were quite a few of them — would be positioned front and centre in that nice, tempting block of miscellaneous infantry. Oh, probably Roder was too much the professional to let that sway him, but Milus lost nothing by offering such a bait.
By nightfall it appeared that Roder would be spending the hours of darkness digging in, putting up what makeshift fortifications he could. The scouts of both sides would have a busy night of it, with Fly-kinden trying to dodge each other’s attention to get a good look at the enemy. The entire Sarnesh force would be sleeping in its armour, ready to wake at a moment’s notice, but by then Milus reckoned he had the measure of his opponent. He told his commanders to move the artillery three hours before dawn, and to expect the Wasp engines to start pounding them an hour after that.
History in the making, Milus knew. On such decisions rests the fate of Sarn and, by extension, all the Lowlands.
It was a shame — a predictable shame — that Collegium had not been able to hold out, but, if tomorrow’s battle gave him the opportunity, he would enjoy the gratitude on the Collegiates’ faces when he came to their aid. Sarn had been following the Beetle lead meekly for far too long. It was now about time that they renegotiated the details of their partnership.
Thirty-Nine
They left Averic in an interrogation room — not strapped to the table, yet, but with his wrists chained to the wall above his head, his hands bound palm to palm to stifle his sting.
He and Eujen had been marched under heavy escort across half the city to the district around the north gate, which was securely Wasp-held. Despite Imperial caution, there had been almost no sound of fighting on the still night air — and what little he had noticed came from the wrong direction, presumably the ongoing squabble between the Wasps and their erstwhile allies.
He was detained in a counting house off the market square, which the Second Army had seized for its use — appropriated seeming too polite a phrase. He assumed that the paraphernalia of interrogation that he had been left to ponder on had been installed recently. It seemed unlikely to have been a previous fixture.
They wanted him to reflect on all the ways they could persuade him, he knew. Even though he had never operated such machines himself, nor even watched another subjected to their mercies, he still had a clearer idea than any Collegiate as to just what extent his interrogators would go to. The physiology he had learned here at the College further established his grounding in just how much varied damage the human body could sustain.
But they had given him time. As a student of the College, solving intellectual problems was supposedly something he could do. So he stared at the table, at the rack of implements — none of them exactly spotless, for he was not the first citizen to find himself at the sharp end of the Empire’s inquiries — and he considered his options.
After half an hour, by his best reckoning, an engineer came in to glance cursorily over the tools, while an officer came to look similarly over Averic. A captain, he noted. That told him precisely how important or otherwise the Empire felt he was.
‘Well, now,’ the captain remarked, eyes studying Averic, assessing tolerances. ‘I’m going to ask you a set of questions, boy — once as you are now, and once on the table. After that I’ll go and consider your answers, and then perhaps we’ll go over everything again and put the table to some use, just to ensure that there’s nothing you’re holding back. But, then, I’d guess you already expected that, being what you are?’
‘To be honest I expected a debriefing,’ Averic said. His voice was steady, almost conversational.
The engineer stopped, a tool under his hand clicking metal on metal.
The captain’s face remained without expression. ‘Repeat.’
‘I apologize. I expected a debriefing, sir. I’ve been amongst the Beetles for a year, sir. Proper procedure is hard to hold on to.’