Seda stared into that half-mask face. What does he gain from this? This is because the Spiders poisoned him, is it? He hates them that much? Where has this come from?
‘Majesty,’ Roder said again, and it was not the soldier that now spoke, but the plain man beneath. ‘Heed me on this, I beg you. They are no fit allies for us, and Tynan is in danger every moment he marches alongside them. Ask him!’ Incredibly, he was pointing at Tisamon, driven to calling upon the least likely aid in his attempt to persuade her. ‘Ask your other bodyguards. Ask the Nethyen! The Mantids have known forever what the Eighth found out in the last war. I have seen my men poisoned and trapped, seduced from their duty, turned against their superiors. I have fought a war against them, and there is nothing of the soldier in them, no honour, no heart, just masks and more masks!’ He was baring his soul now, and the bitter venom in there startled her. She recalled how he had asked to be given the southern front, before the Empire had allied itself with the Spiderlands Aristoi. And that would have gone even more poorly than I thought, and we would even now be fighting around Solarno rather than most of the way to Collegium. And yet, and yet. .
The Spiders were an old Inapt power, and they had held onto that power when most of their peers from the Days of Lore had fallen into ruin. They controlled vast territories, cities of the Apt and the Inapt both, and just like Seda herself they made use of all the artificers’ machines without needing to understand them. A jolt of uncertainty shot through her. What have I overlooked? Overconfidence was always the scourge of rulers. Of course, the Spiders are clever — they have been playing for centuries the game I have invented for myself. So what is the true plan that the Aldanrael have hatched? Is Roder right?
She could not say, and that gaping chasm in her knowledge came close to frightening her. But Roder was right in one thing: she could not be certain of the Spider-kinden as allies. They were treacherous, and she must remember that, and take steps to protect the Empire from them should they turn.
‘General Roder,’ she began, and her very tone was enough to retract Tisamon’s blade and to dispel the tension that their little confrontation had been spreading throughout the camp. ‘You are a good and loyal servant of the Empire,’ she continued, ‘and I hear your words. Our allies in the Spiderlands have been true to us so far, but there will come a time when we will not need them, or they will not need us. It is well to be watchful, and perhaps Tynan is indeed too trusting.’
She saw him relax, and at last glimpsed the spark of motive there. Yes, he hated the Spiders for the injuries of the last war — both to him and to his army — but there was more. His concern was for the Empire and for its greater war. True, if Tynan fell, then Roder would find himself caught between Sarn and the Collegiates, but it was more than that. Roder wanted the Empire to win. She realized, then, how close she had been to turning him away, how her own exalted station, her personal ambitions, could have compromised the war. And they will do so, still, for I will brook no barriers, but I am Empress — as well as heiress to the Days of Lore. I must remember my people. She had a hollow, unhappy feeling that this would be harder and harder to achieve, in the days to come. I will be Empress and magician-queen both. I will rule as the Spiders rule. And if the Spiders challenge me, then. .
‘Captain Vrakir,’ she snapped, and one of her Red Watch came rushing over to do her bidding. He had been listed to accompany her into the forest, but now she had another task for him. ‘Commandeer an orthopter and fly to join the Second,’ she told him. ‘I will have sealed orders prepared for you. You are to act as adviser to General Tynan, with my full authority. Ostrec alone will suffice to represent the Red Watch in my escort.’
Vrakir saluted. He was a serious, intelligent man, formerly a lieutenant in the Fourth Army, one of the survivors of the Felyal massacre early in the last war. More, he was gifted: some great-grandparent had adulterated the Wasp blood within him, and she knew he had proved deficient with machines and maps, a poor representative of the Apt. He was no magician, of course — none of her Red Watch could have mastered the simplest magic — but he made a good vessel. There was just enough vestigial affinity within him that she could work through him, speak to him, even see through his eyes if she used all her strength. It would be like trying to force herself through the tiny holes of a sieve, but that was better than the solid wall presented by most Wasps.
‘I will have orders drawn up by the time you are ready to leave,’ she told him and, as Vrakir ran off, she turned her attention back to Roder. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘show me my escorts, your picked men.’
Seda knew that Ant-kinden armies were built about their famed heavy infantry, blocks of supremely disciplined, mindlinked men and women who had mail and swords, shields and crossbows that made up the grand majority of every Ant army the Empire that ever faced — for all that the individual city-states were usually at each other’s throats. They were slow to innovate, the Ants. All that intermingling of thoughts, which might have been a well-spring of invention, instead seemed to suppress any individuals with new ideas. Seda suspected that on the rare occasions an Ant with a different way of thinking was allowed any power, the world became aware of it rapidly. For that matter, she had been receiving some disturbing reports concerning the new Ant general opposing the Eighth.
Wasp armies, in contrast, had traditionally been built about the Light Airborne, soldiers armed with swords or spears and their stinging Art, and able to move swiftly about the battlefield, lacking the Ants’ iron discipline but swifter and more flexible. Wasp heavy infantry could not stand toe to toe with the Ants for long — not even the old disbanded Sentinels could have done that, whatever retired veterans might tell each other — but the Wasps beat the Ants repeatedly by outmanoeuvring them and by out-thinking them, by using the strengths of their Auxillians — and by allowing individual talent to count for more.
The Pioneers were a good example of this. They had been created during the Twelve-year War against the Dragonflies of the Commonweal, a foe who at their best had been as mobile and unpredictable as the Wasps themselves. Often the Commonwealers had taken inaccessible spots as their strongholds — badlands, hill-forts, or the hearts of ancient forests just like this. Often, too, there had been Mantis-kinden fighting alongside them. The Pioneers had been some of the most skilled individuals that the Empire could draw upon, perhaps the first ever occasion when the usual considerations of purity of blood had been allowed to slacken, when sheer ability had become paramount. And they had died, of course. Fighting the enemy’s war on the enemy’s ground, they had suffered a rate of attrition worse than frontline battlefield units, but they had done their job. No Dragonfly fortress or holdout had survived the Empire’s attentions, and in many cases it was the work of the Pioneers to bring in the rest of the army.
The war against the Lowlands had been a slow time for those veterans of the Commonweal, so far. The Lowlanders fought like the Apt should, with machines and with armies. The call had gone out though and, even as Roder’s Eighth had crossed the Imperial border, the Pioneers had been strapping on their gear, taking up their weapons. Now Roder had brought before Seda the best of them that he could offer. His expression was pained, for they were hardly the immaculate paragons of Wasp soldiery that he might want, but they were good. They knew their craft and, if she was to break off from the main force within the forest and pursue her own aims, she would need them. The forest would be against her, and half the Mantis-kinden in it, together with whatever force the Sarnesh could commit. And her of course, the cursed Beetle girl, Seda’s rival. Seda would need every advantage, including this ragged, disreputable trio.