There was one Wasp amongst them, and he was perhaps the biggest man Seda had ever seen, hulking head and shoulders over his peers as though he had some Mole Cricket blood in him. He was broad, too, bulked out with muscle, his bared arms massive, looking as though they could uproot every tree in the forest for her until she had what she wanted. Twin axes were sheathed across his back, each looking as though a normal man would need two hands to wield it, and he wore a long coat studded with chitin plates, with a dark metal breastplate beneath it, nothing of the black and gold about him. His name was Gorrec, Pioneer sergeant, and he was the closest to an Imperial soldier that she was looking at.
To his right stood Icnumon, who looked as though Gorrec could have crushed him in one hand. He was a slender, pale piece of work, his ash-fair hair worn long and tied back, his features sharp and slightly out of proportion, as so often with halfbreeds. He had Wasp blood in him but his father had been Mantis-kinden, which made for a very dangerous combination. He had his mother’s sting, and the spines of his father’s people speared out from his forearms. He was an assassin, Roder had explained, who had stalked the shadows of the Commonweal, playing hide and seek with Dragonfly scouts and executing enemy leaders within their own forest haunts. He wore no armour, just a loose, long tunic and cloak of mottled grey-brown. There was a short, recurved bow holstered at his back, and long knives at his belt, but Seda could tell far more than Roder could what the man’s real advantage was. Through some teaching of his father or secrets learned in the Commonweal, Icnumon had a touch of the magician about him: a few incantations and half-understood tricks to complement his Art, to let him stalk unseen in the darkness.
To Gorrec’s left was a shorter, squatter figure, and not what she would have expected among the Pioneers. Instead of a slender Inapt killer or a rugged Wasp, here was a solid, balding Beetle-kinden wearing a hauberk of reinforced leather that was one step removed from an artificer’s protective overalls. He had a snapbow over his shoulder, not the standard infantry model but the shorter-barrelled pieces that she understood the Light Airborne preferred for speed and ease of movement. This man was Jons Escarrabin, who had been born in Collegium a very long time ago, and who had fought on both sides in the Twelve-year War, graduating from captive to Auxillian to Pioneer. He looked like a mild shopkeeper, and had been personally mentioned in reports as a crack shot, an expert wildsman and a halfway decent artificer. He fought for the Empire for the same reason that a surprising number of mercenary types did, because where else would they get such a rewarding opportunity to practise their trades?
‘I shall take them,’ she declared. ‘General, begin moving your chosen forces into the forest. The Nethyen and their Moth-kinden masters are expecting you, and they shall serve your officers as guides and Auxillians, bringing you to the fray. No quarter for the Etheryen. No quarter for the Sarnesh. Drive them back wherever you meet them.’ Roder would have some inkling of the magnitude of the task, the size of the forest, its beasts, its darkness, no fit terrain for the Wasp-kinden, and yet they would do their best, despite it all, for her glory and that of the Empire.
And if those two glories diverge slightly, who is to know?
‘My retinue will be Gjegevey, Tisamon and my personal bodyguards, Ostrec of the Red Watch and your three Pioneers. I shall commandeer such others as I see fit from the locals and your forces as I need them. For yourself, Roder, while the Mantis-kinden are at war, there will be no support from the woods for the Sarnesh. You have waited long enough. Ready your men to march.’
Nine
The drone of Imperial machines was all that was left in the sky now. The deceptively quiet Collegiate Stormreaders had been and gone and, from his position dug into a hollow alongside a handful of Spider mercenaries, Morkaris could not have said how much the new Farsphex had helped. He had heard a fair number of bombs going off, for all their efforts.
Cautiously he crept out of the hollow. Morkaris was a cadaverously thin Spider-kinden, seeming pale as the grave in his articulated black mail, with a double-handed axe across his back that looked too heavy for him to wield. He had been a mercenary all his adult life, though, fighting for every coin and at every station, from lone warrior to captain, from captain to captain of captains. Now he had signed on with the Aldanrael family as their adjutant, the man who kept all their varied mercenary forces in line — and damned if he wasn’t regretting it.
I should have stayed in the Spiderlands.
The last few days had been a harsh lesson about how well the sort of war he was used to travelled. The Spiderlands Aristoi fought all the time, with various levels of deniability, and mercenaries were a common commodity over there, with a good company never short of work — sometimes taking the coin of three families in as many days — sometimes all on the same day, or even in the same battle. In the Spiderlands, war was something Morkaris understood. Here, though. . between the Collegiates’ cursed flying machines and the Wasps’ own murderous devices, he was feeling old and out of his depth.
‘Chief,’ one of his men said, and he looked up to see another Spider approaching, and not one he was pleased to see, either. There had just been an attack, with the Collegiates quartering the sky and dropping explosives on any target that presented itself, and here was Jadis of the Melisandyr, his full armour gleaming as though the man had sat polishing it throughout the bombardment.
Jadis was commander of the Aldanrael’s regular forces, hence Morkaris’s opposite number, chief rival and constant foil. Here was a man born with all the advantages Morkaris had been denied: good looks, good family, respect that didn’t require the daily shedding of blood. . Morkaris spat wearily as the man strode over.
‘You’re a hard man to find,’ Jadis told him.
‘I like to think the Collegiates say the same. What do you want?’ Morkaris demanded. ‘Worried about my health?’
The two men sized each other up, not for the first time, as the mercenaries moved out in a loose semicircle behind their leader. Jadis had come alone, but nothing in his pose or expression suggested that he was remotely worried about his safety.
If I thought that was just arrogance. . Challenges between individuals of comparable rank was not uncommon in Spider armies. Just as Morkaris was here to keep the infighting of the mercenaries at an acceptable level, so he himself could kick up some trouble if he wished, and had Jadis been the powdered major-domo he would have expected, then perhaps a little accident might have been arranged. Jadis could fight, though. The Melisandyr trained their sons well. When the Felyen Mantis-kinden and their allies had attacked the camp, Morkaris had witnessed the man at work: sword and shield and mail, protecting his mistress. The sight had been an education.
‘We’re moving,’ Jadis told him flatly. He was sharp enough to know just what Morkaris thought of him, and not to care overmuch. Being liked by mercenaries was plainly not an ambition of his.