Adrian Tchaikovsky - War Master's Gate

Dead, he looked dead, and in Mummers’s shaking grip there was no chance of detecting that infinitesimal rise and fall that earlier had betrayed some spark of life yet clinging to him. Simply shifting him might already have finished him off.

Running feet, and te Mosca wondered if there was any wretched magic that this heart of the Apt world would permit her, or if she had ever known any trick that could salvage a situation such as this.

‘Knife. . I’ve got a knife,’ Mummers gulped out, stumbling on the stairs but keeping his balance. She just shook her head. One knife against the Empire was not going to tip any scales.

Rounding the corner came a couple of soldiers in Collegiate colours, but neither of them locals: Gerethwy and Castre Gorenn.

‘You need to make better time!’ the Dragonfly shouted at her.

‘I am well aware of the situation, thank you,’ te Mosca said tightly. ‘We are evacuating as quickly as possible.’

‘I’ll hold here for them,’ Gerethwy announced. ‘This is a perfect position for my surprise.’

Gorenn gave him a nod. ‘There will be no more of us coming this way. Those that remain are drawing the Wasps away, for as long as they can.’

‘Perfect.’ Gerethwy had dropped to one knee and unslung his kitbag, dragging out his repeating snapbow and a tangle of mechanism.

‘Gorenn, what about you?’ te Mosca asked. Behind her, Mummers had wrestled Eujen’s stretcher down to the foot of the stairs, sparing her one last look back before he went lurching off with it.

‘I shall fight the Wasps,’ the Dragonfly said, and all the fires of the Twelve-year War leapt in her eyes. ‘And then, when that bores me, I shall leave, for there is no son of the Empire alive who can pursue me in the air. And I shall go to Sarn, and from there I shall fight them again.’

‘May the sun be in the eyes of your enemies,’ Gerethwy told her, his hands fitting components together deftly now, practice compensating for his lost fingers. Already the repeating snapbow was mounted on a low, bulky tripod, with some viciously toothed mechanism set in place to feed in its bolts.

Then the Dragonfly was gone, and Sartaea te Mosca was left staring only at the hunched back of her friend. ‘Gereth, come with me now, please.’

‘Not just yet,’ he told her. ‘But I will, believe me. Because I’ve solved the war problem.’ A momentary grin appeared over his shoulder. ‘Believe me, you won’t catch me sticking around for the Wasps, but I won’t need to once this is ready. My weapon will fight here without me.’ Abruptly a dozen slender wires lashed out, unspooling themselves down the corridor. ‘Ratiocinators, Sartaea, the future of artifice. Machines that can do things by themselves, react, calculate, even fight. And so simple — we could have done it ten years ago, if only anyone had thought!’ His hands flickered over the mechanisms, making minute, final adjustments. ‘Wars without soldiers, how about that? And we’re done!’

Then a Wasp appeared at the far end of the corridor, with snapbow levelled. There was a frozen moment of shock on both sides and then the Wasp, seeing an enemy with a weapon directed at him, shot Gerethwy through the chest.

He rocked as the bolt tore through him, eyes wide, a single audible breath escaping from him. Then the Woodlouse fell back with a perplexed expression. Sartaea dropped beside him, keening with loss because he was dead. She could see instantly that he was dead.

‘You, away from the weapon, halt there!’ the Wasp shouted at her. And then she was up, wings flashing about her shoulders, screaming at him for giving the warning one death too late.

Face fixed, he sighted on her and took one step forwards, and Gerethwy’s snapbow twitched on its mount and shot the man two or three times, spilling him back against the wall.

She stared at it, then at Gerethwy. It was as if his ghost was animating the weapon, in some impossible bridging of the Apt and Inapt.

Then another half-dozen Wasps were there, also shouting at her, and she flew back from the weapon and watched as it attacked them, barrel jerking precisely left and right, spitting out handfuls of bolts at a time, the chattering gears feeding through the tape of ammunition with meticulous economy.

She left Gerethwy there and set off after the stretchers, knowing that her friend, even dead, was guarding their retreat.

Her bodyguard had been the last man standing.

With all the rest dead around him, Jadis of the Melisandyr had stood over his wounded mistress’s body in his gleaming mail, shield up and sword ready to defy the entire Second Army. A Spider Sentinel, something out of another time, he had shown no fear nor even acknowledged the possibility of defeat. The sheer temerity of his defiance, backed by all the Spider Art he could muster, had held back the snapbow shot for a long count of ten.

And then they had gone amongst the bodies, giving the Spider wounded a swift, merciful death rather than have them fall into the hands of Vrakir or the interrogators. Save for Mycella — she, they had left for Tynan.

She had taken a snapbow bolt through the leg, he understood, but even then her sheer force of personality — the Art of her kinden — had held them back beyond the reach of her rapier. She had made laying hands on her person unthinkable, a sacrilege.

The word had come to Tynan that they had her, though, and so rather than wait for her to be dragged before him, he had gone to her, as a true penitent should.

The Spiders had fought fiercely, but like a war band from the Bad Old Days, and he understood that this had been deliberate. Like the banners they carried, this engagement had not been about winning. Trapped in Collegium, her army destroyed and her family disgraced, what choices had lain before Mycella of the Aldanrael? Surely she could have found a way to escape if she had truly looked for one, but then what? A beggar in some strange city? A renegade without status or power? What fate, for one who had misstepped in the Spider dance?

And so she had turned her back on survival at such a cost. For her, there was more merit in this ending, entering battle like mummers from some ritual drama, all bright colours and heraldry whose meaning had been lost to the world for centuries.

Seeing her there, on one knee with her sword in one hand, bloodied and bruised but unbowed, his heart was broken. He wanted to weep in that moment. He wanted to throw himself on her mercy, to beg her forgiveness. He wanted to howl out his bitter anger to the sky.

An Imperial general was denied all these things.

He could not say her name, yet looked her in the eye even so, felt her Art wash over him and then ebb, the force of her will fading before him until she was just a woman after all. Just another victim of his campaigns. He knew then that she truly had not betrayed him, that whatever the Empress intended, the Spiders — and what historian would ever believe it? — had not earned their allies’ wrath. He knew that Mycella had been true to him, after all.

He felt as though the whole of Collegium was watching him as he lifted his arm, the palm of his hand directed towards her.

How can I live, after this?

The expression on her face was infinitely sad, and he knew it would remain there in his mind, sleeping and waking, for the rest of his days.

His hand flared as his sting discharged.

The refugee students broke away from the Living Sciences building in a rush. Stenwold stood by the door, leaning on his stick and hoping he looked like a stern warden guarding the retreat of the others, whilst trying his best to catch his breath.

The plan was simple, and encapsulated in the phrase: It’s a big city. All those students able-bodied enough to do so were now going to ground. The Wasps could not know who had been in the contingent that had started the insurrection, and either they would round up every student of the College or they would not. Some would leave the city as soon as they could. Others — and by far the majority — would stay and wait their chances. Collegium would need them, Stenwold had promised. Their time would come.