Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Air War

The Fly-kinden scout attracted some notice by diving out of a clear sky, shrugging off the challenges of sentries, her arms held up to ward of reprisals as she skidded to her feet in the centre of the Collegium camp. By that time enough had seen her Maker’s Own sash, and a few more had recognized her face, so she was allowed to pick herself up and take a quick glance to get her bearings. A moment later her wings were skimming her towards the command tent.

Amnon was in conference with her chief officer, the Beetle woman Elder Padstock, when the Fly gasped out her report.

‘They’re coming!’

‘The automotives?’ Padstock beckoned a messenger towards her, about to send orders to ready the artillery. The Collegiates had foreseen such a strike, after the disaster at the trenches.

‘Their entire army, Chief!’ the Fly got out, her chest heaving for breath. ‘All of ’em.’

For a second Amnon watched Padstock freeze, expressionless, and then she was rattling off orders. ‘Tell the mechanics to have all the automotives readied. Pass word round all the officers and sub-officers to assemble, just like for the drills. You,’ and she picked out the exhausted Fly, ‘get me the other chief officers right now.’

It seemed forever before they gathered, though in truth it was barely minutes: Marteus of the Coldstone Company, the Mynan commander Kymene and Amnon’s lover, Praeda Rakespear. With Padstock and the huge Khanaphir they made up the War Council of Collegium’s army, the first such in its history.

‘Report,’ Padstock prompted the grey-faced Fly, and the diminutive woman straightened up, looking soldierly.

‘Saw dust at first, Chief. Got my glass out. Looks like all the fighting bits of the Second are coming our way, double time, right now.’ That her mind was fixated on that inexorable advance was very clear. She had been one of the far pickets, a strong-winged flier with a telescope keeping watch for some gambit of the enemy’s. Now, it seemed, the Wasps had eschewed gambits.

‘Such speed…’ Praeda said, shaking her head. ‘It couldn’t be, surely? How clearly did you-?’

‘Oh, clear,’ the Fly replied belligerently, scowling at the challenge. ‘Believe me, all the dust in the world won’t hide that.’

‘What’s their battle order?’ Marteus snapped.

‘Saw maybe ten, maybe a dozen of those woodlouse auto-motives leading the charge, what looked like transports backing ’em, and on either wing too — carting infantry, it looked to me. Heavier transports at back.’

The Collegiate officers exchanged glances.

‘That’s what we banked on,’ Praeda observed.

‘Then at least something’s going according to plan,’ came Marteus’s mutter.

Kymene drew herself up, as one of her countrymen began buckling on her breastplate: black with two red arrows, one descending, one ascending, the badge of Myna from before they threw off the Wasps in the last war — We have fallen, we will rise again. ‘We have to advance to meet them in the field, or else fall back,’ she declared, brooking no argument. ‘This,’ and her gesture took in the whole sprawling Collegiate camp outside the tent, ‘cannot be considered a defensive position.’

‘We’d not have to retreat far to give our walls over to their artillery,’ Praeda pointed out.

There was a moment of exchanged looks, mirrored grim expressions. No general wanted to have his hand forced, but the realities were stark.

‘The soldiers are mustering, or already mustered. Let’s move them out,’ Marteus concluded. For an Ant going to war there was precious little enthusiasm in his voice.

‘You must speak to them,’ Amnon rumbled, as his first contribution. Kymene was already nodding. After all, the two of them were the only ones present who had actually led an army before.

‘They go to fight, perhaps to die,’ the Khanaphir First Soldier continued. ‘They look to you as their leaders. They trust you to give them the right orders. You must speak to your people, reassure them. Or I will. I have done this many times before. I have the voice for it.’

Padstock and Marteus exchanged glances, but Praeda put a hand on Amnon’s arm.

‘Do it,’ she agreed.

The Collegiate army was still mustering, the last soldiers finding their places as their commanders came out to them, treading the steps of a drill they had practised plenty of times over the last tendays. Amnon glanced about, and then jumped up onto the flat back of a transport automotive, with Marteus and Padstock flanking him. To his left were the cohorts of the Coldstone Company, their motto In Our Enemy’s Robes, with many of the older soldiers still wearing souvenirs from past battles with the Empire or the Vekken. To the right was the Maker’s Own Company, whose words were Through the Gate, commemorating the fearless spirit with which Padstock and her fellows had marched out, along with Stenwold Maker, to confront the Second Army at the end of the last war.

Between them Amnon saw the balance of the Collegiate force. Mostly these were Three-city Alliance fugitives, Mynans reinforced by a handful of Szaren Bee-kinden and grim-faced Ants from Maynes. Kymene was already passing amongst them; not for her the grand oration, but a personal valediction: a hand on the shoulder, confirmation to each that she would be with them. Beside these was a handful of Sarnesh drivers and crew for the automotives they had sent in support.

Beyond all of the massed military strength of Collegium, the cooks, servants, mechanics, entertainers and all the other baggage that the army had collected watched on, and no doubt each of them was trying to decide: Stay, or flee?

Praeda climbed up beside Amnon and handed him a speaking horn, for even his voice would not carry to so many ears. He took a deep breath, feeling a great weight fall from him, as though he was back in his proper place for the first time since leaving his city and his station. These were not his people, but they were cousins of a sort, and if this battle to come was not his battle, the addition of Khanaphes to the Empire made the wider conflict his war.

‘You have heard the call to battle!’ he said, voice loud into the horn, and louder still as it rolled like thunder over them. ‘The enemy of us all brings his strength against us, and I know full well that each of you feels the worm of fear within you. It is what makes us human. Do not think that I have not felt it, too.’ In truth he did not feel it now, but he could dredge up the sense of it from distant memory.

‘At your backs is your city. You have not seen my home of Khanaphes, which styles itself the greatest city of the world. For thousands of years has Khanaphes endured, our stones grown old long before your College was ever built. And yet I say to you: if any city is a wonder of the world, it is Collegium. Was ever there a city more fit to take pride in what it has achieved? Was ever there a city whose people were more capable of steering their destinies than you? Where the Wasps have laboured mightily to imprison the minds and bodies of all who fall under their shadow, so have you laboured to set yourselves free.

‘Hear me, for these things you take for granted: that you may choose your leaders, that you do not go hungry on a poor harvest, that your surgeons and doctors know all wounds and diseases, that your families live each day without fear of tyranny or oppression.’

He was acutely aware of Praeda standing beside him, and he saw the speaking horn shake as she held it up. He put an arm about her, in front of those thousands, embracing one of their own.

‘The Empire will take from you all these things. They know only the chain and the whip and the iron rule of their law which says: Do as you are told, or suffer. Do you ask yourselves why they come? Can you imagine the blow you strike against them simply by being as you are? Can you think how many in the Empire must ask, Why can we not live as they? The Empire comes to rid you of these freedoms, because those same freedoms will unmake the Empire itself, given time.