Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

Mantids? he thought, utterly bewildered. From the woods beyond Merro? What have we done to provoke them? All around his camp was falling. The Mantids were in amongst the packed artillery now, firing whatever they could with oil spilled from the Wasps’ own smashed lanterns. Major Grigan and his artificers were being hacked down even as they ran to douse the flames.

‘Form up on me!’ Alder shouted again, feeling his voice hoarse with the smoke that was heavy on the air. He saw another group of men trying to join up with his own, with Colonel Carvoc at their head, but they were getting whittled away like wood. They were still ten yards away when Carvoc himself reeled back with an arrow through him, and his squad immediately disintegrated.

Alder’s sword came up swiftly, catching the curved blade of a claw as it sliced down on him, but then a spear drove into his side, shattering ribs and embedding itself deep into his body. He cried out and tried, with his last strength, to kill the man — no, the woman — before him, but the spear-wielder pinned him to the ground, stamping on his chest to free the spear-point and, as she passed over him with barely a pause, the Mantis woman stabbed again, this time through his throat.

‘We asked them how many warriors Felyal could muster, all told,’ Tynisa explained to Stenwold, ‘and they thought about a thousand or fifteen hundred, meaning everyone except the children, really. And they agreed that even a thousand warriors could not hold off the army of Wasps that was out there, if it attacked, since it was an army of about twenty, thirty times that number.

‘And then we asked them how many Wasps they could kill if they themselves attacked. Attacked without warning, at night, after a long wait had left the enemy distracted, bored. ’

‘And they thought about thirty each,’ Tisamon finished, and he was smiling now, a particularly Mantis smile.

*

And across the field of the Wasp encampment the warriors of Felyal raged, and where they found Wasps or their allies they killed, never slowing or stopping or giving their foe any time to realize that the force that attacked them was barely an army at all. A mere warband a fraction of their size, but that ravaged through their tents with a ferocity born of long years of smouldering grudges against the Apt masters of the sunlit world.

They left nothing untouched. They were Mantis, so they took no prisoners, they kept no slaves. They expected no mercy and they gave none. When they came to the tent of Mercy’s Daughters, Norsa faced them in its doorway, unarmed, and for a moment it seemed that she would turn them aside, but they were mad for blood, and not known for leniency, and neither healers nor wounded escaped their blades.

Those soldiers who escaped, for the Mantids were not equal to their boast in the end, would make conflicting and broken reports to their interrogators, and none would forget that night. Even those that questioned them would thereafter sleep uneasily, their imaginations fired by the dreams of blood and shadows, as though the night itself had teeth and they had fallen into its jaws.

Of the soldiers of the Fourth Army, the Barbs as they had been known, scarcely one in four survived.

Stenwold shook his head at this news. The Wasp army that had been ready to rampage up the coast was gone. Teornis had already told the story of how it had been held back, first by the Lord-Martial himself, and then by a close cousin of his whose face would pass, when suitably made-up, for Teornis’s own, with a mere two hundred men. He had only hinted at other plans for the Fourth Army, because he did not wish to boast about matters still in the brewing.

Stenwold found that he was grinning at Tisamon. ‘You chose a good time to show Tynisa her heritage.’

Tisamon did not smile in return. ‘They will not fight for Collegium, Sten — but they will fight. The south coast road has gatekeepers, and the Wasps will come again.’ The thought of that future was grim in Tisamon’s eyes, and Stenwold was about to find some reassuring words to offer when Arianna plucked at his robe.

‘Stenwold!’

She was staring back up the steps leading towards the Amphiophos entrance, which still saw a fair traffic even at this hour.

‘What is it?’ Assassins , he thought instantly. Who has she recognized?

‘Stenwold, you want Thalric, don’t you?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Get soldiers, as many as you can,’ she hissed. ‘If you want him, you’ll have to fight for him. Now, or it will be too late!’

Soldiers? When I have Tisamon. ‘With me,’ he growled, rushing back up the steps, and Tisamon was instantly in step with him, claw hinging out. He heard Tynisa and Arianna behind, knew that his ward would have her rapier clear. He felt much safer with these escorts than with a score of Parops’s Ant-kinden.

‘What is it? Tell me?’ he demanded, as they clattered through the corridors of the Amphiophos.

‘I saw her!’ Arianna was saying. ‘She’s here for him!’

‘Who?’ Stenwold demanded, out of breath already.

‘The Dragonfly! Tisamon knows!’

And she was suddenly ahead of them, standing before the guards of Thalric’s suite, a Dragonfly woman, her cloak thrown back to reveal scintillating armour. The Beetle-kinden guards clearly did not know what to make of her, seeing her possibly as one of Teornis’s foreign troops. They had their shields half-up, frowning, and abruptly there was a long, straight sword in the woman’s hands. The curtain to Thalric’s chamber was drawn half-back, as though Felise had first tried to simply walk between them.

‘Let me pass,’ she demanded, in the tone of a final warning.

Stenwold shouted, ‘Stop!’ skidding to a halt beyond reach, or so he hoped, of that oddly-styled blade. Instantly she had shifted stance, the arc of her sword now covering the guards and Stenwold both, and for a second there was silence as the tension in the woman coiled up to a crisis.

‘Lady Felise.’ Tisamon had come to Stenwold’s shoulder, claw at the ready, but there was a strange expression on his face.

The Dragonfly stared at him, something changing behind her features.

‘Lady Felise,’ Tisamon said slowly, ‘we have met. Do you remember?’

‘Did we fight?’ she asked, almost in the voice of a child.

‘You gave me that honour,’ said the Mantis, giving the words special meaning only for him and for her.

Something shifted behind her face again, something trying to be heard, but then again it was that perfect mask, beautiful and terrible all at once, and the guards clutched at their maces and raised their shields. ‘I have found my prize,’ she said coldly. ‘He is within this room. I will not let anything keep me from him. Not even you, Mantis.’

Tisamon’s voice was a whisper. ‘What. what’s in the room, Sten?’

‘Tisamon, please-’

‘Because I know who she’s hunting, Sten.’

There are better and easier ways to break this news to Tisamon , Stenwold reflected. The dreadful tension of the Dragonfly woman was like a shrill sound at the very edge of his hearing. Bloodshed was imminent.

‘He’s here,’ he confirmed. ‘Thalric is here. He gave himself up. He claims the Empire has cast him out and tried to kill him.’

‘Does he indeed?’ said Tisamon, without sympathy. ‘This woman wants Thalric dead, Sten. She wants to cut his throat and probably dance in his ashes. I have no issue with that, myself.’

‘We. need him,’ Stenwold whispered. He could see the Dragonfly, Felise, standing perfectly still, focusing inwards and inwards. I have seen that look before, in Tisamon . There was another there as well, hanging back further down the hall, a long-haired Spider with a wry smile. Stenwold could see how they had gained access: the two of them, travelling together on this day, would seem like just more of the rescuers from across the seas.