Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

The expression on the older man’s face said so clearly, These young soldiers today that Salma had to smile. ‘As for me,’ Kalder took over, ‘I just got sick of it. I fought your lot, right? And before that it was putting down insurrections amongst the Hornet tribes. And before that I was a sergeant fighting the Bees at Szar. And I did garrison duty at Jerez even before that. I had a family, once, but I haven’t seen them more than six months in twenty years. And now we’ve just taken Tark, and no sooner have the fires burned out than they’re marching us out again, the bastards, for some other forsaken place. It never ends. They just grind you down and abandon you when you drop. So what the Broken Sword is really about — rather than what it means to idealists like young Adran here — is men like me, soldiers who just want the fighting to stop. We want to go home to our wives, our farms. But even if we could, some of us, we wouldn’t, now, because by staying put we get to help others who think the same way, help them to get out and away. And it’s not just Wasp-kinden. Soldiers are soldiers, whether they’re imperial, Auxillian, or whichever poor bastards we might be fighting.’

‘But what if they find out?’

‘Then they take us apart an inch of skin at a time,’ Kalder said. ‘Because the Empire, the Rekef especially, hates none more than quitters like us.’

‘But we’re safe,’ Adran broke in. ‘We’re scouting, you see. Or that’s what they think. Drephos the artificer, he arranged for people to be looking the other way, but it was the Daughters’ Eldest, Norsa, who knew who we were and called us. The Daughters and the Broken Sword see eye to eye, and Norsa’s a favourite of the general.’

‘We can take you another day out from here,’ Kalder added. ‘After that you and your Fly friend are on your own. You’ll be far enough from the army to be as safe as anyone can be, but I don’t know where you can go next.’

‘If we were closer to home then we’d have safe-houses, Wayhouses and the like,’ Adran said. ‘We’re at the edge of the Empire, though. Just don’t head south and don’t head east.’

‘Or north,’ Kalder said slowly, ‘from what I hear. So I suppose you don’t have many options.’

The scout touched down virtually on the bonnet of the transport automotive, startling the driver, who cursed him. The scout made no reply but caught his balance quickly and saluted General Alder.

‘Report on the soldiers ahead, sir.’

Alder rose from a cramped conference he had been having with Major Grigan of the engineers and Colonel Carvoc, in the narrow space right behind the driver and ahead of the freight.

‘Tell me,’ he demanded. He had been informed earlier that an advance scout had spotted a force about two hundred strong encamped right in the path of the Fourth Army, and maybe it was about time someone told him what they intended. ‘It’s the Tarkesh fugitives, yes?’

‘No, sir. I’ve made contact with them, sir,’ the scout reported.

Alder’s one hand grasped a strut to keep him standing as the automotive lurched over some difficult ground. All around him, before and behind, the mighty strength of the Imperial Fourth Army was on the move. There were automotives and pack animals, horses, giant beetles and even desert scorpions, all moving in great columns that probably still stretched most of the way back to Tark. The infantry marched in shifting blocks, while the officers and artificers rode. Sometimes heliopters thundered overhead, sweeping the terrain to watch for ambushes, and a multitude of the light airborne performed the same function, squads of them jumping forwards half a mile and then waiting for the army to catch up.

‘Tell me what’s going on, soldier,’ Alder demanded. The scout saluted him again.

‘It’s an embassy, sir.’

‘You spoke with them?’

‘They hailed me as I passed over, sir, so it seemed reasonable.’

The man had a sergeant’s tabs on his shoulders, and presumably had been picked out from the crowd for some quality or other. Alder now hoped it was his sound judgement.

‘Imperial intelligence says the Kessen won’t meet us in the field,’ Alder said. ‘So what’s going on?’

‘It isn’t the Kessen, sir. There are Ant-kinden amongst them, but they’re mercenaries. It’s the Spider-kinden, sir. Or at least, some Spider-kinden and their retinue.’

Alder’s expression did not change but inside he felt uneasy. The Empire’s stretching borderlands had only touched near the Spiderlands in the last year, and had no established relations. The Scorpion-kinden of the Dryclaw normally acted as go-betweens in any trade the Consortium conducted with the wealth of the Spiders. It was fabled, that wealth, though probably entirely fabulous. Certainly it was unsubstantiated at least. In fact, as he considered it, Alder realized that he knew almost nothing for certain about the Spider-kinden holdings situated south of the Lowlands. They were rich. They were clever. Their lands extended on beyond imperial maps. That was the imperial reservoir of knowledge on the subject.

‘This could get ugly,’ he murmured.

‘They want to speak with you, sir,’ the scout reported.

‘No doubt. You are dismissed, soldier.’ As the scout’s wings ignited into life and he kicked off from the automotive, Alder was already gesturing to a Fly-kinden messenger.

‘Get me Major Maan,’ he instructed, because he urgently needed to know imperial policy regarding the Spiders, and it was an ill-kept secret that Maan was Rekef Inlander. ‘And get me any Scorpion-kinden we’ve still got with us. I want to talk to them.’

After two hours in further conference he felt no wiser. Major Maan had simply emphasized that all travellers’ reports confirmed that the Spiderlands were very extensive, that they were varied in geography and peoples, and that the chief interest of their rulers seemed to be in conspiring against one another. The Lowlands had never presented a threat to the Spiders, as the Lowlanders were also notably self-involved and divided. There was a brisk trade along the Seldis road to Tark, Merro and Helleron, but beyond that it was remarkable how little reliable information could be found.

‘They’re subtle, sir,’ Maan had warned, as if that explained everything.

And so here he was now, General Alder of the Barbs, with his own retinue of two hundred Wasp soldiers and, nearby, another five hundred of the light airborne ready to move in on his signal if things got as ugly as he feared. He had Maan with him, for all the good it would do, while behind him the main army was setting up temporary camp under Carvoc’s command.

And ahead were the Spiders. The ground here was hilly, and patchily wooded, and the Spider commander or lord or whatever he might call himself had chosen a little dell to pitch his tent in. It was barely a tent, by Alder’s standards, just a peaked roof of silk held up on poles, tugged lightly in the wind. A small knot of people were gathered beneath its shade, and the rest of the retinue were at military attention, waiting for him in immaculate parade-ground fashion. It was, he admitted, a clever piece of theatre.

At least half of them were bronze-skinned Kessen Ants in gleaming chainmail and helms of like colour. Their shields bore a device of abstract flourishes that Maan loudly informed him was the crest of Seldis.

Some of the others were Flies, and most of those seemed to be nobles or wealthy citizens, as richly clad in felt and silks as many a magnate of the Consortium of the Honest. Others there were Beetle-kinden soldiers with heavy crossbows. An honour guard of a dozen hulking Scorpions, stripped to the waist, leant on swords almost as high as they were. Then there were the Spiders themselves.