Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

The Fly nodded to him. ‘You’re looking better than you have for a while.’

‘Where are we now?’ Propping himself up with one arm was about all he could manage, however improved he might look. Salma looked around, seeing a scrubby hollow and a dozen or so other people. There were a few feeble fires going, and an earth mound that smelled like bread, and that he realized must therefore be a scratch-built oven. ‘What’s going on, Nero? Who are these people?’

‘They’re on the run, like us,’ Nero said. He pointed out a mismatched trio in Ant-style tunics: a Spider, a Fly and a Kessen Ant. ‘They’re slaves who got out from the city before it surrendered-’

‘Tark surrendered?’

Nero grimaced. ‘I suppose you never heard. You never saw, either. The Wasps. they just took the city apart from the air, like your friend said they would do, until the Ants knew there was nothing for it but to give up, or to see Tark rubbed from the map. That’s how they deal with Ant-kinden, apparently. Anyway, those three were lucky enough to make a run for it, and now they’ve got nothing — just like the rest of us. As for them-’ He indicated the woman tending the oven, who had three small children holding close to her skirt. ‘They used to farm at a waterhole on the Dryclaw edge. Now Tark’s gone, though, the Scorpions are raiding unchecked, and there are dozens of little farmsteads, and whole villages, that are getting attacked and left burnt out. She thinks her husband might be alive, but he’s a slave of the Scorpions if he is, and being dead might be better.’

There were half a dozen young Fly-kinden sitting close together at the lip of the hollow, staring suspiciously at all the others. ‘They were slaves of the Wasps,’ Scuto identified them. ‘I get the impression they were a gang of some kind, probably from Seldis. They sell off their criminals down Seldis way. Anyway, they’re completely lost. They know the Wasps are going to take Merro and Egel, and they don’t want to go back to the Spiderlands in a hurry, and so they’re pretending they’re not part of our troupe here, but they’re sticking around all the same. And the gentleman and ladies behind you. ’

Salma made the laborious effort of turning himself over to look. There was a covered cart there, he now saw, and a bearded man seated on the footboard was carving something in wood. A girl of around twelve was stretched out across the back of their draft-animal, which was a big, low-bodied beetle with fierce-looking jaws. Another girl of nearly Salma’s age was nearby, picking over the halfhearted bushes for berries. They were all white-haired and tan-skinned, and they wore loose clothes of earth-tones and greens. The older girl sensed Salma’s attention and glanced his way. She had a heart-shaped face and bright eyes, and she smiled timidly at him.

‘Roach-kinden,’ Salma identified them. ‘I didn’t think you had them in the Lowlands, but they roam all over the Commonweal.’

‘And the Empire too, although the Wasps really hate them,’ Nero agreed. ‘Oh they’re not seen much, but I hear they come south past Dorax from the Commonweal into Etheryon, and even down the Helleron-Tark road and west towards Felyal. The Mantis-kinden seem to tolerate them, or so I understand. These poor fools were found by the Wasp army as they were travelling, and a pack of scouts decided to do a little free-range looting. They don’t know what happened to the rest of their family.’

‘Refugees,’ Salma whispered, and he remembered how it had been during the Twelve-Year War. As the Wasps advanced they had displaced hundreds, even thousands, onto the roads of the Commonweal, to be preyed on by bandits or descend to thievery to feed themselves. The Commonweal’s rulers had done their best but there had been the war to fight as well, and the scale of the exodus had been unthinkable.

And now it seemed certain that it would happen here as well.

‘What can we do for them?’ he asked, and Nero laughed harshly.

‘Do? You can’t even stand, boy. What do you expect to do?’

Salma stared at him, and then slowly forced himself up to his knees. His head swam briefly, but he pressed his hands flat on the earth for balance. Whilst Nero looked on uncertainly, he rose slowly, first one foot beneath him, then the next, and then, forcing his legs to obey him, he raised himself upright. Pain shot through him from his wound, but he clenched his teeth and ignored it.

Now he was standing. Nero had stood up, too, hands ludicrously spread to catch a man twice his size.

‘I. can. stand,’ Salma got out, though he had to fight to keep his vision in focus. He knew that he might topple any minute, and placed a hand on Nero’s shoulder to steady himself. ‘Tomorrow, or the next day, I will walk,’ he said. ‘And then I shall be ready to act.’

A man called Cosgren joined the refugees a day or so later. He was a Beetle-kinden, but huge — the largest Salma had ever seen, and monstrously broad across the chest and shoulders. For the first day he was with them he was quiet enough, watching his travelling companions carefully and even fetching wood for a fire. The next day he waited until they were all awake and then addressed them: ‘Right, look at you. You don’t know the first thing about where you’re going, do you? So it’s going to be like this. I’m in charge. And because I’m in charge, I’ll get us to somewhere, but you all better do what I say, and that means I get what I want.’

The Fly-kinden youths huddled closer and looked at him rebelliously. They all had their hair cropped short to their skulls in androgynous fashion, and they carried weapons of a sort, if only sticks and stones. Cosgren must have weighed more than all of them put together, though, and eventually they let their gazes drop sullenly.

Cosgren’s rule lasted almost peaceably for that same day. He took what food they had, with the pretence that he would distribute it, but everyone knew, and nobody said, that his own capacious belly would be filled first.

And then, at dusk, he wandered over to the wagon and the three Roach-kinden.

‘Old man,’ he began. The father of the two girls eyed him cautiously. He was not so very old, not really, but his white hair and beard made him look it.

‘You hear me?’ Cosgren demanded. ‘Then say so.’

‘I hear you,’ said the Roach. His voice was surprisingly soft.

‘I’m going to make your life easier, old man. I’m going to take your daughter off your hands.’

‘My life’s easy enough, and I thank you for your kind offer,’ the Roach said.

Cosgren smiled, and a moment later he had knocked the man down with a simple motion, almost thoughtless.

‘I’ll give her more than you can,’ Cosgren said, grinning down at him. ‘You, girl, come here — unless you want your old dad to get hurt some more.’

He was, Salma realized, speaking to the younger of the two girls, not that it would have mattered either way.

Salma was on his feet, without quite realizing how he had got there, and Nero hurried over to him, telling him to be careful.

‘You’re in no state,’ the Fly said. ‘Just wait a moment. there are ways. ’

‘I know.’ Salma approached Cosgren’s lumped back with dragging steps. ‘You there!’ he called, and the big man swung on him.

‘You get back in line, boy. Don’t want those wounds opened up again, do you?’

‘No,’ Salma said. He felt the line of his life stretched taut here, a moment of dread and then peace. In this wasteland between wars, in this meaningless brawl, and why not? Why not indeed? He had been given his moment, reunited with Grief in Chains, and then it had passed him by, and here he was. ‘I’m going to stop you,’ he told Cosgren, conversationally.