Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

We stayed and watched the opening for some time, but there was no further sign of Fael, of course. The other two were looking to Roven for ideas, and they were relieved as anything when he said, ‘We move out. We’ve got what we came for.’ Merric broke camp, and we loaded up the beetle. It was a plodding old thing, that beetle. It could keep up with the horses walking, but not at a gallop. There was no chance of using it for a quick getaway, not laden like that.

However, Fael and I, we’d talked about this. The plan could survive a few knocks. It just meant it was going to be difficult, and we’d have to do some things we might regret, but I was ready for that. I’d regretted most of my life so far, save hitching up with Galtre Fael, so why should this caper be any different? Skessi was already doing my work for me, as though he was in on it. ‘I saw them,’ he was insisting, mostly because it meant he was getting out of doing any work. ‘I saw them coming for us. The white shapes. White shapes with grey wings.’

‘You saw nothing,’ Roven told him disgustedly. When Skessi started to say more, Roven put an open palm his way, and the Fly shut up. The Wasp looked at me next. ‘You see anything, Spider-born?’

‘I see the weather’s turned,’ I told him mildly, and it had. The sky was scudding white clouds, not the white of light weather but heavy with snow. I thought of the path back to Roven’s army, twenty days of hills and forests and solitude. We might pull it off yet.

We mounted up. Skessi preferred to stay airborne, letting Fael’s horse trudge behind mine as mute testimony to our losses. We made poor time that day. The wind was against us, cutting coldly and keenly enough that the horses didn’t want to walk straight into it, and they would veer off every time they could. The snow came shortly after midday, first a light feathering of big, slow flakes, then flurrying and blowing into our faces until we could see nothing of the road, barely anything of our horses’ heads. The beetle was leashed to Roven’s horse, and a dozen times I thought of trying to cut the traces, to lead the thing off into the snow. It was going slower than ever in the colder weather, though, and I was too worried about getting lost myself. I could freeze to death as easily as the next man, and the Wasps were better equipped to get a fire going.

We stopped before nightfall, because Merric had found a wooded hollow that would keep the fire’s heat in. The wind was really up, then, and when it hit the trees it made all kinds of sounds: my cue again. When we were all sitting round the best fire Merric could make, I jumped up all of a sudden, meaning they did too, swords out and palms already extended.

‘Did you hear that?’ I called over the wind.

‘What?’ Roven snarled at me.

‘Voices!’

His look was all belligerence on the surface, but that surface was thin ice. ‘Whose?’

‘They were calling my name!’ I insisted.

‘You’re Dragonfly?’ Roven demanded. I just shook my head dumbly. He tried out a disgusted expression, but I could tell they were all listening now, as we sat down again. The problem was, once you’ve said a thing like that, well, the wind makes all kinds of noises, out there in the wilds. I just hunched closer to the fire and told myself in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances could I really hear my name in the wind now . I’ve always had an active imagination and it’s never done me much good.

Then it was Roven’s turn to jump up, sword out, and so we repeated the whole pantomime. This time, when he insisted he’d seen a shape out there, everyone was supposed to believe him.

‘Bandits,’ he snapped out. ‘Got to be. They’ve seen the fire.’ Nobody objected to this, although I think you’d have had to be within burning distance to notice it. ‘Merric, go scout. You find anyone, kill them.’

Merric didn’t look happy about that, but Roven was a sergeant, and he was just a soldier, and they hammer that into the Wasp army with big lead hammers. This, too, was in the plan, but it was that part of the plan we hadn’t really talked much about.

Merric bundled himself up in a cloak, a grey-white garment that would hide him nicely in this weather. He had his shortsword drawn and ready by his side, but he led with his offhand, palm-out. Crouching low to the ground he went, with just one backward glance at Roven.

He didn’t come back. By the time that became clear, the night was well and truly upon us and nobody was going off to search for him. The three of us, Wasp, Fly and Spider, just looked at each other mutely over the fire and listen to the storm call off its roster.

Merric was still absent the next morning when we set off, trailing two horses now, and with the snow much decreased. We caught up with the man soon enough, though. He was waiting for us, in a way.

It was a long time before Roven spoke, once we saw that. I don’t know how long he’d known Merric, or what he felt about him, but he took a good, long look at what had been laid out for us. It made me wish for more snow.

He was strung between two trees, held there by some tying of the whip-like branches themselves, arms and legs spread out at unnatural angles. The pieces of his armour, the plates of the Light Airborne, were hanging off, scratched and dented. He had been quite hollowed out. You could see his spine through his belly. His eyes were gone too, and his tongue. His head was back, his mouth was open, and you could almost hear the scream in your mind. It was a real professional job. The Wasps themselves seldom put that much effort into stringing up a corpse. For them it’s just a couple of crossed pikes and leave them to sag, most of the time.

Skessi was swearing under his breath now, almost constantly. ‘On,’ Roven said at last, and kicked at his horse, even though it needed no real encouragement. I followed right along, feeling those absent eyes watch me go. This was still the plan, but the details had turned my stomach. I knew the reasoning, but still there’s such a thing as going too far. Of course, Merric would have been dead before all that window-dressing happened, but even so. .

We made better time that day, although the ruin was still visible on the horizon when we stopped to camp. The wind was picking up again, and I tried to block my ears. ‘Avaris, run!’ it called, but the wind will say all sorts of things if you let it. After dark the snow crept back too, shrouding the world beyond the firelight in a blur of gusting white, not as fierce as yesterday but it cut us off from the world, severed us from it totally. As the wind formed words, so the snow was apt to make shapes, and it wasn’t long before I stopped looking.

Skessi was near breaking. He’d been high-strung even before we found Merric, and around the fire that night he ran totally out of brave.

‘I want my share!’ he burst out.

Roven gave him a long, level look. ‘What’s that?’

‘Give me my share of the loot, now,’ Skessi insisted. ‘I’m not crawling along here like this. Give me mine, and I’m out of here.’

‘You’ll keep pace, soldier,’ Sergeant Roven told him.

Skessi was shaking his head very fast. ‘Oh no,’ he got out, ‘not a hope. You’re going to die. They’re going to catch you. Not me. I’m fast. Give me my share.’

‘A whole third of what we’ve got?’ said Roven, grinning. ‘Little man, that’d weigh more than you do.’

‘Give me what I can carry. Keep the rest.’

‘How generous.’ Roven stood, still trying for casual, but Skessi skipped back a few steps and abruptly his sword was out.

‘You cross me, Roven, I’ll tell! I’ll tell your lieutenant about what you’ve been up to. I’ll tell them you killed Merric.’ The Fly was in the air now, wings a-blur, and I heard the wind call, ‘Skessi! Skessi!’