Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

‘We fight.’

‘And when the Sixth doesn’t come, like she said?’

‘Feh.’ Varmen shrugged. ‘And why won’t they come?’

‘Well. .’ There was a pained pause, but Varmen wouldn’t look at him, so Pellrec went on, ‘There was the little thing about the whole Grand Army of three principalities currently beating on the Sixth like a man with a sick slave.’

There was, was there? ‘And you believed it?’ Varmen raised his voice to carry to the men around them. ‘Of course they’re going to tell us that. Why would they even come here to ask for surrender, unless they were scared of us, eh?’

He heard a subdued rustle of laughter as his tone rescued a little morale. Pellrec wasn’t fooled. Pellrec never was. Still, Pellrec would stand and fight alongside him whether he believed it or not. Sentinels didn’t break. ‘Pride of the Sixth,’ Varmen murmured to himself.

‘And here they come,’ Tserro said, and to his credit his voice was steady. Varmen dropped into his fighting stance, keeping his shield up, and the arrows began to arc into the firelight. He felt an impact on his shoulder, two or three on his shield. A sharp rap knocked his head to one side but he brought it back, waiting. The gash in the crashed heliopter was mostly filled with Varmen and his sentinels, and it would be a fine archer who could spin an arrow into a narrow eyeslit or up under an armpit at the range they were shooting at. Varmen heard a shout of pain from behind him, an errant missile catching one of the Fly-kinden in the leg after clipping Pellrec’s pauldron. Another splintered on a sentinel’s halberd blade.

‘Spears now,’ Tserro said. He must have been crouching high aloft, just behind and beside Varmen’s head.

‘Brace!’ Varmen shouted. Arrows began to dance the other way, the short shafts that the scouts used. Fly-kinden weren’t good for much, in Varmen’s estimation, but they were decent shots when their nerve held.

The firelight caught movement, and then the Commonwealer soldiers were on them. They came running: lithe spearmen with thin leather cuirasses, archers in amongst them with arrows to the string, a rushing rabble of golden-skinned faces. Even as they hit the firelight, half of them were airborne, the wings of their Art flaring from their backs and shoulders, launching them up and forward. Their arrows kept coming, loosed on the run or on the wing. One struck Pellrec’s breastplate and bounded up into the mail under his chin, sticking and hanging there like a beard. Varmen heard several cries behind him as the missiles punched through the banded armour of Arken’s medium infantry. The Wasps were returning shot for shot. The light arrows of the scouts were cut through with crackling bolts of gold fire. Varmen saw a half-dozen of the Commonwealers go straight down. No decent armour and not a shield amongst them , he thought. The Dragonflies did have a few good military traditions, but most of their army was merely levy like this.

‘ Pride of the Sixth! ’ he called out and stepped forward just as the first spearman got to him. The Commonwealer’s wings flashed as he charged and the spear slammed into Varmen’s shield hard enough to stop both of them in their tracks. Varmen’s sword flashed down, knowing where the spear-shaft would be through the surface of the shield, hacking the head clean off it. The Dragonfly reached for a dagger but one of the Fly-kinden arrows lanced him through the throat and he dropped. Another two spears were coming in but Varmen’s shield was dancing on its own, his reflexes keeping it moving, covering throat and groin. An arrow clipped his helm and a spearhead was briefly lodged between the plates of his tassets. He swung his sword, tireless as an automaton, breaking spears and keeping them back while their friends tried to push forwards, and the Wasps behind him launched their sting-shot over his shoulders. It was an archer’s war. The sentinels stood as firm as a wall, and everyone else died at range, not even seeing the face of their killers. If Varmen and his fellows had fallen back, it would all have been over, the mob of Dragonfly levy swirling forward to run each Wasp and Fly onto a pike. They held against the ground troops, though, and those who tried to force through between the sentinels’ flashing weapons and the jagged edge of the heliopter’s top wall were picked off by the men behind.

Abruptly as they had come, the Dragonflies broke off the attack, disappearing into the darkness, chased by a few hopeful arrows. Varmen made a quick count and saw a score of bodies. No counting how many dead and wounded they took away with them.

‘What’s our losses?’ he called back.

‘Two scouts, one infantry,’ came Arken’s dutiful voice. ‘Two others wounded.’

‘They’ll be back,’ Pellrec said.

‘Oh, surely.’ Varmen shrugged his shoulders, settling the plates back into place. Pellrec murmured to him and he added, ‘They’ll take a few shots at us now. . hope we’ve forgotten about them. Stay sharp.’

‘Sergeant. .’ Something in Arken’s tone promised complications.

Varmen sighed. ‘Watch the front,’ he told Pellrec and ducked into the wrecked heliopter. ‘What? What now?’

Arken said nothing, but he was stepping back from the prone form of Lieutenant Landren.

‘Don’t suppose we’re lucky enough that he died in his sleep?’ Varmen said. There was an awkward pause, several seconds’ worth, before he noticed the arrow.

‘Ah, right.’ He knelt by the body: dead, all right, no mistaking that. It was dim back there, too dim to get a look at the wound, not that it would have told him much. But he could feel a tension behind him. Sounds like he was alive and well when Arken did his count the first time round. ‘You must have missed him in the dark,’ Varmen said absently.

There was a distinct pause before the ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘Go get some of your men to back up my sentinels,’ Varmen told him. ‘Sergeant Tserro, a word.’

The Fly approached, doing a fine impression of nothing-wrong-here. Varmen nodded amiably and then lunged for him. He had been going for the throat, but the fly’s reflexes were good enough to foul his aim. The heliopter was a cramped cage, though, and Varmen got a fistful of tunic and hauled the man in. He was aware that several of the other Fly scouts had arrows abruptly nocked to the bow. ‘Go on,’ he growled softly, ‘see if your little sticks’re any better than the Commonwealers’.’

Tserro waved a hand frantically at them, still trying for a calm face. ‘Something. . something wrong, Sergeant?’

‘You stabbed him,’ Varmen said quietly. He was aware that all this was taking people’s attention off the real fight, but then a scatter of arrows came in to rattle from the sentinels’ plate, and that took up most people’s minds. ‘And then you stuck an arrow in,’ he added. ‘Or maybe you stuck him with an arrow first. What’s going on?’

Tserro’s face twisted, and for a moment he was going to keep up the act, but Varmen shook him hard enough to loosen his teeth, and finally the truth broke loose.

‘Who d’you think was going to get the blame for this?’ the Fly hissed.

‘Him,’ Varmen pointed out. ‘Or were you saving him the long walk to the captain’s tent to explain himself?’

‘Fool, nothing would have landed on his shoulders,’ Tserro snapped. ‘Landren was Rekef. We all knew it.’

The mere mention of the name made Varmen feel uncomfortable, feel watched . The imperial secret police, the Rekef, the thing that men of the Empire feared more than any external enemy. ‘And killing him helps, does it?’

‘A dead man’s got no reputation to maintain,’ Tserro stated. ‘You’re Wasp-kinden, what could you know? It’s easy to blame us, and nobody cares if we end up hanging on crossed pikes to protect some Rekef man’s career.’