Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

Varmen stalked over to them. ‘If he lives, then nobody cares how Landren died,’ he promised.

The surgeon’s eyes were haunted. ‘Listen, Sergeant, I will do all I can, but men die easy from wounds like this. Ain’t nothing you could do, unless you reckon you could talk the Commonwealers into pissing off just to give me some quiet.’

‘Right,’ Varmen said, and walked back to the other sentinels. They were awaiting him patiently, looking only outwards towards the hidden enemy.

‘What’s going on, Sergeant?’ The worried tones were Arken’s, the infantryman now stepping up behind him.

‘Ah, well,’ said Varmen. He glanced out at the trees, at the waiting Commonwealers watching their every move. ‘Sometimes I do some pretty stupid things, soldier,’ he explained. ‘Only normally, see, there’s Pellrec telling me not to, to keep me in line. You’d think it’d be the other way, what with me a sergeant and him not, but that’s just the way it turned out.’

Arken looked back to where the surgeon was stripping off Pellrec’s breastplate. ‘Sergeant. .?’

‘I’m going to do a stupid thing now,’ Varmen announced, loud enough for the sentinels to hear as well. ‘You’ve got a good enough head on you. If this goes arseupwards you’re in charge. Do what you can with what I’ve left you, and just hope the Sixth pulls its finger out before it’s too late.’

Arken’s look was bleak, but he said nothing. Varmen shouldered past the sentinel line, now only three men and one of them wounded. Nothing’s going to change anything at this point , he knew, but at the same time a voice was hammering inside his head: Pellrec can’t die; not now, not ever! Too many years together, under the mail. There was a sick, horrified feeling inside him, waiting for him to indulge it, but a soldier’s habits meant he could leave it down there unrequited.

‘Sergeant,’ one of the other sentinels murmured, and Varmen strode out into the open and waited, drawing his sword.

He expected a few arrows on the instant, just Dragonfly-kinden reflexes at work, but none came. Perhaps he had startled them as much as he had alarmed his own men. He waited, letting the weight of his armour settle comfortably about him.

They should kill him, he knew. He was a perfect target. One of their archers could be sighting carefully on his eyeslit, the fine mail at his throat. He just kept on standing there, as though daring them to do it.

There was movement now, amongst the trees. Suddenly seeing the part of the plan he had missed, Varmen snapped out, ‘Hold your shot! Nobody so much as sneezes!’ That was to stop his own followers killing his idea stone dead.

One of the Commonwealers was coming out to him, just one. It was the woman, of course. She had her long recurved bow strung, an arrow nocked and half drawn back, picking her way towards him uncertainly. It must take courage, he decided, but he already knew she had that. To him she looked very young, but he assumed she must be one of their nobility, or some prince’s by-blow.

‘Are you surrendering?’ She had stopped well out of sword reach.

‘No,’ he called back.

‘Are you. .?’ She slackened tension on the bowstring, just a bit. ‘What are you doing? Are you asking for permission to relieve yourself? It must be hard, in all that metal.’

The soldier’s joke, coming from her, surprised a laugh out of him. ‘You have no idea,’ he told her. He had forgotten just how pleasant her voice sounded. ‘I’m challenging you.’

‘You’re what ?’ She was staring at him with a faint smile, as though he was quite mad, but in a mildly entertaining way.

‘I heard,’ he said, trying to dredge up precisely what he had heard, and from whom, ‘that your lot do duels and single combats and that.’

‘We’re at war,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s a little late for that.’

‘Come on, now.’ Trying to gently cajole her into it, with Pellrec being cut open somewhere behind him, felt unreal. ‘Me against your champion. If we win, you go home.’

‘We are home,’ she said, and left the words hanging there for a moment before adding, ‘You may have noticed a large movement of soldiers from your lands onto ours. We call that an invasion.’

And she’s probably lost family, and she’s certainly lost followers, even today, and she’s still out here talking to me, despite that, and she’s interested and. .

‘And what would we get, if we won?’ she threw in. ‘Your men will throw down their weapons and bare their throats? I don’t think so.’

‘You get me dead,’ Varmen said. ‘You’ve seen me fight. Take me out of the line, you’ll win that much sooner. Don’t think the Sixth’s going to take for ever to find us.’

She looked at him for a long time, and eventually he thought he saw something like sympathy in her dark eyes. ‘I have more recent news than you, Wasp, whatever your name is.’ He could see that the rudeness of her forthcoming comment bothered her, even here between enemies. Such a delicate lot, these. .

‘Varmen, Sergeant of Sentinels, Imperial Sixth Army, known as “The Cutters”,’ he said automatically. ‘And you, soldier?’

‘Princess-Minor Felipe Daless,’ she told him. He did not know enough about the Commonweal hierarchy to say whether ‘princess-minor’ was a great deal, or just fine words. ‘Sergeant Varmen, word has come back that our Grand Army has scattered your people, killed a great many. They are hunting the survivors even now. Our little conflict here is being repeated a dozen times, just a few miles away. So the army that will find us here will not be flying the black and yellow.’

‘Sounds like you’ve got nothing to lose then,’ he said. She was caught unawares by it, staring.

‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ she pressed.

Pellrec is dying. Even now he may be dying. ‘Not my command, Princess Daless. This is my command. Your man going to fight me or not?’

‘We can’t let you go,’ she said. He sieved for genuine regret and found it there. ‘I’m sorry. We are at war.’

‘What can you give me?’ he asked, using honesty as a weapon, taking advantage of a better nature he knew was in there. And if this were reversed? No imperial officer would think twice before killing anyone pulling this kind of trick.

‘A day’s grace,’ she said. ‘After all, our numbers will only increase. I shall take your challenge, Sergeant Var-men. You are an extraordinary man of your kinden.’

It tasted like victory, even if it was nothing of the sort. The fact that Pellrec, that all of them, would die in any event, win or lose, did not impact on him. Instead he just knew that the surgeon would still have time.

‘Bring it on,’ he said.

‘You have called out a formal challenge, have you not?’ she asked him. ‘Do you not wish to prepare yourself before the duel?’

He almost said no, before realizing that she was allowing him time for free. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How long?’

‘An hour would be fitting.’ She was still trying to work him out, no doubt seeing wheels within wheels when all that faced her was a simple soldier with an injured friend. At last she put a hand out to him, open and empty. He dropped halfway into his fighting stance, bringing his shield up, before he overrode the instinct. Clasping hands, that’s right. Forgot they did that. He levered his helmet off, feeling the cold air on his face.

‘Human after all,’ she said. ‘How easy it is to forget.’ Her hand was still out, and he clasped, wrist to wrist, awkwardly.

‘Amongst my people, an open hand means you’re about to kill someone,’ he explained, meaning the energy of the Wasp sting that could sear out from the palm. Her hand, on the wrist of the gauntlet, was unfelt, weighing nothing.