Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

Stenwold pitched his voice to carry clearly. ‘It’s Stenwold Maker from Collegium. And you must be Salma’s people.’

There was a pause and then: ‘That we are. Come on over, you’re expected.’ The driver obediently followed them within the confines of the camp with the automotive, the tracks crunching and lurching over the uneven ground. Once the engine had stilled Stenwold reached up and unlatched the hatch, letting in a wash of glare from outside.

Tynisa stepped out first, hand ready on her rapier hilt, her movements as lithe and balanced as Mantis and Spider blood could make them. Stenwold followed at her nod of reassurance for, with Tisamon back home watching their prize defector, Tynisa had taken on responsibility for his safety as a trust of Mantis honour. Behind him he heard Balkus now twisting his bulky frame through the hatch, his nailbow clattering against armour-plating.

The camp was a ragged, temporary affair, composed of rough tents and lean-tos without pattern or order. Stenwold guessed that, at the first word of an imperial force heading this way, they could be gone without trace into the surrounding wasteland. There were plenty of convenient gullies and canyons out here in the drylands east of Sarn and, if someone knew the land well enough, they could hide out for ever. And Salma would have followers here who knew every shrub and grain of sand.

There were at least a hundred people in the camp, and Stenwold guessed that half that number again would currently be out scouting or hunting. They were a ragged mix, the lot of them: he spotted at least a dozen separate kinden and a fair crop of halfbreeds. They were all well armed and wearing leather or shell armour, with a few suits of chain. He even saw repainted imperial banded mail amongst them, and plenty of Wasp-made swords. They had been busy, it seemed.

In passing his eyes across them, one familiar gaze met his.

Salma.

The youth had changed so much that Stenwold barely recognized him. He had been reshaped in fire and blood: drained and thinned by injury, toughened by rough living, given gravitas by responsibility. In place of the casual finery he had affected in Collegium he wore a hauberk of studded leather that fell to his knees but was slit into four to let him move freely. He had a helm, too, of Ant-kinden make, also an Ant-made shortsword at his belt, and gripped an unstrung longbow in one hand like a staff. His face was gaunter, his eyes hollower, and there was dust powdered across his golden skin. On first sight he looked like a foreign warlord or brigand chief, savage and dangerous and exotic. So little about him recalled those College days.

‘Salma,’ Stenwold greeted him, and then, ‘Prince Salme Dien.’

‘Just Salma,’ replied the Dragonfly noble. As he stepped forwards, he clasped Stenwold’s hand confidently, and like an equal and not a student. ‘It’s been a while since Myna, Sten.’ His history since their parting was written on his face through bitter experience. His gaze passed on from Stenwold. ‘Tynisa,’ he said.

She was staring at him uncertainly. ‘Look at you,’ she said, ‘all grown up.’ She went to him, one hand held out as though she was not sure he was really there. A moment later her eyes flicked to the woman who stood just behind him, robed and hooded in dun cloth, yet whose skin shone through, whose face glittered with rainbows. An indefinable expression passed over Tynisa’s face, and she looked away.

‘Ah well,’ Stenwold heard her say very quietly.

Salma gazed at her for a moment, the silence dragging.

Stenwold opened his mouth a little, then closed it again. There was tension here he could not account for. He glanced at the rough-looking band of men and women that were the Dragonfly’s followers. ‘Nero told me some of what you’ve been through,’ he managed eventually.

‘He doesn’t know the half of it,’ Salma told him. Something, some dark memory, caught in his voice as he said it.

Are we not grave men of state now , Stenwold thought. As he was about to reply, a woman’s voice cried out in joy and Cheerwell was bundling between Salma’s people, rushing up to Stenwold and throwing her arms about him, sabotaging the dignity of the solemn situation utterly. When Stenwold had finally managed to peel her off him he saw that Salma was smiling. It was not the easy grin of his youth, but it was a start.

‘Uncle Sten, I’ve got something really, really important to show you,’ Che said excitedly.

‘Best save it for Collegium,’ Stenwold told her. ‘We’re close enough to the Wasp army here that I keep looking to the skies.’

‘You needn’t worry,’ Salma told him. ‘I have scouts watching for them, and my people know the land better than they do.’

‘Even so,’ Stenwold said. ‘When you get to my age, you try not to rely too much on anyone else’s information. Let’s get quickly back to Collegium and then we can take stock.’

There was a shuffling amongst Salma’s followers and he said, ‘I won’t be going to Collegium with you, Sten.’

‘No?’ Stenwold watched him carefully.

‘I’m not your agent any more, or your student. I have other responsibilities.’

‘Towards…?’

‘There is a nomad-town of almost twenty-five hundred, people out there that needs me,’ Salma told him. ‘Currently it’s pitched up against the walls of Sarn, and the Sarnesh Queen is waiting for me to explain to her precisely why that is so, and what we want from her. More than that, I have almost a thousand fighting men who are gathered together only because of me.’

‘A thousand?’ Stenwold frowned. ‘I hadn’t heard… Who are they? What is this?’

‘What it is, Sten, is an army,’ Salma said. ‘And who they are depends on who you ask. Deserters, brigands, farmhands, tinkers, lapsed Way Brothers, more and more all the time. The one thing they have in common is that the Wasp Empire is their enemy.’

‘Well, then, the Empire is all of our enemies,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘I don’t see…’

‘Many of them were slaves,’ Salma explained, leaving a moment’s pause for that statement to echo. ‘Many more are renegades. They trust me, and I am responsible for them. I have not gathered them just to hand them over to Sarn or Collegium as an expendable militia. They are my people, a people in their own right. I call them my New Mercers, but the name they see most often is the Lands-army. We will fight the Empire, Sten, but if the war is won, we will not just disband and return to burned-out farmhouses and servitude or punishment. That is what I will talk to the Queen of Sarn about, and what I will talk to you about, in due course, but… things are now different between us. No fault of yours, but events are in the way. I owe these people my service, just as a prince should.’

‘I understand,’ Stenwold said. ‘Perhaps I begin to, anyway. Your emissaries will always be welcome at Collegium.’ He glanced down at Che, who was looking suddenly unsure.

‘Salma…’ she began.

‘I’m sorry, Che. You’ve seen a little of my work here. You must appreciate my position.’

‘But you could die, if the Wasps catch you. And they’ll try, Salma.’

‘I know.’ He smiled, looking so much older than her. ‘When I was in Tark they killed me once, ran me straight through. If she had not come to me even as I hit the floor, that would have been the end of Salme Dien. After that experience, it’s all borrowed time. I cannot turn from the right thing just because it may send me back to where I have already been.’

‘You’re always doing this!’ Che snapped at him. ‘Why… Why can’t you just come back with us? Salma, I’ve only just found you again, after all we went through… Why does it have to be you that does this thing?’