Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1) Page 5

  He heard a whoop from Tallway, who had been reeling drunk from before dawn, and a moment later the watch officer was receding backwards at twice the speed, because the Grasshopper-kinden had kicked him hard enough to put the imprint of her bare foot in the steel of his breastplate.

  He struck the rest of his men, knocking at least one back down the stairs, and then they had to help him get his armour off, because the dent was stopping him drawing breath, and Tallway turned to Lial and grinned like a maniac.

  The lever slipped free at last, and the wings slammed down with a clap like thunder. Tallway and Scop leapt into the air with their own Art wings, and one of the watchmen ended up hanging off the edge of the building, which further inconvenienced his fellows.

  The machine leapt skywards with a drunken lurch that Tallway would have been proud of, the rhythm of the engine’s gears rattling every spar. The wings were thundering, a blur of silk, and Lial heard the engine complaining. In his mind was the fatal sound of Cutmold Limner’s own machine, when the gears had come apart.

  The nose tilted downwards. He had spent evenings arguing with the Workwells about that nose, the precise distribution of weight. On the ground they had been able to balance the machine on a point but, with the wings flailing, the weight was constantly shifting forwards and back, and abruptly the flier was pitching and dropping.

  And Lial took a deep breath, bracing his knees against the hull, and opened his own wings.

  It had been last night. It was the reason that Tallway was even more sodden than usual. Looking at his creation, knowing that on the morrow he would fly or fail, Lial had been struck by a sudden moment of utter revelation. The sky was his now, the limitations of artifice had failed to hold him back and, in that moment, the shackles of Art had likewise given way.

  And the flying machine was as light as they could possibly construe, and its own wings were doing their best. All it needed was a little extra lift.

  Lial felt some part of him that he had never owned to before wrench and strain, and his Art guttered and waxed, the shimmering of his wings there one moment, gone the next, but the nose came up; the nose was up and he was skimming the rooftops of Shallowacre before casting himself and his machine over Collegium, startling Fly-kinden with the beat of his artificial wings, and with such a clatter of engine that every citizen below looked up.

  By the time he reached the better parts of the city he could feel the engine winding down, and when he came in to land it was at a glide, the wings barely moving. He landed before the gates to the Great College, though, with a hundred scholars and students as his witnesses.

  The next year at Clifftops Lial brought his machine, but there were already two manned competitors waiting to contest with him. Two years later, manned, heavier-than-air fliers were sufficiently commonplace that the College officials brought the competition to an end.

  Lial himself became one of the youngest ever College Masters. Although his precise influence on the matter is unknown, during his tenure the first ever halfbreed student was accepted into the College.

  Although Lial Morless was to be one of the great heroes of artificing, more level-headed historians now play down his influence. It was clear, they say, that manned orthopters would have been achieved within a few years of his maiden flight, by someone else if not by him. Besides, the airship trade continued blissfully unaffected by the introduction of heavier-than-air fliers, as airships had a greater range, and could carry vastly more cargo, although the Messenger’s Guild was forced to adapt considerably. Professional opinion continued to play down the import of orthophers and other heavy fliers right up until the year 538, when the Wasp Empire commenced its invasion, and the character of the skies changed forever.

  This is an odd one to start with, taking place so long before the beginning of Empire. It’s a look at a Collegium the novels don’t show – not just before Stenwold, but also, while the city of Empire isn’t perfect, it has, at least, improved since Lial Morless’s day. This is Totho’s story, in a way. Scop is his spiritual ancestor, paving the way to get Totho into the Academy, while not quite disarming the Collegiate’s prejudices towards halfbreeds, and from those two things, of course, a great deal follows.

  Ironclads

  “Tell me again.” Varmen could feel himself getting angry, which was never a good thing.

  “No sign.” The little Fly-kinden kept his distance, for all the good that would do against a Wasp. “Not a single soldier of them. Nothing, Sergeant.”

  “They said –” Varmen bit the words off. He was keeping his hands clenched very deliberately because, if he opened them, the fire within would turn this small man into ash.

  “They said they’d be right behind us,” said Pellric from behind him, sounding as amused as always. “Didn’t say how far.”

  “Right behind us,” Varmen growled. He stomped back to the downed flying machine. The heliopter had been a great big boxy piece of ironmongery when it was whole. When it struck the ground the wood and metal had split on two sides. What roof was left, shorn of its rotors, would barely keep the rain off. A rubble of crates and boxes had spilled out of it, some of them impacting hard enough to make little ruins of their own.

  The pilot had not lived through the crash, and nor had two of the passengers. Lieutenant Landren was, in Varmen’s opinion, wishing that he was in the same position. The bones of his leg were pushing five different ways, and there was precious little anyone could do with them.

  “Oh we love the Imperial scouts, we do,” Varmen muttered. “Bonny boys the lot of them.”

  “You should have seen what hit him,” the Fly said. The tiny man, barely up to Varmen’s waist, was supposedly a sergeant as well, but he was happy to hand the whole mess back to the Wasp-kinden. “Cursed thing came right down on the props like it was in love.” The corpse of the dragonfly was in smashed pieces around them, along with what was left of the rider. Did he know? Varmen wondered. Did he bring them down deliberately? Probably the stupid bastard thought he could fly straight through, ’cos the rotors were going so fast he couldn’t see ’em.

  The ground around here was as up-and-down as anyone could wish not to be holed up in. The Dragonfly-kinden could be anywhere, and probably were. The red tint to everything told Varmen that the sun was going down. The unwelcoming hill country around them was about to get more unwelcoming in spades.

  “Where are they?”

  “I said –”

  “Not our lot, them.”

  “Oh, right.” The Fly’s face took on a haggard look. “Oh they’re right all around us, Sergeant. They cleared out when you got here, but for sure, they’re still watching us. You can bet, if we know the Sixth Army isn’t coming, then so do they.”

  “Get fires going,” Varmen heard Pellrec saying. Pellrec wasn’t a sergeant, but Varmen wasn’t a planner. They had an arrangement. “The Commonwealers see cursed well in the dark. Tserro, your little maggots are on watch.”

  The Fly sergeant’s face went even sourer but he nodded. Tserro, that was his name. Names were not a strong point of Varmen’s.

  Stupid place to end up, frankly. For the cream of the Imperial military, the spearhead of the Sixth Army, the very striking hammer of the Wasp invasion of the Commonweal, he had hoped for better. It had all seemed such a good idea. Varmen was a professional soldier after all. He was used to sniffing out dung-smelling errands and dodging them. This had carried all the marks of little risk and high praise. I’m such a sucker for the praise... Scouts have got into trouble again – like they always do – A squad of Fly-kinden irregulars and a heliopter suddenly stranded. Go hold their hands until the army picks up the pieces. Sixth is heading that way anyway, won’t be a day, even. So off we trot with a little iron to give the scouts some backbone. Five sentinels and a dozen medium infantry slogging ahead of the advance in all our armour. Because we knew the rest were right behind us. They told us they were coming, after all. How can a whole army lie to you?

  “Get all the lug
gage into some kind of front wall,” Pellrec snapped out, getting the infantry moving. “One man in three with a shield at the front, the rest keep under cover and be ready to shoot out. Tserro –?”

  “Here.” The little sergeant was obviously still weighing who was supposed to be giving orders, and where the chain of command ran. He clearly took the fact that Varmen had not countermanded anything as his casting vote. “Where do you want us?”

  “Space your men so they can keep watch over every approach,” Pellrec told him. “Bows and crossbows, whatever you have. When they appear, get in under the heliopter’s hull.”

  Wings bloomed from the Fly’s shoulders and he skipped off to order his men. Pellrec leant close to Varmen. He was a proper Wasp-kinden beauty, was Pellrec: fair-haired and handsome and a favourite with any ladies they met that the army hadn’t already slapped chains on. Compared to him, Varmen was a thug, dark-haired and heavy-jawed and five-inches taller. The two of them had come through a lot in the vanguard of the Sixth Army. Seeing Varmen’s expression Pellrec laughed and said, “So, glad you signed up?”

  “Enough of that,” Varmen snarled. “We’re the Pride of the Sixth. Who are we?”

  The one sentinel close enough to hear said, instinctively, “The Pride!” and even Pellrec mouthed the words, grinning.

  “Sentinels, boys,” Varmen said, louder, in his battle voice. The words carried across and past the wreck of the downed heliopter. “The pit-cursed best there is.” He hoped that the Commonweal soldiers out there could hear him.

  He stalked into the shelter of the downed flying machine to check on the man who was nominally in charge. Lieutenant Landren was conscious, just now. The Fly-kinden quack the scouts had brought crouched by him, changing the dressings on his mangled leg.

  “What’s it look like, Sergeant?” Landren’s voice was ragged enough that Varmen knew there would be no help from him.

  “Seen worse, sir,” he said dutifully. “We’ll get through. Sixth is on its way, sure as eggs.”

  “We’ve made contact?”

  A little sharper than I reckoned, after all. “Not so much, sir, but when we set out, they were right behind us. What’s going to have happened to them?” And what in the pit has happened to them?

  “Good, good. Carry on, Sergeant.”

  “Will do, sir.” Varmen grimaced as soon as he had turned away from the man. His eyes met those of Tserro, the scouts’ own sergeant. The man was perched up under the heliopter’s fractured ceiling, stringing a bow with automatic motions, not even looking at it. His stare was made of accusation. Varmen scowled at him.

  “Three of my men I sent to the Sixth,” the Fly hissed as the sentinel passed him. “One got far enough to know the Sixth ain’t coming. Two didn’t come back. Why’d the first man live to get through, Sergeant Varmen? You think perhaps they want us to know we’re stuffed?”

  “Shut it, you,” Varmen growled at him. “Pell, how’s it coming?”

  “Oh, it’s arrived, Varmo,” Pellrec told him. “Or at least, as much of it as we’re likely to get.” He had made the best job of turning the crashed machine into a defensible position, with the broken sides of the heliopter to fend against airborne assault, and a rabble of crates and sacks to turn aside arrows.

  “Arken!” Varmen snapped. The man he’d put in charge of the medium infantry clattered up instantly. From his privileged position at the front, Varmen had always regarded the medium infantry as a bit of a botched compromise: armour too heavy to fly in, and yet not heavy enough to hurl into the breach without losing more than you kept. Varmen’s chief memory of men like Arken was as a froth of shields and spears either side of the sentinel wedge as the thrust of the Imperial assault went home. He never seemed to see the same men in charge of the medium infantry twice.

  “All right, here’s the plan,” Varmen told him, and loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. “What them out there don’t realise is that we’re exactly the right men for this job. Screw flying about like racking moths and Fly-kinden. We’re the armour-boys. We don’t need to go dancing all over the sky. We just need to stand and hold. Me and the lads will take the front. I want your lot in a line behind us. Sting-shot at anything that tries to come in above us. Anything that gets past us, or that attacks the scouts, take them on – sword and spear.”

  “Right you are, Sarge,” Arken said.

  I always remember the names, with the medium infantry, Varmen thought. Odd that. A dozen men in a dozen fights and I always know which name to yell, and I can have a commanding officer for two years and still get it wrong.

  “Sentinels!” he shouted. “Get your racking kit on!”

  They had hauled it all the way here, each man’s mail spread between three of the sweating medium infantry as well as the man himself. This was the pride of the sixth, the elite of the Imperial army, the honour so many soldiers aimed at, and fell short. The sentinels, the mailed fist. Let the light airborne rule the skies. Let the engineers hurl forth their machines and their artillery. When it came to where the metal met, you sent in the sentinels. Worst job, best kit, best training. None of Arken’s men could have stood wearing Varmen’s armour.

  He helped Pellrec with his, first: the long chainmail hauberk first, shrugged over the head in a moment of oil-and-metal claustrophobia; breast and back-plates strapped sight at the side, the anchor for everything that came later; double-leaved pauldrons for the shoulders; articulated tassets that covered from waist to knee. Armoured boots and greaves from knee to foot; bracers and gauntlets from elbow to hand. Each piece was spotless, the black and gold paint lovingly restored after each fight until not a chip remained. Each curve of metal slid over its neighbours until what was left was not a man but more a great insect, a carapace of armour over armour.

  Moving swiftly and surely in his mail, Pellrec returned the favour, putting in place by practised motions the barrier that kept Varmen and the world decently separate. The other three sentinels were similarly clad now, hulking ironclads in Imperial livery, their heads looking too small for their bodies. Easy to fix that. Varmen slung his arming cap on, tied it beneath his chin. The coif slid over that, lopsided at first until he tugged it into place. Last came the helm, cutting down the world into a manageable slot, to be dealt with a slice at a time. The senses he had built up in training were already starting to speak to him, to tell him where the others were, where was a wall, where was open space, without having to look around like some backwoods farmer come to the capital for the first time.

  He held his hands out. His shield was buckled to one, and the other received the weight of his broadsword. There was no standard weapon for a sentinel. The man who could wear this armour was fit to make that decision for himself. Varmen’s sword was a cavalry piece, weighted towards the tip for a crushing downward blow. Pellrec fought with a Bee-kinden axe, short-hafted and massive-headed. He made a habit of breaking down doors with it, or sometimes flimsy walls. The others had their favourites: a halberd, a broad-headed spear, a pair of brutal maces. Varmen let his narrowed gaze pass over them, seeing metal and more metal, his faceless soldiers. Beyond them, the men of the medium infantry were looking slightly awed.

  “Pride of the Sixth!” he shouted, his voice hollow and metallic in his own ears, drowning out their answering cry.

  Getting dark out there. And they would come when it was dark. Dragonfly-kinden eyes were good. The fires that Pellrec had ordered lit barely held back the darkness a spear’s length. Beyond that he had to trust to Tserro’s scouts. Craven little bastards, the lot of them, but they know they’ll die right alongside us. No doubt the Fly-kinden were itching to take wing and abandon the armoured Wasps to their fate, but this war had taught them that the Commonwealers were just as swift in the air as they were. Any Fly that tried the air would end up on an arrow in no time.

  “Movement,” one of Tserro’s men spat out. Varmen’s heart picked up, that old feeling that had been fear, when he was a raw recruit, but was now no more than anticipation. He
and his fellow sentinels readied themselves, waiting for the onslaught. The darkness was thick with unseen spears and bows. Behind their metal-clad line, Arken’s men waited. They had their short-bladed swords drawn, but their free hands out, fingers spread. In their palms waited the golden fire that was the Wasp sting, that searing piece of Art that made their kinden so deadly as warriors. Tserro’s scouts nocked arrows, shuffling uneasily on their perches.

  “Coming in now,” one of them said.

  “How many?” Varmen braced himself.

  “Just... Two, just two.”

  “What?” But the guttering firelight touched on movement now. “Hold your shot,” he snapped out, and even as he spoke one of the Flies let loose an arrow. “I said –” he started, but then he saw what happened to the lone missile, and he swore, “Bloody guts and knives...” One of the approaching Dragonflies had caught it, snatched it out of mid-air. It was a neat party-trick, he had to acknowledge. Like to see them do it with sting-shot, though. That’d burn their pretty hands a treat.

  “What’s going on,” he rumbled.

  “Maybe they want to surrender?” Pellrec murmured from beside him. Varmen chuckled despite himself.

  “Close enough,” he called out, clanging the flat of his blade against his shield to make his point. “Here to surrender are you?” It was always easier using Pellrec’s words. Pellrec was so much better at speaking than he was. A rattle of sour laughter came from the Wasps at his back.

  The two Dragonflies were lightly armoured in leather and chitin scales. They were slight of build compared to a Wasp, but they moved with a careful grace. On the left was a man who looked younger than Varmen’s five-and-twenty years, wearing a crested helm. An unstrung bow and quiver of arrows jutted over his shoulder. The shaft the Fly-kinden had sent at him dangled in one hand like a toy.

  Varmen’s eyes turned to the other one and he grunted in surprise. A woman. Of course the Dragonfly women fought alongside their men, but when there was actual fighting to be done he tended to blank it out, seeing them all as just more faceless enemies. The firelight turned her skin to red, but he knew it would be golden. Her head was bare, dark hair worn short in a soldier’s cut. She held a sword lightly in one hand. It was a good four feet long, most of her own height, but half that was the long hatched haft. Varmen found himself grinning in the privacy of his helm, when her eyes met his. The only women he had seen recently had already been claimed by the Slave Corps, or by some officer or other. This one might want to kill him, but she was still a sight for the eyes.