Blood of the Mantis (37 page)

‘Masters, hope of the free world,’ he began, trusting that his voice sounded less sarcastic to them than it did to himself. They stared at him suspiciously, as though he was cheating them in some petty mercantile business. The naked hostility evident amongst so many of them made him want to scream.

‘You have known me, I think, as a patient man and the emissary from a city of patient and learned men. I hope therefore you have formed a good picture of my character. Our hosts, at least, have taken some pains to investigate it.’ Again that harsh edge to his tone. He forced himself back into a tenuous calm, and did not look at the Sarnesh tactician, although he was sure that she knew just what he meant, and that she did not care.

‘Master Maker,’ Teornis spoke up. Stenwold glanced at him in surprise. The Spider wore a crooked smile, and looked briefly at his fellows to his left and right before continuing. ‘During this recent period of emergency, Master Maker, we have had some cause to talk to one another. Your name has been on many lips, and news of your arrest caused alarm, to say the least. Allow me to cast off my inheritance and be candid for a moment. I promise such a lapse shall not happen again.’

There was a slight murmur of amusement from some of the others, and Stenwold marvelled at the man’s ability to influence their mood.

‘We are all enemies within this room,’ Teornis said. ‘We were never made to stand in one place and all look the same way. The commander from Kes hates our hosts. The lady from Etheryon hates me. Our hosts themselves, right now, are not enamoured of any of us.’ His smile broadened. ‘Not the most optimistic of situations, you will agree. But we are prepared to listen to Collegium, Master Maker. We will listen to you.’

Thank you.
‘Then listen carefully,’ said Stenwold. ‘We are at war, all of us. The Empire is currently a threat to every city in the Lowlands, and yet here we stand bickering about a mere weapon. Not a weapon that cracks open mountains or destroys cities, but a weapon that a man may hold to kill another man. A successor to the crossbow, in fact, that in itself is barely more than a thrown stick with a little cleverness attached. I have heard fellow artificers speak of the march of progress. This thing, this snapbow, is not progress. It is just another way of killing someone and, even if it is an inch more efficient, then that does not make it progress. Progress is made by the improvement of people, not the improvement of machines.’ He was surprised at the sympathetic response to his words from the Inapt – the Moth-kinden and the Mantids – until he realized that they must have embraced such a view for ever. He wondered whether, at this tapering end of the wedge, he had rediscovered some truth his own people had lost long ago.

No time for such philosophy now, old man.

‘So the enemy have a way to kill people faster than they could manage before. You will say that we should have it, too, and I cannot say no to that. My own people, all our people, will soon become the targets of this weapon. Therefore we cannot cripple ourselves by casting it aside.’

They watched him narrowly.

‘So what, you say? What is the answer, then? I have only one, and I cannot force it on you. Collegium possesses the plans for this weapon, but there will be other chances soon for all of you who are capable of the artifice to copy and design your own. My current monopoly is almost fictional: it exists only in a saving of time. But we have so little of that left, and therefore I have something to bargain with.

‘I will give these plans to the Sarnesh,’ he told them, seeing already the beginnings of their anger. ‘I will give them to the Kessen,’ he added. ‘I will give them to Teornis of the Spiderlands. I would give them to the Ancient League, if they would accept them. I would give them even to the Vekken, if they were here. I will give them to anyone and everyone who will sign a written oath.’

That caught them unawares, even Teornis. They waited, and he happily let them wait a little longer before he enlightened them.

‘An oath, I mean, that these weapons will be used against the Empire only. I know all too well that knowledge cannot be destroyed. They are therefore here to stay, these monstrous devices. An oath, all the same, that they will not be used against any other cities in the Lowlands, or against the Spiderlands. And an oath that you will take up arms against any city that does.’

They clearly did not understand. He put his staff flat on the table, leaning forward. ‘Whoever breaks this oath will have more enemies than they know what to do with, and in this way those of our allies – our
allies
, you understand, who have given of their own resources already to defend us – those of our allies who cannot use this weapon are thus still protected from it. An oath of cities. An oath of alliance.’ He looked from face to face and heard his voice shake as he continued, ‘Trust, you see. Without trust we cannot succeed. Without trust we cannot stand together.’

‘And will you sign this oath, for Collegium? We understand that Collegium is even now raising an army equipped with such devices,’ the Sarnesh woman said.

Stenwold gave her a flat look, then delved in his pocket and brought out the much-creased oath he had laboured over. Before their eyes he unfolded it and signed it with his reservoir pen.

‘It is done,’ he told them. ‘Who will be the next?’

They watched each other now, not him, and he feared they would not.
At least I can go home, then
, was his only thought.

‘I shall sign next.’ Teornis took the oath from him and signalled for a servant to bring him pen and ink. ‘I know there are those who will not trust me, but I shall bind the Aldanrael by my mark, nonetheless. If they believe themselves to be so much more trustworthy, I invite them to place their own marks beside it. After all, the new-woven Ancient League lies a long way from my lands. I do not believe this new weapon has sufficient range that my anticipated treachery might endanger them.’

He pushed the document across the table towards the Skryre from Dorax, ignoring the hostile glares of the two Mantis women who flanked her. The Moth-kinden, looking old and very small, looked at the paper and those two fresh signatures.

‘We have nothing to pledge. We shall never use this deadly toy,’ she said. ‘We are at the mercy of all of you. This weapon shall likely be the death of us.’

‘Will the League draw back even now?’ Stenwold asked her. ‘I do this to protect you, for what protection it can offer. Nothing we do or say will prevent the snapbow coming into general use here, as it already is in the Empire.’

‘Do not presume to lecture us, Beetle,’ she said, but she was tired, defeated. ‘It means nothing. However, the Ancient League shall put its mark to this.’

After that, the oath passed about the table until it landed before the Sarnesh Tactician, who had no doubt been communicating with her king and her entire city all this time.

When she signed, there was no great upsurge of relief in Stenwold, just the thought that he could leave this wretched city at long last and see his beloved Collegium once more. He forced himself to wait, even as the dignitaries filed out with their various expressions of suspicion and dissatisfaction, forced himself to remain the impeccable diplomat to the last. When Teornis appeared at his elbow, as silently and familiarly as his own shadow, he was not surprised.

‘Masterfully done,’ the Spider said. His smile, as always, looked as genuine a smile as Stenwold had ever seen, and more practised than any.

‘I am not meant for this,’ Stenwold sighed.

Teornis shook his head, seeming amused. ‘I only hope that we always remain allies, Master Maker, for you would be a formidable foe.’

‘High praise from the Lord-Martial?’

‘And well deserved.’ Teornis’s smile twitched broader, and even that reaction, seeming so spontaneous, could just as easily have been deliberately contrived.
With these Spiders I truly cannot ever know.
The thought turned him to reflect on Arianna, and he dismissed the association quickly.

‘You should listen for news from the east, War Master,’ Teornis advised him. ‘It is at least passably pleasing this season.’

‘There is some new winter fashion, is there?’

‘A new fashion in warfare, indeed. One hears on the wind that a certain protégé of yours has been causing the Imperial Army some degree of embarrassment.’

*

Where the Seventh Army had come to rest after the Battle of the Rails there had once stood a Beetle-kinden farmstead. That was gone now, and in its place was a series of wooden fortifications that the Winged Furies had put up during the winter, in anticipation of retaliation from Sarn. They were Wasp field fortifications, though, nothing the Ant-kinden would have recognized: slanting walls and overhanging ledges, bristling with sharpened stakes, to make the camp as difficult to attack, from ground or air, as the Wasp mind could devise.

But there were still losses the walls could not guard against. There always were. Scouts went missing; foraging parties sometimes failed to return. The land beyond the fort was the hunting ground of Sarnesh rangers, of bandits, brigands and desperate refugees. This, though . . . this latest news had brought General Malkan out to see for himself. He required the evidence of his own eyes to understand the true scale of the attack.

There had been a troop transport coming down the track from Helleron, packed with men and supplies, going at a speed that only well-maintained rails could allow. Three miles from the fort, there had been a series of explosions that ripped apart the engine automotive and suddenly the tracks had been gone, hurled aside into splayed and coiling shapes, and the entire convoy had come off the rails, carriages shunting into carriages, the straight line of the transport’s passage thrashing suddenly like a whip.

The corpses had gone by the time he reached the site. Travelling with a guard of 600 men was time-consuming but Malkan was not a rash sort. He was the youngest general the Empire had and he fully intended to become the oldest, in good time.

‘One hundred ninety-seven men died in the initial impact,’ one of his aides was recounting without emotion. The man was his intelligence officer, almost certainly Rekef, and probably did see this number as nothing more than that. ‘Over four hundred injured, best count.’

‘And then?’ Malkan prompted, though he knew already. The word had run quickly through the entire Seventh.

‘And then the convoy was attacked, sir,’ his aide said. ‘The soldiers trying to exit the train came under shot from both north and south of the tracks. We estimate that another three hundred and twenty men were killed outright before any defence could be mounted.’

‘And that defence consisted mostly of staying under cover and keeping their heads down,’ said Malkan, wondering what he himself would have done in the circumstances. ‘Engineers, I want news!’

‘Sir.’ One of his artificers left the rails and ran up to him. ‘Judging from the wreckage it could have been either a steam-expansion bomb or triggered steam pistons making the tracks jump. Just simple mechanical force to unseat the automotive, nothing flammable until the automotive’s fuel lines ruptured in the impact.’

‘So?’

‘It’s a simple and robust device, sir, but whoever set it would need to be a skilled artificer in order to gauge its precise disposition. It must have been initiated on a pressure trigger, sir. The trains aren’t regular enough for a clockwork timer.’

‘Could you make such a device in the field?’

‘You could assemble it, but the parts must have come in from Sarn.’

‘Or Helleron,’ Malkan mused, ‘or Collegium.’ He had already heard the reports of some soldiers who had survived the attack, reports that gave descriptions of the attackers. No disciplined Sarnesh Ant-infantry, these, but a rabble composed of different kinden. A rabble with a common mind, like bandits but more organized . . .

‘What of our scouts?’

‘Two have not returned, while the others report no sign of any large force nearby,’ his aide confirmed.

‘They won’t. After you achieve this kind of success, you scatter, then rendezvous later . . .’ The attackers had taken their own dead with them, but their departure had been hurried. There had still been clues: crossbow bolts, discarded weapons . . . yet there was no pattern, nothing uniform. Malkan ground his teeth. He could send men after the missing scouts, but whoever had not wished to be seen would have moved on by now, or alternatively it could become an ambush.

‘I want those rails repaired in double time,’ he told the engineer, who saluted and returned to his men. Malkan pondered the situation for a while, putting himself in the position of his enemies as best he could. ‘Keep at least two hundred men here to guard them, though. I’d come back, if I were him, and kill the artificers as they worked.’

‘There is a lot of rail-line between here and Helleron, sir,’ the aide noted.

‘Indeed, so get a messenger off to Helleron . . . better send three, separately. We need a new way of transporting supplies and men. Just march them overland if they have to.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The Seventh had been relying on the rail-line to Helleron over the winter. It would now be a difficult adjustment to make, going back to old-fashioned methods, but it might be for the best. Simplest done was simplest fixed, as the artificers always said.

The dead men were a waste of resources, the broken rails and automotive an annoyance. What was really concerning General Malkan was the loss of almost 500 snap-bows that the attackers, whoever they were, had made off with, having deliberately targeted the carriage they were in.

‘Explosives . . . and these new weapons . . .’ he murmured. ‘If it weren’t for that . . .’

‘What, sir?’

‘In the Twelve-Year war . . .’ he began. It had been the cause of his meteoric rise through the ranks, his conduct at that war’s end. ‘. . . Towards the end, they were always springing surprise attacks, ambushes. They had inferior discipline, inferior equipment. We had broken their field armies by then, so they had to make up for it in tactics, using the land itself . . . those Dragonfly-kinden . . . I want to know any news received about Dragonfly-kinden.’