War Master's Gate (18 page)

In the Maynes rebellion that had brought the Commonweal war to a close, ‘Sergeant Bergen’ had dropped grenades on the insurrectionists and fought off their clumsy orthopters in the
air.

They’re right on you
, came the thoughts of one of her spotters, packaged with a concise picture of how many and what trajectories, and she returned a response immediately,
spreading her calculations to her flanking pilots so that they and she could split and rejoin in perfect coordination, throwing off the pursuing Collegiates, altering course and sheering through
the air towards the bombing Stormreaders even as they made their approach. Her weapons hammered away, the vibration of them felt through the stick, through the frame of the machine, entirely
distinct from the rapid and regular beats of the engine.

After Maynes was subdued, she had been arrested, and for three tendays she had sat in a cell awaiting execution, with or without Rekef torture. She had seen it as her last victory then, for it
had been a military prison, a man’s place.

The man who came to let her out had been the same quartermaster who had invented poor Bergen, and later promoted the imaginary soldier to sergeant. She would learn later how hard he had fought
to keep her alive, but he was a major by then, in recognition for his keeping his allotted part of the war effort in one piece, and he paid his debts.

‘Go home, girl,’ he had told her. For her, the war was now over.

But, of course, she had possessed two maverick gifts, not just the one.

Her shot raked the side of the lead Collegiate flier, and the Stormreader banked violently, almost into the path of one of its fellows. She ignored it, let her shot stray to the next, but its
pilot had already realized the danger and was climbing so as not to be caught between the enemy and the ground. Another two had already broken off. That left . . .

There was one of them a little more dogged than the others, now alone as it streaked towards the transporters. There was a rapid shuttling of thoughts between Bergild and her companions, which
she ended with,
Mine.

The pursuing Stormreaders were right behind her, and her flankers split up to draw them away. Two remained with her, because the Collegiates weren’t fools, and she let her Farsphex dance
before them, denying them a clear shot whilst calculating her own. The Imperial machines were as fleet and nimble as could be – no bombs, no bombardiers, not a pound of spare weight that
might mean the difference between life and death.

Stray shot sparked from her hull, one of her pursuers getting far too close, but then she was ready, falling into that moment when she would have to commit, and thus be at the mercy of her
enemy.

Seconds only until the Stormreader would unleash its cargo. All those dumb minds down there watching that swift approach and desperate to live.

Now.
And she was on her line, piercers opening up with their juddering roar, and she saw the constellation of sparks about the Stormreader’s engine casing, punching a string of
bolts towards the left wing.

Three hard strikes punched into her hull, but then one of her fellows was coming straight at her pursuers, shooting wildly and putting them off their aim.

For a moment, just one of those split seconds she was living between, she thought she had lost it and that the determination of the bomber would surpass the accuracy of her own flying, but then
his wing splintered apart as her shot knifed into the joint, and the Stormreader was spinning away, end over end, ploughing into the ground behind its intended target. She saw a sudden plume of
fire as his bomb detonated within the bay.

Then came the counter-attack, and she dragged her machine away, taking a half-dozen holes through the silk and wood of one wing. Her fellows were there to cover for her, but abruptly the
fighting had become something new – not the fencing match of threat and counter-threat, but life and death as the Collegiates gave up on their ground targets to deal instead with their
annoyances in the air. Her pilots had superior coherence and discipline, but the Stormreaders were arguably better machines for this duelling, and they had twice the numbers.

She took in her pilots’ views of the air, formed them into a whole, found their best chance for survival, scattered her people across the sky without any of them ever being alone for a
moment, all efforts now concentrated on evasion and yet refusing to be driven away, always there and never ceding the air to the enemy.

As one of her fellows died, she felt the stab of pain as if it was her own. His mind, within hers, was a briefly burning red-hot spark of pain and fear, snuffed out instantly as his Farsphex
nosedived into the ground.

One less
. And they could hardly spare it. Her thoughts rallied the others, spurred them on.
The Empire is counting on us.

Her father had possessed the same poisoned gift: that mindlink Art whose known practitioners had been rounded up and executed just a generation before, by the Rekef secret police.
Never
tell
, he had insisted.
You must never let them know.
But when she heard what the Empire wanted her kind for, she had turned herself in to the Engineers without a second thought.

Give me back the sky
, had been her only desire,

The intervention of the other Imperial machines came as a surprise, not a part of her mental battle plan at all. They had most of them not been ready for immediate launch but, the moment the
Stormreaders had been spotted, the ground crews would have been working towards it. Now that uneven clutter of old Spearflights and the flying rabble of the Spiderlands was all about, still not
quite evening the numbers, but complicating matters for the Collegiates. The Stormreaders outmatched them badly, but there had been a clock ticking ever since the attack started. Most Stormreaders
had a limited fighting range, and their forays over the Second Army were on a strict leash – and the more they had to fight, the more spring-stored power their clockwork hearts used up. The
older Imperial machines could refuel when they needed it, and the Farsphex had been able to fly from the Empire to fight over Collegium itself, and then return in safety, so efficient was their
fuel.

Her pilots called it in all at once, the moment the Stormreaders began flashing their signals to each other.
Fall back
, she instructed.
No heroics
. They could not risk losing
another Farsphex to a sudden ambush. Defence of the army was all.

She pictured the pilot who had died, not so much the face as the feel of his mind. What they would do when they got closer to Collegium, when the Stormreaders would be able to fight for as long
as they needed, she did not know.

So I hear that command has a plan
: the thought of one of her fellows, filled with discontent.

We can only hope
, came her reply.

‘The problem, basically, is that the Mantis-kinden never fought a traditional battle in their lives. When we fight, we go in, we take and hold land, consolidate, press
on. Them? They attack, kill, fade away. They don’t stay where they were. Their only strongpoints are their actual holds, which are basically villages built into the trees, which you could
pretty well miss if you walked right through them – until they killed you, anyway.’

Tynisa nodded, remembering her journey to the Felyal with her father. He had been bringing her there to see her people’s way of life. Since then she felt she had run into more than her
fair share of the Mantis way, and yet here she was again.

The speaker was an Ant-kinden named Sentius, placed in command of the Etheryen relief force by Tactician Milus. He was a lean, weathered Sarnesh with some grey in his dark hair, and he had
ventured into the forest before to liaise with Sarn’s allies.

‘The Etheryen tell me that they won’t attack holds, and the Nethyen won’t either. Now, I reckon that’s likely to change soon enough, either because someone starts losing
or because your Wasps won’t know the rules. For now it’s a blood-pissing chaos in here. There’s basically a whole third of the mid-forest that’s full of war bands from
either side all running about lying in wait and jumping out at each other, and both sides are striking out towards the other side of the wood – so we’re only a hundred yards in and
still I’ve got scouts out,’ he went on. ‘And then there’s me with my men, and at least we can get as split up as you like and still know where we are, but I reckon that
I’ll be losing whole squads within a day or so, once the Nethyen get wind of us – and our friends will be doing the same for the Wasps, too. And then I have you lot to cope with as
well. All of you.’

Overhead, the canopy was near full. The world beneath was cast in shades of dark green and pale grey, lanced by errant sunbeams. Just a hundred yards in, as Sentius had said, there was no mark
of axe on any tree, but instead great bloated forest giants that three men could not have stretched their arms around, and growing far closer together than seemed reasonable, each one muscling up
against its neighbours for room. The space between them was like some mad architect’s fantasy, a vaulted, irregular colonnade that unravelled in every direction into the gloom. All around
them were Sarnesh Ants, stepping carefully through the undergrowth that somehow clawed itself a hold here despite the poor light: great sprays of ferns, twisted nests of brambles, the jutting
shelves of bracket fungus, and slender capped spires of mushrooms half the height of a man.

‘Civilians,’ Sentius pronounced, giving the word that special contempt unique to military men. His gaze raked the assembly, barely pausing on Che and her followers. Tynisa understood
that they were already accepted, by order of Milus himself. The rest, however . . .

The Roach girl, Syale, was no surprise, and in truth she seemed to pass through these woods with an ease that surprised even the Mantis-kinden. Or perhaps she just had no common sense, of
course, but it was plain that the Sarnesh were not going to keep her out. The ambassador from Princep Salma was here to stay.

The ambassador from Collegium was a more contentious figure, though. Helma Bartrer, Master of the Great College and representative of the Assembly, seemed oblivious to any hints. Instead she had
attached herself to Terastos, the Moth-kinden nominally representing Dorax, and she was not to be dislodged short of physical force. Any such attempt would be complicated by Amnon, her vast and
unsubtle shadow.

‘Listen to me,’ Bartrer told Sentius sharply. ‘I am an expert in the history of the Etheryen and their culture. I have studied these matters for longer than you’ve held a
sword.’

‘I’ve got experts, Mistress Bartrer,’ Sentius told her with admirable mildness. ‘I have him—’ Terastos. ‘And I have her—’ Che, to her plain
surprise. ‘More to the point, I have every cursed Mantis who lives in this forest and isn’t actively trying to kill me.’

‘And you have me,’ Bartrer finished, with great finality. ‘Believe me, before this is done you’ll be glad of me. Tell him, Mistress Maker.’

Che started in surprise, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. ‘I . . . why?’

Helma Bartrer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Because I know what you’re after here. And, believe me, you need me.’

There was some unheard signal from down the line, and Sentius abruptly blanked the entire conversation from his mind. The Sarnesh, who had been making a cautious advance, were instantly seeking
cover, then freezing to stillness with crossbows and snap-bows at the ready.

Che and the other ‘civilians’ crouched together in the midst of an overarching stand of ferns. ‘What are you talking about?’ she hissed at Bartrer.

‘Oh, I hear a lot.’ The College woman seemed almost hostile. ‘You reckon the Empress is coming here – or is here right now. You reckon she wants something in these woods,
that’s the word I hear, but you don’t know what that something is. Even though you’re
Inapt
now, I hear.’ That last comment seemed the crux of the dislike in the
woman’s voice, and yet Tynisa could not see it as merely the Apt dismissing their forebears. Instead she read something like
envy
in Bartrer’s tone.
Live long enough with
history?
she wondered. Like most Beetles, Bartrer would be Apt, making the study of the Inapt a maddeningly frustrating business.

Che looked from face to face. ‘I assumed that if there’s something here the Moths would know.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Terastos.

The Moth grimaced. ‘Some scraps perhaps. I am no Skryre, and my masters are jealous of their learning, And many of the texts in Collegium are lost to my folk, despite our demands for their
return.’

Che looked into Bartrer’s face again, and her eyes flicked to Amnon, who would presumably go where the academic went. Perhaps it was the thought of his able help that decided her.

‘Then I need all the help I can get,’ she admitted. Maure plucked at her sleeve, but she shook the halfbreed magician off.

By then the Sarnesh were moving again, some false alarm now dealt with. Squads were constantly moving off, to be rapidly lost in the darkness, guided only by the best-guess mental map they
shared between them. Sentius reappeared with his repeating crossbow over his shoulder, and a Fly-kinden padding along almost under his armpit. This was Zerro, his chief of scouts, a gaunt and
taciturn man who moved as silently in the forest as any Mantis.

‘Bartrer’s with me,’ Che told him, pre-empting any argument.

Sentius nodded glumly. ‘Fine. You get to tell your people when something happens to her. She’s not my concern from this moment. And I gather that you’ll all be out of my hair
soon enough? Off on a jaunt into the depths?’

Che nodded.

‘Zerro here will be with the vanguard. You break off from him at your discretion. ‘I’ve been in here more than most. There’s some bastard things in this wood that I only
ever heard about from the locals. There are places the Mantids won’t go. Wandering around with your mouth open’s a fool’s errand. But, like I say, we’re up to our eyeballs
in experts, and I reckon you’ve got your own, now.’