War Master's Gate (24 page)

Che was acutely aware of all of them in that moment. The scout, Zerro, was signalling her, but she did not know his sign language, and she was not under his command. She could sense the sharp
scrutiny of the Moth Terastos, his fear and uncertainty, and something like a bitter envy from Helma Bartrer, frustrated Apt scholar. Here was Maure, calm amidst the darkness because she understood
what Che was about, and here she felt Thalric’s concern, his slowly escalating tension that might lead him to do something rash . . .

She stepped forwards, one slow deliberate pace, and then another that put her closer to the mantis than either Tynisa or Zerro. She knew that the Ants all had their weapons levelled towards it,
but the status of such creatures was uncertain. The locals held them in high esteem, so killing one might have repercussions. Or not: the Mantids never seemed to have the same attitudes towards
death and killing as did civilized peoples.

From every facet of the creature’s vast eyes, the forest watched her.

Go
, she told it.
We are not your prey. You are not ours. We pass through like the wind. We leave not even footprints in our wake.
The forest wanted blood, she knew. Like a
crowd at a Wasp arena, it wanted them to fight for its amusement, but she was Cheerwell Maker of Collegium, and nobody’s pit-slave.

Its arms shifted, unclasping a little, reaching towards her in readiness for a strike, but she read the animal, and the immense semi-consciousness around her, as though they were a human face.
My time is not now, and this is not the agent of my death.
She stared into that compound gaze.
Enough hollow threats.
For a moment she actually felt a connection with the insect
itself, a sharp and calculating mind with more understanding and contemplation than any simple animal should be able to own to.

‘Pass on,’ she told Zerro, just quiet words, but she could feel a faint shiver in the air and in the trees as she spoke, reacting to the authority she had taken on. Even the Fly and
his Ants, the blind and deaf Apt, must have felt some change. From that moment on, she knew that they would look to her. She had taken command in a bloodless coup.

That distant presence, the eye of Argastos, had seen it all, she knew, and was evaluating her even now.
What is he like? Is there enough left to even be thought of as
‘he
’
? Do we go to the man himself, or the ghost, or just his tomb?

They were moving off again, and Che found herself keeping pace some half-dozen yards behind Zerro, Tynisa by her side. Her sister was eyeing her as though she had gone mad or turned into a
stranger. Che smiled at her, but she had the feeling that her smiles were no longer the amiable and reassuring ones she had once worn.

There was a drug they called Chneuma, which had become a standard part of the Air Corps kit. It kept a pilot awake and alert for days, strung tight like a wire and ready for
action. Too ready, perhaps. Bergild was pacing constantly, twitchy and unable to sit, making circuits of the crate-table where Major Oski and his Bee second, Ernain, were trying to play cards. They
had hollowed out a nook amongst the disassembled artillery in the back of one of the transport automotives and, at every jolt and lurch, Bergild’s wings would flower for a moment, ready to
take to the air.

The Fly engineer cast her a baleful look. ‘I am blaming you for losing the last three hands, you realize?’

For a moment she stopped, clenching and unclenching her fists, blinking at him as though she had never seen him before.

‘Can’t keep your mind in your head, these days?’ was Oski’s verdict, and when she opened her mouth he added, ‘I know, I know, you’ve got worries. We’ve
all got worries.’

Bergild’s worries were her fellow pilots operating in shifts over the Second’s advance, their minds touching hers moment to moment. They were overdue another visit from the
Collegiate orthopters, so every Imperial pilot was on standby and plugged full of Chneuma. She did not want to think about coming down from the drug afterwards. Nightmares and shakes and dreadful
cravings, they said, and none of the chemists really knew how long it was safe to keep using the cursed stuff.
But necessary. We are so few that we need all of us, every time.

Then one of her pilots really
did
have something to report and, wings springing into being, she was at the back of the covered automotive immediately with Oski and Ernain leaping up
behind her, for all the good they could do.

‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’ began her faltering response to their questions, and then, ‘one orthopter. Farsphex. Ours.’ But she was frowning because there was no
mindlinked contact with the pilot. Not proper Air Corps, then.
A trick?
The incoming pilot was signalling with the heliograph codes that had been developed before the new breed of pilots
had emerged, but Bergild and most of her people had never learned them. At last someone got hold of one of the older pilots who had, then interpreted an intent to land. Bergild instructed that the
visitor be guided in far from anything critical.

So who’s got one of my Farsphex?

She and Oski and Ernain skipped out of the automotive, their wings carrying them above the great marching mass of the Second and its Spider allies, over the labouring transports – wheeled,
tracked and walkers – and the articulated forms of the Sentinel automotives. The Farsphex had come down, with one of her own machines still wheeling overhead, and some sergeant had detailed a
few squads of Light Airborne to deal with whoever stepped out. By the time Bergild and the others had arrived, the orthopter’s passenger had disembarked and presented his credentials –
and was on his way to General Tynan post-haste.

The newly arrived pilot was still standing by his machine, and Bergild saw that his armour boasted a red insignia and pauldrons – nothing she recognized.

Ernain knew, though. The Bee-kinden was so well informed about goings on in the Empire that she would have taken him for Rekef if he wasn’t so free with the information.
Although I
wouldn’t know what other information he’s not being free with, I suppose.

‘Red Watch,’ the Bee identified. ‘Very new, the Empress’s darlings. Looks like special orders for the general.’

A section of the army had halted for Tynan to receive the orthopter’s passenger, and Major Oski was able to pull sufficient rank to get them within earshot as the man presented himself as
one Captain Vrakir, also Red Watch. Looking up dourly after scanning through the newcomer’s papers, Tynan did not appear delighted by this indication that the Empress had not forgotten
him.

‘So what does she want?’ the general demanded. ‘There are no orders here.’ He did not suggest that Vrakir had been sent to spy on him, but that was hardly a wild leap of
logic.
He should have had this meeting in private
, Bergild reckoned, but then General Tynan was a blunt-speaking man who did his best to live his life in the open. The Spider commander,
the Aldanrael woman, was close by Tynan’s side, though, and who knew what thoughts were passing behind her calm exterior?

‘There will be orders, General, in due course,’ Vrakir replied stoically. ‘For now, I ask you to accept me as the Empress’s voice here.’

For a moment Tynan looked as though he might argue, and surely everyone there was thinking,
This is not how you run an army
, but whatever the Empress had written on that paper in
Tynan’s hand, it was sufficient.

Then the word came, and Bergild called out, ‘General, orthopters inbound!’ because he was right there and it would save time. Everyone was looking at her instantly – perhaps
all the more so in shock at a woman’s voice daring to accost their leader – but she was already in the air and racing for the automotive that carried her machine ready for launch.

Behind her, Tynan was shouting out for everyone to get moving again – no stationary targets for the Collegiate bombs – and for the infantry to spread out as best they could.
Everything fell into a well-rehearsed chaos, familiar from every previous day of this march. Bergild, herself, had thoughts only for the sky.

Taki had never flown a bombing run. She understood the necessity of the work, but it was not
her
work. She was a pilot of Solarno and she took her prey in the air.
There was no glory in attacking an enemy that could not fight back. When she had explained that – the one time she had tried, anyway – to the Collegiate pilots, most of them had looked
at her as if she was mad.

Beetle-kinden were a practical-minded lot. If they were forced to fight, then most of them would far rather build machines to do it for them, ideally in a way that precluded retaliation. That
made Taki think of the Empire, the way it had brought Myna to its knees, with so little danger to its own side, by orthopter and artillery. Collegium would not be taken so readily, but the whole
business brought a sour taste to the mouth. Where were those sunlit days in Solarno, when she would joust in the skies against her brothers, air-pirates, free pilots, Princep Exilla
dragonfly-riders, and all bound by their common kinship? Here she was now at the cutting edge of Apt warfare and already mourning a lost way of life.

Mantis-kinden would understand
, she thought, even as she adjusted her course to head against one of the Farsphex, as the Imperial machines rose out of the great marching host.
They
wouldn’t understand the machines, but the thoughts behind them. Oh, for an Apt Mantis to teach to fly . . .
Clouds of the Light Airborne were scattering upwards, wings aflare – not
that they would be any real good in the fighting, but they would be out of the way of the bombs. The heavier infantry, the Spiderlands troops, and all the rest still shackled to the earth, they
were dispersing as much as they could, losing cohesion and slowing their advance to do so.
Well, fine, we’re not exactly here to bomb them to death, just to break their toys and kick over
their larder.
For there was a multitude of automotives with the Imperial force, though not half as many as when they had come this way the first time. All the important loads that the Empire
could not do without had been split up across the army – more good sense from the Wasps – but it meant that any vehicle over a certain size became a target.

And this time they’ll know it.
The plan was typical committee-born Collegiate nonsense, and Taki had argued fiercely against it, but it was a good plan nonetheless.
Still
doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Then the Farsphex was flashing into her sights, already turning aside as she began to shoot, obviously warned by some other Imperial pilot. Taki slung her
Esca Magni
into as tight a
turn as she could, unhappily aware that she had managed it tighter in her time. Her prized craft had taken its share of knocks in the fighting over Collegium a month before and, although the
mechanics had done their best, she was going to have to give up on it soon. Sentiment was something she had been indulging in, and could not truly afford. She needed a new orthopter.

The enemy pilot threw the Farsphex into a surprisingly nimble climb, but changed course suddenly, and Taki knew that the Imperial mind – the collected thoughts of its mindlinked pilots
– had seen what new game Collegium had brought.

The Stormreaders were quartering the sky, seeking out the Imperial fighting craft and driving them mercilessly, but not one of them heading for the ground. They were making all-out war on the
Farsphex, the Spearflights, the rabble of other machines the Empire had mustered, whilst at the same time the
rest
of Collegium’s air force was hoping for a clear attack on the
ground.

They had put a surprising amount of craft in the air, for such a grounded folk. The Collegiates had given Taki orthopters and fixed-wings and heliopters, and most of them were as lumbering and
bulky as their owners – flying barrels, flying crates, all wood-hulled and unlovely things that had been drawn from a life of cargo-hauling or flying courier duty, or lugging complaining
passengers from city to city in the Lowlands. There were more than two score of them, and most were loaded with bombs where the Stormreaders could only carry a handful. Each had a civilian pilot
willing to make the run – no reluctant draftees here by Taki’s insistence – and another man or woman in the hold ready to rain fire and death on the Empire. Some of these craft
had hastily fitted mechanisms to release their cargo, whilst others would rely on holes cut into the floor, or shoving bombs out of a side-hatch.

If the Farsphex got through to them – even if the older Spearflights did – then the result would be a massacre, but there were more Collegiate fighter craft in the air than Imperial,
by some margin.

The Farsphex she was chasing twisted round and tried to double back, but another Stormreader was already there and arrowing in so sharply that Taki had to slacken her own pursuit or risk running
into its bolts. She saw the Farsphex take a spray of hits, tilt a little in the air and then level out. By then she and her newfound wingman were both on its tail, harrying it away from the bombers
and daring it to brave their shot.

Below them, the first bombs landed – delivered too hastily, with the rosy fire of their explosions cracking open ahead of the Imperial advance. But there were more where that came from, a
great deal more.

Bergild’s mind was full of the voices of her fellows, all of them trying to get past the Stormreaders in order to reach the bombers, and all of them being driven in every
direction across the sky by the Collegiate fliers. They were doing their best to assist one another, to stay calm and coordinate their movements, but she could feel the desperation creeping in.

She corkscrewed her Farsphex groundwards, a dangerously steep descent at the best of times, bolts flashing past her from the craft following on her tail. Then another Stormreader was rushing at
her, flat and low over the heads of the Second Army, its piercers stuttering. She had to jerk away: it was that or end up with shredded wings and unable to pull out of the dive she had been in.
There was one of the clumsy Collegiate bombers in her eye, though, and she had pulled out not so far from it; and so she feigned reaching for height, pulling her nose up, and then letting the
Farsphex fall away to the right, towards her target, hoping against hope that her attackers would be fooled just long enough.