War Master's Gate (43 page)

‘There was more to their ways, in the past. In the Commonweal there still is. But when they are faced with doubt, with change, or with loss, it is the old certainties that they fall back
on, and none more so than death,’ Maure pronounced. ‘They mourn a thousand years of decline. They have given up looking to the future, for they cannot find their way towards it. The
coming of the Empire has only brought them sooner to a destination they have been approaching for centuries. So they burn their dead and sing their songs for the last time.’ Her voice had
grown ragged and distant, and Thalric saw that she was shaking slightly.

‘Maure!’ he snapped, in his best officer’s voice, and she twitched and opened her eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘The forest reeks of their despair. It can be . . . hard to stay clear of it.’

Thalric wanted to say something like ‘I can imagine’, but it was so abundantly plain he could not, that any consolation would be absurd. ‘Well, we know something now that we
didn’t before,’ he concluded brightly. ‘We know where they’ll bring Che tonight – guest of honour at a mass funeral.’

‘Fine,’ Tynisa agreed. ‘So that’s where we’ll go.’

The other three regarded her doubtfully, and she faced them down as though they were the enemy.

‘I am to fight their champion tomorrow. This badge and my sword have won that for us. Tonight, Che will be taken to their hold. Tonight we will meet her there, to get her out if we can, or
to show her that we are there for her if we cannot. I will not sit out the night in this rotting coffin if we know where Che will be.’

‘They’ll kill us,’ Thalric insisted.

‘They will –
tomorrow
. After the duel they’ll kill us. Probably they’ll find some reason to try even if I win. So I’m going to walk into their hold and
wait for Che, because I don’t see that there’s much to lose in doing so. You stay here if you want.’

‘Maure?’ Thalric pressed, because the magician seemed to have the best-honed survival instincts of anyone there, save for himself.

‘They will not kill us out of hand, I think. The duel is too important to them. But their despair is very heavy. It may make them act in strange ways. Mantis honour has not fitted in with
the world well in living memory, and now they have to twist and strain it to breaking point to adapt to the events around them. It is hard to say what they might consider the honourable course of
action.’

‘So you’re staying?’ Thalric confirmed.

‘I’m going,’ Maure said. ‘Because, once Tynisa leaves here, there is nothing stopping the Nethyen from killing the rest of us. She is our champion. They don’t need
the rest of us.’

Tynisa’s expression was openly defiant. ‘Stand aside, Amnon. I’m going.’

‘We all are,’ the Khanaphir replied heavily, slinging his snapbow.

‘She is Amalthae,’ the Mantis-kinden answered.

Che nodded cautiously. It was not quite true to say that the great insect was looking at her – for its attention seemed entirely devoted to cleaning the razor-sharp barbs on its forelimbs,
one by one. But its eyes were vast, all-seeing. There were few places in this little clearing where Che would not become an object of that peripheral scrutiny.

‘And who are you?’ she asked him. The Mantis frowned, as though surprised that anyone should wish to know. He was a long-boned man, perhaps ten years Che’s senior, or perhaps
not even that. His face was as expressionless as an Ant’s, and for the same reason. He wore no armour, only loose garments dyed in forest colours, while a bladed gauntlet was folded into his
belt.

‘Ceremon, I was called,’ he said, pausing over the name so that she wondered just how long it had been since someone had actually called him anything at all save for Amalthae’s
. . . what?

‘Her companion?’ she ventured.

‘Her consort,’ he corrected.

‘You have the Art of Speech?’ As well as being constantly under that faceted sight, there was no place in this clearing that would not be within the lightning reach of the
creature’s arms. When those limbs had snatched her up from the ground and drawn her close to the mantis’s scissoring mandibles she had believed it was the end. Something other than
hunger had been behind the strike, however – something other even than Mantis-kinden hatred of intruders, it seemed, for here she was, still alive.

Ceremon just nodded. Like Amalthae, he did not look at her directly much, yet was always aware of where she was and what she did. Every small move of hers froze the pair of them for the briefest
moment as they recalculated the quickest way to catch or kill her if that proved necessary. So far, Che had given them no excuse.

‘So . . . when do the rest get here?’ she tried.

‘No others. Just us.’ Amalthae went entirely still, even her antennae barely swaying, and Ceremon was suddenly motionless too, fading deeper into himself so that Che’s sense of
his
presence
– for all that he stood right before her – almost vanished. Had she come walking into the clearing just then, she would have noticed neither man nor insect.

And died
,
probably
. She tried to project her own mind.
What is it they’ve heard? Tynisa? Thalric?
But she found no resonance of her friends, no minds at all
nearby, only the convoluted density of the forest itself.

Something moved, beside and behind her.
Another mantis?
But she had a feeling she would not have heard it, if it was. Despite herself, she flinched, retreating towards the known killer
and away from the unknown.

She saw something glitter, a black carapace and busy legs, as a beetle pushed itself between the close-grown trees, half scuttling, half climbing. It had large, round eyes and jaws like twin
blades, a world away from those patient draught animals she had seen working on Collegiate farms as a child. Longer than she herself was, and a hunter in its own right, it regarded her fiercely,
working through the small number of choices its mind allowed it.

Had she the Speech-Art she could have calmed it and turned it aside. As it was, she thought she might find some way to accomplish the same result through magic, but she knew that she had no
need. She was watched over by something more terrible than this armoured beast.

It went for her, breaking into a run that would have covered the ground in seconds save that, barely halfway towards her, it was gone. Che, who had been expecting the move, was still surprised
by it, the beetle barely seeming to exist in the space between the ground and the mantis’s closed arms, before Amalthae’s mouthparts sawed neatly into the insect’s head and
stilled its frantic struggles with surgical grace.

Ceremon took a deep breath, releasing his Art and returning to the foreground of her attention. Che had formerly understood that the Speech Art fell mostly one way: commands issued and very
little save for basic impulses communicated in return. She felt that between this man and his consort there existed a more profound connection.

‘You haven’t killed me yet,’ Che observed, as calmly as she could after that predatory display.

‘No.’ Ceremon stared into the forest. ‘But you are right to think it. My people would have killed you if they had caught you. Either your blood on the forest floor there and
then, or a proper bloodletting to strengthen the forest, at one of our places.’

‘But not you? Are you waiting till your consort gets hungry enough?’

‘Amalthae . . .?’ Ceremon frowned for the first time. ‘Because of her, I am not as my people are. It is difficult to . . .’ He cocked his head, so plainly listening to
the beast beside him that Che looked up, expecting to meet a sentient gaze, but Amalthae continued to eat daintily, and spared her no direct attention.

Ceremon nodded as if conceding some unheard point. ‘All kinden derive from their totem,’ he explained. ‘Each has its mystery, some easy to follow, some not.’ He glanced
up at the feeding beast again, then down at the ground. ‘To the Beetle: endure. To the Ants: hold to one another. To the Moths: mastery of the mysteries of the dark. And so . . . our own path
. . . To the Mantids: fight. It sounds simple, surely?’ He spread his hands. ‘And yet we have fought and fought since the very first of us, unyielding – proud and bloody –
and where are we? It would have served us better if our mandate had been to
win
.’

‘I’ve never heard a Mantis speak like this,’ Che admitted.

‘Nor will you. These are
her
thoughts,’ he said sadly. ‘I only couch them in a way you may understand. We have fallen short, always, of our ideals, and now time has
become an enemy we cannot fight, and in their desperation my people have come to the last twist on the Mantis path.’

‘Becoming allies of the Wasps,’ Che observed.

Ceremon shrugged. ‘The Lady of the Wasps came to my people and promised a return to the old dark times, the simple times when what we were was sufficient; when what we were meant
something. Some of my people believed her, or at least held to some small hope that she spoke true. And others . . . more knew that we would never receive our birthright from the hands of the
Wasps, but that the simple fact of her standing there and making such an offer showed how the world had truly turned, once and for all, and that we had outlived our time in it. These, too,
counselled that we should join with the Wasps, but not for any silver future. We should join with the Wasps so that we might make the world run red – or some small part of it – a final
battle, a struggle to the death. And afterwards . . . for us? Nothing afterwards. No Nethyen, no Etheryen . . . Even as the Felyen to the south have passed from this world, so we would
follow—’

‘The Felyen?’ Che demanded. ‘They fought . . .?’

‘They are gone,’ Ceremon confirmed softly. ‘No blood of theirs remains unshed. They have carved their own gate and stepped through it, and no more shall they be known. There
are many of my people who would see that as a good thing, something to be desired.’

‘But not you?’

He met her eyes briefly. ‘If not for Amalthae, I might think it, but she . . . she shows me that we have strayed from our path – no, that the path is too hard, and the ways we have
fallen into are because we have strived and failed. That so many of us now see extinction as preferable to finding a new way is proof of that, she says.’

Che nodded carefully. ‘And where do I come in?’

‘You are able to speak with the same authority as the Lady of the Wasps. We know this, for Amalthae can see the brand upon you, even now. If you demand it, my people will
listen.’

‘Your people will kill me.’

‘Perhaps, but first they will listen. Amalthae says speak with them. Guide them.’

‘To what end?’ This time Che was addressing the great mantis directly, and it paused in its devouring, only the abdomen of the beetle left intact.

‘She says . . . she says she wishes you to save us. She says you are the only one whose words might be heard. She says . . . she has lived long and I am her third consort. Her kind . . .
we are her children, and she fears for us.’ The man’s soft voice began to quaver. ‘She does not want us to go.’

Sergeant Gorrec of the Pioneers watched the Empress as she spoke with Tegrec the Turncoat and with that gangly old Woodlouse, noting all the signs – ones he was more than
familiar with, of superiors in disagreement.
Of all possible places, this is not the one for argument.
Not that anyone would openly defy the Empress, of course, but she was asking
questions they could not answer – or maybe she did not like the answers they gave her.

The other two Pioneers huddled close, Icnumon and Jons Escarrabin. The Beetle looked just about how Gorrec felt – namely miserable and lost and worried. He clutched his snapbow to him like
a talisman. The halfbreed, though: Icnumon had changed when they . . . well, Gorrec couldn’t say precisely what they had done, but things were definitely different.

They had passed through into what seemed somehow a different forest. The trees grew closer, were more gnarled, their branches a solid interlacing canopy ahead, whilst the undergrowth was now
shot through with briars, making progress tiring and painful. There was almost no sign of animal life – Gorrec and his fellows were tried woodsmen and knew what to look for. They spotted only
the occasional mark or track that Icnumon identified as the killer mantids. The air was dim and curiously obscuring as though some shreds of fog remained even at noon, and the colours . . . nothing
here was bright. Sounds were muted and, in the long silences, it seemed as if there were other noises just at the edge of hearing, a whispering and a murmuring.

Only one of the Empress’s female bodyguards had made it this far, the Sarnesh and the Etheryen having accounted for the rest. The woman sat by herself, withdrawn and wordless; the Wasp
soldier, Ostrec, seemed little better. Even the armoured man that Seda called Tisamon seemed changed here, a troubled introspection evident in his immobile stance.

Gorrec shifted closer to Icnumon, meaning to question him, but the halfbreed’s look warned him off.

‘If I could tell you, I would,’ the man said, ‘but there are no words.’

Then there was a sharp sound – a
real
sound – and the three Pioneers leapt to their feet, weapons to hand. Tegrec was sitting down, one hand clamped to his face, Seda
standing over him.

‘No more discussion,’ the Empress declared. ‘You will follow my lead or you will die here.’

‘Your Majesty,’ came Tegrec’s thin voice, ‘Gjegevey and myself, we have both sought for the path, and in doing so we have seen where it leads. Majesty, this is not . . .
this is what we wished to
avoid
! The Seal . . . it is
here
. No records, no stories even, but—’

‘You pair of blind fools,’ Seda snapped back. ‘Of course there is a seal here. Which war did Argastos win? Which enemy was he victorious over, except the Worm? And you thought
that they would just set him as a guard in the wilderness? Oh, there are seals in many places, but Argastos guards the greatest.’

Gorrec would not have credited the paunchy Wasp turncoat with much courage, but holding his argument against the Empress must have required all of it. ‘But we brought you here . .
.’