Fourteen

As the weather grew colder and the snow began to flurry, Varmen earned his keep, guiding them safely to empty little crofter’s huts or searching out tiny hamlets, no more than three or four shabby hovels occupied by the most dismal-looking peasants Che had ever seen. These people were terrified enough at the sight of Wasps to abandon entire dwellings to give them shelter, and Che would never know if that was because of the past war or the current regime.

When there was no village or hut available, Thalric and Varmen showed her an old soldier’s trick by heading for the nearest copse of trees. There would almost always be a hollow somewhere amongst the roots, which they would curtain off with a cloak to create a little pocket of body-heat against the cold outside. Che was uncomfortably aware that she was surviving through the skills of the Imperial army, learned through bitter trial and error during the first few winters of the Twelve-year War.

Some time later, they had stopped in a town that Thalric remembered: it had been marked as Lans Stowe on the Imperial maps during the war. He had not seen its capture personally, for there had been a great deal of ground to cover for an agent of the Rekef Outlander. The defenders here had held off the Empire for a long time – long after the land on all sides had fallen under the black and gold flag. The town was large, and built into the steepest side of a high hill, topped by one of the Commonweal’s most defensible castles. It had been a low, solidly built, crown-like affair and, uniquely, the castle walls themselves had extended to encircle the entire town, sloping inwards to a height of twenty-five feet, then shelving outwards, at a sharp angle, to support roofed walkways, nests of arrowslits and a barrier of wooden spikes. Many of the buildings in the town had been similarly fortified, and Lans Stowe had boasted a great many archers and arrows. Had the place been more tactically essential at the time, it would have fallen far sooner, but a combination of its strength, the defenders’ prudence in laying down supplies, and a lack of any pressing need to do anything about it had left Lans Stowe standing, besieged and surrounded, to within two years of the war’s end.

They had brought in the artificers, Thalric recalled, and used this place as an experiment in new artillery, for the maverick halfbreed Dariandrephos had then been forging his reputation. Imperial soldiers had never needed to charge the strong walls of Lans Stowe. The Light Airborne had never risked themselves against the wings or arrows of its defenders. Instead, the artillery, far out of bowshot from the walls, had begun levelling the place systematically. The ingenious architecture, which had held off the Empire’s desultory efforts for years, was as ancient as any other stonework in the Commonweal, the product of long-dead masons who had seemingly not passed their skills on to any worthwhile apprentice.

After a tenday of ruinous bombardment that had given Drephos the opportunity to experiment with various solid, explosive and incendiary missiles, the surviving defenders had sallied forth: all the glorious chivalry of the old Dragonfly-kinden with their glittering nobility and massed spear-levy. The Wasps had been ready for that, indeed it would be safe to say that the besieging forces had been ready for several years. By all accounts there were few survivors, the Wasps working out their long-harboured frustration on the city to such a degree that the Slave Corps raised an official complaint at the meagre pickings.

And here the three of them were at Lans Stowe, where Thalric had expected anything but this. A Commonweal shanty town of their little stick buildings, perhaps. A deserted ruin, certainly. But this . . .

In the centre of the town there rose a ziggurat in the Wasp-kinden fashion. It was, in its own way, a triumph of design. The lower two tiers were formed from blocks of broken stone mashed together, caged in wire and wood and then mortared in place. Had the upper reaches been of the same construction, then the whole edifice would have crumbled under its own weight, but they had presumably run out of suitable stone around that point, so had continued their work in cane and wood, the Commonweal’s traditional building materials. The shape, however, was wholly Imperial.

Of the rest of the town, perhaps half the buildings followed the local pattern: the slanting roofs and, presumably, twin-walled interior. The rest of it, which Thalric guessed was put up to replace structures Drephos had beaten down, was devised to the Imperial pattern: solid, low buildings, often with a second floor smaller than the first; flat roofs and little walled compounds. A surprising amount was constructed of the same salvaged stone, the rest of wood.

There were plenty of soldiers out on the streets, and Thalric felt instinctively at home. It had the feeling of any occupied town in the Empire, with a good garrison on hand in case of trouble. The soldiers wore black and gold, in varying degrees, through most of them were Dragonfly-kinden. Perhaps one in five was a Wasp, with a scattering of other Imperials, mostly Beetle-kinden and Flies.

There was clearly a stratification at work here amongst the townsfolk, and again one that was innately familiar to Thalric. There was a definite ruling class composed of Dragonflies and Wasps, well dressed and armed, often with retinues of followers. Then there were the Grasshopper-kinden making up the majority of the town’s populace who, by contrast, were poorly clad, and they worked. Some were chained.

Their masters, especially the Dragonflies, made a point of naming their home Landstower, as the occupying Imperial forces had done before the Empire’s borders had retreated so violently – after the death of the Emperor and the liberation of the Alliance cities. Thalric and Varmen were nodded to on the street, as though they had become people of consequence here purely because of their kinden.

‘This is insane,’ murmured Che. ‘It’s like they’re putting on a play, or we’re in . . . some kind of hallucination. A warped reflection.’

‘What are we doing here, Varmen?’ Thalric asked of their guide.

‘Taking another sounding,’ the big Wasp explained. ‘Believe it or not, the Principalities aren’t exactly the most stable of places. If there’s fighting westwards of here, I want to know about it. Also, we need supplies, and personally I could use a proper bed for just one night.’

Che caught Thalric’s gaze and her expression said clearly, I don’t want to stay here, but she voiced no actual objection.

‘So there’s an inn?’

‘Wayhouse,’ Varmen explained. ‘I like Wayhouses. Best thing the Lowlands ever exported.’

‘What on earth are the Way Brothers doing out here?’ demanded Che, still staring about them at this Empire in miniature.

‘Keeping a Wayhouse,’ Varmen replied, and then grinned at her exasperated expression. ‘I’m not saying the Empire was ever full of the little fellows, but they were always there. Beetles mostly, but a few of them were offshoots of decent family, enough clout to stop the places getting burned down. And the soldiers liked them ’cos, when you got to stop at a Wayhouse, you knew they wouldn’t rob you blind. ’Course, some of them got burned, all the same. You know how the army always is with cults and the like.’

Thalric nodded, remembering.

‘But they were like the Daughters – you know, those healer bints that always went trailing the pike. The men liked them and so the high-ups tended not to notice them so much, you see?’

The Wayhouse itself was one of the flimsy-looking Commonweal structures, to their surprise, and quite a sprawling one, clearly having been extended recently. The four Beetle-kinden men running the place wore the comfortingly familiar brown habits of the Way Brothers. That they had a staff of a dozen slaves was jarring to Che, but she decided, unhappily, that being a slave to the Way Brothers was probably doing relatively well, as a slave’s lot went.

The common room was already busy with travellers, and all of them sitting on the floor or on cushions – none of the tables and chairs that a Lowlander or a Wasp would have set out. Aside from a family of white-haired Roach-kinden bundled close together in one corner, the rest all seemed relatively well-to-do. There were several merchants – a Beetle, a Wasp and three Dragonfly-kinden – and one striking Dragonfly woman with a guard of four Mantis warriors. Then there were two important-looking Wasp-kinden with an entourage of a dozen men apiece, taking opposite ends of the room and pointedly keeping a no-man’s-land of strangers between their respective followers. In the Lowlands a Wayhouse catered to all travellers, down to the very poorest, but Che guessed that the truly poor in these parts did not get to travel very often.

‘Let me go and ask some questions,’ Varmen suggested. ‘Someone’s bound to have come from the west.’ He paused, considering. ‘Or else, you know, if nobody has, then we can probably guess it won’t be an easy road.’

Left to their own devices, Thalric and Che studied the varied throng.

‘We should do a little information-gathering of our own while we’re here,’ the former Rekef man decided. ‘No real news of this place was reaching Capitas when I was still there. The Principalities must be changing every day, and I want to know how this place has turned out like it has.’ Che could only nod.

He glanced from one to the other of the two influential-looking Wasps. The younger man looked like a merchant factor or quartermaster, the kind of Consortium type that Thalric had never much either liked or trusted. The older one still wore his Slave Corps tabard over his finery, as the badge of the Empire, no matter how debased, seemed to be a harder currency here than within the Wasps’ own lands.

In the end he chose the merchant, as the lesser of two evils. The thin-faced man looked to be about thirty, with a great deal of locally crafted gold about him. His retinue included a few Wasp guards, but they were outnumbered by the Commonwealer servants or slaves attending on him, including a pair of well-favoured Dragonfly women taking turns at feeding him sweetmeats.

‘May we join you, sir?’ Thalric asked. As he had guessed, the Imperial term of respect carried disproportionate weight here. The merchant, who would have been far from a ‘sir’ to Thalric back in the Empire, smiled as broadly as his narrow face would permit.

‘Well met, travellers on the road,’ he announced, indicating that Thalric should find a space of floor close by. ‘We have business together?’

‘We might, sir.’ Thalric was already fleshing out the details of his lie even as he spoke. ‘I’m but recently arrived here from Capitas, scouting for markets.’

The merchant raised his eyebrows. ‘A factor, then? Who for?’

‘Consortium,’ Thalric confirmed, but allowed the man’s sly smile to prompt an addition, ‘Horatio Malvern.’ The Malverns were well known as a powerful family in the Consortium, and Horatio as one of their aspiring sons. Thalric’s grasp of the intricate politics of the Imperial merchant clans did not run deep, but it was broad enough to fake a first meeting like this.

The Wasp merchant’s smile in response was knowing, and told Thalric a lot. ‘Well, the Malverns must know that we have all marked out our territories already, those of us Left Behind.’ He put a formal stress on the words. ‘If the Consortium wishes to run things here, then we may have difficulties . . .’

‘On the other hand, if my masters were simply looking for someone to deal with, for Commonweal goods . . .’ Thalric ventured. He was aware of Che, at his elbow, watching him with mixed amusement and fascination.

‘Then we will no doubt get on extraordinarily well,’ the merchant announced. ‘I am Merchant-Colonel Aarth, and we are clearly well met.’

Thalric was at pains to nod solemnly at the absurd rank. Clearly those ‘Left Behind’ by the Empire’s formal withdrawal from the Principalities had wasted no time in handing out the promotions. He guessed that, when the world around here had still been sane, Aarth had been no more than Thalric was currently pretending to be: a merchant family’s roaming factor, lacking in either power or respect.

‘Aulric, Consortium sergeant,’ Thalric replied humbly. For impromptu identities, best practice recommended a name close enough to the truth for him to respond to it without hesitation. ‘Tell me, Colonel . . . My masters told me that there were Wasps still in the conquered principalities, but I had expected to find . . .’

‘War?’ Aarth completed for him. ‘All of us holed up in castles and forts, surrounded by a besieging horde? Not at all. Oh, there were some that were worried. The top people, the magnates and generals and governors, they all got out as soon as the news came and left us to our fate. They’d been keeping well apart from the locals, see? They were expecting this to become another Myna.’ He smiled, not without a touch of self-mockery that made Thalric like him more. ‘I won’t deny that we were worried, but then we realized we weren’t the only ones. Everyone left alive here was looking at each other and seeing that the nobles are dead, the generals are gone . . . You might not credit it, but a lot of locals here were just as concerned about the Commonweal coming back and lumbering them with another pack of princes.’ A broad grin, from a man who plainly thought he had made the right choice back then. ‘So most of the enterprising Dragonfly-kinden, those who had been something better than dirt farmers, started to look for someone to lead them. Sometimes they chose locals, more often they picked us. We were used to leading them, see? The main thing they remember about us is that we won, that we’re stronger than they are. We’d won the battles and we still held most of the castles and defensible positions, even if we were short on men.’

For a moment he paused, as if to savour his petty victories. ‘Pretty soon everyone was taking on any locals who wanted in just to protect us from all the others. Then we started talking to each other – sorted out a new hierarchy based on how many swords, how much land, all the basics. Those Dragonflies willing to deal with us, we accepted them as our near-equals, gave them ranks like proper civilized people. The others got to go to the bottom of the pile and, with our new allies, we had strength enough to keep ’em there. For about half a year it was . . . well, you know the North-Empire at all? The hill tribes? It was like that, every village and town for itself. But you know how we are, Aulric: we’re better than that. We sorted it out. And those locals we’ve taken in and taught, they’re proving good students. One of the governor-generals is a reformed brigand chief of theirs. I’ve met him – he’s mad for all things Imperial, splendid fellow.’ A shadow crossed the merchant’s expression. ‘Of course we hear things have calmed down back home, with herself in charge at last.’

Thalric made a quick judgement. ‘I’ve seen no sign of armies pointed your way, Colonel. The Alliance cities are a problem, but . . .’ He glanced briefly at Che. ‘Seems to me the Lowlands are likely to be foremost in people’s minds.’

‘That’s fine, because we’d value good relations with the Empire,’ Aarth explained carefully, and Thalric understood him perfectly well. They wanted trade and the chance to visit home, but not to return to the bosom of the Empress. They were on to a good thing here, as lords of their own little backwoods empire.

After that, he and Aarth discussed matters mercantile, Thalric improvising well enough to keep the man happy. Shortly thereafter, Varmen was back with them.

‘It’s not what I’d call safe, west of here,’ their guide explained, after Thalric had bid Aarth farewell. ‘Still a few places holding out against the governor-general, which is what the local crook calls himself. We’ll have to go carefully, and be ready for a fight.’

When they left Lans Stowe, or Landstower, Varmen’s little pack-beetle had taken on a more sprightly gait entirely, and Varmen had transformed himself. He wore head-to-toe chain-mail, from the coif framing his face like a hood, to the long hauberk falling most of the way to his knees, to . . .

‘I’ve never seen mail trousers before,’ Che declared, staring. ‘I think that’s more armour than I’ve ever seen anyone wear ever, Varmen.’ She had kept her distance from him so far, but the sight of the man so heavily protected evidently struck her as almost comical.

‘This?’ Varmen just grinned. ‘This isn’t armour, mistress. This is just clothes you need to keep the rust off.’

As soon as they were beyond the farmland attached to Landstower, they travelled away from the roads, at Varmen’s suggestion. The terrain was surprisingly hilly, with irregular patches of dense forest, but there were plenty of goat tracks, and Varmen explained to them that the roads themselves dated only back to the occupation, and were little better, just hard-packed earth. ‘You see, the locals never did travel much,’ he explained.

Oh, I know, Thalric recalled. All these lands were places where he had fought, undertaken Rekef missions and cut throats. Imperial policy had been strict concerning the longevity of noble families in all areas under conquest.

Also at Varmen’s suggestion, they travelled on after dusk each day despite the intermittent snow, making several hours’ careful progress along the animal tracks before camping for the night, so as to make better time despite the short winter days, and to make life more difficult for anyone hoping to catch them unawares.

That was why their enemies, instead of ambushing them at their camp, were eventually forced to descend on them raggedly as they progressed.

The three of them had been moving along a lightly wooded track between two hills, when Che called out the warning, her own eyes better in the dark than either of the Wasps’. A moment later, there were forms gliding down around them, half a dozen, and then more. Thalric had his sword out, his offhand extended to sting, and Che had a hand to the hilt of her own blade.

‘All right, what’s this?’ Varmen demanded, with weapon already to hand: a sword longer and heavier than army-issue standard.

‘Give me a lantern!’ someone snarled, and one of the figures produced a rush-light from beneath a cover, lending a faint illumination to their surroundings. The newcomers were mostly Dragonflies, partly armoured in their borrowed black and gold. Standingbetween,andalittlebehindtwoofthem,wasthespeaker: a Wasp-kinden, not Aarth but the slaver at the Wayhouse.

Thalric made a quick count and found eight Commonwealers gathered in a loose half circle around them. Most of them carried spears, but a couple had bows with arrows to the string.

‘Your name’s Varmen, no?’ the slaver asked.

‘I owe you money?’ the big Wasp asked. ‘I don’t know your face.’

‘No need to worry yourself. I don’t want you. You can just take off,’ the slaver told him.

‘Is that so?’ Varmen said, looking round at all the Dragonfly-kinden. ‘Kind of you.’

Thalric was not sure what he had expected from Varmen, but when the big man grabbed his beetle’s halter and just backed off into the trees he found he was not overly disappointed. Che obviously had possessed more faith in their guide, for she shouted after him vainly, even as a curtain of driving snow took him from view, and then rounded furiously on the slaver.

‘What do you want with us?’ she demanded. Her own sword was out now, a short Collegium piece.

‘With you, nothing. Go follow your man there, if you wish,’ the slaver replied.

‘I don’t wish.’ She stood closer to Thalric, despite the odds. Just then, he could have wished for her to take the man’s offer, because he was faster than she was, both on the ground and in the air, and protecting her would get him killed all the sooner. Still, the odds were hardly favourable even without her.

‘What’s this?’ he asked them. ‘Who are you?’

‘Captain Halter, at your service.’

There was an awkward pause, because clearly the man expected his name to mean something, but Thalric could not place it.

‘I don’t know you . . .’

‘No?’ Halter’s face betrayed a twitch of annoyance. ‘But I recall you, Major, or your description at least.’

This use of Thalric’s old rank sent a dangerous jolt through him. This may suddenly become worse than I thought.

‘I wasn’t always the man of means you see before you,’ Halter continued, clearly delighting in having a captive audience. ‘I used to be a very lowly man indeed. But not entirely abandoned: I still got the lists.’

Thalric stared at him. ‘You’re not serious.’

‘I used to spend a lot of time memorizing those lists,’ Halter explained, positively beaming over his own cleverness. ‘We got plenty of fugitives coming through the Principalities. It was one of the few ways I could really attract my superiors’ notice, by turning in a few decent traitors. Names and descriptions, I memorized every one. Used to recite them to myself before I slept, most nights.’

‘I don’t know who you think I am,’ Thalric started. ‘My name’s—’

‘Aulric, you told the merchant,’ Halter finished for him. ‘So he told me, but I remember a man who matches your description nicely – a man who was right near the top of those lists, not so long ago.’

‘Listen, I’m not—’

‘Then you won’t mind stripping off and letting me and my lads look at your scars,’ Halter proposed, leering. ‘You see, Sergeant Aulric, this Thalric I remember had picked up a big old scar running from his navel to just about his knee. The description was very specific.’

‘Those lists . . . they must be years old, though.’

‘Oh, but once you’re on a list, there’s only one way off, as everyone knows. Imagine the reward I’d get for turning in such an inveterate traitor.’

But I’m not a traitor: I was the Regent . . . And of course such a revelation would make matters a great deal worse. Thalric steeled himself, reasoning that this slaver would want him alive. Once again, he wished Che had fled, but to order her away now would surely give Halter the idea of using the woman as a hostage. Right now, the man probably thought Che was a servant or slave or something.

‘So, you’re going to strip, or shall we just fly you off to the Empire and see if they want you?’ Halter demanded.

Thalric was formulating a line concerning the wrath of his notional Consortium masters, when a voice shouted out from behind Halter.

‘Right now, you sneaky bastards! Face a real man!’

Halter whirled around, and half his men with him, to see an apparition come striding into the lamplight, out of the drifting snow, approaching almost within spear-reach before they could react.

The newcomer appeared colossal, but that was mostly the armour. A full-face helm exposed nothing of him save a narrow eyeslit, whilst segmented pauldrons encased his shoulders, and his torso was locked into a massive breastplate and backplate, from which hung curved tassets that descended clattering to mid-thigh. Brutal-looking gauntlets encased his hands. All of this was worn over the full layer of mail that Thalric had last seen the same man wearing, for that voice, despite its hollow echo, was Varmen’s. He had his heavy-bladed sword in one hand, and a broad heater shield strapped to his other arm. The man had transformed himself into a ghost of the Imperial past: here was the heavy armour of the Sentinels, who until not so long ago had been the Empire’s pride and joy and the unyielding fist of its line battles.

The only flaw in all this barrier of solid steel was a small, jagged hole in the breastplate, low-down to the left and barely noticeable.

‘Oh, piss-damn,’ Halter swore, shaken, and Thalric let fly a sting-bolt that killed one of the archers, whilst lunging at the other in a flurry of wings. The bowman twitched backwards, out of reach, but Thalric’s backhand swing smashed his bow before he could bring it to bear. Then Varmen was charging down on Halter, an unthinkable weight of both metal and man in smooth, furious motion. The slaver rapidly let fly with his sting three times, twice caught on the shield and once searing harmlessly off the breastplate. One of the Dragonfly spearmen, undergoing a surfeit of loyalty, tried to get in the way, but Varmen did not even give him the courtesy of a sword stroke, barging him aside as though the man was irrelevant, bellowing ‘Pride of the Sixth!’

At last, Halter tried to fly, wings suddenly sparking from his back. He had left it too late, though, and Varmen’s blade chopped down to catch him neatly between neck and shoulder and slam him to the ground.

The Dragonflies had joined in the fighting, and Thalric had been hard pressed to keep the spearmen at bay in those first few seconds, until Che had lanced one through the ribs. Once Halter was down, however, they scattered instantly into the night. Had there been a free archer left amongst them, Thalric would have expected some long-range reprisal. As it was, he reckoned he and Che were probably safe from at least that particular pack of villains for the rest of the night.

He turned his gaze to the armoured behemoth that Varmen had become, and saw that the man had not yet sheathed his sword, but instead was now staring at him through that dark eyeslit.

‘The lists,’ came the man’s voice, hollow from within the helm.

‘What?’ Thalric asked, with a sinking sensation in his stomach.

‘He said your name was on the lists,’ the other Wasp stated flatly.

Thalric felt himself tense, so as to be ready if the man came for him. Halter’s sting had barely marked that solid armour, but Thalric’s Art was considerably stronger than most, and he would aim for the lighter mail over Varmen’s throat.

‘What’s going on?’ Che wanted to know.

‘Lots of people were on the lists,’ Thalric said defensively, enlightening her not at all.

‘Oh, I remember the cursed lists, and all the names on them were Rekef,’ Varmen spat. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? You watched me doing all that mumming for the Dragonflies, all those hints about how you were a sneak, and all the time you were laughing at me ’cos it was true all along.’ His voice had turned raw and angry.

‘Varmen, listen,’ Che said hurriedly. ‘It’s not what you think—’

‘I remember your lists,’ Varmen snapped. ‘When we were waiting to march on Sarn with the Seventh, two or three times some pack of Rekef executioners would come from down the rail line, with their cursed lists. They’d haul someone out from inspection, hustle them off, and then it was an unmarked grave and no questions asked. Because they were on the lists. And, you know what, I don’t care. Let Rekef kill Rekef, I’m not going to piss any blood for that – but those poor bastards they hauled out, we knew them. We’d known ’em for years, you know? Ate with them, diced with them, trusted them to watch our backs – and they’d been Rekef all along, spying on us, writing down every last thing anyone said that sounded like it might be treason.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Thalric demanded of him.

The faceless helm shifted left and right, seeming something less than human, a mute animal in pain. ‘If I’d known . . . I’d never have agreed to guide you, if I’d known.’

‘Listen,’ Che told him, ‘I’m not Rekef, right? I’m a Lowlander from Collegium. You’re . . .’ She remembered his cry: Pride of the Sixth. ‘Sixth Army? You were at . . .’ She got her recent history straight and blinked. ‘Malkan’s Folly, that must mean.’

‘Malkan’s Stand,’ Varmen corrected, giving the Wasp-kinden name for the battlefield on which Imperial ambitions towards the Sarnesh Ants had been smashed . . . and where the Empire’s heaviest line infantry had met the new dawn of the snapbow. Her eyes were drawn to that single flaw in the man’s mail, a finger-sized hole punched effortlessly through that thick armour plate.

‘I’m no Rekef, and Thalric hasn’t been one for years. That’s probably why he was on this list to begin with.’

Varmen’s carapaced shoulders slumped. ‘I’d never have said yes,’ he muttered, but he sheathed his sword in a single motion, through long habit able to find the scabbard’s mouth without searching, and then he was fumbling at the buckle to his helm, dragging the weighty thing off and then drawing back his coif, showing a tousled, unhappy man underneath.

‘We’re glad you came back, even so,’ Che told him. ‘And that you could get all your armour on so fast.’

‘All?’ he said, with a faint smile. ‘Woman, this isn’t all. This is just what I could, you know, throw on in a hurry. Most of it’s still on the beetle.’ His eyes found Thalric’s and the smile faded.

‘What can I say?’ Thalric shrugged. ‘So I was Rekef. As she says, not for a long time – and the Empire has gone to some lengths to get rid of me since. Putting my name on the lists is the least of it.’

Seeing Varmen’s grim expression linger, Che pressed on. ‘I promise you. Nothing about this journey relates to the Rekef, or even to the Empire.’ She essayed a smile. ‘Let me tell you about my sister.’