Salute the Dark (46 page)

His sword blazed with white fire, the night around them as bright as noon. The blade drove beneath Salma’s ribs with all the force that Malkan could give it.

She had gone by many names already. It was the custom of her kind to don a new name as easily as a new garment, to suit fresh circumstance. She had been Free of Lilies and
Soaring Fire. She had been Grief in Chains and Aagen’s Joy. And most recently she had been Prized of Dragons, and the lover of Prince Minor Salme Dien.

Her kind were strange and few, living in remote places, secluded glades throughout the Commonweal and beyond. They lived off the sun’s own light, and had no needs or cares save when others
found them. They were coveted, taken, forced, enslaved. They were the bright cousins of the Moth-kinden, too shining and beautiful for others to contemplate without wanting to possess them. When
they were enslaved, though, they brought a trail of ruin, being passed from hand to hand, stolen, bought in blood, becoming the cause of fights and murders and the sundering of friends and
brothers. It was only from other kinden, and their small and greedy minds, that they learnt of such things as sadness.

Salma had been different. Salma had been an island in the raging sea of anger and fear and lust. Salma had brought back to her an awareness of the nobility of his people, the one people that the
Butterfly-kinden consented to live amongst. But Salma had a flaw, in that his nobility had driven him to a desperate, violent course.

She had known it would end like this, but she had led Morleyr and the others here anyway, desperate to find him in time to snatch him from the claws of the Empire, to rescue him as she had
rescued him before the walls of Tark. Freed now from the earth, from the tunnel that Morleyr had crafted with his own hands; freed from the general’s tent and rising with flaming wings above
the fighting that spread out from it, she saw him.

He had fallen to his knees just then, and the Wasp was dragging the blade out, and she felt, in her own soul, the life that was Salme Dien wink out – cut to the heart, dead on the instant
– and beyond even her powers to bring back.

She had already learnt many terrible things from the Empire and its subject peoples. She had learnt of betrayal and need and contempt, bigotry and vice. She had learnt hate and rage, but never
until now had she experienced these emotions herself. There came surging through her something monstrous, roaring and screeching. There was a voice in her mind and it was crying out for something
her kind had never known before.

Vengeance!
it screamed, and she was powerless against it, battered by the storm of feeling that was now blowing her from the sky down towards General Malkan.

She saw him look up, shielding his eyes. Beyond him, the Wasp soldiers were no longer rushing frenziedly backwards and forwards, but instead were staring only at her. She was used to that, to
attracting such attention. The massed eyes of 500 men were no obstacle to her. Her attention was on Malkan only.

She saw him take a step away, stumbling, the sword becoming loose in his hands, falling from his grip.

She
screamed
, and let her Art fly from her, all of it, using Art that no other kinden could know. So the Empire had taught her how to hate, at last, and she would teach them something in
turn.

Balkus took his men forwards another twenty yards, and by now they dutifully formed their two ranks of archery line around him without needing to be told. The battle was going
raggedly, messily, for not even the Sarnesh mindlink could force this pre-dawn fight to run smoothly. The Wasps had rallied swiftly along the far edge of the line, and now there was a solid block
of soldiers opposing the centre, composed of imperial sentinels and heavy infantry with a circling screen of the light airborne. The Sarnesh advance had ground to a halt.

Losing our advantage
. The surprise and momentum that had carried them this far was fast disappearing. The attackers’ losses were mounting and Balkus was acutely aware that his
detachment was due for a hammering if the Wasps actually threw a counterattack his way. Parops’ Tarkesh soldiers were keeping a line of shields braced against the stings and flagging snapbow
bolts that arced over, thus giving cover to Balkus’ snapbowmen. However the Wasp line was growing longer by the minute, as more of their men ran to the front. Now, Balkus had Plius’ men
making a line down his formation’s right flank, taking up where Parops’ shields left off and watching the imperial lines extend ever further to flank them. The Tseni agent, squeezed
into hastily refitted armour, was white-faced and sweating. He had been a long time as a civilian in Sarn.

Balkus shook his head, whilst around him the snapbowmen of Collegium loosed their shots, scattering the Wasp line as it tried to form up. The Mantis warband that had been on his far right had
been scythed down almost to a man by an enemy snapbow volley, and a moment earlier he had felt in his mind the sudden flare and silence that had signified a leadshot ball ploughing through twenty
ranks of Sarnesh soldiers.

But where in the wastes
is
their real artillery?
Apart from the leadshotter, and a lone catapult somewhere towards the rear of the enemy’s camp, there had been nothing so
far, not even war-automotives.
Does that mean Salma actually pulled it off?

The order came just then.
Commander Balkus, your men to loose on the Wasp centre.

What about our flank?
Balkus demanded, but then realized that the thought had remained in his head. He could not question the order. Obedience was too deeply bred in him. The Wasps across
from him were already finding the range, so that Parops’ men were taking a battering. Balkus turned his attention to the solid mass of heavy infantry at the centre, and saw that they were
about to press forwards.

We are dead
, he realized – another thought he was keeping to himself – and then he shouted, ‘With me!’ and rushed to get in range of the Wasps, taking advantage of
the space that opened up between Parops and the Sarnesh main force.

A snapbow bolt, at the limit of its range, jammed into his mail with a spark of pain but he ignored it, knowing that his men were following him, and that enough of them were bright enough to
know what a bad idea this was. The Wasp left flank, which had been trading shot with his men, suddenly began to pull together, to seize the opportunity. Without being asked, Plius’ contingent
moved their shield-wall to take the brunt of them as they came.

‘Throw everything you’ve got into those lads!’ Balkus shouted out in a real battlefield bellow. The men and women of Collegium fell into place around him as though they were
professionals, and not just a rabble of tradesmen, merchants and adventurers. Their expressions, Beetle and Fly and Ant and many others, were fixed and blank, concentrating on the task in hand
while blotting out the carnage around them. It was only their second battle, and this time they had no walls to stand behind.

The Wasp centre surged forwards, and Balkus’ snapbowmen opened up almost as one. The closest corner of the Wasp formation crumpled instantly, sending a shock from man to man, so that the
far side was still moving, but out of step, and the near side was at a standstill. In this second of confusion, the Sarnesh began charging them, thundering forward shield to shield, whilst the men
of the second rank loosed their crossbows and snapbows directly into the faces of the enemy line.

‘They’re coming!’ Plius bellowed, drawing his blade for the first time. The Wasp left wing, heedless of what was happening at their centre, was rushing them, both on the ground
and in the air. Balkus watched his own people reloading all around him, and knew they would be in time for one more round.

‘And loose!’ and they did, raking through the spread formation of light airborne and infantry. The Tseni soldiers braced themselves, with shields overlapping, and the Wasps struck
them head on. Between Balkus and the Tseni, Parops’ men were ready waiting, cutting into place like the blades of shears to trap the Wasps between their shields and those of Plius’
contingent. To Parops’ left, there were only the Collegium irregulars to hold the line.

‘Nailbows!’ Balkus roared, and took his own up from its strap, emptying it rapidly into the charging Wasps. The roar of the weapons from all around him told him that his order had
been heard, and for a moment the Wasp charge was down to nothing, as though a great fist had struck them still. Then they were coming on again, and Balkus had his sword drawn whilst his band of
militia were taking up their shields and maces, axes and spears, with the pikes thrusting in from the second and third ranks. The Tseni line buckled abruptly, no longer enough of them left to hold.
The shock of impact recoiled into Parops’ shield-wall, as the Wasps drove a wedge between him and Balkus’ men. Plius died without ever striking a blow.

From behind the Wasps, from within their camp, came a sudden, soundless explosion.

It was light only, with no force: a monstrous wash of white light. Balkus reeled back, covering his eyes, hearing a few sounds of metal on metal, the scream of a man wounded. The Wasps had
meanwhile faltered, scattering within feet of their targets, pulling back. Balkus, still blinking, saw them looking around, their officers trying to find out what had just happened.

Something was burning within the Wasp camp – no, not burning, something was
alight
. Hanging in the air was a human shape, but one so bright that it hurt the eyes. The Wasps closer
to it had all turned towards it, but were now pushing away. The light was so bright that Balkus could see every detail beneath it. This was not bright like day. No day had ever been so harshly
radiant.

There was a figure directly before that light, and Balkus swore in awe and fear because the man standing there was burning, flaming incandescent. His very armour was glowing white-hot with the
focus of that terrible light. This was Art, Balkus realized, but Art that he had never seen before, and never wanted to see again. The man was staggering, flailing, and yet he still faced the
searing, glowing creature before him, the light so excruciating that he could not draw himself away from it, even as his armour melted on his boiling skin.

And there was a flare, another tidal wave of light ripping through the Wasp army, so that those closest to the fire, those that had turned to see what it was, screamed and clutched at their eyes
and fell to the ground.

And it was gone, and the torches and lanterns of the Wasp camp barely touched the utter dark, but the Sarnesh were in one another’s minds and they rammed home their attack into the
suddenly disarrayed Wasps. Then Balkus gave the order to shoot at an enemy he knew was there, only yards before him, unseen and unseeing, and the snapbows of Collegium shattered the Wasp left and
broke them apart.

The rebellion in Myna had broken out all at once and yet without any unification. The news of General Reiner’s death was the spark that had sent every cell of resistance
fighters into the streets, but it spread faster than Kymene could control it. Whilst many bands heeded her order to wait and attack in unison, others had simply struck at whatever local target the
Imperials might provide.

The imperial garrison already had its men out in force in the city. The first reaction to the deaths of both Reiner and Latvoc, neither of whom had been men to willingly share their plans with
subordinates, was to round up known troublemakers and attempt to continue Reiner’s iron-fisted bludgeoning of the populace. In many cases the soldiers thus despatched ran straight into the
local resistance as it, too, sallied forth. There was a score of separate skirmishes within the first hour of the rebellion, and, in most of the fights, sheer numbers overwhelmed the small punitive
forces the Empire had sent out. Where they had expected to find at worst a rabble of malcontents armed with stones, knives and clubs, the imperial soldiers ran headlong into Myna’s military
heritage.

The Mynans were close to Beetles, cousins perhaps, but a halfbreed strain that had taken in fresh blood and stabilized into a new kinden entirely. What was not Beetle in them was a core of Ant
fighting spirit that had made the taking of this city such an undertaking in the first place. Eighteen years had gone by, and the people of Myna had kept their blades sharp, their crossbows well
oiled. The resistance fighters currently on the streets were a patchwork re-creation of the generation before, with their black and red breastplates and helms, their short swords and long shields
and heavy crossbows. As the first unwary men of the Empire broke against them, they were overwhelmed or shot out of the sky.

The news soon snapped the officers of the garrison into line. The Empire’s response was swift and proportionate, calculated to ensure that, in order to stop the rot, the rogue elements at
large in the city would be destroyed to the last man as quickly as possible. Without exception, those bands of resistance fighters already mobilized were either routed or surrounded and
slaughtered. At the same time that the imperial response was being deployed, however, Kymene’s own people, and those that heeded her – over two-thirds of the resistance total –
made their own move. They struck at key buildings and positions across the city, encountering surprisingly little resistance because the forces that would normally have rushed forth in defence were
already engaged elsewhere. Several imperial detachments even returned to find their own barracks overrun and in enemy hands. Others found themselves holed up and under siege in the very buildings
they had just stormed. One detachment, finding itself under threat of being trapped and smashed against the city walls, retreated through the main gates of the city in the general direction of
Maynes.

By the end of a single day of savage fighting, without quarter on either side, Kymene found herself in control of over half of Myna, with the Empire still holding out in three improvised
positions across the city. The balance was composed of the surviving resistance groups who had not heeded her, or areas that were so devastated or heavily contested that nobody could truthfully
claim to have any grasp of them. Had it not been for one factor, her victory would have seemed inevitable.