War Master's Gate (27 page)

‘And the Skryres of Tharn, this is their decree?’

‘Yes.’
Some of them. Perhaps.
Tharen politics had always been fluid, and the Empress of the Wasps’ new status as a magician of power had divided the Skryres all over
again. A majority had agreed to join with the Empire – better that than another costly occupation like before – but how far to tread along the woman’s path was another question.
Out here, beyond the reach of her immediate superiors, Yraea had come to her own conclusions.
Stop Seda, secure Argastos in his chains. Maintain the status quo.

‘Well?’ she pressed.

Again a long pause, the woman’s expression of uncertainty only deepening. Yraea hissed with exasperation. ‘Servant of the Green, do you turn against us now? Are you unfaithful after
all this time? Is this what the Mantis-kinden have come to?’

In the darkness, the old woman’s eyes flashed. ‘Of course not, and you are right in all you say, and yet . . . my people hear her words. None has spoken of a return to the old ways
for generations. We begin to despair. The Wasp’s false hope is like a blade turning inside us. Yet it is better than your offer of no hope at all.’

The rebuke stung. ‘If it could be done, do you not think we would do so? She lies. She cannot give you what she promises. Do not be misled by her,’ Yraea repeated. ‘Do not
betray me, Servant of the Green. Your place is to obey.’

At last, the Loquae nodded. ‘I will speak to my people,’ she said, almost in a whisper, with more than a hint of defeat about it. She slunk off into the forest, leaving Yraea
wondering just what was left of the Mantis-kinden at this frayed and Apt-ridden end of time.

Desperate
, she decided. Whilst her own people had retreated to their mountain homes and learned patience, the Mantis-kinden had merely diminished as the years had gnawed away at what
they had once been, and they knew it. The Wasp Empire’s presence forcing them to resume dealings with the outside world served only as a jagged and unavoidable reminder that they had no real
place in it any more.
As long as they obey me in this, they shall have served their purpose.

That night, Seda saw the gates for the first time.

She dreamt, but ever since her conversion to the Inapt world, her dreams had become more than mere fancy. She had seen the depths beneath Khanaphes through Che Maker’s eyes, in those
dreams, just as Che had seen them through hers when Seda trod those buried paths herself. Now it seemed she woke from each night knowing some further scrap of information, some shred of lost lore
or a new understanding of those around her.

In her latest dream she was in some part of the forest she had not seen –
yet!
– and in her mind arose the thought,
the Heart of the Green
. Here the land sloped up
to a hill – a mound, rather, since it was the work of hands rather than nature.
A barrow
, some lost thought informed her: the resting place of the ancient, honoured dead. It had been
surfaced with slabs of stone, but now with grass and ferns thrusting from between the cracks. It looked to her like the carapace of some long-dead armoured beast, or perhaps a vacant compound
eye.

There were similar burial mounds in the North-Empire, in Hornet country, ancient relics of her own people’s distant ancestors that the Apt tribesmen still avoided from long tradition.
These days such tombs were prey to treasure hunters, those wily enough to evade the locals, but she was willing to bet that no daring thief had ever returned alive from the barrow she beheld in her
dream.

Set into the mound’s side was a gate, and this was what she was drawn to. The mound’s own shape had been built out to accommodate this portal, which was nearly as tall as the
mound’s highest point. A trilithon of grey slabs formed its sides and lintel, but the twin gates themselves were layered with chipped scales of gilded wood that rustled faintly together, each
one inscribed with elegant, potent sigils; as fine an entry way as any prince or emperor could command.

The name that came into her mind unbidden was
Argax
: signifying at once Argastos’s hall and his tomb.
And perhaps more.
What she sought – that which she had come
out and risked herself for – lay within, and all she had to do was open those gates.

Surely she must want to gaze upon the face of Argastos, after all this time.

The dream took her feet and tried to send her forwards to those gilded gates, but no magician of her skill was so careless as to let dreams get the better of her.

You mistake me
. She formed the words.
I am not just some Apt peasant who has chanced upon power. I am the Empress of the Wasps.
And she slapped away the tendrils that had been
attempting to drag her forwards.
Believe me, I shall come to you in my own time, and I shall come as Empress, not as servant. Others have made the same mistake, believing that I am here to
learn, and to pay homage. I drank their blood. I can drink yours too, if you have any. And if you don’t, I shall yet find some way to consume you if you will not serve me.

She expected an instant response – almost certainly an angry one, but instead there was a cool measuring of her. She was not yet sure whether what she faced was a human mind or some echo
of one, or just a facet of the forest itself, but it was old and cunning and patient, whatever it was. She could not provoke it so easily.

Come, then
, she thought she heard it murmur.
Come conquer Argax for your Empire.
Mockery, but could she sense a sliver of respect there?

She forced herself to step back from the golden doors, and she became aware that she was not alone in her dream – or rather that this was the dream of Argastos and she was not the sole
participant. Nearby she saw the Beetle girl, the Cheerwell Maker creature, but this time there was no immediate surge of hatred. Instead she saw that the girl had gone through the same experience,
had shrugged off the obvious lure, and for a brief second the expression on the girl’s dark face must have mirrored Seda’s own.

I will destroy you
, Seda declared, and the Beetle locked eyes with her, her gaze giving not an inch. The last time they had clashed, Seda had indeed nearly destroyed her, but they were
both stronger and more skilled now. Any battle between them would not be decided so easily.

Looking into that hatefully familiar face, though, the expected rush of loathing or even of fear, did not come. In that dream of Argax, standing before the barrow of Argastos, Seda entertained
the strange thought that, under other circumstances, here was the one creature in the world that might truly understand her.
A sister?
Save that all her siblings were dead, and the last
practically by Seda’s own hand.

Still there remained the uncharacteristic and melancholy thought:
I could have used a sister.

The land lying south of the Etheryon–Nethyon forest, the great road that General Roder’s Eighth Army would have to travel, had been turned into an invisible
labyrinth.

Both sides were still awaiting the outcome of the clash within the forest – at the mercy of whoever became the winners there, who could then strike with impunity at either the Ants or the
encroaching Wasps. Neither side was letting the dust settle, though. Roder had his orders, and Tactician Milus had sent his city’s forces to meet him.

But not in pitched battle, because the Sarnesh had already suffered a costly defeat against the Eighth at Malkan’s Folly. For now, they maintained faith in their forces and their allies
within the forest, hoped for a better opportunity for their great stand, and held the bulk of their soldiers back at Sarn itself.

Imperial flying machines still made their forays that far – Spearflights and a handful of Farsphex making the Sarnesh nights a nerve-racking lottery of fire. The Sarnesh air force itself
could coordinate impeccably in the air, but their machines were old: orthopters whose design had scarcely changed in eight years. They could have held their own against those bulky old heliopters
the Empire had relied on at the Battle of the Rails, but even the benefit of their mindlink barely made them the equal of the fleeter Spearflights. Inevitably, the Farsphex smashed them from the
air.

On the ground, Milus’s tactic was to slow down the Empire as much as possible, hoping for a flanking attack from the Etheryen to the north, or even from a victorious Collegium to the
south. He was no fool, Milus, and he could see that his people were right where the metal met. The future histories of the Lowlands were his either to write or be relegated to, depending on the
decisions he now made.

Since the Imperial Eighth had begun its advance from Helleron, from before either the fortress fell at Malkan’s Folly or the Nethyen Mantids turned on their own kind, the Ants had been at
work on the overgrown, broken ground south of the forest. Wasp scouts would have spotted neither earth-moving machines nor large working parties, but instead there had been small bands of soldiers,
camouflaged as best they could. Some had been engineers, others snipers picked for their skill with a snapbow. They had their own scouts as well, and a scattering of bold Fly-kinden for long
flights and night work, but their most valued men and women had been the sapper-handlers.

Theirs was an ancient trade, and their tool was known as the First Art. Long, long ago, when the lives of men had been short and cheap, at constant hazard from the beasts they shared their world
with, some few of them had found a way to reach across the chasm between man and insect, and so become the first kinden. At first they had only begged, but much later, there were negotiations,
demands, orders. Nowadays that old Art was a rare thing, but ascendant mankind still lived alongside the beasts and drew inspiration from them in the form of Art. There had always been tunnels
undermining Sarn, but not dug by the hands of men.

In that contested country east of Sarn, a band of Ants was crouching in a dugout, each of them touching the mind of their officer, whose periscope was even now spying out the Imperial
advance.

Leading edge is composed of alternating blocks of infantry – close-packed, armed with spear and snapbow . . . and war automotives. I see several of the new design, those
woodlouse-looking machines. Artillery, supplies and non-combatants too far back to see. T
he words were acknowledged by a Sarnesh relay post to the west and would be passed on, together with an
approximation of what the officer saw, all the way back to the tacticians.

I see a skirmish along the line, seven hundred yards thereabouts. One of the others – Pallina’s squad.
The Ants reached out their minds to hear the distant echoes from their
doomed comrades.

Light Airborne on their way, twenty seconds
, concluded the officer, taking the periscope from his eye.
I trust we’re all ready.
His face was without expression, but the
others felt his humour. It was a good man to fight alongside, he who could look upon extremity and laugh.

They were going to die, to a man: all the little squads that Milus had posted out here were ‘lorn detachments’, suicide details. They would spend their lives in slowing down the
Wasps.

For Sarn
, came the answering thought, first from one, then from all of them.
Sarn the mother of us all!

Scorvia
. The officer focused his attention on their one sapper-handler. The woman looked at him for a moment, her mind elsewhere and tainted with the alien feel that always came with
her particular Art.

Oh, ready, Officer
, Scorvia confirmed.
For the mother of us all.

The Light Airborne were coursing overhead, and the Ants huddled deeper in their dugout, almost holding their breaths in their wish to deny the Wasps any warning.

The waiting, after they had passed, strung them taut as wires, but the officer would not risk the lens of his periscope being spotted. They relied solely on sound and vibration – and on
Scorvia, who had wider senses at her disposal.

The engines of the Wasp automotives could be heard now: a low grumbling as they idled at walking pace to keep alongside the squads of infantry. The skies overhead were busy with airborne and
some few flying machines.

And Scorvia looked up and thought,
Now
.

One of the engineers lit the fuses for the mines, and seconds later the ground around them shook as the charges exploded beneath the approaching Wasps. There were shouts and cries, but the Ants
were already on the move, piling out of the dugout with snapbows and grenades ready to hand.

They found a light automotive kicked wholly on to its side by the blast, its undercarriage blackened and cracked, and a squad of infantry still picking itself up, half a dozen of them dead on
the ground. With brutal, desperate efficiency the Ants attacked, for all that there were only six of them against an army. Every dead Wasp meant one fewer to storm the gates of Sarn. Snapbows spat,
and the officer and engineers threw grenades into the midst of the reforming enemy squad, stretching surprise as far as it would take them.

And further, too, for the ground all around the Wasps was rippling now, hard bodies thrusting their way clear of it, glistening black with serrated mandibles agape, crooked antennae tasting the
scent of the enemy. The Sarnesh had brought their beasts to war.

A score of them only, but they were half the size of a man, dark-shelled ants tearing themselves from the ground in response to Scorvia’s thought and hurling themselves at anything that
was not their own. Their jaws clamped onto legs and arms, piercing and crushing, even severing hands and feet. Their abdomens stabbed in to sting, driving searing acid into the bodies of their
foes. Ferocious, almost mindless, whipped to a rage by Scorvia’s inciting commands, they tore the Wasp soldiers apart even at the cost of their own lives.

Another automotive was already coming close, and the soldier atop it let loose with a swivel-mounted rotary piercer, raking the mass of ants and not caring much if he hit his own allies. The
weapon had been designed for a fixed position, though, and its firepowder charges rattled and bounced it around on its pivot, sending most of the bolts wide. Then the Sarnesh officer got his last
grenade to drop neatly onto it, blowing apart weapon and crewman alike.