The Air War (39 page)

The army was moving again the very next day. The Imperial Second was known as ‘the Gears’, and General Tynan was not going to let them stop turning for anything, it appeared.

That night, however, Laszlo had decided that the time had come to risk everything. He had not told Liss what he was doing, in case she tried to stop him, or in case she pointed out what a stupid
thing he had resolved on. Instead, while she slept, he skipped out from the wagon and flew away.

He was a sailor by training: he knew the seas and, more, he knew how sailors thought. Kes was not just a military power: it lived on trade, and there would be those sea-traders who would want to
avoid the reach of the Aldanrael, for whatever reason.

Three times he let his wings carry him off the cliff, scouring the seas for sight of a sail, battling gusting wind and sudden squalls of rain before clawing his way back to land, before his
strength failed. On the third venture, pushing himself further, risking more, he was lucky. A little Beetle-kinden steamer was out there on the waves, stolidly making its way towards Kes. He
dropped down on to its deck, sending its crew scrabbling for swords and crossbows, and demanded, between gasping breaths, to speak to their master.

He had only moments to explain himself, but the news that the Aldanrael held Kes soon had the Collegiate skipper’s full attention. Every Beetle-kinden sailor knew how the Spiders’
tame pirates had been preying on the sea trade until Stenwold Maker put a stop to it.

The ragged message Laszlo delivered was wild, out of order, everything he could dredge from his mind about Solarno, Tark, Merro, Kes. He could only hope that it was enough, and would reach
Stenwold in time to do some good.

Then, after a wistful thought about simply remaining on board, he took wing again and returned, dodging sentries and searchlamps, to get back to Liss’s side. He could not leave her, and
there would be more to learn and to report on, before he was done.

He slept not at all that night, holding Liss close to him, feeling the terrible fragility of her and, beyond the wagon’s cloth walls, the commensurate fragility of everything else.

‘You must do something to control your Mynans,’ Jodry said, around a mouthful of honeybread. Although most of his face was engaged in eating, his eyebrows contrived
to glare at Stenwold meaningfully.

‘They’re not
my
Mynans.’ Stenwold had no appetite, as he stood by the window of Jodry’s office and stared out at the city, trying desperately to calculate rates of
advance. He had received a message by ship from Laszlo, at last, which meant that he could at least assure the man’s extended family of rogues and pirates that he was still alive. The
contents of the message more than offset the relief, though, for General Tynan’s Second and his Spider allies were practically tearing up the coast towards Collegium.

At the same time, he had received word that the Eighth Army, which had taken Myna, was already past Helleron, meaning all chance of stoppering the bottle on the Empire was already gone while the
Assembly debated and the Merchant Companies recruited. The Sarnesh had sent ambassadors to Collegium, but not to debate. Malkan’s Folly was manned and ready for the Empire, with a Sarnesh
army already mustering in the city to mount an attack as soon as the Eighth got bogged down in besieging the fortress. The Sarnesh had told the Assembly, somewhat patronizingly, that this was a
soldier’s war, and real soldiers would deal with it.

And then there were the Mynans . . .

‘Well, you brought them here,’ Jodry pointed out.

‘Speak to Kymene.’

‘
You
speak to her. She scares the sandals off me,’ Jodry muttered. ‘Looks at me like she’s trying to work out what possible good I am. Murderer’s eyes, that
one.’

‘Her city’s back under the black and gold,’ Stenwold pointed out, somewhat testily. ‘It’s not a situation to inspire levity.’

‘But if she wants to work with us to liberate the place, she has to work
with
us, and so do that rabble of pilots you pulled in, and all their soldiers who’ve turned up at our
gates. Little Mistress Aviator’s been training our fliers to work together: formations, tactics, all that sort of thing. She seems to think that’s all very important. Now your Mynans
are on the scene and, yes, they have more flying experience than our lads and lasses, what with all that scrapping about on the border over the last year, but they won’t do what they’re
told, and Mistress Taki, for reasons of her own, won’t tell them either, and our own pilots are frankly scared of being in the air with them because nobody knows what they’ll do next.
And while we’re trying to train them to work alongside our people, they’re trying to wing off to hunt Wasps that, frankly, aren’t even here yet. Either they’re flying off
without orders or authorization, or they’re bullying our ground crew into keeping their personal Stormreaders wound and ready, as if the Empire’s already at the gates.’

‘Jodry, if you’d seen Myna, you wouldn’t want to be caught unprepared either, believe me.’

‘Oh, I know, but then you don’t have to listen to Corog Breaker moaning about how it’s impossible to get them even to march in step.’

‘Why would they . . . ? What’s Corog Breaker got to do with it?’ Stenwold pictured the Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum. ‘He’s a pilot?’

‘Well actually he
is
a pilot, thankfully, but mostly he’s a disciplinarian,’ Jodry said primly. ‘And he’s trying to make your Mynans part of a
team
.’

‘They’re not—’

‘They
are
. I’m making them yours. You’re now official liaison with the Mynan exiles. I, as Speaker, command this. There, it’s done.’

Stenwold looked at him as mutinously, no doubt, as the Mynan pilots were even now looking at Corog Breaker. The man’s logic was faultless, however. ‘Do you have any idea how much
else I have to do?’ he complained, somewhat wretchedly. ‘The committees, the engagements, the planning? I’d forgotten how this city runs its wars on bureaucracy.’

‘Yes, I know,’ the Speaker’s calm slipped a little, ‘Stenwold the martyr. You’ll never know the problems of yours that I’ve solved without your ever hearing
of them, because you were in Myna or off mooning over that Sea-kinden woman of yours. But now you’re the War Master, whether you like it or not. During peacetime I could keep you on a long
leash because you’d done good work for the city, sterling work, and you’d earned the right to thumb your nose at our committees and our paperwork. Now it’s war again, and you
yourself proposed the vote, and you will
not
simply stride about in a breastplate and leave all the organization to me. I need you, and Collegium needs you. And that means at all hours . .
.’ Jodry’s words ground to a halt, for Stenwold was no longer listening to him. ‘What?’

‘Quiet,’ Stenwold told him, already at the window and throwing the shutters open.

Jodry goggled at him. ‘Stenwold, what—?’

‘You hear it?’

‘I don’t . . .’ Jodry lapsed into silence, and the two men waited. In the air was a distant, ever-increasing drone. ‘They’re training in the Stormreaders . . .
?’

‘Clockwork engines don’t sound like that,’ Stenwold said quietly, as the sound built – still far off but not as far as it had been a moment ago. The buzz of engines on
the air: many engines.

A moment later and Stenwold was bolting from the room, the door slamming open as he shouldered into it, leaving Jodry staring after him, his mouth working soundlessly.

‘Advance! Advance! Forward! Form shooting lines, two . . . no . . .’ Chief Officer Marteus swore under his breath, holding on to his calm by the slenderest of
threads. ‘Two lines, one shooting over the other. You – Fly-kinden – get to the front. What’s the point of you standing there when the Beetle kneeling in front of
you’s still taller?’

The shooting line had dissolved into chaos, and Marteus felt that same anger rising in him that had seem him leave Tark so ignominiously, years before. It had served him well enough when the
Vekken had come to Coldstone Street, or when the Wasps’ Light Airborne were jumping the walls, but training his new recruits was rubbing his temper raw, and any moment now he was going to
explode in a wholly unprofessional manner.

‘Back to where you were!’ he snapped at them, seeing the motley squad of a score and ten new-minted soldiers stumble and jostle their way across the square. People were watching, he
was well aware, lolling out of windows to chuckle – people who didn’t have the guts to enlist themselves, but were content simply to criticize and laugh.

‘Now, forward! At the trot, come on!’ This time they managed it, and stopped approximately when he ordered. ‘Shooting line, loose!’ he bellowed hoarsely, hearing the
ragged chorus of retorts from their snapbows – charged but not loaded. ‘Now charge, and loose again!’

That was hoping for too much. Half of them managed a decent turn of speed with the weapons, even miming slotting the bolt in. The others were still fumbling as the first half were shooting.
‘No!’ Marteus roared. ‘No! Stop!’ His voice was failing. Ant-kinden did not have to shout at one another. The old days of service in his home city were suddenly an
unexpected source of nostalgia. ‘You shoot
as one
. Individual shots kill individual soldiers. Shoot together and you stop their advance dead. Ask the Sarnesh – it’s what
smashed their line at the Battle of the Rails, and it’s what stopped the Jaspers dead at Malkan’s Folly, eh? Back to where you were.’

They ran through the exercise again, got to the same point, half the squad out of position, some fumbling, some shooting. Marteus’s voice cracked under the force of his invective and he
turned away to take a swig from his waterskin. His ears rang to shouting, however, and for a moment he thought it was still his, or perhaps some private drill officer within his own head.

But no: a woman’s voice. He lowered the skin, looking round. One of his recruits had plainly endured as much as she could take, too. She was stalking along the line, bellowing in a high,
clear voice at the others, correcting their stance, lining them up. ‘Come on, you maggots!’ he heard her shouting. ‘You’re embarrassing your city! That’s it! Bows
level and straight – that means you too, Lucco, no enemy down near your feet – ready to loose . . . ?’ And by this time she had realized what she was saying, and that Marteus was
staring at her.

She was a lean, spare woman, some Spider halfbreed sort, and she did not back down before his stare, but simply adopted a stave-straight soldier’s stance. ‘Chief Officer,’ she
said and, in those non-committal words he reckoned she’d learned more of soldiering than half the men he’d served with in the Vekken siege.

‘You think you can give orders better than I can?’ he demanded.

‘No, Chief, but I think I can listen better than these.’

Halfbreeds
, thought Marteus, but the Coldstone Company had never been choosy and, besides, only around half his recruits were Beetle-kinden.
Someone
was shaming Collegium, but it
wasn’t these, who at least had taken up the snapbow or the pike to defend their surrogate home. ‘Go ahead,’ he told the woman, ‘show me.’

She nodded, surprised and abruptly nervous, but turned back to her fellows. ‘Loose!’ she ordered, and the bows snapped dutifully. ‘Recharge – that’s it, wind steady
and you’ll not fumble it. Gerethwy, Barstall, hold your shot – you too, Master Maldredge. When you see three in four up and pointed – now – loose!’ She risked a glance
at Marteus, but his face remained as impassive as only an Ant’s could be. ‘Ready to receive a charge!’ she hazarded, and the half-dozen Inapt they had with them –
Mantis-kinden mostly – were shouldering forwards. ‘No, not round – cut between like we practised –
and why aren’t you recharging your bows?
– and –
loose! Pikes at the ready!’

She turned, still in the midst of the tableau she had created, the pikemen in the second and third ranks bracing their weapons, whilst the rows of snapbowmen were recharging now without being
told, raggedly but not so far out of step with one another.

‘Your name?’ Marteus demanded. He heard one of the other recruits snigger – a tall grey-skinned creature of some lanky kinden he had never seen before.

‘Straessa, Chief Officer – called the Antspider,’ the halfbreed reported, reverting to her blank soldier’s demeanour.

And she knows all their names
, Marteus thought. Another knack that Ant-kinden never needed to learn. ‘Right. Subordinate Officer Antspider.’ He made the decision quickly, the
words rushing out before he could regret them. ‘You drill your friends here another dozen times, then break.’
Does this mean I need more subordinates? Probably. Does that mean I need
rank badges, like the Empire has? Almost certainly.
Ant-kinden needed no rank badges, of course. Everyone knew who everyone else was.

‘Right, back to where we were!’ the new Subordinate Officer ordered, and cuffed the tall man as he passed. ‘No bloody smirking, Gerethwy, this is war . . .’

She stopped speaking, the certainty in her voice draining away. ‘Chief . . . ?’

‘What is it?’

‘Are they ours?’

She was looking upwards, and Marteus – and everyone else – followed her gaze.

Black shapes were passing over the city against the insistent drone of engines, low enough that they could see the flickering wings of orthopters. No strange sight perhaps, given how hard the
aviators were training, but these flew in formation, and they were many.

‘Clear the square!’ Marteus shouted, and he heard his new junior officer seconding him. ‘Make for the College.’ There was no great rationale in that, save that he could
think of nothing else to suggest.

‘Wheel left!’ Corog Breaker shouted. ‘Fly straight. Wheel right – keep that distance! You’re moving apart.’

He had a better voice for it than Marteus ever did, honed by bellowing across classrooms and foundries and tavernas. The Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum was now teaching discipline to airmen
rather than fencing to students.