Salute the Dark

After tomorrow the world would know Drephos for one thing. It would not be as a genius artificer, inventor of machines, paragon of progress, the man who drove the mills of war. They would know him as the man who killed Szar. They would overlook the technical achievements he had made in bringing it about, citing him only as a butcher, the pedlar of atrocity. The Empire, that had given him such opportunity, would have made him its scapegoat, the focus for the world’s scorn and hatred. The Wasps would keep him around, keep him working, but the world would never know the truth for which he had worked all his life, his ideology and his ethos. Anything he put forward henceforth, be it philosophy or technology, would be tainted with that reputation.

He heard movement below him, where nobody should be trespassing, then a sudden shout of alarm as Big Greyv, the silent Mole Cricket, loomed massively from the shadows to accost the newcomer.

‘It’s all right, let him come up,’ Drephos called down. ‘Come on, Totho. I’ve been expecting you.’

It was the sudden unfolding of Big Greyv from the shadows that had given Totho such a turn. Of course he knew that the Mole Cricket could see perfectly in the dark, just as Drephos could, but that someone so huge could lurk totally unseen shook him badly. Greyv held an axe casually in one hand, the weapon dwarfed by its wielder. Totho himself would barely have been able to lift it.

He weighed his own burden in both hands while looking up at the watchtower beside the new engines. The lights of the engineering works behind showed him the robed figure standing atop it.

‘You are here to talk to me, are you not?’ the voice of Drephos drifted down to him. ‘Then climb up here. I dislike shouting.’

Totho cast a look at Greyv. The Mole Cricket’s dark face was unreadable but the set of his body said that he was unhappy, and that he did not trust Totho alone with their master. It was, Totho reckoned, a fair enough assessment.

He slung his burden over one shoulder and walked over to the metal rungs. One was missing and some were loose, and he therefore divined that this must be a tower constructed by the garrison engineers and not Drephos’ own people. He paused for a moment beside the deceptively small cask that was crammed full of the poison. It looked manageable enough to be carried easily by one man but the material within was so compressed and concentrated that it would have taken all Totho’s strength to shift it. He glanced up to see Drephos peering down at him, his halfbreed, iris-less eyes calmly curious as to what Totho might do.

What he did was climb on up to join his master. He wanted to talk.

‘I anticipated I would be seeing you at some point tonight,’ Drephos said. ‘You have brought another sample of your work, I notice.’ He held a hand out and automatically Totho unslung his piece and held it out to show him.

‘You have perfected the loading mechanism, I see,’ Drephos remarked.

The repeating snapbow lay slender and silver in Totho’s hands. ‘I adapted one from a nailbow,’ he explained. ‘It’s too complex for mass-production, though, and it jams too easily. It needs more modification.’

‘Even so, I am impressed. Good work.’ Drephos’ hand touched the weapon briefly, but he made no protest as Totho reslung it, continuing, ‘I know why you’re really here.’

‘And why is that?’ It had been an unexpectedly hard climb, or perhaps Totho’s own nerves were running him fierce and ragged.

‘You are not yet one of my cadre, not fully. That is only to be expected. Everyone needs time to settle in and learn the routines.’

‘Routines?’

‘Both physical and ideological.’

Totho grasped the rail, looking out towards the Szaren barricades. How many thousands of people…? ‘And the Twins?’

Drephos shrugged unevenly, joining him at the rail. ‘I was surprised by that,’ he admitted. ‘I had not judged the limits of their stresses and their tolerances as well as I might.’

That brought a bitter smile to Totho’s lips. ‘So they were just a piece of your machine that failed.’

‘After their task was done, thankfully.’ If Drephos had heard any accusation in his underling’s words there was no sign of it.

‘They killed themselves rather than see you do this.’ Totho knew that he had to force a confrontation now, before his own nerve failed altogether.

Drephos’ hands found the rail, one of them with a subtle scrape of metal. It looked for all the world as though he and Totho were simply sharing the view. ‘If that was the choice that they set themselves,’ the Colonel-Auxillian replied, ‘then I am disappointed, but it was their own choice to make.’ His voice hardened slightly. ‘You will note that they did not attempt to interfere with my work. Is that the choice that you have set yourself, Totho?’

Totho took a long breath. ‘I have merely come to ask you to reconsider.’ It sounded absurd to him, a pathetic anticlimax, but Drephos was nodding.