Salute the Dark

He heard the hollow knock of a leadshotter, but not close. A spume of smoke rose from a neighbouring hilltop also swathed in greenery.

Artillery? His own leadshotters were tilting towards the smoke, his engineers frantically taking measurements, calculating angles.

It was then that the enemy appeared, swarming along the ridge of his own hill with a motley of fliers above them. Praeter found his throat instantly drier even than the dust could make it. They were coming at a run, all shapes and sizes of them: armoured Ant-kinden soldiers, Mantis archers and swordsmen, Spiders, Beetles, Scorpions, Mynan Soldier Beetles, lumbering Mole Crickets. These were the dredgings of the Lowlands and the Empire both, a great froth of angry men and women now rushing the Wasp position.

His eye counted, even while his mind reeled. Two thousand, perhaps three – and how many of them wearing pillaged Wasp armour or using imperial weapons? Have we come this far just to arm every ruffian in the Lowlands?

‘Set your spears!’ he shouted, leading his cavalry between the infantry blocks. ‘Someone call some airborne from the other flank. We need them here! This must be the main attack!’ Send word to Malkan. But he bit down on that last unspoken command. He would not do so, not for all the soldiers who might die here. He would not bend his pride so far as to ask for Malkan’s aid.

Taking his entire force into account, he outnumbered this enemy ten to one, but here, right here and now, he unfortunately did not.

She, the one who had been Grief in Chains and was now Prized of Dragons, watched as the flying soldiers of Salma’s army dived in again, plunging down into the dust. Her blank white eyes followed their course, and she wondered how many they would lose. She hated fighting. She hated all war.

She loved Salma, who had come after her, even into the teeth of the Wasp army. For that she called herself Prized of Dragons now, who had been Grief in Chains, and then briefly Aagen’s Joy. One of the things that she loved most about Salma was that he, too, had no love of war. Perhaps he did not hate it as she did, but he took no joy in it. He was doing this, mounting this savage assault on the Wasp advance, because in his heart was his love for her and a prince’s love of his subjects. He had thousands of people in Sarn who needed his protection, and this battle was the price – as would be all the battles still to come.

Salma touched down lightly near to her, glancing about. She ran to him, her robes flapping. His smile, when he saw her, was like the sun to her.

‘Surely you must flee now, Salma,’ she said to him. ‘Their army, all their other soldiers, will be coming.’

‘That’s precisely what I need to know.’

There were warriors of Salma’s ragtag army passing back and forth all the time – busy hurrying the injured away or rushing in from other engagements. Salma peered through them until he saw a squad of horse cavalry galloping in.

‘Phalmes!’ he cried, and the Soldier Beetle reined his horse in, skidding slightly on the loose sand and stones.

‘General!’ the Mynan acknowledged. It was a title that Salma did not want, a Wasp title, but to his men he had become a general, and there was nothing he could do about that.

‘Where is their main force now?’ he asked.

‘The harriers have done what they could,’ Phalmes reported. Prized of Dragons noticed how his horse panted. Phalmes must have ridden miles back and forth today.

‘We’ve pulled out?’

‘Broken, almost. We’re gone, though.’ The harriers had been squads of men designed to make the far flank of the Wasp army assume that it was the main point of attack. They had been instructed to sow as much confusion as possible, while the real assault would come at the opposite corner of the advance.

‘We need to finish here. How do we stand?’ Salma asked.

‘You need to see for yourself,’ Phalmes said. ‘There’s only one group standing here, but they won’t budge.’

‘Show me.’

Phalmes wheeled his horse, and his men – mostly his original bandit followers from before he met Salma – rode after him. Salma’s wings flared and he coasted over Phalmes’ head, and Prized of Dragons let her own bloom into the air in a rainbow splendour of dancing light to follow him.

Phalmes’ words were instantly clear. The Wasps had been thrown off this side of the valley, killed and scattered or simply retreating in good order. Smoke from burning automotives still thickened the dusty air. Only one band of black and gold remained, a few hundred men surrounded by a loose cordon of Salma’s people. Prized noticed that only a few of them were Wasps.

‘Auxillians, Salma,’ she observed. ‘They are Bee-kinden.’

‘I see them.’

‘We have little time, General,’ Phalmes reminded him.

Salma nodded, walking forwards. He saw a few crossbows lift, but trusted to his reactions and the obvious threat of retribution to safeguard him.

‘Who commands here?’ he demanded.