Salute the Dark

The sudden guilty flicker only betrayed what Thalric already knew, because of course every soldier in the Empire had thought about it, and no doubt others had put it into practice, but it was never admitted. The Empire had reserved a traitor’s death for any philosopher who pointed out that they were all still barbarians at heart, that the whole machinery of military hierarchy was not – as with the Ant-kinden – to complement their essential nature, but to restrain it.

‘It’s just the same,’ Thalric told the man. ‘It’s just a matter of scale.’

The soldier was already backing away, shaking his head, as though insane treason was a disease he might catch.

Thalric settled back. For a man with nothing but his continued existence to recommend him he felt curiously at ease, as though some old debt had at last been paid off, for all that it had taken up all the credit he had in the world.

Nineteen

Stenwold was unsure whether to be impressed by Collegium’s response or to laugh. Certainly it had all the hallmarks of people desperately doing the right thing without any real expertise, or even a clear idea regarding it. As the Buoyant Maiden drifted into the skies over the city, there arrived a succession of visitors to the airship: first a handful of Fly-kinden wheeling past it, ignoring Stenwold as he waved at them, and darting away to get out of range of any notional attack. But the customary curiosity of their race kept them in the air to watch, rather than returning to the ground to report, and so the next wave of airborne defence turned up spoiling for a fight. This was a dozen armoured Beetle-kinden with mechanical wings buzzing away in a blur, moving through the air with a surprising speed and grace. Stenwold recognized the design: namely Joyless Greatly’s one-man flying machines that had done such sterling service in the Vekken siege. At least one of them had survived the conflict, and Collegium artificers had since been industriously copying the design and improving on it.

The leader of the heavy airborne, as he proclaimed his troops to be, landed on the Maiden’s deck with a sword in one hand and a cut-down repeating crossbow in the other. He looked as ferocious a figure as any Beetle-kinden had ever cut, and instantly demanded to know who they were. Jons Allanbridge, who found this reaction from his native city somewhat galling, proceeded to get straight into a row with the man and the exchange became sufficiently heated for the passengers packed below to come up to see what was going on. Because they were who they were, and in a foreign land, they came up fully armed and expecting trouble. There was very nearly a diplomatic incident as a dozen of Collegium’s new heavy airborne faced off against a score and a half of Dragonfly-kinden warriors with every apparent intention of hacking fearlessly through them. It was then that Stenwold was able to intervene and, thankfully, at least one of Collegium’s defenders now recognized who he was.

Of course, in all the confusion, nobody had informed the city what was going on, and so Stenwold had just managed to make peace with the airborne when a long shape slid alongside the Maiden, and put it entirely into shadow. It was another airship, and not much smaller than the colossal Sky Without, but this one was brand new, coming straight from the Collegium foundries. Stenwold later discovered that the design of it had been kicking about Helleron for ten years, and had been repeatedly turned down on the basis that nobody in their right mind would have need for such a thing. It had finally been brought to Collegium by a Helleren exile, whereupon somebody had realized just what they were looking at.

They called it the Triumph of Aeronautics, and they called this type of vessel a Dreadnought. The craft’s individual name spoke truest, though, for the city’s chemists had needed to concoct an entirely new kind of lighter-than-air gas just to keep the weighty thing in the sky. It was an armoured dirigible, a great wood-reinforced balloon beneath which lay a long, narrow gondola plated with steel. From his privileged vantage point on the wrong side of it, Stenwold could see two dozen open hatches, with a lead-shotter behind each, and he guessed there were other hatches in the underside to bombard any enemy on the ground. Meanwhile the rail bristled with mounted repeating crossbows and nailbows. It was certainly a magnificent piece of engineering, and it sent a shiver through him to think that it was something his people had made.

By that time, the officer of the airborne had explained what was going on to the captain of the Triumph, and someone had the presence of mind to send a Fly-kinden messenger down to the city to stop them sending anything else up. It was in such august company that the Buoyant Maiden touched down.