Salute the Dark

The city walls were lined with engines, Stenwold observed, and everywhere they went, every step of the way from the airfield to the Amphiophos, there was armed militia evident in the streets. The same kind of people who had been sent off to help the Sarnesh were now distributed all over Collegium, and most especially on the walls.

She met him before he was three streets into the city: Arianna, rushing out of the crowd so swiftly that several of the Dragonflies drew their swords on her. Stenwold flung his arms about her, noticing her stricken expression.

‘I didn’t know,’ she got out. ‘The news has been so bad, I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.’

As he looked at her face, Inaspe Raimm’s prophecy came back to him, and he said, ‘There are no certainties.’ There were a lot of people waiting for him to move on, but he did not care. ‘I’ve missed you. I have missed you, but I’m glad you stayed here, safe.’

‘War Master, the Assembly-’ interrupted the commander of the heavy airborne. Stenwold shrugged him off.

‘Safe?’ Arianna asked him, and laughed, a wretched and unwilling sound. ‘I’d ask you where you’d been, if I didn’t already know. Sten, there’s a Wasp army marching east of here. It’s no more than three days away.’

Passing into that familiar great chamber, he was at least relieved of one fear: there were not hundreds of Assemblers waiting there to pick his own news apart. That would come later, no doubt. In his mind, the Assembly of Collegium seemed a worse prospect even than the approaching Wasps. Instead there were only two people there, in that great amphitheatre: a fat Beetle man and a Spider-kinden Aristos.

‘Hello, Stenwold,’ said the Beetle, with a faint smile. His name Stenwold now recalled as Jodry Drillen, and instead Stenwold had expected to see the Assembly’s Speaker, old Lineo Thadspar. After a moment, Stenwold decided that question could wait.

‘Master Drillen,’ Stenwold said, and then, to the man next to him, ‘Lord-Martial Teornis.’

The Spider nodded. He was wearing sombre colours, his features drawn, as if that indefinable varnish of Spider grace and charm had rubbed off in places

‘May I introduce Paolesce Liam.’ Stenwold gestured at his companion. The bulk of the Dragonfly-kinden were, he hoped, being billeted even then, but he had brought their leader along with him. Paolesce was a tall, slender man whose age was hard to tell at a glance, but whom Stenwold had pinned, after speaking with him, as being around the Beetle’s own years. He wore his gleaming armour still, standing with feet apart, gazing about with apparent equanimity at a city that must seem overwhelmingly strange to him.

‘Master Liam is…?’ probed Jodry Drillen.

‘Master Paolesce,’ Stenwold corrected, ‘is here as… as a gesture of solidarity. He has brought thirty soldiers. The Commonweal will, I hope, be raising a force to trouble the Wasps on their own border, but-’

‘But you thought we had more time,’ Drillen finished for him. ‘Didn’t we all.’

‘How…?’ Stenwold looked from him to Teornis. ‘The Wasps have come by ship?’

‘They came by land,’ the Spider said. ‘They simply didn’t stop for anything. Egel and Merro rolled over, as we knew they would. Kes declared itself uninterested in war, and most of the surviving population of Felyal is here, within Collegium’s walls, or north with your Prince of the Wastes.’

‘And,’ Stenwold frowned at the Lord-Martial, ‘what about your own people? What about the Spiderlands?’

Teornis gave a smile, but it was painful. ‘Why, when their army was sufficiently far west, we sallied forth and attacked the garrison force they had left behind. We had a battle and, in short, we lost. We lost in a sufficiently flamboyant manner that enough of our army got back to Seldis to man the walls. Some of the mercenaries we hired fought a bloody enough rearguard that I managed to save my own hide. Seldis is currently under siege. We’re having our turn on the rack right now.’

‘The Sarnesh are probably fighting even as we speak,’ Drillen said softly. ‘If they fall, then the first we’ll know is another Wasp army marching south on us. We are now where the metal meets, Master Maker. The war, the real war, has finally come to us.’

‘And how far is this south-coast army from Collegium?’ Stenwold asked hollowly. ‘Three days? Is that accurate?’

Teornis’ smile was sad and genuine. ‘At the pace they are capable of, that may even become two. War Master, you have arrived just in time for the war.’

Stenwold stared down at his hands. It was something he had been doing a lot recently. He had always considered himself a practical man, a trained artificer who belonged to a kinden that made and built things, whether those things were machines or trade agreements. But he was beyond his range of ability now. He could not repair this crisis, or even patch it. Events had overtaken him, as he now sat at the bedside of a dying man, and waited.