past.’
Angved and Varsec exchanged glances. ‘Any other casualties, Captain?’ the aviator asked.
‘Eleven men lost, sir, all to enemy crossbows,’ the captain confirmed. ‘Twenty-one in total, including Stasric’s men.’
Twenty-one dead to six hundred of theirs, Angved considered. A mere skirmish, but the numbers would look good when sent home. ‘Have your men stay ready, since we can expect further attacks by the Many. They’re a stupid, brutal people.’
Midnight was approaching when the watch lieutenant awoke Angved, sounding panicked. ‘Something’s outside the wall, sir.’
It took a blinking and blurred moment of recollection before the Engineer remembered where he was and what he was doing there. For a moment he had thought he was back accompanying the first Khanaphir expedition, making war on the city on behalf of the Many of Nem, rather than the other way around.
‘The Scorpions are back?’ he demanded, shrugging his way into a leather cuirass and locating his sword.
‘Sir, we’re… we’re not sure what it is. The sentries don’t think so, sir.’
‘We’re under attack?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
Angved sighed, putting him down as the sort of overexcitable type who should never be left in charge of a night watch, for the good of everyone else’s sleep. Still, now that he was awake, it seemed prudent to go and investigate what had spooked the watchmen. He dragged a woollen cloak over his shoulders to keep out the night chill, and shouldered his way out of his tent.
There was barely any moon, and only the torches and lanterns of the camp repelled the night. Angved tugged his cloak closer about him and let the lieutenant lead him to the walls, where a flick of his wings got him up on to the parapet.
‘I don’t see anything,’ he grumbled, scowling into the darkness.
‘Report, soldier,’ the lieutenant instructed, stepping back and patently hoping thus to disappear from the angry major’s notice.
‘There’s something big out there, sir,’ one of the sentries said promptly. ‘It’s been back and forth three times now.’
‘An animal,’ suggested Angved dismissively.
‘The only glimpse I had of it, it seemed like a man, sir. Or at least a little like a man. Most of the other sentries have seen it, too.’ Even as he spoke, there came a shout from further along the wall, and Angved bustled over there to peer out beyond the range of the camp lights.
He saw it then, not very clearly but enough to confirm all that the sentry had said. The movement, as it slunk back into the night, was unpleasant – human but not quite, its limbs out of proportion, not quite on two legs, but not quite on all fours.
The Imperials exchanged unhappy glances.
‘What was it up to, that time?’ the watch lieutenant asked. ‘It was… digging, was it?’
‘Can you see something still out there?’ one of the other sentries wondered, squinting. ‘Looks like it left something behind.’
‘Get me a strong flier with a lantern!’ Angved snapped. Once this order was obeyed, he continued, ‘You, fly out there and drop the lantern down where we saw it.’
The soldier looked none too happy at this, but the Imperial Light Airborne did not admit to being scared of the dark, so he kicked off from the wall and swooped in, making the pass as swiftly as he could and letting the lantern drop from ten feet up, ending tipped on its side on the sand, still burning.
At the sight revealed, one of the sentries swore. The rest were silent.
They could see a neat pyramid of human heads out there: Wasp-kinden heads, without a doubt. Angved felt quite equally sure that, asking around, he would find someone able to recognize the twisted features of Sergeant Stasric. Each of the expressions that the lantern picked out suggested that their deaths had not come quickly or easily.
At the far edge of the lantern’s reach, something shifted, a hulking, long-armed thing with its knuckles resting on the ground, its massive fists clublike and thorned. It seemed as big as a Mole Cricket-kinden, but thinner and longer of limb. The head jutted from between broad shoulders heavily knotted with muscle, and although the eyes glinted, even the lantern light seemed reluctant to illuminate its face.
Angved felt its attention focus on him, as though it had somehow managed to identify him as the man in charge. His soldiers were thoroughly spooked, he knew, but they would still launch an attack on his word. And besides, this thing must surely be mortal, susceptible to sword and sting and snapbow bolt.
But still… ‘Message understood!’ he called out. ‘You’ll see no more of us in your city. That’s not what we’re here for. And we’ll see no more of you, either. Agreed?’
His voice seemed to roll out for ever across the desert, as if the only sound in the world. He was aware that most of the camp was awake by now, with eyes on him alone.
The thing crouched even lower, leaning forward a little, and Angved caught a brief, stomach-twisting glimpse that made him wish its face had stayed hidden. The skull-like contours, that brutal tusked jaw… and yet those eyes were so human that they seemed to be agonized and appalled by the monstrosity that they were set in. Then it was gone, and it was Angved who cursed, this time, as it moved off, vanishing like wind and shadow in an instant.
‘I dearly hope it understood you, sir,’ said the lieutenant, standing at his elbow. Angved had feared that his actions might have made him seem weak before his men, but he realized then that he had gained their unexpected approval. Not one of them had wanted to go out and fight that thing, whatever it was, and no amount of tactical or technological superiority would change that.
There was nobody else at the camp either disobedient enough or venturesome enough to go treasure hunting, and their nocturnal visitor remained conspicuous by its absence, although Angved himself set up a searchlight for the night watch, just in case.
Subsequently it took them a single day to get the drill working, and a day after that to start the pumps. The machinery was designed to work in primitive conditions, sandstorms included, it being solid Beetle-kinden workmanship from Sonn that could survive being dragged all over the world by rough and ready Imperial soldiers. They were soon packing barrels with the mineral oil that generations of Scorpions had used for lighting lamps. Angved remembered them explaining its properties to him: wood was hard to come by, but the oil welled up in numerous places around the desert. If ignited, it would burn for days.
He had never come across mineral oil that would burn so steadily, in the quantities the Scorpions decanted into the bowls of their lamps. He had performed his tests and that simple artificer’s inquisitiveness had led inexorably to this current pumping operation – and the similar stations that would soon be set up across the Nem.
He sent a messenger back to Khanaphes, and a few days later the first airship appeared, sailing serenely across the disc of the glaring sun, then scudding sideways in the crosswind as it tacked lower. Angved had the filled barrels ready for collection, and the airship crew and his own off-duty soldiers made quick work of hoisting them on board the vessel, which sagged a fraction lower in the sky with each additional load. The pilot brought news, too, together with supplies for the men and even three Dragonfly-kinden slave girls. The visit made a pleasant change from the brisk orders and hard looks that Angved had grown used to.
With evening coming on, he and Varsec stood outside his tent and watched the airship leave with its first consignment. The pumps were still going and everyone would have to learn to live with their noise, but the two engineers themselves were used to that sort of privation.
‘There goes the future,’ Angved observed, holding up a bottle to the fading light. It was good Imperial brandy, and the label denoted a vintage that he had only heard of, never been able to afford. ‘If I were a more suspicious man, I’d think Colonel Lien was trying to poison us both with this.’ The bottle had been marked for the two majors’ personal attention.
Varsec smiled and shook his head. ‘ General Lien hates the pair of us, as upstarts and troublemakers,’ he mused, ‘but he also knows full well that he needs us. Besides, the Empress knows our names, Angved. We can’t just be made to vanish so someone else takes credit for our work. And Lien knows that I could have written how the Aviation Corps shouldn’t be subject to the Engineers, but I was loyal enough not to. This is him saying that so long as we keep to our side of the deal, he’ll keep his, Major Angved.’
