Empire in Black and Gold

A cold feeling came to me, but it was disappointment, not fear. I stood slowly, sensing the end of what few good times I had known. ‘Fael,’ I told him, ‘don’t.’ I reached down for a piece of treasure, a brooch worked into the shape of a beetle with spread wings.

‘Avaris!’ he insisted. ‘Not one piece! Please!’

‘Don’t play that one on me,’ I told him. ‘Fael, I practically invented the ghost scam. There’s enough for both of us to live like Princes-Major. Don’t try it on me. There’s no need.’ But I felt sad because, whether he tried it on me or not, we couldn’t trust each other now. Our partnership had just been killed as sure as Merric.

‘Avaris,’ Fael said despairingly, and his friends turned up.

Pale shapes with grey wings, but I can do better than that. Ancient armour, hollow eyes, the military prime of the Commonweal’s early glories, pearly bows and white arrows, crescent-headed glaives and long-hafted swords with inscribed blades. Behind them, and mercifully half-lost in the snow, some taller thing, some greater figure, man-shaped but pale and regal and ten feet tall, armoured in mail that would put to shame a sentinel for bulk or a merchant-lord for precious stones.

‘Fael. .’ I remember very clearly my voice then, how it shook and twisted.

‘It’s too late for me,’ Fael said, ‘But they have let me intercede for you, for they were of my kinden once.’ His gesture took in the gaunt-faced warriors about him, but most definitely not the looming shadow behind.

And I fled then. I fled without ever having touched the smallest part of the greatest hoard I have ever seen, and I never saw Galtre Fael again, nor heard any word of him.

And I wonder, now. . well, at this remove, I’m sure you can guess what I wonder. I wonder whether my friend truly spent his last free moments, while facing absolute annihilation, bartering for my continued life and health. And, if so, I cannot measure what I owe him in all the world’s riches.

But I wonder, too, whether the second plan, the plan Fael and I had devised, which contained the first plan we had explained to Roven and the others, I wonder whether that second plan might not have been part of a third plan known only to Fael.

And I will never know.

Ironclads

‘Tell me again.’ Varmen could feel himself getting angry, which was never a good thing.

‘No sign.’ The little Fly-kinden kept his distance, for all the good that would do against a Wasp. ‘Not a single soldier of them. Nothing, Sergeant.’

‘They said-’ Varmen bit the words off. He was keeping his hands clenched very deliberately because, if he opened them, the fire within would turn this small man into ash.

‘They said they’d be right behind us,’ said Pellrec from behind him, sounding as amused as always. ‘Didn’t say how far, though.’

‘Right behind us,’ Varmen growled. He stomped back to the downed flying machine. The heliopter had been a great big boxy piece of ironmongery when it was whole. When it struck the ground the wood and metal had split on two sides. What roof was left, shorn of its rotors, would barely keep the rain off. A rubble of crates and boxes had spilled out of it, some of them impacting hard enough to cause little ruins of their own.

The pilot had not lived through the crash, and nor had two of the passengers. Lieutenant Landren was, in Varmen’s opinion, now wishing that he was in the same position. The bones of his shattered leg were pushing five different ways, and there was precious little anyone could do with them.

‘Oh, we love the imperial scouts, we do,’ Varmen muttered. ‘Bonny boys the lot of them.’

‘You should have seen what hit him,’ the Fly said. The tiny man, barely up to Varmen’s waist, was supposedly a sergeant as well, but he was happy to hand the whole mess back to the Wasp-kinden. ‘Cursed thing came right down on the props, like it was in love.’ The corpse of the dragonfly was in smashed pieces around them, along with what was left of the rider. Did he know? Varmen wondered. Did he bring them down deliberately? Probably the stupid bastard thought he could fly straight through, ’cos the rotors were going so fast he couldn’t see ’em.

The ground around here was as up-and-down as anyone could wish not to get holed up in. The Dragonfly- kinden could be anywhere, and probably were. The red tint to everything told Varmen that the sun was going down. The unwelcoming hill country around them was about to get more unwelcoming in spades.

‘Where are they?’

‘I said-’

‘Not our lot, them.’

‘Oh, right.’ The Fly’s face took on a haggard look. ‘Oh, they’re right all around us, Sergeant. They cleared out when you got here, but for sure they’re still watching us. You can bet, if we know the Sixth Army isn’t coming, then so do they.’

‘Get fires going,’ Varmen heard Pellrec saying. Pellrec wasn’t a sergeant, but Varmen wasn’t a planner. They had an arrangement. ‘The Commonwealers see cursed well in the dark. Your little maggots are therefore on watch.’

The Fly sergeant’s face went even sourer but he nodded.

Tserro, that was his name. Remembering names was not a strong point for Varmen.

Stupid place to end up, frankly. For the cream of the imperial military, the spearhead of the Sixth Army, the very striking hammer of the Wasp invasion of the Commonweal, he had hoped for better. And it had all seemed such a good idea. Varmen was a professional soldier, after all: he was used to sniffing out dung-smelling errands and dodging them. This had carried all the marks of little risk and high praise. I’m such a sucker for the praise. . Scouts have got into trouble again — like they always do — leaving a squad of Fly-kinden irregulars and a heliopter suddenly stranded. Go hold their hands until the army picks up the pieces. Sixth is heading that way anyway, won’t be a day even. So off we trot with a little iron to give the scouts some backbone. Five sentinels and a dozen medium infantry slogging ahead of the advance in all our armour. Because we knew the rest were right behind us. They told us they were coming, after all. How can a whole army be lying to you?

‘Get all the luggage into some kind of front wall,’ Pellrec snapped, to get the infantry moving. ‘One man in three with a shield at the front, while the rest keep under cover and be ready to shoot out. Tserro?’

‘Here.’ The little sergeant was obviously still weighing who was supposed to be giving orders, and where the chain of command ran. He clearly accepted the fact that Varmen had not countermanded anything as his casting vote. ‘Where do you want us?’

‘Space your men so they can keep watch over every approach,’ Pellrec told him. ‘Bows and crossbows, whatever you have. When they appear, get in under the heliopter’s hull.’

Wings bloomed from the Fly’s shoulders and he skipped off to instruct his men. Pellrec leant close to Varmen. He was a proper Wasp-kinden beauty, was Pellrec: fair haired and handsome, and a favourite with any ladies they met that the army hadn’t already slapped chains on. Compared to him, Varmen was a thug, dark haired and heavy jawed and five inches taller. The two of them had come through a lot in the vanguard of the Sixth Army. Seeing Varmen’s expression, Pellrec laughed and said, ‘So, still glad you signed up?’

‘Enough of that,’ Varmen snarled. ‘We’re the Pride of the Sixth. Who are we?’

The one sentinel close enough to hear said, instinctively, ‘The Pride!’ and even Pellrec mouthed the words, grinning.

‘Sentinels, boys,’ Varmen said louder, in his battle voice. The words carried across and on past the wreck of the downed heliopter. ‘The pit-cursed best there is.’ He hoped that the Commonweal soldiers out there could hear him.

He stalked into the shelter of the downed flying machine to check on the man who was nominally in charge. Lieutenant Landren was conscious again, just now. The Fly-kinden quack the scouts had brought was crouching beside him, changing the dressings on his mangled leg.

‘What’s it look like, Sergeant?’ Landren’s voice was ragged enough for Varmen to know there would be no help from him.