Empire in Black and Gold

find us by. .’ And how long could this be put off, really? ‘By nightfall?’

‘Nightfall it is.’ Tisamon rose, and Stenwold wished they had more time together, there and then, with no rescues to perform. He did not know if he would still have a friend when he and Tisamon met again.

Scuto had secured transport for them, although Stenwold suspected they might have been better off walking. It was a rickety-looking automotive: a simple open cab balanced on a set of eight rusty legs.

‘Is it fast?’ he asked.

‘Faster than walking? Just about,’ was the Thorn Bug’s reply. Stenwold peered underneath the contraption’s high-stepping legs. Walking automotives had gone through a period of taking short cuts a generation ago and, as he feared, this one was very much a victim of its times. Instead of eight separate legs there were just two projecting from the engine, so the vehicle would be lurching along on two four-pronged feet.

‘It’ll go fine,’ Scuto assured him, ‘so long as you wind it each morning. Two-man job, but you’ve got Totho there to help you. Don’t forget, if you’re complaining, any fuel east of here’s going to have black and yellow stamped all over it.’

‘I suppose that’s true.’ A decent clockwork engine had a lot of advantages over steam or combustion. It would never run dry and it was easy enough to repair if it broke down. Stenwold had whittled cogs from wood before now to set one aright.

‘What’s troubling you?’ Tynisa asked him suddenly. ‘It’s not just Che, is it?’

He smiled at her, though his heart sank. ‘It’s. .’ But he could not say it. Anything he said now would be too much of a lie. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he added. When I have to. When I’m forced to it.

It had been a long day of walking. What rest stops the Wasps had allowed them were overshadowed by the slavers, who never allowed their charges to forget their presence. Water was rationed with a parsimonious hand. Hard bread and stale cheese was their only food. On the march, if any slave faltered he was whipped back into line without hesitation or mercy. Che had begun the day full of pity for her broken-spirited fellows and ended it thanking providence only that she was in better physical shape than most of them.

Towards dusk it became evident that they were approaching something at last. Some things, in fact: two structures that could not be made out clearly against the darkening sky.

‘Farmstead?’ Che suggested. Salma peered ahead, his eyes much better than hers in the gloom.

‘Not buildings,’ he confirmed. ‘But I can’t see just what they are.’ Then a slaver passed close to them and they knew well enough to be quiet.

It was near dark when they arrived, but Che recognized them by then, because she had seen similar constructions before. They were automotives, but monstrous huge ones. She had seen them used for bulk transport of stock, and stock, she realized, was just what she and the others had become.

For a score and a half of slaves, even one of these machines would have been too capacious, but the cages that made up the back half of each were already mostly full. It was more of the same, Che noticed, but she could not believe that all of these unfortunates were supposed to be escapees. Even as they approached the two great engines, another column of prisoners was moving up — from the south as far as she could judge. Hairless men with dead white skins, jutting jaws and pincered hands, the slave-runners of the newcomers loomed head and shoulder over their charges. Che watched numbly as their leader met with a delegation of Wasp slavers and began to haggle over the price of his wares.

‘From the Dryclaw,’ she guessed. ‘Or even the Spiderlands. It depends how far they’ve come. The Empire must provide a ready market.’

‘Oh it does,’ Salma confirmed. ‘The Empire is built on their shoulders. Slaves work in their fields and build their houses. Slaves go down their mines and attend their every need. The Empire is built on slaves’ backs and on their bones, Che. And as for the Wasps themselves — fortune forbid they should take up any work but soldiering.’

Che glanced up at him. ‘Does the Commonweal have slaves?’

His smile grew wry. ‘We don’t call them that, but I suppose if you have paid slaves in your factories, then we have slaves in all but name working our land. What an open-minded man the College has made of me.’

Their column was now stopped and she saw Brutan and Thalric, a careful distance between them, go and speak to the leader of the automotive-riders. The big, pale southerners were concluding their business. Their hands looked so vicious, made for nothing but fighting, that Che stared at them in awe. In the flickering firelight there was nothing about them that did not speak of casual violence. Their clothes were a mishmash of leather, hide and chain mail. They had axes at their belts or else huge swords slung across broad shoulders. They looked at the Wasps with brash and measured expressions.

Brutan had returned to his own men and was giving out some orders. Che caught only the occasional word, but enough to understand that they would be camping here for the night, and would be moving on with the machines in the morning. She looked around for Thalric but he was still with the machinists, discussing something in close detail with their leader. Apparently in the absence of any other instructions, the convoy crew winched down the cage doors of the automotives and began to herd the slaves out.

There was another palisade, two in fact, but this time pitched in a semi-circle about the rear of each of the automotives, where the only place to go freely would be the inside of a metal-barred cage. The convoy drivers secured all the slaves to the palisaded stakes, their human bounty now numbering over seventy souls.

The slaves stayed hugging the perimeter, not venturing into the central space for fear of calling the slavers’ notice, until the Wasps decided to feed them, long after they themselves had eaten. With a practised swing one of them hurled a cloth bag into the very centre of the pen, and immediately sheer chaos erupted. Che herself stood no chance. If she had even moved it would have been into a maelstrom of elbows and knees and fists as the slaves fought over the meagre fare.

I always did want to lose a little weight, she reflected as she pressed back against the palisade until the melee broke up, leaving only a few scuffling bodies locked in combat over the remaining crusts and crumbs. With a weary sigh, Salma dropped down beside her. She had not even realized he had joined in. Wordlessly he handed her a mangled handful of broken biscuit, hard waybread, a ragged fragment of cheese.

‘You’ve got some for yourself?’

‘Enough.’

‘Then thank you.’

A shadow fell across them. Expecting a slaver, Che looked up to find a burly Ant-kinden looming over them.

‘Yes?’ she asked, and he lunged for her, or rather for the food in her hands. Even faster, Salma was in the way, lurching up from his sitting position to put a shoulder in the man’s hip, toppling him to the floor. Salma remained standing as the Ant got to his feet. He looked about twice as broad as the young Dragonfly, whip-scarred and well-muscled. The slaves on either side of Che were shuffling sideways, hastily trying to get out of the way. Salma shifted his footing, waiting for the Ant to make a move.

‘Oh now, listen!’ Che shouted, or at least she intended to shout, but it came out more as a squeak. ‘There’s no need for any of this. We’re all slaves here. Why fight amongst ourselves?’

Everyone was gaping at her as though she was mad, slaves and slavers both. She even caught sight of Thalric, ten feet beyond the gamblers, staring at her.

‘We’re better than that,’ she told the slaves, turning her back on the Wasp captain. ‘We might be in chains, but we don’t have to amuse them by behaving like animals.’

The Ant made his move then, because Salma had been distracted by her outburst, but he underestimated the Dragonfly’s speed. Salma was in the air at once — for the four feet of extra height his leash allowed him, and he savagely kicked the big Ant across the face twice before coming down on the other side of him. Furious, the Ant rounded on him, and then made a dash for Salma’s leash as it stretched taut across the pen. Even as he yanked on it, Salma was already moving for him, and got an elbow into the side of his head and then a fist into his chin. The Ant swayed but he still tugged viciously down on the leash, almost dragging Salma off his feet, and then got a hand on the Dragonfly’s wrist and twisted, hard.

Salma grimaced as his arm was bent back. He hit the Ant twice, three times with his free hand, but the Ant absorbed the blows stoically. Che looked around at the slaves nearest her but it was obvious nobody was going to step in.

She jumped up and hurtled in herself. No sword here, and she had never fought bare-handed before. That