Dragonfly Falling

superiors that they’ll do better next time.’

‘Wise man, good advice,’ the Dragonfly told him.

‘So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?’ Totho asked. ‘We can’t just sit here. We have to get word to Stenwold.’

‘The city is sealed,’ Parops said sadly. ‘That’s the one thing we and the Wasps seem to agree on, as we’re not letting anyone out, and neither are they. If you left without permission from the Royal Court you’d be shot by our crossbows, and even if you weren’t, they have flying patrols on the lookout all the time.’

‘They’ll try to recover the broken engines after dark,’ Totho said suddenly. ‘They’ll send slaves to do it, probably.’ He had taken Salma’s place at the slit window. ‘Your artillerists should keep the ranges, and keep watch.’

‘Night artillery’s always a challenge,’ Parops said. ‘I’ve said it, though. Let us hope they take it up.’

Totho frowned at that ‘I’ve said it,’ and then realized what the man meant, remembering the mindlink that the Ancestor Art gave to all Ants. It united them within their own walls and equally divided them from their brothers in other cities.

Skrill finished another mouthful of bread, and took a swig of beer from the nearby jug. ‘I ain’t fighting no siege,’ she said.

‘They wouldn’t have you anyway,’ Nero told her.

‘Now I ain’t good enough for your siege?’

‘We fight together, as one,’ Parops explained. ‘Foreigners on the walls would only get in the way. No offence, but that’s how it is.’

Skrill shrugged.

‘On the other hand,’ Nero said, ‘if the walls do come down, then we’re all invited.’

‘Did their engines break through anywhere, when they turned them on the walls?’ Totho asked. He closely examined the arrowslit, seeing how its flared socket was set into a wall three feet thick at least.

‘A few stone-scars but nothing structural,’ Parops said. ‘They’re going to need a bigger stick to get through these walls. Nero tells me my kinden aren’t renowned for having new thoughts, but one reason for that is that the old ones have always served us pretty well. We know how to build a wall that won’t come down.’

‘And of course, this is another thing their. tacticians out there will have noted. That they will need more. ’ Totho mused. ‘What are their artificers like, Salma?’

‘I’m no judge,’ the Dragonfly admitted. ‘They’re like people who put big metal things together. That’s about my limit.’

‘It’s an odd thing,’ said Nero, ‘but the best imperial artificers, in my experience, are Auxillians: slave-soldiers or experts from the subject-races. True Wasps always prefer to be proper warriors, which is more about the fighting and less the tinkering around. I’ve had a good look out there and a lot of the big toys are in hands other than the Wasps’.’

‘Can they be turned?’ Totho asked immediately. ‘They’re slaves, after all. If they turn on their masters, with our help, they could escape into the Lowlands-’

Salma was shaking his head and Nero chuckled. ‘You’d assume, with all their experience as slave-owners, that the Wasps would have spotted that one, boy. Which is exactly why they have. Any funny business from those poor bastards down there, and their families will get to know about it in the worst way. And, besides, if some platoon of Bee-kinden, hundreds of miles from home, does decide to go it alone, you think they’ll be welcomed any, in Tark? Or anywhere else? And home for them is now within the Empire’s borders, so any man jumping ship will never get to see it again.’

Salma nodded. ‘I should tell you something, I think, at this point.’

Nero and Parops exchanged glances. ‘Go on, boy, don’t hold it in,’ the Fly-kinden prompted.

Salma’s smile turned wry. ‘I didn’t come here just for Stenwold’s war, or even my own people’s war. Not just to fight the Wasps, anyway.’

Totho nodded, remembering. Salma had barely mentioned the lure that had drawn him on this errand, which had originally been Skrill’s errand alone. Totho had almost forgotten that himself, amidst the catalogue of his own woes.

‘Don’t keep us in suspense,’ Nero said.

‘A woman, I’m afraid.’ Salma smiled brightly. ‘I came here after a woman.’

‘A Wasp woman?’ Parops asked.

‘No, but I’m told she’s with the camp. With some order of theirs, the. Grace’s Daughters, is it? No, Mercy’s Daughters.’

‘Never heard of them.’ Nero said. ‘So what about it?’

‘I will be leaving Tark at some point,’ Salma said, ‘whether your monarch approves or not. Because she’s out there somewhere and I have to find her.’

Nero’s glance met that of Parops. ‘Must be wonderful, to be young,’ the Fly grumbled. ‘I almost remember it, a decade of making a fool of myself and getting slapped by women. Marvellous, it was. Your mind seems set, boy.’

‘I mean what I say.’

‘Then at least choose your moment,’ Parops said. ‘Work with the city and let us get to trust you. Because there will be a sortie sooner or later. We’re not just going to sit here and watch them ruin our walls, you realize.’

‘Forgive me, but so far your city doesn’t seem interested in working with any of us,’ Totho pointed out.

‘That was then,’ Parops told him, taking the jug from Skrill and taking a swig from it. ‘Now you are, nominally, on our side, and people want you to talk to them.’

Salma’s grin broadened. ‘Now that’s unfair. There was a delightful Ant-kinden lady earlier who wanted nothing more than for me to talk to her.’

And at that there was a rap on the door and, when Nero opened it, she was standing right there, the Ant interrogator, staring straight at Salma.

Alder made a point of not wearing armour. Not only should there be some privileges for a general, but he hated being fussed over by slaves and servants, for with one arm he was unable to secure the buckles.

The largest tent in the Wasp encampment was not his living quarters but his map room. If assassins chose to head for it at night in search of generals to kill then that was entirely agreeable with him. He had sent a call out to his officers to join him, and if he had known that an Ant tower commander had dubbed them ‘tacticians’ he would have found it highly amusing. The term might just fit himself but, as far as planning this siege went, his was a perilously lonely position.

He was a man made for and unmade by war: lean and grey, though athletic still. He remembered a time when the title ‘General’ was reserved for men commanding armies. Now back at the imperial court there were generals of this and that who had never even taken the field. In his mind he preserved the purity of the position.

He was of good family, in fact. That had taken him to a captaincy. After that each rung of the ladder had been hard-won, climbed under enemy shot, and slick with blood. His face had a rosette of shiny burn-scar across nose and right cheek. His right arm had been amputated by a field surgeon who had not expected him to live.

That surgeon still received, at each year’s end, twenty-five gold Imperials from the amputee’s personal coffers. General Alder remembered the competent and the skilled.

So why, he asked himself, am I left with these misfits as my command staff? He lowered himself into one of the four folding chairs, watching his staff file in. The Officer of the Camp was Colonel Carvoc, an excellent administrator though an almost untried soldier, now seating himself to the general’s left. His armour was polished and unblemished. To Alder’s right came the Officer of the Field, Colonel Edric. Edric was a man of strange appetites and humours. An officer of matchless family, he spent his time amongst the hill-tribe savages that passed for shock troops in this army. He always went into battle, by his own tradition, in their third wave. He even wore their armour, and a chieftain’s helm with a four-inch wasp sting as a crest. With coarse gold armbands and a mantle of ragged hide, he looked every inch a tribal headman and not at all an imperial colonel.

The fourth chair remained empty, but Alder’s third and most problematical colonel was usually late and kept