Dragonfly Falling

his own timetable. The general’s hand itched to strike the man every time he saw him, but some talents were precious enough for him to suffer a little insolence. For now at least.

The others were assembling in a semicircle before those seats: field brigade majors, the head of the Engineering Corps, the local Rekef observer posing as military intelligence. Behind them were the Auxillian captains from Maynes and Szar, their heads bowed, hoping not to be singled out.

Still Alder waited, whilst Colonel Edric fidgeted and played with the chinstrap of his helm.

His missing colonel remained absent, but she came at last. He had not ordered her to attend. Supposedly he could not, although he could have had her marched into his tent or out of the camp any time he wished. Instead, he kept a civil accord with her because an officer who was seen to drive away any of the Mercy’s Daughters was an officer soon disliked by the men.

‘Norsa,’ he said, although he had greeted none of the others.

‘General.’ Norsa was an elderly Wasp-kinden woman in pale lemon robes, walking with the aid of a plain staff. Alder’s respect for her was based in part on that staff and the limp it aided, which had been gained in battle, retrieving the wounded.

‘Colonel Edric. The morale amongst your. adherents?’ Alder asked.

‘Ready to make a second pass on your word, General,’ Edric confirmed.

‘I suppose we should be grateful that they’re all so stupid,’ Alder said, noticing the sudden crease in Edric’s forehead. The fool believes it. He’s gone native. In that case it was an illness that time would soon cure.

‘Major Grigan. We lost three engines, I counted.’

The Engineering Corps major nodded, not meeting Alder’s eyes. ‘We can retrieve parts, and we have enough spares in the train to construct six new from the pieces.’

‘Your estimation of their defences?’

Grigan looked unhappy. ‘Maybe we could go against them again tomorrow. Don’t think we made too much impression. Can’t be sure, sir.’

‘I want your opinion, Major,’ Alder said sternly.

‘But he doesn’t have one, General,’ snipped out a new voice, sharp and sardonic. Here was the errant colonel at last and, despite the man’s usefulness, Alder always preferred a meeting where he did not appear.

‘Drephos,’ Alder acknowledged him.

‘He prefers to defer to my opinions, since my judgment is sounder.’ The newcomer swept past Grigan with a staggering disrespect for a man of his heritage. He wore an officer’s breastplate over dark and decidedly non- uniform robes. A cowl hid his face. ‘General, the normal engines just won’t dent those walls.’

‘Well, Colonel-Auxillian Drephos, just what do you suggest?’

‘I have some toys I’m longing to set on the place,’ Drephos’s voice rose from within the cowl, rippling with amusement, ‘but I’ll need the cover of a full assault to do so. Specifically, throw enough men at those emplacements atop the towers, as their crews are too skilled for my liking.’

‘Well we wouldn’t want to see any of your toys broken,’ Alder said.

‘Not when they’re going to win your war for you.’ With his halting tread Drephos took up the final seat, on the other side of Colonel Carvoc. ‘We all know the plan, General,’ he continued. ‘And the first part of the plan is to knock a few holes in those walls of theirs. Give me the cover of a full assault and I’ll work my masterpiece. Stand back and watch me.’

‘A full assault will cost thousands of lives,’ Carvoc noted, ‘and it will be difficult to sustain it for long.’

‘Don’t think I’ll need all that long. Mine are exquisitely clever toys,’ Drephos said, delighted with his own genius as usual. ‘I’d suggest that you start by putting your usual tedious engines up front, give them something to aim at. While you’re at it, give the archers on the inside something to think about. We all know Ant-kinden: if it works, they won’t change it. Which always means they only try to mend something after it breaks. And if something breaks messily and finally enough, well, we artificers know that sometimes things just can’t be fixed.’

Salma awoke as she slipped from his bed. There was wan light spilling sullenly from the two slit windows up near the ceiling, and it caught the paleness of her skin. He had never known skin so pale, like alabaster with ashen shadows. In that grim, colourless light she seemed to glow, picked out from all the surrounding room.

Her name, he recalled, was Basila. Her second interrogation had been gentler than the first, and the third, after the hours of night, gentler still. He had not believed, quite, that these Ant-kinden even possessed a concept for the soft arts, as his people called the intimate act. They seemed all edges and planes and cold practicality. There had been heat aplenty, though, until he wondered just how many women across the city he was making love to simultaneously. She was stronger than he was, and fierce, constantly wresting control from him, an officer commandeering a civilian. For a man used to casually seducing women, it had been quite an experience.

He watched, eyes half open, as she pulled on her tunic and breeches. She was lacing her sandals before she noticed his watching attention.

‘You might as well sleep,’ she said.

‘I’m awake now. It’s dawn already?’

‘It is. I have duties.’

He watched as she shrugged on her chainmail, twisting for the side-buckles from long practice. He knew, or at least suspected, that they would not lie together again, that it had been merely curiosity that had drawn her to him. For his part it had been, at least, a way of showing the world and this city that his destiny had not escaped entirely from his own grasp.

Back in Collegium his liaisons had been the titillation and scandal of the Great College, scandal most particularly among those he had passed over or those who would have indulged in the same liaisons if they had dared. The strait-laced of Collegium would not have believed it, but Salma’s own kinden had a strict morality of coupling. It divided the world of the preferred gender into two parts, not based on race or social standing or anything other than the subjective feelings of the individual concerned: sleep where you wish, amongst those who mean little to you, and amongst those to whom you mean little. Amuse yourself as you will, but with those close to you, those who love you or those you love, bestow your affections only where they are sincerely meant.

He had never elaborated on this creed for Collegium, for there it would not have been understood. He had never lain with Tynisa who had, he knew, wanted it. Particularly he had never lain with Cheerwell, who would have agreed, for all the wrong reasons, if he had asked.

Basila buckled on her sword and, seeing Salma smiling at her, ventured a small one of her own.

‘Off to a hard day’s beating people?’ he asked, and her smile slipped. He assumed it was annoyance at him, but then she said, ‘It is dawn. The enemy is advancing on the walls.’

He dressed as fast as he could, his belongings having been returned to him. He took up the stolen Wasp sword without even buckling on a scabbard. Basila was now gone to join her unit or await prisoners or whatever she had to do. She had left him to cower here behind doors like the slaves of Tark and await his fate, and that cut deep.

He found Totho emerging from the next-door room just as he left. For a second he had time to wonder whether the halfbreed artificer had heard anything of the previous night’s activities, before recalling that Basila, of course, had been silent throughout.

So Totho heard nothing but the whole city knows we did it. He had to grin privately at that.

‘What’s going on?’ Totho asked sleepily.

‘The Wasps are attacking. Get your sword and bow.’

‘But the Ants won’t let us fight-’

‘Totho, if enough of the Wasps get over the wall, then our hosts’ preferences won’t come into it.’

Salma bolted up the stairs as Totho turned back for his gear.

They had been billeted in the rooms beneath Parops’s tower. Salma chose the first outside door, the ground- level door, and stopped with it half open, frozen.

The space before the gate was filled with ranks of Ant-kinden soldiers with crossbows and plenty of quarrels. Above them the walls, their crenellations slightly scarred from the previous day, were lined with more of them, and some of those had greater weapons. There were nailbow-men there with their blocky, firepowder-charged devices, and two-man teams with great winch-operated repeating crossbows resting on the walls.