work and would not dream of putting so much as a large knife in their hands. It was not so much for fear of rebellion as pride in their own martial skills.
‘It’s more complicated than that. They deal in very large armies, and they swell their ranks with the conquered — Auxillians, they call them. They enslave whole cities, you see. Then they ship out fighters to some part of their Empire remote from their homes, and set them to it. It’s as though here you got sent out to. Collegium or Vek, or somewhere. I imagine sometimes it doesn’t work, but mostly the men sent out there will have family back home and they’ll know that if they run, or turn on their masters, then their kin will suffer. And so they fight. They’ll either be skilled help, artificers and the like, or just bow-fodder, first into the breach. It can’t be much of a prospect.’
Parops nodded again, and Nero felt a shiver as he realized that his words would be at large in the city now, darting from mind to mind, perhaps even reaching the Royal Court itself.
‘There are still some foreigners leaving by the west gate,’ the Ant said carefully. ‘In fact there are still foreigners coming
‘I’ll stay a little while,’ Nero said casually.
‘I get the impression that when these fellows draw sword they’re not going to care what kinden you are, if you’re found inside the walls.’
‘More than likely true,’ Nero admitted.
Parops at last turned from the window and his obsessive scrutiny of the near future.
‘Why are you here, Nero?’ he asked. ‘Your race is hardly renowned for its staying power in the fray. You run further to live longer, isn’t that it? So why haven’t you done what any sensible human being would do, and run while you can?’
Nero shrugged. Partly it was due to his friendship with Parops, of course, but there was another reason, and it was such a personal, trivial thing that he was ashamed to admit it. ‘I’ve never witnessed a war,’ he said. ‘I’ve put a few skirmishes under my belt, over the years, but never a war. Not really. I did a study once, the Battle of the Gears at the Collegium gates, you know, and shall we say critical reception was lukewarm. That’s because it was beyond my experience, and I couldn’t capture it. And so that’s my reason, as good as any other — and it’s a poor one, I know.’
‘You are quite mad,’ Parops told him.
‘Probably. However, my own kinden are very good at squeaking out at the last minute, and there are still a few grains of sands in the glass. You never know, perhaps I’ll reclaim my heritage after all.’
‘Don’t leave it too long,’ Parops warned, and then some fresh word came to him, invisible through the crowded air of the city. ‘They have taken the ambassadors in, at last,’ he announced.
When Skrill came running back she was ducking low amidst the sprays of man-high sword-grass. Her progress involved a series of sudden dashes across less covered ground, moving with her long legs at a speed Salma knew he himself could not have matched. Then she would freeze into immobility, hunched under cover, an arrow already fitted to her bowstring. He and Totho were dug in together beneath one of the great knots of grass that arched over them with its narrow, sharp-edged fronds. They watched Skrill’s punctuated progress impatiently.
Then she had flung herself to a halt beside them, bowling into them in a flurry of loose earth. She was a strange creature, halfbreed of Mynan Soldier Beetle and something else, and with no manners or education to recommend her, but she had led them flawlessly to within sight of the Wasp army as if she knew every inch of the terrain.
‘What did you see?’ Totho asked her.
‘Did you see her — or the Daughters?’ Salma interrupted.
She gave him a wide-eyed, mocking look. ‘Did you perchance not notice those many thousand soldiers out there, Your Lordship? Wherever your glittery lady is, she ain’t paradin’ herself about their camp, now, is she? So no, I din’t happen to meet her and invite her over here for a pint and a chat.’ She shook her head, one hand coming up to tug at her pointed ears as though trying to make them longer. ‘I didn’t even get close to the camp because they got a thousand men on sentry duty, or that’s like it looked to me. A whole ring of them, and earthworks, palisade, even little lookie-outie towers. And the sky! Don’t even get me started. If you was thinkin’ about just swanning in with those wings of yours you best put that candle right out. They got men circlin’ and circlin’ like flies on a tenday-dead corpse. They plainly reckon the Ants’ll give ’em grief — and why not? I would, if I was runnin’ things at Tark Hall.’
‘Ants are too straight for that, aren’t they?’ Totho asked. ‘I thought they’d just line up and fight.’
‘Don’t believe it, Beetle-boy,’ she told him. ‘Ants’ll play the dirty tricks same as anyone. They do
‘Don’t call me that,’ Totho said, for the nicknames she used were starting to gall him. ‘I’m no more a Beetle than you are a. a whatever it is you are, or aren’t.’
‘Am I a Beetle? No. Is His Lordship a Beetle? No. Then you get to be Beetle-boy unless we can get a better Beetle than you,’ she told him without sympathy.
‘Will the pair of you be-’ Salma had started to hiss, and then the Wasps were in sight, skimming at just a man’s height and touching the tops of the sword-grass as they came. In that same moment they had clearly spotted the three spies.
There were half a dozen of them, light airborne out merely on a scouting mission, but Wasps were a pugnacious lot and never ones to shirk a fight. Their leader shouted an order and two of them broke off, arrowing back towards their camp. The others sped towards Salma with swords drawn and palms outstretched to unleash their energy stings.
Skrill shot one straight off, leaping up with her sudden speed and loosing an arrow that split the second oncomer’s eye. The Wasp flier recoiled in the air and then dropped from sight amidst the tall grass.
Salma had no time to string his own bow. As the three remaining soldiers launched the golden lightning of their stings he let his wings take him straight upwards, his shortsword — stolen Wasp-make itself — clearing its scabbard.
Skrill had already dashed to one side but Totho had no option but to cast himself to the ground and hope. He felt one sting lash across his pack as though he had been punched there by a strong man. Then he was up with a magazine slotted into his crossbow.
One of the men had skimmed upwards in pursuit of Salma and it struck Totho how they seemed nimbler in the air than most Wasps, obviously hand-picked as scouts. He raised his bow and loosed.
The man coming for him jinked aside and the bolt sped past him. Totho saw the man’s face split into a grin in the knowledge that there would be no reloading of such a cumbersome weapon as a crossbow in time. By then Totho was racking back the lever and shooting again and again, seeing surprise and dismay splash across those same features. The man dodged the second shot but not the third, nor the fourth or fifth, and he ploughed dead into the earth six feet away. They were a race of builders and artificers, the Wasps, but for all their numbers and ingenuity they were behind the Lowlands yet in craft.
He heard a shout nearby and saw Skrill fighting furiously with another enemy, sword to sword. She was swift, her blade lunging and darting like a living thing, but her opponent was a professional, and the metal plates of his armour kept turning aside her blows. Totho knew he couldn’t risk a shot in their direction and drew his own blade, breaking cover to run to her aid.
Above them Salma dived and spun in a deadly aerial ballet with his opponent. For them, distance was all: too close and they would foul each other, too far and the Wasp would have more chance to use his sting. Amidst their aerobatics their swords flashed rarely, each seeking a second’s opening to strike against side or back.
Salma was Dragonfly-kinden, born to the air, and his race prided themselves on their grace and control while on the wing. The Wasp, for his part, was as fleet and nimble as his kind ever were, but there was a distance even so. Salma had abruptly cut away, seeming to falter in the air, allowing the Wasp to draw up to shoot at him. In that same moment Salma reversed his motion, wings powering him forwards. The man tried to angle down to face him head-on, sword sweeping in a broad parry, but Salma was through his guard on the instant, driving the blade between the Wasp’s ribs where his armour left off, and then using the pull of the man’s heavy descent to drag the steel from his corpse.
