Part 22 (1/2)

And his traitor mouth continued. 'You would want to control the timing of the missiles' ignition, if you could. A higher ignition would disperse the flame and impact over a greater area; a lower impact would cause more focused damage.' Delivered as though this were some piece of theory for discussion by the cla.s.s.

'I knew I had read you well. That's excellent thinking, Totho. So solve for me problem the second.'

It isn't as though I'm helping him. He must already have solved it. 'I suppose you could have . . . clockwork fuses or timers?' 'I suppose you could have . . . clockwork fuses or timers?'

'Such as those you were intending to destroy my airs.h.i.+ps with? And what further problem would you encounter with that?'

Totho still watched, and by some chance three of the airs.h.i.+ps loosed their charges, that flared into being within seconds of one another before bursting across the city. 'Cost,' he suggested, and Drephos crowed.

'So few artificers even consider it, but we will still have to drop so many incendiaries before Tark is ours. Something cheaper?'

Totho racked his brains, considering all the mechanisms and devices he had learned of. After a moment, Drephos laughed again.

'No matter. You've come far enough to repay my foresight in saving you. You must learn to think simply, where simply will suffice. Tell him then, Kaszaat.'

'Simple cord,' said the Bee-kinden woman. 'Cord of differing lengths-'

'And when it reaches its length, it pulls out a trigger, and ignites the incendiary!' Totho saw clearly, and for a moment was so in love with the elegance of the idea that he did not see a city burning at all, simply a demonstration of artifice and skill. 'That's brilliant-' And he stopped, abruptly shamefaced.

Drephos had not noticed the catch in his voice, but merely watched the airs.h.i.+ps as they began to make their slow way back to the Wasp camp. 'They will be nearly out of incendiaries now,' the master artificer said. 'And my range-finders do not work well in the dark. I have yet to devise a machine that can see in the dark as well as I can. Do you see my point, though, Totho?'

'Your . . . ?'

'That this is the proper place for you. Here, where the metal meets. You must have guessed the great secret of our artificer's craft, since it comes to all the best minds eventually. War War, Totho. Think how many inventions and advances come from war. Not just weapons but in all branches of our science. It is war that is the catalyst, that inspires us and whips us on. Artifice feeds off war, Totho. You must see that. And war feeds off artifice, so that each clings to the other, like a great tree growing ever higher and higher. They are the left and right hand of mankind, so as to allow him to climb to the future. War is the future, Totho. War to hone our skills, and our skills to make war.'

'There must be more than that . . .' Totho started. 'At some point war would have to end because the weapons would become . . . so terrible that if anyone used them . . . everyone would die.'

Drephos's laugh came again, no less gaily than before. 'Do you think so? I disagree. There is no weapon so terrible that mankind will not put it to use. On that day that you describe, the end to war would only come after the end of everything else.'

'And that is what you are working towards?' Totho said.

'Look down there, boy!' Drephos's mismatched hands encompa.s.sed not only the camp but the fitfully burning city. 'What of that would you save? Take away my machines and they would be at each other's throats with swords and knives instead. Then take away their steel and they would pick up rocks and clubs. There is no saving them: they are merely the fuel for war's engines. Only we, Totho we are the point, the reason. We, because, alone amongst this destruction, we create, and we create so that they may destroy, so that we may create anew.'

'I cannot join you,' Totho whispered, but something had swelled in his heart, that stopped the words ever being properly heard: something that beat along with Drephos's words, and the pitiless, sterile glory that he spoke of.

'Only think,' Drephos said softly. 'Only think, and watch, and learn. Is it so terrible to be a master of the world to control, rather than be lost to the current? Come, I will teach you some more that you never learned at the College. I like you, Totho. I see a keen mind, an artificer's mind. That is the most valuable thing in the world, and I would not see it wasted.'

Drephos descended the gantry awkwardly, dark wings flickering once or twice to keep his balance, and once a hiss of pain as his injured leg locked briefly. Kaszaat had simply floated down on her own, leaving Totho to make the downwards journey rung over rung, wondering if Drephos was humouring him by doing the same, and deciding not.

'The general and his clowns are done for the day,' Drephos observed, making off into the camp with his uneven stride. 'In truth, they are done for the war. All the planning is now here, in my mind. They merely stand slack-jawed and wait for me to hand the city over to them. But I will show you how they play with the toys I have given them. Here!' His gauntleted hand picked out a large tent ahead of them, near the centre of the sprawling camp. The three of them ducked inside, finding the officers' map table and a crudely sketched ground-plan of Tark.

'The battle plan is remarkably simple, as all the best plans are,' Drephos explained to Totho. 'The airs.h.i.+ps batter a neighbourhood with the incendiaries, and sometimes with targeted explosives if there's a barracks or a similar hard sh.e.l.l to crack. The incendiary material I have devised burns exceptionally hot enough to fracture stone but briefly, and so, once an area has been swept clear, the Empire's soldiery can move in without fear of immolation. In this way we secure more and more of the city, a street at a time.'

'But what about the people left behind by the retreat?' Totho asked. 'They cannot be taking everyone with them, surely?'

'You forget the admirable self-possession of the Ant race, Totho. They forget n.o.body, leave n.o.body unless they are forced to. Their civilians evict themselves in good military order. And so hundreds, thousands even, will flee their homes, and the remainder of the city becomes more and more crowded. And the results of the next airs.h.i.+p bombardment, therefore, become all the more effective.'

Totho stared at the map, seeing red markers for the latest positions of Ant forces, black and yellow for the heavy hand of the Empire that was creeping in from the sundered wall.

Totho had not slept at all well, yet. The city of Tark had been under the radiant shadow of the airs.h.i.+ps for four days now. The same savage pattern had been repeated over and over. The Tarkesh formed up against the Wasp advance, the airs.h.i.+ps drifting in like weather. The Tarkesh then retreated, or they burned. A third of the city was now a blackened ruin, the Wasps' encroachments dark with the ash of their victories.

Totho had not slept well simply because his dreams were troubled with small modifications, innovations and tinkerings, by which this entire process could be made more efficient.

In the day he had a limited run of the camp, because Kaszaat watched over him and there were always guards within shout. He made no attempt to escape, however. He had nowhere to go. It would be simpler if they killed me It would be simpler if they killed me, he thought, but made no attempt to provoke that. Sometimes Drephos would call upon him, and then he would be put to the test, examined on his artifice, or shown again the map table, given some lecture on the order of battle. The very artifice of war, of supply and strategy, in itself held a keen interest for the Colonel-Auxillian.

Drephos rearranged the blocks on the rough sketch of the city, heedless of the damage he was doing to the tactical situation. Everything would have to be moved soon enough to represent the latest advance.

'You see, the Ants don't give ground lightly,' he explained to Totho. 'They fall back and regroup, as good soldiers should, and then they press forward again. And toe-to-toe they're better than the imperial soldiers, make no mistake. That mindlink their Art gives them is a wonderful advantage. Some Wasps have it, true, and the Empire has specialist squads, but not enough to make a difference. Especially as our men at the front are the light airborne, and they can't possibly hold off heavy Ant infantry. So what do we do?'

'I am . . . not a tactician, sir,' said Totho cautiously.

'A good artificer must become one, or at least become familiar with that trade. You must know how your creations are being used, how to best put them to work. Remember, any army officer, given half the chance, will waste any advantage you give him. Kaszaat, explain.'

The Bee-kinden woman glanced at the table, and then looked up at Totho with a bright, challenging look in her eyes. 'When the Ants engage, we target their soldiers directly. In order to use their superior discipline they must stand close, solid formations. Then the airs.h.i.+ps take them. It is the best time. Our forces are more mobile. Most at least can avoid the fire.'

'Most?' Totho asked weakly.

'What's the matter?' Drephos asked, mocking him. 'I thought these Wasps are your enemies. If their own officers care nothing for their lives, why should we?'

Memories of the bright orange flares, the incendiaries flowering over Tark in all their deadly wonder, lit up Totho's mind, and he s.h.i.+vered.

'Are you going to . . . wipe them all out, destroy Tark?'

Totho had begun to believe it. The fighting had been fierce. The Ants had ambushed the Wasp airborne a dozen times, killing scores of them in each engagement before themselves being wiped out or driven back. The fiery rain over the city continued relentlessly, relieved only by nightfall or when the airs.h.i.+ps had to return to the gantries for rearming and refuelling.

Though the Ants had tried, they could not adapt to this new warfare. They had been fighting the same set-piece war against their neighbours for centuries. Now the Empire had reinvented the word: 'war' no longer meant what they thought.

'That may be necessary,' Drephos said, evidently none too interested. 'But unless the Tarkesh are very different from the Ants of Maynes, it will not be. You see, they are a pleasingly logical breed, Ant-kinden, and there is an inevitable conclusion bearing down on them: that if they wish to save anything of their people, anything at all, then they must lay down their arms and accept what treatment the Empire gives them. A third of their city is already in ruins, and it will mean years to rebuild what these few days have taken from them. They will realize, eventually, that their destiny as slaves offers them more of a future than their destiny as martyrs. Then they will surrender. Because they are a rational people an Apt people they understand the numbers, you see.'

Totho was feeling very cold all over. The logic was icy and una.s.sailable. 'But they are soldiers every one of them. Surely . . .'

'They are soldiers who cannot fight back. They will eventually realize this. Their civic pride will be heated and cooled, heated and cooled, until it is at last thrust into the waters one time too many, and it breaks. A month to take Maynes?' Drephos clenched his gauntleted hand. 'Now I have given them Tark in a tenday. For that, they will give me whatever they want. Including you.'

'I cannot-'

'You cannot accept it, of course. You would rather be returned to their hands, to be questioned as they call it, or tortured, as I would say. You would rather be a menial slave than an artificer. Morality is not something that has overly plagued me, but I respect it in others. It is your choice, but delay a little before you make it. Once that decision is made you cannot change your mind.'

Twenty-One.

There was a rapid hammering on the door of his room and Stenwold pushed himself from his bed and went to answer it. For the first time in a long while he had been doing nothing except stare at the ceiling and brood. No plans, no action or mental juggling of his contacts and agents. He felt depressed, powerless, now that he had finally gone before the a.s.sembly. It was all out of his hands.

He opened the door on Tynisa, who looked agitated. Her sword was already drawn, he saw with a sinking heart.

'What is it?'

'You had better get your gear together,' she told him. 'Arm yourself and go out the back way.'