Part 25 (1/2)

'I wish you luck with it, General.'

Alder frowned at the halfbreed. 'And where will you be, Colonel-Auxillian, that you're wis.h.i.+ng me luck?'

'I have arranged a transfer to the Seventh for myself and my people, General. I have given you the tools to unpick an Ant city, but the Seventh is yet to be thus supplied. They are listed to march on Sarn eventually and, besides, their more immediate destination is of interest to me.'

Alder shrugged, one-shouldered. 'If you have wheedled such orders, then so be it.' He glowered at the artificer briefly. 'I don't like you, Drephos. You're a worm, and don't think I don't know how much you hate us.'

Within the shadow of his cowl, Drephos smiled thinly. 'But . . . ?'

'But you have accomplished a great deal here,' Alder admitted reluctantly. 'I shall note it in my report.'

'You're too kind,' Drephos said. 'If you do not mind, General, I will return to the camp. I have business to take care of before I bid you a final farewell.'

A few fires were lit, well hidden in hollows to escape unfriendly eyes. They had marched a long way, far enough that they were long out of the reach of the Ant minds left in Tark. Parops and his men had thus no clue as to the fate of their city, but it seemed clear that it would be one of two results: either Tark would bow the knee or it would be overwritten on future maps by some Wasp name, a new town dug out of Tark's ashes.

His men were as dispirited as he had ever seen soldiers be, and he shared their despondency. They were creatures of routine and loyalty, creatures of the city they were born in, conditioned to obedience there, knowing nothing but the will of Tark and its monarch. Now they were alone. Six hundred and seventy-one Tarkesh men and women out in the wilderness, on the road to Merro, with no idea of where they could go or what could be done next.

Between them, they had food for less than a tenday, even if carefully rationed. There were few of them with the ability to live off the land, since it had never been needed, and all of them had left family behind. Parops himself had abandoned his unfaithful mate whom he now missed beyond reason.

There seemed barely any point in continuing, and Par-ops found the burden of responsibility intolerable. Though ground down with misery, at least his soldiers could look to him for orders. He had never wanted this role. They had made him tower commander simply because he had a good head for logistics and it was considered a position where he could make the least trouble with his unconventional thinking. Now unconventional thoughts were all that could save them, and he could not seem to muster any.

'How are you feeling?' Nero came fluttering down beside him.

Parops gave him a look that was all the answer he needed.

'No sign of any pursuit, anyway,' the Fly said. 'Got other things on their minds, I'll bet. Any thought to what you're going to do next?'

'If I had a free hand,' Parops said flatly, 'I would lead my men back to Tark and attack the Wasp camp.'

'Because that would be suicide,' Nero said.

'Exactly. But my last orders don't allow that, so I have to think of something else.'

'Well I've had a couple of thoughts if you'd like to borrow them,' Nero offered.

'Anything.'

'Get your men to Collegium,' Nero said. 'I've got an influential friend there who's dead set against the Empire. He's on the what do they call it? The a.s.sembly.'

'Collegium's too far,' Parops countered. 'We cannot travel through most of the Lowlands in the hope that some friend of yours will take in six and a half hundred homeless Ant soldiers. Not to mention that if the Kessen see us tramping down the coast, they'll wipe us out.'

Nero nodded. 'I can see your point there. All right, Parops. I've been a good friend to you or as good as I could be, yes?'

'For a Fly-kinden, I suppose.'

'High praise there. Right then, I'm going to suggest two courses of action, and you'll not like either of them. All right? One of them is what I'm about to do, and the other one's what you could do. You don't have to, but I'm out of ideas if you don't. First off, I'm going back.'

Parops stared at him. 'You're mad.'

'It's a loyalty thing, Parops. You You should understand. Not to Tark, I admit: loyalty to my friends. I have always tried to be loyal to my friends. Because I travel a lot and have no certainties, and I never know when I'm going to need a friend, for a bed, for a meal, or to get me out of prison. And Stenwold and me, we go back twenty years.' should understand. Not to Tark, I admit: loyalty to my friends. I have always tried to be loyal to my friends. Because I travel a lot and have no certainties, and I never know when I'm going to need a friend, for a bed, for a meal, or to get me out of prison. And Stenwold and me, we go back twenty years.'

'His two agents, or apprentices the halfbreed and the other one?'

'The Commonwealer, yes. I have to find out what happened to them. Probably they're dead, but I have to know. Because Stenwold would want to know.'

'They'll catch you,' Parops said. 'You'll end up a slave, or dead.'

'They won't catch me,' Nero said, 'because I'm not going skulking in like a thief. I'm just going to walk straight up to them: Nero the famous artist, perhaps you've heard of me? Happened to have a lot of black and yellow paint spare. Maybe you want a portrait. You know the stuff.'

'They will kill you or enslave you,' Parops said firmly.

'You were going to kill me too, at one stage. I'm good at not being killed. I've done it all my life,' Nero said. 'I owe Stenwold, and he would want to know.'

Parops shook his head but found he did not have the strength to argue. 'So what is your suggestion for us? Is it as mad as that one?'

'Madder,' Nero said, giving the first smile anyone there had seen for a long time. In a low voice he explained his plan, and men around them began raising their heads as Parops's mind put out the information.

'We cannot do that. It would be-'

'Suicide?'

'Worse. We'd be slaves. My people would never agree to it,' Parops stated.

'Wouldn't they? There's an Empire coming this way, with armies to spare, and you've got seven-hundred-odd highly trained Ant warriors. So who would turn you away?'

Parops just stared at him.

'Will you at least think about it?' Nero pressed.

There was a moment when Parops did not even see him, when he was concentrating simply on the interchange of ideas flas.h.i.+ng between his men, their rapid, silent debate of the concept, of Nero's plan.

'We will attempt it,' said Parops finally. 'What do we have to lose?'

Twenty-Three.

He swam in those dark reaches, those vast abyssal reaches that no light had ever touched. No stars there were, and no lamps. There was only the void and the rus.h.i.+ng of the wind, or the sucking of the current that sought to draw him downwards.

He had fought free of those depths once already, and now he had no strength for any second struggle. There were monsters in those depths, trawling for ever through the vacant dark with their jaws agape. To fall between the needles of their teeth meant oblivion and surrender.

Not death, because all was death here.

In Collegium it had been the fas.h.i.+on, while he had been resident there, to paint death as a grey-skinned, balding Beetle man in plain robes, perhaps with a doctor's bag but more often an artificer's toolstrip and ap.r.o.n, like the man who came in, at the close of the day, to put out the lamps and still the workings of the machines.

Amongst his own people, death was a swift insect, gleaming black, its wings a blur too fast to be outrun and too agile to be avoided, the unplumbed void in which he swam was but the depth of a single facet of its darkly jewelled eyes.

Amongst his own people they drew up short poems for a death, and carved its wings into the sides of tombs and cenotaphs, with head down and abdomen tapering towards the sky as it stooped towards its prey. They would paint death's likeness as a shadow in the background, always in the upper right quarter of the scroll, when depicting some hero's or great man's last hours. In plays an actor, clad all in grey, would take the stage bearing a black-lacquered likeness of the insect, which he would make swoop or hover until the time came for it to alight.