Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1), Adrian Tchaikovsky [13 ebook reader .txt] 📗

senses he had built up in training were already starting to speak to him, to tell him where the others were, where was a wall, where was open space, without having to look around like some backwoods farmer come to the capital for the first time.

He held his hands out. His shield was buckled to one, and the other received the weight of his broadsword. There was no standard weapon for a sentinel. The man who could wear this armour was fit to make that decision for himself. Varmen’s sword was a cavalry piece, weighted towards the tip for a crushing downward blow. Pellrec fought with a Bee-kinden axe, short-hafted and massive-headed. He made a habit of breaking down doors with it, or sometimes flimsy walls. The others had their favourites: a halberd, a broad-headed spear, a pair of brutal maces. Varmen let his narrowed gaze pass over them, seeing metal and more metal, his faceless soldiers. Beyond them, the men of the medium infantry were looking slightly awed.

“Pride of the Sixth!” he shouted, his voice hollow and metallic in his own ears, drowning out their answering cry.

Getting dark out there. And they would come when it was dark. Dragonfly-kinden eyes were good. The fires that Pellrec had ordered lit barely held back the darkness a spear’s length. Beyond that he had to trust to Tserro’s scouts. Craven little bastards, the lot of them, but they know they’ll die right alongside us. No doubt the Fly-kinden were itching to take wing and abandon the armoured Wasps to their fate, but this war had taught them that the Commonwealers were just as swift in the air as they were. Any Fly that tried the air would end up on an arrow in no time.

“Movement,” one of Tserro’s men spat out. Varmen’s heart picked up, that old feeling that had been fear, when he was a raw recruit, but was now no more than anticipation. He and his fellow sentinels readied themselves, waiting for the onslaught. The darkness was thick with unseen spears and bows. Behind their metal-clad line, Arken’s men waited. They had their short-bladed swords drawn, but their free hands out, fingers spread. In their palms waited the golden fire that was the Wasp sting, that searing piece of Art that made their kinden so deadly as warriors. Tserro’s scouts nocked arrows, shuffling uneasily on their perches.

“Coming in now,” one of them said.

“How many?” Varmen braced himself.

“Just... Two, just two.”

“What?” But the guttering firelight touched on movement now. “Hold your shot,” he snapped out, and even as he spoke one of the Flies let loose an arrow. “I said –” he started, but then he saw what happened to the lone missile, and he swore, “Bloody guts and knives...” One of the approaching Dragonflies had caught it, snatched it out of mid-air. It was a neat party-trick, he had to acknowledge. Like to see them do it with sting-shot, though. That’d burn their pretty hands a treat.

“What’s going on,” he rumbled.

“Maybe they want to surrender?” Pellrec murmured from beside him. Varmen chuckled despite himself.

“Close enough,” he called out, clanging the flat of his blade against his shield to make his point. “Here to surrender are you?” It was always easier using Pellrec’s words. Pellrec was so much better at speaking than he was. A rattle of sour laughter came from the Wasps at his back.

The two Dragonflies were lightly armoured in leather and chitin scales. They were slight of build compared to a Wasp, but they moved with a careful grace. On the left was a man who looked younger than Varmen’s five-and-twenty years, wearing a crested helm. An unstrung bow and quiver of arrows jutted over his shoulder. The shaft the Fly-kinden had sent at him dangled in one hand like a toy.

Varmen’s eyes turned to the other one and he grunted in surprise. A woman. Of course the Dragonfly women fought alongside their men, but when there was actual fighting to be done he tended to blank it out, seeing them all as just more faceless enemies. The firelight turned her skin to red, but he knew it would be golden. Her head was bare, dark hair worn short in a soldier’s cut. She held a sword lightly in one hand. It was a good four feet long, most of her own height, but half that was the long hatched haft. Varmen found himself grinning in the privacy of his helm, when her eyes met his. The only women he had seen recently had already been claimed by the Slave Corps, or by some officer or other. This one might want to kill him, but she was still a sight for the eyes.

“Who speaks for you?” the man asked, to Varmen’s disappointment. Don’t we get to hear her voice, then? He could imagine it, light and graceful as she was, sly and dancing. He swallowed abruptly.

“Lieutenant awake?” he called back.

“Not just now, Sergeant,” Arken reported.

“Then I reckon I do,” he stated. Is it a trick? Is this to get us off guard before they storm us? He looked at Pellrec, saw the man’s pauldrons shrug up and down.

To the pit with it... He took a couple of steps forward and thrust his sword down into the earth for easy retrieval. “You want something, do you?” he asked them.

“We offer you the chance to surrender,” said the woman. Varmen stared, Her voice was exactly as he had imagined. He had always had a thing for women with good voices. After a moment he realised that the awkward pause in the conversation was him.

“Go on,” he stated, mostly to get her to keep talking.

“You think that –” the Dragonfly man started but Varmen cut him off with an angry motion of his gauntlet. “Not you, her. Don’t interrupt the lady.”

The angry, injured-pride expression on the man’s face made it almost worth being stuck out here about to fight off the hordes. Shame he can’t see me grinning right now, the