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

Wasps behind him launched their sting-shot over his shoulders. It was an archer’s war. The sentinels stood as firm as a wall, and everyone else died at range, not even seeing the face of their killers. If Varmen and his fellows had fallen back it would all have been over, the mob of Dragonfly levy swirling forwards to run each Wasp and Fly onto a pike. They held against the ground forces, though, and those that tried to force through between the sentinels’ flashing weapons and the jagged edge of the heliopter’s top wall were picked off by the men behind.

Abruptly as they had come, the Dragonflies broke off the attack, disappearing into the darkness chased by a few hopeful arrows. Varmen made a quick count and saw a score of bodies. No counting how many dead and wounded they took away with them. “What’s our losses?” he called back.

“Two scouts, one infantry,” came Arken’s dutiful voice. “Two others wounded.”

“They’ll be back,” Pellrec said.

“Oh surely.” Varmen shrugged his shoulders, settling the plates back into place. Pellrec murmured to him and he added, “They’ll take a few shots at us now, hope we’ve forgotten about them. Stay sharp.”

“Sergeant...” Something in Arken’s tone promised complications.

Varmen sighed. “Watch the front,” he told Pellrec and ducked into the wrecked heliopter. “What? What now?”

Arken said nothing, but he was stepping back from the prone form of Lieutenant Landren.

“Don’t suppose we’re lucky enough that he died in his sleep?” Varmen said. There was an awkward pause, several seconds’ worth, before he noticed the arrow.

“Ah, right.” He knelt by the body: dead, all right, no mistaking that. It was dim, back there, too dim to get a look at the wound, not that it would have told him much. But he could feel a tension behind him. Sounds like he was alive and well when Arken did his count the first time round. “You must have missed him in the dark,” Varmen said absently.

There was a distinct pause before the “Yes, Sergeant.”

“Go get some of your men to back up my sentinels,” Varmen told him. “Sergeant Tserro, a word.”

The Fly approached doing a fine impression of nothing-wrong-here. Varmen nodded amiably and then lunged for him. He had been going for the throat, but the fly’s reflexes were good enough to foul his aim. The heliopter was a cramped cage, though, and Varmen got a fistful of tunic and hauled the man in. He was aware that several of the other Fly scouts had arrows abruptly nocked to the bow. “Go on,” he growled softly. “See if your little sticks’re any better than the Commonwealers’.”

Tserro waved a hand frantically at them, still trying for a calm face. “Something – something wrong, Sergeant?”

“You stabbed him,” Varmen said quietly. He was aware that all this was taking people’s attention off the real fight, but then a scatter of arrows came in to rattle from the sentinels’ plate, and that took up most people’s minds. “And then you stuck an arrow in,” he added. “Or maybe you stuck him with an arrow first. What’s going on?”

Tserro’s face twisted, and for a moment he was going to keep up the act, but Varmen shook him hard enough to loosen his teeth, and finally the truth broke loose.

“Who d’you think was going to get the blame for this?” the Fly hissed.

“Him,” Varmen pointed out. “Or were you saving him the long walk to the captain’s tent to explain himself?”

“Fool, nothing would have landed on his shoulders,” Tserro snapped. “Landren was Rekef. We all knew it.”

The mere mention of the name made Varmen feel uncomfortable, feel watched. The Imperial secret police, the Rekef, the thing that men of the Empire feared more than any external enemy. “And killing him helps, does it?”

“A dead man’s got no reputation to maintain,” Tserro stated. “You’re Wasp-kinden, what could you know? It’s easy to blame us, and nobody cares if we end up on crossed pikes to protect some Rekef man’s career.”

Varmen threw him down, seeing the flash of wings as Tserro caught himself. “This isn’t over,” he promised. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, they’re trying to kill us. If we get out of this, we’re going to have words.”

“Oh for sure,” said Tserro, half-mocking, but with fear still underneath it.

“And in case you get any daft ideas, you just remember who’s standing between you and the Commonweal.”

The rest of the night passed in light showers of arrows: long, elegant shafts that broke off the sentinels’ armour or rattled against the ruined coping of the heliopter. One of Varmen’s men took a hit to the elbow, the arrowhead lodging through the delicate articulation of his mail and digging three inches into the joint. He let Tserro’s field surgeon remove the missile, the Fly doctor’s hands tiny as they investigated the wound, and had his arm strapped up. In just over an hour he was back in place, wielding a single mace in his left hand. Another arrow, arcing overhead, resulted in one of Arken’s men officially dying of bad luck, as it came from nowhere to spit him through the eye. There were no other casualties. By mid-afternoon the next day it had become plain to all sides that this occasional sniping was getting nowhere. The Dragonfly-kinden mounted another sally.

That they had been reinforced was unwelcome and immediately obvious news. After a fierce volley of more arrows, one of which came in hard enough to put its point through the inside of Varmen’s shield, the first wave out of the trees were not Dragonflies but a rabble of Grasshopper-kinden. They were lean, sallow men and women without armour, wielding spears and long knives, clearly a levy sent to the front from some wretched peasant farmland somewhere. They were very quick, rushing and bounding towards the heliopter in no kind of order, but nimble on their feet. Several had slings that they were able to loose whilst running. A stone dented Pellrec’s helm over his forehead, staggering him,