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

knew was in there. And if this were reversed? No Imperial officer would think twice before killing anyone pulling this kind of trick.

“A day’s grace,” she said. “After all, our numbers will only increase. I shall take your challenge, Sergeant Varmen. You are an extraordinary man of your kinden.”

It tasted like victory, even if it was nothing of the sort. The fact that Pellrec, that all of them, would die in any event, win or lose, did not impact on him. Instead he just knew that the surgeon would have his time.

“Bring it on,” he said.

“You have called out a formal challenge, have you not?” she asked him. “Do you not wish to prepare yourself, before the duel?”

He almost said no before realising that she was giving him time for free. “Of course,” he said. “How long?”

“An hour would be fitting.” She was still trying to work him out, no doubt seeing wheels within wheels when all that faced her was a simple soldier with an injured friend. At last she put a hand out to him, open and empty. He dropped halfway into his fighting stance, bringing his shield up, before he overrode the instinct. Clasping hands, that’s right. Forgot they did that. He levered his helmet off, feeling the cold air on his face.

“Human after all,” she said. “How easy it is to forget.” Her hand was still out, and he clasped, wrist to wrist, awkwardly.

“Amongst my people, an open hand means you’re about to kill someone,” he explained, meaning the energy of the Wasp sting that seared out from the palm. Her hand, on the wrist of the gauntlet, was unfelt, weighing nothing.

“How sad,” she said, and stepped back. “One hour, Sergeant Varmen.”

Just Varmen, Princess. He felt a lot of things, just then: his anguish for Pellrec; his knowledge that he was extorting a grace from the Commonwealers that he was in no way entitled to; and his utter, earthy admiration of Felipe Daless.

He returned to his men, and Arken’s questioning look. “Going to be about an hour,” Varmen told him. “Then you and the lads get some entertainment.”

“You know what you’re doing, Sergeant,” Arken said, not quite making it a question.

An hour. He had not considered what he would do with himself, for that hour. A glance told him the surgeon was still at work. He could not watch that. In a small but keen way he was a squeamish man. He could not watch butchers at their trade, even had it not been a friend under the knife. He took some scant comfort from the fact the man was still working.

There was a sound, a choking gurgle. Herbs are wearing off. Varmen turned away, his stomach twitching. His gaze passed across the mutinous Fly-kinden, Arken’s dispirited medium infantry, the remaining sentinels still at their post.

“Stand down, lads,” he told the armoured men. “Take a rest.” He found he trusted Felipe Daless instinctively, which he really should not do. “Be easy,”

“Hold him! More sedative!” the surgeon snapped, and Pellrec groaned, with a raw edge to the sound. Varmen shuddered and stepped out into the open again.

Nothing to do but wait. How was the Princess Minor spending her time? Some mindless ritual, no doubt. They were a superstitious lot, these Commonwealers. They believed in all sorts of nonsense and magic. It had proved no answer for good battle order, automotives and artillery. He wondered now if it helped them in some other way. He would subscribe to anything that simply helped calm the mind, just now.

He carefully let himself down to his knees. He could not sit in the armour, but it was padded out to let him kneel indefinitely. He thrust his sword into the earth. He would wait for her like that, and try not to hear the increasingly agonised sounds from behind him. He took up his helm, looking at the curve of his reflection in it. Ugly-looking bastard. Wouldn’t lend him a tin bar piece.

A succession of bitter thoughts occupied his mind then: the argument with his father the last time he had returned to the family farm; a girl he had left in Volena; the time he had been in his rage, and killed an old slave with one blow – not something a Wasp should regret, but he had always felt it ignoble.

What time had gone by he could not have said, but when he looked up she was standing before him: Felipe Daless. She had an open-faced helm on now, and a breastplate, moulded in three bands that could slide over one another: breasts, ribs, navel. She had bracers and greaves. Little of it was metal: these Commonwealers were good with it, but sparing. Their armour was lacquered and shaped chitin, mostly, over horse-leather. They had a knack, though, to shine it up until the best pieces glowed with colour like mother-of-pearl. Her armour was like that, brilliant and shimmering. Varmen had seen such armour throw back the fire of a Wasp’s sting without the wearer even feeling the warmth of it.

Against swords it could not compare to Imperial steel.

“Time, is it?” he asked. She nodded.

“Go send for your champion then,” he said, with faint hope.

“She stands before you,” Daless told him.

“Thought she might.” Varmen levered himself to his feet. I knew it would be, surely I did. Not my fault that we’re the only kinden sane enough to keep our women from war. How’re you going to get next year’s soldiers, with this year’s women all dead, sword in hand? It was a strength of the Empire, of course, and a weakness shared by almost all its enemies, but he had not regretted it more than when Felipe Daless stood before him in her gleaming mail.

To his eyes, a veteran’s eyes, she looked small and young and brave.

“You are not like the rest of your kinden,” she observed.

“Nothing special, me,” he countered.

Pellrec screamed, a full-throated shriek of agony, from nothing. Varmen did not flinch, just raised his helm to