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

that using an officer as bait was generally frowned upon in the army. I was suddenly extremely away that if she, who clearly had few fond memories of the Empire or the Wasps, chose to make me one more casualty of war, there would be little I could do about it.

“Don’t worry, sir,” she told me, still staring off into the darkness. “I’ll watch over you.”

Old Mercy was not much pleased by the affair, as you can imagine. It was only because of the Beetles that I was able to salvage any of it. We lost about one in three of the regular Wasp-kinden, but the Beetle Auxillians got out with less than one in ten casualties, thanks to a combination of durability and common sense. I was thus able to dress the whole disaster up as a scouting exercise and repeat my doomed requests for a stronger force with which to make the assault.

A tenday later, enter three hundred light airborne.

I was as surprised as anyone, but there they were, spoiling for a fight. Apparently Old Mercy had decided to smash the Sel’yon once and for all, and our ‘progress’, which existed almost entirely within my reports, was enough for him to secure the release of troops who had been idling elsewhere. My orders were for a swift, merciless raid, leave no opposition alive. With the new troops I reckoned we could give it a decent try.

I conferred with my sergeants, old and new, and laid out an order of battle to make best use of our new resources. The Commonwealers would know we had been reinforced, so no sense waiting around. We would allow the new arrivals two days to rest up and get their bearings, and then we’d be back into the trees.

After I’d packed the sergeants off with their orders, I did not call Cari into my tent. One of the Wasp-kinden pioneers, the one with the wife, had already been given orders. It would not be fitting for me to consult with a mere unranked Auxillian.

No, so instead I sought her out, which was easier said than done. I limped all over camp looking for her, and at the last she obviously heard about it, because she found me.

“You’ve heard.” I wasn’t quite looking at her, just standing there gazing over the camp. Anyone watching me would not have seen me conferring with a subordinate. Perhaps they would not have seen Cari at all. “What do you think?”

“Have the pioneers sent ahead of the line. We’ll break up their positions, spoil their ambushes. Before we came, sir, the ’Wealers had a lot of home ground advantage, but we’ve been chipping away at that, and with the men you’ve got now...”

“You think it’ll work?” A Lieutenant of the imperial army seeking assurance from a shabby little Thorn Bug wench. “You know Mantis-kinden...”

“I do, and they’ll go down fighting to the last one of them, no doubt; but, sir, there are perhaps sixty of them, maybe less. Send the pioneers ahead. Let the airborne get stuck in everywhere the enemy appear, mop up with the Auxillians.”

After that, I thought for a while and then sent for the leader of the pioneers, to amend his orders.

We went in on schedule, stings blazing. I had the light airborne set a punishing pace, which was easy for me to say since I wasn’t capable of keeping up with them. I went in with the Auxillians, but I told Sergeant Wanton not to stop until he was in sight of the Sel’yon fort. I felt I was being somewhat optimistic, in this, but once the orders were given and the men sent off, it was out of my hands.

My experience of that battle was basically a gruelling march through a wood, at the best pace I and the Beetles could set. We didn’t see a single live enemy all the way, and everything I know I gleaned from reports. The short story is that the imperial army excelled itself, admittedly with odds heavily in its favour. The light airborne attacked in force, swarming the enemy every time they showed themselves, taking losses but not letting up. The slightly longer story is that those enemy were usually visible to be swarmed because one or other of the pioneers had already stirred them up. We lost three more pioneers in that action, but they did their job, the job that Cari had set out for them. They were the only soldiers we had who could meet the enemy on the Commonwealers’ terms, spoil their ambushes and draw our airborne to them.

Two hours later my Auxillians and I drew up alongside Wanton’s airborne, and the fort was indeed within our view. I was exhausted and, although I stepped out to greet Wanton on my own two feet, I had been leaning on Beetle shoulders for a lot of the way. Strange how sometimes we feel we have to make more of a show for our own people than for the Auxillians.

As ordered, the airborne had halted their advance to allow the heavies to catch up. Indeed, the pace of the airborne had been such that they had been in time to see the fort gates closing as they arrived. Wanton reckoned there couldn’t be many people left in the fort, given how many of the Mantis-kinden had gone down during the advance – never easily, but stings and numbers will deal with most things. The Dragonfly noble who was at the heart of this, however, was unaccounted for, so he and his family and closest retainers were likely still holed up there.

The fort itself was nothing worthy of the name, a thing of slanted wooden walls and mounded earth, all built up around and between three trees. The base was broad, the top narrow and ringed with spikes of splintered cane, and there were plenty of arrowslits. Not a joy to take over ground or air, therefore, but such places are only as good as their defenders. It was time for the Auxillians to get their hands