Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

Genres: Fantasy; Action & Adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

In the fifth book in the Castle series, Steph Swainston returns to her uniquely imagined fantasy world. Fifteen years after the last devastating Insect attack, the immortal Circle is finally ready to launch an offensive against their implacable enemies. This time they have a new weapon - gunpowder. Hopes are high. But the Circle's plans are threatened when the vital barrels of gunpowder go missing. Jant, the Circle's winged messenger, is tasked to investigate. Soon it becomes clear that the theft is part of a deadly conspiracy . . . and Jant and his friends are among the targets. As tensions rise, Jant races to foil the conspirators. Can he expose them in time - or will the crisis blow the Fourlands apart?

Release date: November 24, 2016

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 335

Sample

CHAPTER 1

A Grave On The Seashore



The smoke rising from the pyre was blowing into tattered, hazy scrims as it drifted out to sea. We stood in a loose arc around it, and I was at the very end of the line, staring numbly at the flames. Every figure in the arc wore black: to introduce any colour into this day would be sacrilege. Across from me, the rising heat distorted Saker’s face. He had one hand over his mouth and the other in his greatcoat pocket.

The pyre was built from hundreds of musical instruments. Guitars of various kinds, flutes and oboes, now reduced to skeletons by the flames, surrounded the harpsichords inside like a palisade. Fire crackled up from stacks of burning violins and cellos; the tortoiseshell was peeling back off a hundred harps like fiery wings; bassoons and clarinets were aflame within their silver wire. And on top of it all, in the centre of intense heat and billowing smoke, stood Swallow’s rococo grand piano, on which her body lay.

Swallow Awndyn was just a black, charred shape now, with flames pouring around her, hugging her tightly, and the smoke lifted up from her and drifted out to sea.

My wife, Tern, was crying silently, pressing a silk handkerchief to her nose and mouth. I put my arm around her waist and brought her close. She was warm and yielded to me, softened by grief. To my left the arc of mourners wound behind the pyre. The heat haze rippled their figures; they seemed to sway. They had footprinted the dry sand around them into peaks and troughs, over which shadows chased and ebbed.

I recognised some of the mourners: musicians from two National Orchestras, virtuosos from the Royal Academy, singers from the Hacilith Opera, and a few very big names in blues and jazz. They had cast their instruments onto Swallow’s pyre as if vowing their music would die with her, and now all eyes were on her last appearance. The depth of their loss was immeasurable. They were heartbroken, and so was I.

I felt inside my shirt collar for my Castle pendant, ripped it off and turned the sunburst on its gold disc between my fingers, then hurled it into the flames. Tern squeezed my arm.

Fire played the whole orchestra at once; it curled and roared within the piano’s casing. Pings resounded as the strings snapped. Fire poured around the necks and split the ivory pegs of the guitars, burst the membranes of the drums with squeals and booms. It flickered long fingers over the holes in the piccolos, licked its forked tongues into their tubes – each one became a chimney gushing smoke and tips of flame. Swallow took all these instruments with her into death.

The piano bier gave a crack and its middle fell in. Great black braids billowed up and some of the women half-turned away from the flames, from the sight. I could no longer tell if they were crying or if their eyes were running from the smoke. The form atop the piano had gone; it had fallen piecemeal into the mahogany shell. A few breathed sighs of relief. Eventually the fire began to burn down into embers and the smoke lessened, spinning into clouds and carrying Swallow far out to sea. A bell tolled nine in the town behind me, doleful and low and, without a word spoken, the funeral party started to break up. Even the smoke was now thinning. Goodbye, Swallow, I thought. Goodbye.

Saker turned from the others and walked away over the hard, corrugated sand to the edge of the ocean. Foam-edged wavelets were licking in, hissing to a halt, then another pushed in, lapped over the top and curled its knuckles on the sand. They touched his boot toes and, after a while, lapped around them.

Parallel planes of the sea and the identical sky receded to meet at the horizon. Seldom ripples coming in on the limp sea moulded the chill sand. The mourners were silently returning to the town, leaving tracks slate grey and scuffed against the pale cream of the long strand.

Tern nodded to me. ‘Let’s go and see him.’

We joined Saker at the water’s edge. He didn’t look round, he knew who it was. ‘It’s over,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘Everyone’s going back to the house.’

‘They can wait.’

We walked on a little way up the beach, not looking back to the pyre or the mourners, though I could still smell that smoke. Here and there flat black pebbles were embedded in the sand. Saker stooped and collected an armful, ignoring the brine soaking into his sleeve.

‘She loved the sea,’ I said.

‘Hmm.’

Straight shafts of sunlight shone through silver-rimmed holes in the cloud cover. Their beams struck the ocean and set it sparkling.

‘I saw you throw your pendant into the fire,’ Saker said at length. ‘That was a nice touch.’

‘If Swallow couldn’t be part of the Circle I scarcely want to be, either.’

‘It’s not our fault the Emperor wouldn’t let her in,’ Tern said. ‘We did all we could.’

Saker said, ‘I loved her, you know.’

‘We know.’

‘I really did love her. It was not some act. I was overwhelmed by love for her. I would have given everything. And now …’ He stopped and stared out to sea.

‘You’re not to blame for this,’ I said.

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘It didn’t surprise me, when I heard the news. It doesn’t surprise me that she would … kill herself. We should have predicted it, that Swallow would kill herself. We should have seen it coming.’

‘Yes.’

‘Unlike Raven. He didn’t have to jump. But Swallow … dear Swallow … drinking poison – well, anyone can understand.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Tern.

‘No? Did you think she would continue to make music? Happily for us, for the world? Given the number of times the Emperor rebuffed her? Given the amount she was kicked around and buffeted by the world? Do you think it all comes out spontaneously just for your enjoyment? Do you think it would still flow if we continued to ignore her needs and treated her so badly?’

‘She had reward and acknowledgement,’ I said. ‘Everyone loved her music. We knew she was the best.’

‘She knew she was the best. That was the problem. She wanted to use it and join the Circle. She wanted to be immortal. How could she ever be happy while the Castle stands there and the Emperor won’t let her in?’

‘She couldn’t be content,’ I said.

‘She’s at peace now,’ said Tern, and then, ‘Oh, god, I’m sorry.’

Saker took one of the flat stones he had collected and skimmed it over the water, punctuating the silence. Flick … splash, splash, splash. Again: flick … splash, splash, splash.

‘She had one aim,’ he said. ‘One ambition, one desire. Her only determination was to join the Circle and it burnt her up from the inside out. Poor Swallow. It was a white heat so powerful that everything she did was bent towards joining the Circle.’

‘For god’s sake, Saker,’ I said, piqued. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

‘The Emperor should have let her in because she was a genius musician and now we have lost all her music. The music she would have written if she was made immortal.’

Flick … splash, splash, splash, splash.

‘He should have let her in because she suffered so much. Days and waking nights. No mortal has ever been as tortured with so great a desire to become immortal. And San thinks that’s no reason!’

‘It would be against his law.’

‘He could have made an exception.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He has to follow his own rule.’

‘He could change it!’

‘Anyway, many mortals are driven mad by not being able to gain a place in the Castle.’

‘Swallow wasn’t mad.’ Flick … splash, splash, splash, splash. ‘And most of all he should have let her in because doing so would change the Castle. There was space for her music.’ Flick … splash, splash, splash. ‘There is a place for art. Not just cannon and gunpowder. Not just the sabre-swingers that San makes his slaves.’

‘I resent that.’

‘But you must admit it.’ He weighed one of the smaller, sea-wet pebbles in his hand. He turned slightly sideways and: flick: splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash.

‘That’s seven,’ said Tern eventually.

‘Oh, I can do a hundred and eight. There are people out on Tris right now saying, “What the fuck was that?” ’

‘Come back to the house, Saker. It’s all over.’

He sighed and sent another stone skipping on the trail of the last. ‘The Emperor said no and she killed herself. What else could she do? Drink poison. She suffered in life so much: how she must have suffered in death. Did she suffer, Jant?’

‘I don’t know what drug she took,’ I admitted.

Flick … splash, splash, splash.

‘The smoke is clearing,’ I said.

‘Yes, and the house has opened to view,’ said Tern. ‘Eleonora’s waiting.’

Saker straightened up, folded his arms and looked out in the direction of the line of expanding concentric rings his last skipping pebble had made. ‘The tide’s coming in.’

‘Yes.’

‘It will take away the ash.’

‘Yes.’

‘And the wind will scatter the rest.’

‘Ye—’

‘It always will, you know. For ever. No matter what happens.’

‘It’ll be gone by nightfall,’ said Tern.

‘Poor Swallow.’ His voice cracked and he hid his face in his hand. Again we waited, Tern and me, until he emerged. ‘This is how the Castle treats talent.’

‘Musical talent.’

‘Any art that matters.’

I agreed. We’ve made ourselves like Insects, to fight them, and without humanity we are no better than them. But still I thought this was a poor way for the King of Awia to behave.

‘Eleonora wants to see the house,’ said Tern.

Saker pulled himself together, and wiped his hands on his sleeves to brush off the sand. ‘Jant. Go tell Leon we’ll meet her at the house. We’ll walk there. All right?’

‘All right.’ I kissed Tern, then turned and half-padded, half-splashed over the water-filled corrugations, then crunched on the dry sand, past the lines of seaweed. I slip-stepped up the slope, paused on its crest at the edge of the road, and looked back.

Tern and Saker were now two small figures, Tern in a long, black skirt and Saker in a mourning suit, walking past the smouldering pyre with the strand ahead of them, the sea the colour of pumice and the sky the same opalescent grey, to the terracotta manor house on its grassy promontory at the head of the beach.



The Queen of Awia’s coach waited patiently on the road, the coachman on his seat in a capecoat, and six glossy sable mares standing in harness with funereal ostrich plumes on their heads wafting in the breeze.

Eleonora Tanager must have been watching me stamping the sand off on the road, because as I approached the coach door opened and its white eagle coat of arms swung wide revealing a moiré silk interior. She leaned out, in black but still sporty: a shaped jacket cinched at the waist and with the same pert practicality I’ve come to expect from Saker’s wife.

‘Jant,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

‘The world’s loss,’ I said.

‘She was lifted up in the smoke. I bet she’d have liked to fly.’

‘Spare me that bullshit.’

She shrugged and smiled diplomatically. I said, ‘Saker and Tern will meet us at the house.’

‘I see …’ She patted the seat opposite. I climbed in and shut the door. The horses’ hoof-falls blurred into one as we rolled off smoothly, leaving sand grains blowing across the cobbled road.

Inside, was just me and Eleonora, with her fawn-brown eyes, her severely short hair, rounded breasts still high and firm; she’s athletic and looks younger than forty, tight trousers, top boots and leering smile. She leant forward and I shuffled back uncomfortably. ‘Saker’s taking it badly, the silly sod.’

‘What do you expect?’

She pinned me with a glance. ‘We have much to do. His mind must be on this sale.’

‘I hear you won.’

‘Of course we won!’ She laughed. ‘Nobody could outbid the crown of Awia!’

Not only did Swallow die intestate but she had mortgaged the whole manor. It was no longer hers. She’d mortgaged it to the Bank of Hacilith, which last week had auctioned it and Saker and Eleonora had reached out and bought it, at which point the newspapers went so crazy I flew down from Lowespass to see what was happening.

‘Do you know how much she mortgaged it for?’

‘Jant, the Bank won’t say. It’s an extraordinary sum of money, none of which remains. None. It’s nowhere to be found, and there are no accounts. Well, only sketchy ones.’

‘I knew Swallow was feckless, but …’

‘She was completely irresponsible. Who knows where the money went? Everyone says she was bad at managing Awndyn.’

‘She only cared about music,’ I said.

‘Yes. Doubtless it went on that. Funding aspiring musicians. Elaborate stage designs. Or maybe she frittered it away writing another symphony while the harvest went untended.’ Eleonora eyed me shrewdly and continued, ‘So we’re closing the deal and in an hour Awndyn will be ours.’

I could picture her in her favourite armour – as if she was wearing plate even now. ‘We’ve achieved a lot,’ she said. ‘Saker and me have united all the manors of Awia. We own four out of six, and now we’re buying Awndyn, so we have a Plainslands manor too. And two healthy children. It’s not been a bad fifteen years’ work, don’t you think?’

‘Not bad at all,’ I said glumly.

‘Awia will never have to ask for help again.’

‘Well,’ I added, ‘Congratulations.’

‘Cheer up, Jant. The world goes on.’

She leant her cheek on the window, looking up the road as it began a slight curve, following the bay. Her breath misted on the glass. ‘Look! Gypsy carriages. Why don’t they move?’

I pushed down the window and leaned out, though it put me too close to her for comfort. Sure enough, the road ahead was blocked by a line of Litanee wagons. The Litanee had arrived early in the morning and helped to build the pyre. They’d been waiting all this time at a quiet distance and now they were harnessing their horses and starting to drive away, but unhurriedly.

‘They’re here to pay their last respects,’ I said. ‘They liked Swallow.’

‘Oh.’

‘She was kind to them. She wanted to learn their music.’

‘Oh, I see.’

They politely gave way to each other, manoeuvring their wagons, and with the clop of hooves drove on in a troupe. The wagons were covered in colourful paintings: apple trees, hayricks and sailing boats, but they were too distant for me to tell their tribe. Each had a black canvas stretched over the roof: their sign of mourning.

‘They’ll be gone in a minute,’ I said.

We started up again, but now we were at the rear of their procession, so we followed them along the coast road while the uneven roofs and tall red chimney stacks of Awndyn Manor hove into view. We turned off onto its private road, laid in herringbone brickwork, and between the wet, sandy lawns either side, which the gypsy wheels had rutted. We stopped in front of the arched porch, and beyond the wing of the manor house, I could see the grey sky and ocean slanting away into a damp, metallic distance, the pyre still smoking.

Eleonora flung the carriage door open and, with half-spread wings, marched majestically into the house. I sighed. Awndyn manor would become hers, from the rolling chalk downland and wheat fields around Drussiter, to the pretty, chaotic town of Awndyn-on-the-Strand, its bohemian streets and sweep of beach, its miles of machair; from its red cows that fed on seaweed to its pickled herring barrels sent to the Front. From Swallow’s Artists’ Almshouse, to the auditorium where she conducted open air concerts, all would be Eleonora’s. I didn’t feel good about it at all.



CHAPTER 2

Swallow’s manor house,

Awndyn-on-the-Strand, April 2039



The air in the drawing room was like old corked wine. It seemed darker in here, now it was no longer lit by Swallow’s bright personality. She had truly illuminated wherever she was: every situation she enlivened, and now there was just the dark, heavy furniture and a musty smell of dried flowers.

Wittol, the manager of the Bank of Hacilith Moren, welcomed us, and straight away obsequiously ushered Saker and Eleonora into the adjoining dining hall, where documents were spread out on the table. He shut the door with an unctuous click, leaving me and Tern alone with Bunting, Swallow’s Steward.

Bunting was as Awian as they come. He was in shirt and waistcoat, and had draped his overcoat on the back of the chaise-longue, under the diamond-paned bow window. His broadsword was tied into the scabbard with black crepe, and gold cord with acorn knots draped from its hilt. He toyed with them nervously. We unsettled him.

He was telling us how he discovered Swallow dead: ‘I was the first to find her … I was coming to advise her that dinner was ready and she … she was just there, sitting in that chair.’ He pointed to a great desk against the far wall. It was polished walnut, its roll top pushed back, and many small, empty pigeonholes and ivory-handled drawers circled like theatre balconies the expanse of its writing surface. Green leather, edged with gold tooling, it was matched on the seat of a chair pulled out from under the arch of the desk, and you could see the impression, where Swallow always sat. The morning sun shone through the leaded glass and cast a network of shadows over it. Atop the desk was a metronome (stopped), a rosin pot full of pens, and a coffee mug on a coaster. That was all.

‘She was sitting on the chair, but resting face-down on the table, her head in her arms.’

We approached the table respectfully. The musty smell was stronger here. ‘At first I thought she was asleep. She was lying on her score … She’d been working on that symphony all year. So I put my hand on her shoulder to wake her … she was cold.’

He caught his breath and continued. ‘She was cold and very pale. I’d never seen anyone so white. I turned her over and felt for her pulse … nothing!’

He pointed to the mug. ‘That was the poison she drank. And she must have kept writing the score while the poison acted on her because … look …’ He picked up the sheaf of paper and sure enough you could see where her hand had begun to shake because the notes were ill-formed, and the pressure of the pen became lighter until they were just little flecks with their tails at the horizontal. Lighter and lighter, smaller and smaller, until they stopped in the middle of a phrase.

‘She never stopped trying,’ I said.

‘She died with a pen in her hand,’ said Bunting. His tone was accusatory and then he blushed. ‘I’m sorry.’

Tern took the manuscript from him and studied it intensely. I was more interested in the mug. The musty smell emanated from it. I picked it up and sniffed it: inside was a dark brown residue, like coffee grinds. It was redolent of dead leaves and long-abandoned houses. I didn’t know what poison it was – and because I know all there is to know about drugs and poisons, this was very disconcerting.

‘Who killed her?’ I exclaimed.

‘It was suicide, Jant,’ Tern said soothingly.

‘Could anyone have put this in her drink?’

Bunting shook his head and brushed his damp palms on his backside. ‘No, Comet. She made it herself.’ He showed us a copper kettle in the fireplace. ‘She often boiled water there and made tea or coffee. She made this the same way.’

‘Could someone have come in and poisoned her drink?’

‘Well … I suppose it’s possible. I was in the kitchen, so was the cook. I hadn’t seen Swallow since breakfast. She demanded privacy when she composed.’

‘And she didn’t keep many servants.’

‘No.’

‘I want to question them. One at a time.’

‘Jant,’ Tern said. ‘What are you talking about? Swallow killed herself – we know why.’

‘We think we do. But I’ve never smelt anything like this. I can’t identify it. So where did it come from? Where did she get it? … If it is an infusion I suppose it might be hemlock gone stale. Look,’ I said to Bunting, ‘decant it into a bottle for me. I’ll take it to analyse.’

Bunting ran his hand through his hair, forcing it up into sweaty peaks, and regarded me with untold misery. In the silence a clock ticked in the cloakroom. All was now passing into the hands of Saker and Eleonora: the linenfold wall panelling that smelt of beeswax, the stone-mullioned windows grouped in sixteens and thirty-twos, the plasterwork ceiling with its small pendentives, and the writing desk, against which leant Swallow’s walking stick.

No fire was lit in the hearth, but the April morning was beginning to warm. Sparks of dust danced through a shaft of light, each one flashing golden, enjoying brief fame, before randomly rejoining the shadow.

‘It’s taking a long time,’ said Bunting.

‘It’s a big business.’

He nodded with the carelessness of despair. ‘I suppose you see a lot of mortals die.’

‘Thousands,’ said Tern. ‘But rarely this way.’ She rearranged her fur stole around her dainty shoulders, and the nets and silks of her long skirt, damp at the hem from the beach, swept the floor as she went to sit on the chaise longue.

‘What was Swallow like in the last few months?’ I asked Bunting.

‘Bitter! Well … ever since Thunder’s Challenge she’d been bitter. More and more so until it consumed her. For a decade, Comet, she bottled her fury up inside. She was bound to kill herself … I’m afraid … with hindsight …’ She kept biting her lip and her eyes glittered. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so angry.’

‘Quietly angry?’

‘Ferociously. It scared us.’

‘Did she take it out on you?’ asked Tern.

‘No, no. She was good to us. It was the Emperor she hated. Begging your pardon, my lady. She hated the Castle. All immortals. And then maybe she turned to hating herself.’

I was growing tired of pacing back and forth on the oak floorboards, the green Ghallain rug. After Thunder’s Challenge, I should have come to visit Swallow. But the Emperor had given me so many orders I’d never had chance. And I think she wouldn’t have agreed to see me anyway. Not while suffering such all-consuming fury.

The hall door unlocked and the bank manager emerged, closely followed by Eleonora and Saker. Mr. Wittol of Hacilith was so gaunt that his black silk coat seemed to flow into the hollow of his abdomen, and almost disappeared from view before resurging over his bony hips. His trousers seemed to hang loose without any legs in them at all. With a reserved and aquiline air he contemplated us before announcing, ‘The Manorship of Awndyn is now the property of their Majesties the King and Queen of Awia.’ And he gave a bow which set the rose-gold tags on his watch chain jingling.



CHAPTER 3

Mine Twenty, ‘Thunder’s Salient’, The Lowespass Front, June 2040

The cannons started at dawn. I was circling over the field artillery on the furthest right flank where Capelin Thunder sat on horseback between his teams of gunners. The outermost six-kilo gun fired and recoiled. Men clustered in, white coats like mites, heaved it into position and, while sponge and ramrod flashed, the next one in the line boomed and reared.

I leant against the wind. It rippled my shirt as I turned. This was going to be a hot day – and hard work. The line of cannons stretched along the front of the Paperlands, three kilometres from here to Cyan at the mouth of Valley Twenty in the centre, another three beyond her to Tornado on the left wing where, with six-kilo shot, he too was pounding the fuck out of the Paperlands.

The breeze ripped the smoke from the cannons. By the time Thunder’s third had fired, the first had reloaded. Along the ground below me a hundred barrels spat flame and rebounded.

The din was overwhelming. Even fifty metres above them my ears were starting to ring and in a few minutes I’d be deafened. I held my wings straight and chandelled up, faster on the southern turn. Smoke whipped back towards the Wall. And from the vast wilderness of the Paperlands it brought the smell of Insects … They were massing.

We were ten kilometres into the Paperlands. We’d left our static gun emplacements far behind. I saw them in the distance, on this side of the Wall. Their bunkers gleamed when the sun flashed on the twelve-kilo siege guns lurking inside.

Already Thunder’s battery was cracking the walls of the Insects’ tunnels. Their pointed pagoda roofs, like whipped-up meringue peaks pink in the morning light, were beginning to shatter. Their tough, fireproof paper walls were breaking with a fibrous texture between papier-mâché, ceramic and bone.

Antennae flicked out of a crack. A triangular head emerged. Two gold-brown legs like blades scrabbled out. An Insect the size of a horse pulled itself through with antlike dexterity. It ran a few steps, feelers swivelling, scented the men of the gun teams, and bolted at them.

Another followed it out of the breach, then another. Then thousands tore down their own cell wall to attack. For an instant I glimpsed them crammed together inside. They struggled to widen the breach, and out they poured!

I swooped low and smoke snatched over my wings. It stung my eyes and blotted my throat. I sucked a breath, flew into the smoke bank. Thick black fumes enclosed me completely, stinking of sulphur. There was Capelin’s white horse, glowing as if luminous; he sat like a sack of rice. He couldn’t see the Insects. He couldn’t see a damn thing. I called to him and he yelled at his aides. They galloped away down the line, bugles trilling. I’d sighted bugs and the cannon must change to canister.

Or they’d be overrun. I cut up through the cloud, out into the blinding sun, bleeding off my speed as I rose until, for an instant, I hung motionless in the air. Tens of thousands of Insects were bristling, erupting out of their broken tunnels.

I tilted forwards into a glide and whooshed down the line with the booming, bucking guns zipping past one by one below me.

Six men to each. There’s a loader hefting a red canvas bag of powder. In it goes, shoved down by the ramsman. There’s another, loading a tin of canister shot. He’s double-shotting it. They all are!

A hundred thousand Insects will run this gauntlet. Here’s a gun ready loaded, the ventsman is piercing the touchhole and setting the fuse. Now all the guns ahead were primed and ready, the artillerists in position. Each firer held a linstock with the slow fuse snaked around it, hissing invisible-pale.

I viewed our whole trap, so cleverly designed only Thunder had the chutzpah to try it. We force the Insects to run, and we don’t have to move. If all goes well, as he insists it will, we’ll funnel them along the face of the Paperlands and into Valley Twenty.

Our fifty thousand men were drawn up in ranks facing the white sea of the Paperlands. I glimpsed Saker’s colours, then Cyan’s, rippling above the infantry opposite the entrance to the valley, and Eleonora’s swan flying in the heavy cavalry some distance to the rear.

All this is land we’ve reclaimed and cleared of Paper. Along a twenty kilometre front Thunder has wrested a band ten kilometres deep, and on a morning like this I feel it’s possible to beat the bugs all the way back to Lazulai.

That’s the last cannon, a gap, then archers. There’s King Saker on his white stallion with an arrow at string. I swooped low, dared lower, making smooth movements with my legs to steer, and my next beat touched the tassel-fringe of the sky-blue flag of Awia, hanging limp on its eagle-topped pole. Saker raised his hand in the air and my feathers whisked over it as I passed above him.

The archers gawped up in wonder. Silver sallets became pale faces, open mouths. They were wishing their wings weren’t useless.

‘Eyes forward!’ he bellowed.

The ground in front of each man stubbled with arrows he’d planted there. They looked to the Wall as I hissed away. On their horizon a pall of smoke was growing and they knew the Insects were coming.

A cannon, a gap, and Cyan’s muskets. Cyan Lightning by her sunburst flag in the centre. She’d witnessed my dive over the archers and I could see her grin from here. She gripped her musket by the small of the stock, and brandished it. She was sitting an immense destrier that dwarfed the mounts of the colour ensigns and the lines of the two ranks before her. Her horsehair crest ruffled in the breeze. She tilted up her face as I sailed over, and I looked down into the ammo box on the saddle bow, between her armoured thighs.

Her infantry are deployed in line, one battalion three ranks deep. I felt their grim silence, their muskets loaded and ready, behind the first rank of pikemen in armour – no helmets but full harness.

Next along the line, more six-kilo cannons with their teams waiting, ramrod and linstock in hand, water buckets at the ramsmen’s feet. Then the array continues, Awian archers, then line battalions of Tanager musket fyrd, artillery, Eske musket fyrd, all the way to the west wing where Tornado’s cannon is blowing breaches in the paper.

Behind us the squares of cavalry waited almost indolently, casual confidence in the attitude of Eleonora’s lancers and, behind them, the limber teams waiting to pull the field guns home, when we’ve funnelled a hundred thousand Insects into one little valley of death.

I sped up the line. Tornado’s cannon were booming without pause. I rose to glimpse their pall of smoke.

A six-kilo ball hit the peak of an Insect’s tunnel, smashed it, and great shards of