The clatter of hooves in the street roused me. I lay with a terrible pain in my arm and a stiff ache in my wings, feeling like death-fast-thawing like a corpse out of the Ilbhinn glacier. I wondered why I was always doing this to myself, until I remembered I came by this pain in the line of duty rather than pleasure.
The sound of hooves intensified, with the jingling of bells. There must be a whole company outside. I tried to get out of bed and gasped as the ache fired into a streak of agony. I slipped a T-shirt on and looked out of the window. It gave onto the second ring; the road below was full of horses, and lancers riding in full plate, holding their lances point down. Their line, two abreast, wound around the corner. The noise of bells on their bridles might reassure the horses, but it put my nerves on edge.
High over the barracks roof, a few Insects were twisting up into the air.
The lancers passed by and the street emptied. On the cobbles a dispersed smear of brown fur and pink bone was all that remained of the Eske fyrd’s grizzly bear mascot. Behind it, a door to the barracks block was open and two soldiers with crossbow bandoliers stood on its step. One leant forward to light a cigarette, then straightened up and blew out smoke.
A quick movement caught my attention. An Insect ran round the corner and hurtled down the street. The smokers slammed their door shut. The Insect dashed beneath my window, then seemed to lose its footing with all six legs at once. It fell and bowled tail over forelegs with its own momentum, crashed into the wall and lay still, with a red-fledged arrow sticking out of it.
Lightning will be awake, then.
The door was ajar and I heard Tornado’s voice counting to ten three times as he ascended the stairs. He reached the top and knocked so powerfully that the door swung wide.
I called, ‘Yes!’
He continued knocking.
‘It’s bloody open; you can bloody come in if you bloody have to!’
He entered, still in filthy armour, and a scowl. ‘You’re looking good this morning.’
‘The flight is starting again. What time is it?’
‘Six a.m. There aren’t as many, yet, but the ones that came down yesterday are still clogging the roads. Wrenn’s clearing the middle road with a company of hastai, and I’m going to relieve him soon. Lightning says where are you? Lourie sent me because Lightning bawled at him to come and fetch you. He said, “Get that lanky Rhydanne git down here now!”’
‘Lourie said that?’
‘No. Lightning.’
‘Ah.’ I tried to comb my hair and gave up, made the mistake of consulting the mirror. Blood and iodine had seeped through the bandage on my shoulder and dried, sticking it to my skin.
Tornado bent to peer out of the window. ‘I’ve never seen the like of Insects in the air. I bet it pisses featherbacks off to find that Insects can use their wings.’
I agreed. ‘There we were, happily taking wings as trophies and using them to glaze windows, never thinking they could grow them and use them to fly.’
‘I wouldn’t have believed it.’
‘They’re heavy, graceless fliers. They seem glad when they touch down.’
Tornado shrugged. ‘You were pretty impressive.’
‘Up until the point I crashed. Look how badly skinned I am.’ I glanced at my scale mail hauberk and gambeson, which I hang upright on crossed poles like a scarecrow. My helm sat angled on top, the rust-stained tail of its white horsehair crest hanging down.
‘At least you’re not mad.’
I paused in lacing my boots and blinked at him. ‘Mad? Why should I be mad?’
‘You should see Frost.’
We descended the stairs into the hall full of soldiers and townspeople, not crushed together like last night but running about in panic, shouting over the distant buzzing. Zascai came and went from the doorway, crowding around Lightning, who stood leaning against the doorjamb, scribbling a note. He had his bow on his shoulder and, standing at his heel, his favourite deerhound, Lymer the-two-hundred-and-tenth, watched the street attentively.
He folded the paper and handed it to a runner, who raced out of the hall. I pushed to his side but he didn’t notice me.
Immediately a fyrdsman vied for my attention: ‘Comet, what do I do if-’
‘Wait,’ I said.
‘But how can they be flying?’
‘Just wait!’
The same was happening to Tornado, who was dealing out orders for an infantry company. Eszai are equal in status and there is no hierarchy among us, meaning there is no final authority in a crisis and, if we have no pre-planned strategy, it causes problems. Lightning tended to dominate and I usually deferred to him, knowing he was the best of us at envisaging the whole battlefield. He could remember where every company was at any given time.
‘Snow sent me, Lightning,’ a woman said in pidgin Awian. ‘He said the flamethrowers now are working.’
‘At last. Have you any infantry to fend off Insects? No? I’ll send for a squad. You-who are you?’ He was pointing at an approaching longbow man.
‘Warden of the first battalion Rachiswater archers.’
‘You are? Since when? What happened to Cirl?’
‘He’s dead, my lord. We can’t get into the barrack attics to shoot from the windows because people are hiding inside and they’ve locked the door.’
‘Can you not reason with them?’
‘They won’t reason.’
‘Break the door down, but make sure you guard them back to their houses. Ensure the houses are free of Insects and for god’s sake make them stay there. Then take up your position.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Lightning…’ I spoke up, but he was too harassed to hear.
A warden crowded into the doorframe. I guessed from his stainless accent that he was one of Eleonora’s cousins appointed to her lancers. He said, ‘I believe we should-’
Lightning interrupted, ‘I asked you to tell me where Hayl’s husband has gone.’
The captain said, ‘He is bereaved. He is as furious as he is demented with grief. He has taken a company of lancers to rescue people from the armoured carts and peel towers.’
‘Outside town?’
‘Yes.’
‘I told him not to!’
‘He said it was his revenge on the Insects. He said he will ride them down, unless the flight intensifies. The horses are even more terrified of Insects above them, especially the noise, and they can’t hear our orders. Becard only has one company from the third battalion Eske lancers.’
‘I thought you said the first battalion?’
‘Third, Lightning.’
‘Third. Third. Well, take the first, then. Put your armour on and venture out. Give him support but order him back as soon as you can. Tell him I said so, in the Emperor’s name.’
The hound’s hackles prickled; it started barking furiously. Lightning peered out around the doorjamb, unslung his bow, drew and loosed. An Insect charging down the street skidded to a halt in front of us, in death throes. Lightning lowered his bow and noticed me. ‘Jant, don’t just stand there!’
The fyrdsmen crowded around us. Lightning looked from face to frightened face. ‘You will all damn well wait while I speak with Comet…Jant, what’s happening? How can they fly? They never have, before. Never! Have you discovered anything?’
‘I think it’s a mating flight.’
‘A what flight? It’s chaos. Come and see Frost.’ We turned away from the crowd and his dog padded after us. Lightning continued, ‘We’ve lost seven hundred men and I would say twice that number are too afraid to leave the barracks. I need you to bring me more information. Tornado, please take over and by god tell the second Rachiswater archers to stop dropping stray arrows on the pyre crew.’
‘I’m going to report to the Emperor,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course.’
I heard a soldier mutter to his mate, ‘Fody said that Insects are carrying men off and drowning them in the lake. Picking them up and flying away with them!’
I rounded on him. ‘That’s false! Fyrdsman, don’t spread rumours! Insects are weak fliers, and they can’t lift anything. On the ground, they return to being normal Insects. Bear that in mind, all of you!’
As we crossed to Frost’s table Lightning continued quietly, ‘It’s not true, is it? They are not normal.’
‘No. Their behaviour has completely changed. The ones in the streets are trying to run back to the lake. They all return to the water, and I think they’re laying eggs in it.’
‘They’re what?’
‘They put their tails in and a sort of froth comes out. Then they range over the whole valley. They drag the people they’ve killed to the lake. They’re dissolving the Wall and pulling all kinds of dead shit out.’ I explained how they were making a splanchnic swamp of the lake and were agglutinating a wall to enclose it. It was as if they had claimed it as their own.
Lightning looked shocked. ‘Take care how you speak to Frost.’
‘Why?’
‘She hasn’t slept for three days. She is near breaking point. If she worsens I will send her to Whittorn, Eszai or not.’
‘No, Lightning. Zascai stress casualties are kept at the front, so we should do the same for Eszai. People recover much faster with their dignity intact.’
‘Well, she’s having a bad effect on the Zascai.’
‘We need her to work the dam.’
Frost had arranged four tables into a square, with no opening, and she was hidden by a high wall of folders, books and stacks of paper piled on top. We walked around two sides, seeing that when she had run out of books she had continued building with tool boxes. Only the far side was clear, facing away from the crowd, with her coffee pot and a pile of nuts and raisins on the surface. Frost was sitting, shoulders hunched, and her head on her hand. She swayed very slightly as she spoke to one of her engineers in emphatic, low tones. ‘So Insects are flying again? I need to know.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Go and man the telescope. Watch the dam. If they start papering over any part of it, come and tell me.’
‘Yes, Frost.’
‘I want all the barrels of limestone-cutting acid under lock and key. I want fifty draught horses ready to ride to the dam at a second’s notice. I want weather reports four times a day. If a drop of rain falls I want to know.’
‘Yes.’ The engineer glanced at me and rolled his eyes.
‘Bring me the spillway capacity calculations. If they block the spillway, it’s goodbye, Lowespass.’
Lightning cleared his throat. The foreman saw his chance to escape and dashed away.
Frost had dirt under her fingernails and white salt crusted at the edges of her eyes. Her hair, dry with neglect, was tied back but the ends straggled on her shoulders. She shoved her sleeves up her broad forearms with a gesture like a washerwoman, and said, ‘Tell me the figures.’
‘What figures?’
‘How many men have died? How many injured? How many people have I killed?’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Lightning said.
‘Come on, Saker, what else can it be?’ Her voice took on a hard edge. ‘There’s no record of Insects ever flying. Thou knowest that more than anyone, thou hast been around almost as long as they have. My lake is the only thing that’s new. The Insects are reacting to my action. To my dam-to water.’
‘Water?’ Lightning said. ‘There has always been a river.’
‘Standing water.’
‘It could be population pressures,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe they only swarm every two thousand years.’
‘They are flying to reproduce,’ Frost stated.
Lightning rubbed the scar on his palm. ‘Don’t be awkward…If Insects reproduce in the air we would have seen it before. Besides, Rayne dissects them and she says they have no male and female forms.’
‘They had no wings, either, before I built the dam.’
‘They had very small wings,’ Lightning said.
‘Oh, yes. We thought their wings were vestigial, but it turns out they were just immature.’
I said, ‘Having wings isn’t enough. They’ve also somehow gained the instinct to fly. It isn’t easy, it took me years to learn.’ I pulled my T-shirt neck down so they could see my collar bones which had been broken so many times they were gnarled.
Frost murmured, ‘Two, four, sixteen, two hundred and fifty-six…’ She grabbed papers and started screwing them up. ‘It’s my fault! I brought it on us! I renounce it!’
I said, ‘Why not have some breakfast?’
‘Eat? I’ve no time! The milk in my coffee is all the breakfast I need!’
I sat down on the edge of the table and she indicated her fortification of books and tool boxes. ‘This is my office. I am in charge of the dam.’
‘Of course,’ I said soothingly.
‘Even if everything else fails, my project won’t!’
‘Cool it.’
She put the handfuls of paper down slowly. ‘Oh, Jant. Why are we engineers always hoist with our own blocks?’
‘We need you. You’re the smartest of us,’ I said.
‘It gets thee nowhere. Being smart just gets people killed.’ She poured another coffee.
‘Maybe you should stop drinking that,’ I added.
‘It’s just a cup of coffee.’
‘It’s not a cup of coffee, it’s a state of mind.’
Doubt masked Lightning’s usually stately face. He said, ‘I don’t know why the Insects have changed…Rayne once suggested that they bred underground or in cells behind the Wall. Why have we never seen a flight before?’
I said, ‘I told you they were coming from the Shift.’
‘Shut up about your drug fantasies!’
‘Don’t you remember the bridge?’ I asked. ‘Where do you think it led?’
Lightning blanked me out, and said, ‘Maybe there are lakes out of view in the north.’
I sighed. ‘If you want. But I circled their flight and I saw them coupling in a big, slimy orgy up there.’
Frost squeezed her eyes shut. Her body jerked upright, rigid in a long shudder. In a second she was back. ‘A…another white flash. It’s the pressure. Bad tension. I-I didn’t know this would happen. How could I?’
Lightning said, ‘We can’t be sure-’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure.’ The sights I had seen in the Somatopolis began to make sense: the obscure shape swimming in the pool, and how the water that had spouted through from Vista had triggered the Insects’ instinct to breed.
I said, ‘They’re dropping food in the lake. The Wall is not just their means of protecting the Paperlands but also a way to store food.’
‘Food?’ Lightning grimaced. ‘Why?’
‘Because whatever comes out of those eggs will want to eat.’
Frost buried her head in her hands and started murmuring, ‘I only wanted to be immortal because of Zaza…Two hundred and fifty-six; two hundred and sixty-five thousand, five hundred and thirty-six; four billion, two hundred and ninety-four million-’
‘Please stop doing that,’ said Lightning.
I wondered how to help Frost. Asking her to relax would be like trying to convince a shark to stop swimming. If they stop, they drown, so I’m told. She habitually imposes so much stress on herself that this additional stress was more than she could cope with. The very qualities that had helped her gain immortality-remarkable self-discipline and a drive to work herself to the bone-were now impediments.
She is addicted to work and buries herself in it so deeply she’s surprised when her actions affect anyone else. Let me give her a task, a purpose, another dose of work to calm her mind.
I picked up a scrap from the tide of paper on her desk, folded it into a glider and threw it past her. She looked up resentfully, selected another sheet and made a glider of far better design. She creased the edge of one wing and tossed it. It described a circle around me, turned on its side and flew back to her.
I said, ‘Do you know that water is running down the spillway?’
‘Ha! A little overtopping; I’d expect it to be displaced by all that detritus. The culvert is adequate.’ She sobbed and wiped her nose.
Lightning sighed, looking at the mortals lingering just out of earshot awaiting our command. ‘Try to put a better front on for the Zascai.’
‘She’s in shock,’ I said.
‘We’re all in shock.’ Lightning added, ‘There are not so many today. The flight could be dying down of its own accord.’
‘I hope so,’ I said.
Frost began to stutter, ‘D-don’t you see? That’s the point. My lake affected all the Insects in in in the area. When they’ve all…mated…the flight w-will stop. Then what? Then what?’
Now did not seem to be the right time to tell her and Lightning about the death of the Somatopolis. The Vermiform had implied that Insects don’t lay eggs in sea water. I asked, ‘Can we make the lake saline?’
Frost’s arms tensed. ‘W-we don’t have enough s-salt here.’
‘Well, order some up.’
Lightning shook his head. ‘Not a hope. How would you take it to the lake? There are too many Insects running free outside. With thousands over such an open area, they would slaughter us even if we had three times the number of troops.’
A commotion in the doorway interrupted us. Wrenn entered the hall, in full armour, dragging an Insect by its two antennae bundled together in one gauntleted hand. He had hacked off all its legs at the first joint, leaving stumps. Its antlike body squirmed, bending at the neck and waist, and it rotated from side to side as he pulled it over the straw-strewn floor to us.
He had caught it before it detached its wings. The long, hyaline membranes surrounded it completely, shredded into ribbons on one side, rattling and clattering together. It reared up its front femurs threateningly and yellow paste oozed out of the severed joints.
Frost stood up. ‘Serein Wrenn Culmish, that is absolutely disgusting. Take it outside!’
‘Morning, all. Think of it as one less Insect. I want to show you something.’ He let go of the antennae and the Insect rocked on its back until it rolled the right way up. It was constantly trying to get to its feet, regardless of the fact that it didn’t have any. The loss of a leg or mandible isn’t a serious injury for an Insect because it can regenerate them in subsequent moults. This one was missing all six legs but it was still wriggling. It squirmed around and grabbed Wrenn’s ankle.
He drew his broadsword with a flourish. As its jaws closed on the greave plate he swept its head off, leaving it dangling from his leg.
Its body slowly stopped moving. Wrenn kicked his foot free, and the head rolled to rest, compound eyes downward. ‘I picked this one up on the road. Do you see it’s fatter than usual?’ He poked its abdomen with the tip of his sword. Pressing with both hands on the hilt, he punctured the softer sclerites under its abdomen at the waist and sliced it open to the tail. He turned his blade to widen the cut and a mass of white capsules the size of my palm suspended in clear jelly splodged out.
‘Eggs. Lots of them. Do you see?’ He stirred them with his sword point, cutting their cuticles, whereupon they leaked a milky liquid.
I slipped my hand into the cold, gelatinous spawn, picked up one egg and squeezed it. It was the size of a tennis ball and very slimy, with a tough, sclerotic skin. It slipped between my fingers like a bar of soap, and bounced on the floor.
‘Ugh,’ said Frost.
‘Sorry.’
‘Thank you, Wrenn,’ Lightning said. ‘No less than your usual brilliance.’
‘So why do they drop their wings off when they could keep flying and attacking us?’
‘They’re working on instinct,’ I told him. ‘They’re interested in the lake. It’s just coincidence that we’re here at all.’
‘But why fly? Why do they have to fly to shag?’
‘Ask it,’ I said.
Wrenn took the point. ‘Fair enough.’
He sat down on a bench end, removed his helmet and padded cap and ruffled his flattened hair to make the spikes stick up. He called to Tornado, ‘It’s your shift, Tawny. I’ve been at it since five. Give me half an hour for breakfast then I’ll come back out.’
Tornado picked up the Insect by the tip of its abdomen and dragged it, still dripping transparent gel, out of the hall.
Frost had knelt down and was counting the eggs, picking them up with gluey strands and piling them on one side. ‘There are upwards of a hundred in here. Tens of thousands of Insects are laying. If they all hatch, there’ll be millions of offspring in my lake…’
She brushed her hair back, leaving a trail of slime stuck to it, sat on her heels and looked at us, wide-eyed. ‘I have to drain the lake-as quickly as possible.’
‘How long will it take?’ I said.
‘I expected it to take days. I can’t just reel the gate wide open; it would flood everything from here to Summerday. The breakwave would be…well, maximum outflow could easily wash the levee away, and then…I don’t like to speculate.’
‘How fast can you open the gate safely? What do you need? Tell us, so we can make plans.’
She jumped up and dashed to her desk. She whipped a sheet of paper towards her, grabbed two pencils, shoved one behind her ear and poised the other. ‘If Q is the flow rate and dt is the time…Hum! Could the debris block the gate? No, its compressive stress is tissue to that force of water…You there! Yes, you. Bring me some more coffee! Where’s my foreman? Asleep? Why? We have work to do! Oh, if Zaza were here we could do this in a couple of days!’
Lightning and I backed off. ‘Thank you,’ he said gratefully.
‘I’m just trying to keep her occupied. We don’t have sufficient troops to reach the winch tower anyway.’
He nodded. ‘I know. We’re stranded here, Jant, for now. But at least we’re stranded with the largest store of arrows in western Lowespass.’
I noticed Kestrel Altergate at the far end of the room, trying to help a field surgeon without actually touching his patient. ‘Just make sure Frost sleeps at some point, and keep those bloody reporters away from her.’
One of Lightning’s wardens called from the spiral stairs. Lightning raised a hand in acknowledgement and said, ‘I have to organise the archers on the towers. Please bring us some instruction from the Emperor.’
‘I will.’
‘I hope San knows what to do, because I fear I don’t…Jant, did you find Cyan in Hacilith?’
‘Er. Yes.’
‘Wonderful! Well?’ Lightning glanced to the Zascai clamouring for his attention. The bolder ones were beginning to approach. ‘Is she safe?’
‘She’s safe now,’ I said.
‘Now? She wasn’t safe before?’
‘She was safe before and she’s safe now.’ But not during the time in between, I thought. Lightning gave me an urgent look, but I met his gaze. ‘Rayne is bringing her here. They’ll arrive in a couple of days.’
‘Good. Thank you, Jant…’ I could see Lightning wanted to ask me more but the Zascai were waiting. He fidgeted with the scar on his palm, then he nodded and went back to issuing commands.
Wrenn beckoned to me. ‘When you see the Emperor, tell him that all our fyrd are knackered and scared stiff. The Cook said that he’ll try to resume the wagon train, with extra outriders for protection, or we’ll soon run out of food. I don’t want to have to chew gum and tighten my belt until new supplies arrive.’
Wrenn pressed the clips to release his plates with a click; gorget, breastplate, faulds, and placed them on the floor. He was so hot his feathers stood up like needles on a pine branch, to let the heat escape. A few detached ones floated down. Wings don’t perspire, but everywhere else his undershirt had brown tide marks and with the sweat of his latest exertion it stank.
He said, ‘These clips don’t last long. I have to keep threading on new ones. God, that’s better. I feel much lighter now.’
His armour was state of the art, top of the range. I cast an envious eye over it. ‘Nice gear.’
‘Isn’t it? Check out Sanguin.’ He passed me his broadsword.
‘Very nice.’
‘You can see the temper line and everything.’
I tilted the blade to see its etched arabesques and the name in a flowing Awian script.
Wrenn took his helmet on his knee and picked at the lining, then undid the finger-screws that held its bedraggled crest in place. He slid the crest out of its runners and began to wipe mud off it with his sleeve. ‘It’s a quagmire out there. And my arms are covered in bruises from lugging those fucking shields.’ He looked at my bandages. ‘What happened to you?’
‘I crash-landed.’
‘Did you? Armour, Jant; get yourself some of this.’
‘I can’t fly in harness.’
‘Wear something on your arms at least.’ He grinned. ‘What do you think you are, bloody immortal?’
I picked up one of his mirror-finish arm plates from the floor and turned it over. Its canvas straps were hidden underneath it and woven through with steel wire resistant to Insect jaws. The straps had metal spring clips-they could be unfastened in a second if something did go wrong, and they were all easily reachable. Wrenn could don full harness in minutes.
He nodded at it. ‘You should ask Sleat to make you some. It’s much better than that old crap scale you wear.’
‘Show me,’ I said.
He took off a greave and ran his finger inside it. ‘Well, it’s lightweight. Feel that. My breast and back plates are thinner than the ones for my arms and legs. Chain mail strips sit under every joint-elbows, waist, knees-they don’t add much weight but no claw is going to find its way in there. And see the little holes?’ He ran his finger along a line of perforations. ‘They make it lighter still, but they’re to let the air breathe. It doesn’t collect sweat and rust and I can wear it all day without overheating. Not like old lancers’ armour.’
It was the highest-quality steel with the sunburst inlaid in orpiment yellow. I ran my thumb over the smooth embossing and Wrenn chuckled. ‘Decoration won’t save your life. Look here-all the plates are straight-edged and tapered. Mandibles won’t find purchase on that. There’s deep fluting along every plate-no jaws will be strong enough to crush that much reinforcement. Sleat’s proved it in trials. Best of all, there are no small pieces for the bastards to grab-the elbow couters are attached to the vambraces and the besagews aren’t discs hanging loose, they’re part of the breastplate, see?’
‘Is this Morenzian?’ All human armour was adaptable to Awians these days but sometimes the added pieces were unreliable.
‘Sleat extended the pauldrons for me and I tuck my wings under them. He can do the same for you. He took my measurements when I joined the Circle. He made exactly what I wanted.’
‘Sleat custom-forges armour for every new Eszai,’ I said.
‘He made me a whole garniture suite.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. All interchangeable plates, for all purposes and the decoration matches. I wear this to joust; I just change the breastplate for one with a lance stop, and I have a closed-visor bascinet with a crest instead of this light casque.’
‘Clever.’
‘Oh, and I have a matching surcoat too. I don’t want to joust in bare Insect-fighting steel when there are ladies watching.’
‘Frost is a keen jousting supporter,’ I said. ‘You should talk to her about it and help calm her a little. She remembers all Hayl’s scores.’
‘At the moment I’d rather not.’ He began unhooking the leather spats stretched over his feet to prevent mud working in between the joints. ‘These are the only thing I have a problem with. Leather never lasts long in a bout with an Insect-I might as well wrap myself in bacon.’
Lightning yelled from across the hall, ‘Jant! Are you going to the Castle or are you going to wait until we’ve all been eaten?’
‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I’d better go. See you in a few days.’
‘Bye.’ Wrenn attended to replacing the madder-red crest on his helmet. His plumes were an Awian symbol of bravery and he must have bought them at market, moulted by a girl whose feathers were so beautiful she could sell them. They couldn’t have been keepsakes from lovers, because Wrenn was enjoying being single far too much. Only one clever lass has come close to snaring him; she was an ardent swordswoman and applied to be taught by him, but when their conversation never turned on anything but swordplay even her patience wore thin.
I walked out to the square and climbed up to the hall roof, dwelling enviously on Wrenn’s armour. I wanted some. I thought, we have come a long way since the year 430 when Morenzians started sewing thick metal plates onto clothes. Insects’ carapaces are the optimal natural armour and we have learnt from them how to give ourselves the best possible exoskeletons.
I stood on the ridge, watching Insects descending on the town. I ducked as one buzzed overhead, blotting out the rising sun, and waited for a clear space when it would be safe to take off.
In the square, Hurricane was forming up a company of shield lines; five lines deep, ten men in each, standing shoulder to shoulder. They wore thick gauntlets, and padding on their left arms.
Along their lines the heavy rectangular shields reached down to the ground with little space under them; their ground spikes had been unscrewed. Each had one flat edge and the other edge curved into a hook along its length, so they clipped together loosely into a flexible continuous wall without gaps or overlaps that an Insect claw can pin together.
At the far side of the square, under the direction of the Macer, squads of infantry were dispatching dying Insects with heavy lead mallets, their handles one and a half metres long. They looked as if they were breaking rocks or knocking in tent pegs, but I heard the awful cracking as Insect limbs and heads gave way.
Three men with shields, one at the front and two beside him on his either side formed a triangle, running towards the gatehouse tower. A young man, sheltering between them, dragged a tiny limber cart loaded with arrow sheaves. They ran as fast as they could, reminding me of servants under umbrellas dashing across the Castle’s courtyards in heavy rain. An Insect descended towards them and the three shield men raised their shields into a roof.
The Insect landed squarely on the shields-which angled in different directions under its scrabbling feet. It slid off and the whole thing collapsed-the Insect came down in the middle, tangled in the cart and spilling arrows everywhere. Before it could right itself, the men crowded around and I saw their swords flashing as they rose and fell.
I looked down the road, seeing Tornado’s shield lines coming around the corner. They were clearing Insects before them, pushing them forwards. Insects were bracing their powerful legs on the shields’ rims, tearing at the spears, trying to crawl up the sides of the buildings, slipping over discarded wings and backing, backing, backing, as the shield wall advanced.
Tornado was walking in the gap between the first and second lines. His company was also five deep. Each line was of shield bearers and spearmen arranged alternately to thrust their spears over the tops of the shields. Those in the last line walked backwards to deal with Insects running up behind them.
Five lines isn’t many. I’ve seen this formation twenty deep when we were clearing Insects from Awian towns.
Tornado’s lines were approaching one of the radial roads. Tornado boomed, ‘Cover right junction!’
The men who heard him repeated it at a shout. It made them focus, it bound them together and those at the back heard the concerted yell. They pulled their shields in and advanced towards the street corner. Tornado called, ‘Line one, continue! Line two, stack to right!’
Behind the first line, line two began to dissolve their line across the road and instead queued up behind the right end of the first line. As they approached the junction, the men in the first line looked down the side road, saw it was crawling with Insects, and called, ‘Ten Insects, right!’
The queue of shield bearers and spearmen together dashed out from behind the first line and ran across the side road, turning as they ran to face the Insects in it. They filled the side road wall-to-wall, spacing themselves out. They slammed their shields together. ‘Ho!’
The Insects forced against the shield wall but the spearmen had them under control so quickly Tornado didn’t have to detach another line to stand behind them. He left them blocking the road and all the other lines marched across the junction.
The shield wall was left defending the junction, a vital position for the overall strategy. They shifted their weight from foot to foot, rubbed their bruised arms and hands and stared up at me. When more Insects hove into view they shouted to steady their nerves. Insects are deaf so our shouts mean nothing to them, but the men needed to reassure themselves over the unearthly buzzing.
A hiatus in the Insect storm, and I was aloft. I flew over the camp and saw the extent of the devastation. The tents outside the town wall were flattened, plastered in mud. Their drainage ditches had collapsed into brooks of sludge. Shining carapaces bobbed in the moat’s coffee-coloured water.
Around twenty soldiers were constructing a pyre outside the gate. Bodies were laid side by side next to the woodpile to be cremated. No one buries corpses in Lowespass because Insects simply unearth them.
A squad of ten women were stripping armour, belts, boots and identification tags from the bodies, leaving only the clothes on. A girl crouched, entering the details in a ledger, because armour and weapons are reissued to new fyrd and she would send any money and jewellery to the family of the deceased.
Men were looping ropes around dead Insects and dragging them out of the gate, hefting them onto a pile beyond the pyre.
A fireman was unwinding the leather pipe from his flamethrower, a cart carrying a metal cylinder of neat alcohol and rape oil. He directed the nozzle while his mate pumped the handle. They sprayed liquid flame onto the Insect carcasses. Insects are supposed to be deterred by the smell of burning chitin but I’ve never seen any evidence of it.
I hastened south to the Castle for the rest of the day and all night, rehearsing in my head what I was going to say to the Emperor. I couldn’t see the horizon, so I tried to keep the strain on both wings the same and maintained a straight line. I navigated south carefully, checking the sultry stars by my compass.
Their constellations reflected like scattered salt on my oiled wings. I have always been convinced that stars are an illusion, just like rainbows, because no matter how high I fly they never seem any nearer. The spaces between them mesmerised me and I flew on, composing my report to the Emperor in my head. I wondered what to do if Frost’s madness worsened. I couldn’t think of any way to ease the pressure on her, because she was the only one of us who really understood the dam.
I didn’t know Frost’s pre-Castle name but I have heard how she joined the Circle. She won her Challenge in 1703. She had lived all her life in Brandoch, where she founded the Riverworks Company in partnership with her husband.
Brandoch town is built on a little rise so low as to be almost indistinguishable from the rest of the drowned fenland. In Frost’s day it flourished because it overlooked the only passage through the Moren Delta deep enough for carracks. Frost and her husband laboured in the manorship’s tradition of reclaiming low-lying land from the sea which often flooded it: every one of its polder fields are man-made. They worked as a brilliant team, draining and shoring the marshy levels with dykes and long, raised roads.
Frost only sought the Castle when her husband fell ill with malaria. She realised that if she could make him immortal she had a chance of saving him. She is the most selfless of us all.
Her predecessor, Frost Pasquin, set her the Challenge of moving a fyrd division across the Oriole River using nothing but their own manpower and the materials to hand in Lowespass. Pasquin had been working at the front for too long and had lost touch with the rest of the world. He had not been aware of his Challenger’s area of expertise and he was surprised at how gladly she accepted the competition.
Pasquin took eight days to build an ingenious pontoon bridge of pine and cowhide, with a load-bearing weight enough for the five hundred men. Then it was the Challenger’s turn.
She moved the river. She surveyed it, dug a short channel and ran it into an old meander. Her husband lay on a stretcher and watched her silently, growing ever weaker while she worked day and night for five days solid. He was forbidden to help her by the Castle’s rules even if he had been well enough. The river altered its course and flowed a little south of the camp of fyrdsmen. They didn’t have to walk a step; Pasquin’s bridge was left high and dry.
The Emperor asked Pasquin if he could return the river to its original course. But Pasquin couldn’t, and had to admit he was beaten.
Frost’s husband died the same night. She won her place in the Circle but all she would say was that she had failed to save him. She became locked in mourning and refused herself any pleasure.
The changes in people’s characters cannot be divorced from the changes in their bodies. An adolescent is passionate and changeable because of his changing body, not just his lack of experience. An octogenarian is fatalistic since he can feel his body failing, and knows it prefigures his death, not solely because he has seen friends die. Middle-aged mortals change more slowly than the very young and very old, so their characters are more stable. And we Eszai never age at all, so aspects of our characters are also fixed.
Moreover, I doubt any Eszai really grows up while the Emperor San is our immortal father. They preserve their identities against the grind of long centuries, and by their quirks they distance themselves from the crowds. So, Frost still retains the attitude of mourning. She lives for her work but complains she can’t achieve as much working alone. She leaves the fruits of genius scattered through the Fourlands, like the tidal mills of Marenna Dock, the Anga Shore breakwater on the Brandoch coast, and a hundred six-sailed wind pumps along Miredike and Atterdike that drain the malaria swamp.
Frost is, without doubt, a genius. The traits of genius often coincide with madness, but that isn’t strange, because if genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, then you tell me what madness is.