The Seal of the Worm (59 page)

For the Lowlanders, progress eastwards was faster than an army should be able to travel, with so many of the slogging infantry packed onto automotive carriages and hauled down the line. It was still something of a stop-start business, though, as the rail-laying automotives ahead had to slow to negotiate more difficult terrain, or as Imperial saboteurs and local forces fought desperate rearguard actions to give their main force at Capitas more time to assemble.

Out there, tearing up the dry ground, was a veritable armada of automotives – everything that Milus had been able to requisition from Helleron and Sonn. They were driven by the Sarnesh, manoeuvring together with their faultless coordination and forming a broad wing on either side of the rail line, ready to intercept any attack. Their aviator siblings were performing the same service overhead.

Straessa was passing along the Collegiate carriages, checking on her followers. Nobody was particularly happy: being cooped up in a rail automotive for days on end, barely a chance to stretch your legs, was nobody’s idea of what a good time was about. It wouldn’t have been the Antspider’s first choice for what soldiering was about either, but apparently war had moved on in a number of efficient but uncomfortable ways.

Some of her lot were trying to sleep, despite the light cutting in through the shutters and the constant jolt and sway that plagued them day and night; the rails were just bad enough to ensure there was no smooth rhythm to it. In one carriage, a dignified old Beetle woman she recognized from the Faculty of Logic appeared to be giving a lecture to whoever might be interested. In another someone had a cheap printing of some of lost Metyssa’s great Collegiate cycle – that lurid, exaggeratedly dramatic account of the occupation that some there had lived through, and that others only heard about second hand – and was reading it aloud for the benefit of his fellows. They were all doing their best to stave off the tedium of the journey.

And just as she was starting to think that it was this waiting that was the worst part of the whole experience, someone gazing through a window called out, as she passed, ‘Are those ours?’

Straessa hunched down, peering out. Her blood went cold.

She could see the Sarnesh automotives scattering, splitting off in faultless harmony, manoeuvring at top speed to react to the newcomers. But she could already see it would not be enough. She had endured at least one nightmare about these mechanical monsters.

The Empire had finally sent its Sentinels against the rail convoy.

There were five of them, that familiar and feared design of overlapping plates, like tall woodlice save that they moved at a gallop towards the great, helpless flank of the train, curving in the course of their charge so as to keep up with the automotives’ speed. Even as Straessa watched, she saw the flash and smoke of their leadshotter eyes. A Sarnesh war-automotive was abruptly lying on its side, frustrated steam venting from between its armour-plating. Another shot struck close to the rail, raising a gout of dust and earth. Some of her soldiers had snapbows already to the windows, but there was absolutely nothing they could accomplish. Straessa opened her mouth to give an order, but realized that nothing in her experience or any military theory had prepared her for this. There was absolutely nothing she could do. Their only defence was the rail automotive’s speed, and the train of carriages was so long that they were the grandest target in the world.

She saw an explosion burst and bloom about one of the Sentinels, a Stormreader pulling into a tight turn to come back for another pass. The Wasp machine had not slowed.

She was so busy watching that, that she missed the shot that actually impacted.

It struck the far end of the carriage behind hers, and sent a whiplash of destruction all along the train. The carriage taking the brunt was flayed open, punched off the tracks and sent end over end, spilling soldiers and supplies. Straessa’s own carriage was yanked off the track itself, slewing on its side over the uneven ground, occupants slamming against the walls. Two other cars, in either direction, were derailed whilst the automotive itself continued driving up the track, even with the brakes applied as hard as could be. The carriages behind rammed their siblings that still lay partway across the track, shunting them to a grinding halt.

And the Sentinels came on, shouldering aside the nearest Sarnesh automotives contemptuously.

Straessa found herself sprawled on her back against the shutters of a window that would now only open on to bare ground. Every part of her ached but nothing seemed broken. For a second, feeling that the carriage had at least come to a stop, she stared with her single eye at the sunlight coming in through what was now the ceiling.

Then she was shouting. ‘Out! Get out and get ready to fight. Grenades if you’ve got them! Get out or we’re all dead in here!’

She curled herself into a ball to avoid being trampled to death by people following her orders. Those who could were evacuating sharply, piling out at either twisted end of the carriage or hauling themselves up out of the skyward-facing windows. Most seemed to have a snapbow at least.
Which is better than me.
Straessa had not even been carrying hers as she checked on the troops.

With luck, by now the Sarnesh are doing something useful.
She levered herself up, wincing at the all the bruises she was going to have.
Come on, get moving, woman!
Blearily she stumbled from the carriage into the abrasively bright daylight after her soldiers, dragging her rapier from its scabbard.

She almost fell under the Sentinel as it charged past, slamming into the next skewed carriage, sending the entire car spinning about its midpoint. She heard screams from those caught in its wake. From somewhere nearby another leadshotter boomed.

Straessa took her chance and ducked past before the machine could return, looking frantically for her people. They had formed up into approximate maniples of ten to twenty, but were keeping a lot of space between each other, which seemed good sense.
Not sure why they need officers, really.
They were also already shooting, using what cover the carriages and the rocky terrain gave them, and she saw Wasp Light Airborne dropping down and coursing overhead.

Another Sentinel was coming up, following the rail line, its articulated body bunching and flexing as its legs pistoned furiously. For a moment she actually raised her little sword against it, in desperate defiance, but it was already breaking off, heading almost head to head against one of its brethren. She saw that it had been painted with a long streak of black on its segmented flanks.
One of ours!
For the Sarnesh had a handful of the machines taken from the vanished Eighth Army, just left vacant and untouched by whatever disaster had destroyed the Imperial force.

She assumed that the two Sentinels were going to strike each other head-on. Before they got that close, though, the Sarnesh machine loosed with its leadshotter and she saw the ball skitter off the Imperial vehicle’s armour, doing no damage but deflecting its course so that, when they collided, the Sarnesh ran its prow into the flank of its enemy. Straessa flinched back from the tremendous impact, seeing both machines lurch away under it, the Imperial limping, with a couple of legs on that side trailing, and the Sarnesh brought almost to a stop by the collision, then slowly building up speed as it sought a new target.

‘Antspider!’ Gorenn dropped down beside her, an arrow ready on the string as always.

‘Report!’

‘Holding them off, Officer! There aren’t so many of their soldiers,’ the Dragonfly informed her, scanning all around. ‘Machines are fighting machines. They’ve been stopped, I think. We’re throwing them back.’

‘Was that it, then?’ Straessa frowned. ‘Just a desperate shot and then they’re spent? There must be more.’

Gorenn shrugged, but Straessa’s mind was working feverishly, starting with,
Now what would I do . . .?
A moment later she was darting away down the track towards the emptied carriages. There were soldiers all over – Ants forming up with silent precision, Mynans charging past with swords and snapbows – but she was looking for people who were instead keeping still, trying to be overlooked. But in such a milling crowd, stillness itself was out of place.

There . . . Curse it, I was right
, and she was picking up speed, hoping Gorenn was following her. She had seen a Beetle-kinden crouching at one of the carriages still on the tracks, and no doubt the Sarnesh thought he was one of hers. He was a stranger, though, and wearing no uniform, and he was working on something at the carriage’s underside.
Because if I myself was organizing this, I’d sneak a few artificers in to set some charges.

He saw her even as she was running at him, eyes wide as he realized he’d been detected. He had no snapbow, but he brought out a shortsword quickly just as she reached him, and then they were furiously steel against steel. Straessa knew she was better, but her bones and muscles were protesting the treatment with each blow, whilst the Imperial Beetle was desperate, strong and good enough to keep her at bay despite her longer blade. She tried three times to pierce through his guard, even going as far as her old trick shoulder thrust, which hurt a lot more than it had last time. She managed to pink him in the shoulder, a bare half-inch of blade, but she nearly got his own sword in her face in return, and then he tried to lunge past her point so as to grapple with her.

She got her sword into his thigh, but there it stuck, and his greater weight bowled her over, and then she was struggling with him for his own sword, as he raised it over her like a long dagger, trying to drive it down past the rim of her breastplate.

We’re in the middle of my own cursed army! Why is nobody helping me?
She tried to draw breath to cry out, but she was losing ground inch by inch, and she felt that the attempted yell might see that blade plunge straight through her. His face was so close to hers that she could see the veins about the edges of his bulging eyes as he fought to kill her.

She slammed her forehead into the bridge of his nose. Or that had been the idea. In fact she slammed her forehead into his hard cheekbone, dazing herself, but he started back, losing force on the blade so that, when she pushed, she toppled him off her. With a cry, he went for her again before she could struggle upright, and an arrow skewered him almost ear to ear, leaving him sitting back on his haunches, transfixed head tilted philosophically at the sky.

‘Took your time,’ Straessa hissed, taking Gorenn’s hand and letting the Dragonfly do most of the work of pulling her up.

‘Didn’t you hear me yelling at you to give me a clear shot?’

Straessa blinked at her. ‘No . . . no, I didn’t. Look, go and round up a bunch of ours, get them to go check down all the carriages for other sods like this one, or for explosives, right? I reckon that’s going to be our best contribution for now.’

Gorenn nodded briskly, flared her wings and was away.

There were two more saboteurs caught and killed, and a dozen set explosives to disarm, but the Collegiate artificers were up to it. The Empire’s gambit had failed, on that front.

The carriage that had actually taken a leadshot hit was irreparable, and the entire army lost a day’s progress while the combined might of its artificers got the other cars back on the rails and ready to travel.

Two hundred and four Collegiates and twenty-three others had died in the attack. The work on the carriages gave their comrades time to bury them, and to mourn.

Thirty-Eight

There was one corner of the world left where Totho could think.

He was packed into this cave with the slaves, jostling shoulder to shoulder in the lightless, airless press of them. He had fought with his blade until it had been ripped from his hand. He had fought on with his gauntleted hands, but they had dragged him down. When they could not kill him, battering at his mail with their crudely forged swords, they had dragged him to their sightless city and thrown him down here with the others, those wretches who had been caught but not yet killed. The only way out was the same shaft that he had been dropped down.

Nobody was fed. Nobody was given water. Several had died already.

Totho had allowed himself to be buffeted back and forth, sometimes almost falling over save that the constant sway of bodies kept him upright, until he had found this corner, this last black outpost of understanding. A nook at the far back of the cave, as far from everything else as he could ever get.

The Worm’s deadening influence did not quite stretch there, as though it was so deep into the rock that it was thrust into some other place where sanity still reigned, and Totho could crouch there with his armour scraping against the walls, fending off the moaning, weeping mass of composite humanity, and think Apt thoughts.

Only wedged there into that corner did he have options. They had not taken his mail, so they had not taken his weapons. He had one last trick, if only he had the final courage to use it. His belt of grenades remained, and it had been easy enough to feed a single pull-cord through them all. One bold wrench and the privations of this place would be gone. He would not have to worry about them any more. He guessed that the blast would kill just about everyone else here, too. It would only be a shame that his captors would not die as well, though perhaps the contained force might crack the rock, tumble down some part of their domain into the pit that his explosives would create.

He thought about it further. Over and over, he thought about it, but he did nothing.

Where are you, Che?
He had been so sure that he would find her, but he was a prisoner, and she was not here beside him. She was dead, perhaps. Or she was free.

If he had known what the Worm would do to his mind, he would never have come down here. With his Aptitude intact he felt that the world was his to face and to master. But here . . . crammed into his tiny space, throat and nostrils choked with the sweat and excrement and fear of all those doomed souls, all his Aptitude could give him was a way to die.