The Sarnesh had inflicted sufficient casualties to cause the Wasps to fortify their position and dig in, while awaiting reinforcements. Information Stenwold received from his contacts in Helleron suggested that those reinforcements would come with the spring – which was likely to see more of death than new life at this rate. He was only thankful that the winter they were on the verge of was forecast to be harsher than the Lowlands normally endured. Certainly it would not be suitable for the movement of massed armies. Even the Wasp Empire stopped for winter.

There had also been a Wasp army of 30,000 advancing on Merro and Egel, further down the coast, but it had been stalled by 200 men belonging to the Spider Aristos Teornis, and then destroyed by the Mantis-kinden of Felyal. Teornis was at Collegium still, wanting to discuss strategy and brimming over with great ideas about how other people’s soldiers could be sent to their deaths, his own having mostly returned to their home ports. Yet another Spider that Tisamon will have to be kept clear of, Stenwold reflected glumly. Also at Collegium was Achaeos, lover of Stenwold’s niece, still recovering from the wounds he took at the Battle of the Rails, together with the Fly-kinden Sperra, who was tending to him. That made up the tally of Stenwold’s people, or so he had thought.

But the Fly-kinden messengers had changed all that: first Nero and then a sullen-faced girl called Chefre. On the strength of their news Stenwold was rushing north-by-east, as fast as a steam-engined automotive would take them.

Abruptly the automotive was slowing. Stenwold looked up from his charts, now crumpled and creased, almost indecipherable in the dim light inside the engine.

‘What is it?’

‘Men ahead, armed men,’ Balkus reported, from the turret, and Stenwold realized he must have mentally shared his visions and thoughts in silence with the Sarnesh driver, for all that Balkus was a renegade. ‘A camp, looks like.’