Scelae nodded. ‘Then let’s be plain with it. Any fancy planning and contingencies we come up with now won’t survive a meeting with the Wasp battle line. We cannot hope to react to your sleights and changes and tactics. You, however, can react to ours.’

‘Explain,’ said the Queen.

Scelae leant over the map, but it was obvious that she could make little sense of it. ‘I will split my force and place one half on each of your flanks. We will screen your advance with our bows, and our wings. We will prevent their flying soldiers from wrapping your lines. I have many skilled archers amongst my people. Then, when we’re close to the enemy, we will attack, draw them out, break their lines. Wasp discipline does not match your own. They can be provoked, dispersed. With your mind-speech, you will be able to take advantage of what we can give you. Let us be the spearhead, then. Give your orders based on how we strike. That way you can make best use of us.’

The Queen considered this, still surrounded by the silent counsel of her tacticians. She nodded slowly, a deliberate affectation simply for the benefit of the other kinden there. ‘The idea has merit, although you take a great deal of risk on your people. If you yourselves break rank, to charge or pursue, we may not be able to save you.’

Scelae tilted her head on one side. ‘We are warriors. We fight. We understand all that means.’

The Queen looked down at the map-tables, then up at Cheerwell, the shock of eye contact startling in its intensity. And how many others now look at me out of her eyes. ‘Your comments?’

Che opened her mouth, trying to think, but Sperra said, ‘Messengers, surely.’

‘Little one?’

‘Messengers. If it goes wrong you can send someone out to the League soldiers,’ the Fly-kinden said. ‘You can call them back, put them elsewhere.’ She spread her small hands. ‘Not that I know the first thing about war, anyway, but that’s what I’d do.’

‘You wouldn’t need actual messengers-’ Che broke in suddenly.

The Queen found a smile for her. ‘Yes, we have the same thought. I shall place a few of my fleetest soldiers with each half of your warriors,’ she told Scelae. ‘They at least will be able to hear me, and they can tell you what I… suggest that your forces do. Many things can happen in a battle, and we can never predict them all. I may have need of your warriors in ways we cannot yet consider.’

Scelae glanced at the Moth-kinden, who nodded.

‘Agreed,’ she said, and moved to go, preparing to explain to her people a plan that all the Ants already understood.

Che coughed pointedly. ‘I have… something to say, I think. Something that my uncle himself would say, if he were here.’

The Mantis stopped, looking back at her.

‘Speak,’ the Queen directed.

‘This is something that stretches beyond the battlefield of tomorrow,’ Che said, sounding to her own ears unbearably awkward and pompous. ‘We’re writing history, right now, here in this tent. The three cities of the Ancient League, and Sarn, and Collegium, are all standing together and of one mind. We must remember our common cause. We must. If we turn the Wasps back, then it would be all too easy just to go back to trying to ignore each other, to forget how we have stood here, all together, for one purpose. We should remember that, for as long as we can.’

Scelae, who had so long been a spy in the Queen’s city, smiled bleakly. ‘I am not sure even the threat of the Wasps can bring us to that degree of unity. Let us defeat them first, and see what remains.’

Che slept that night in Achaeos’s arms, clutching at him for security, while Sperra lay as a curled and lonely shape at the other end of the tent. The morning woke Che not with dawn light but with his absence.

‘Achaeos?’ she called softly. There was a noise from outside, not loud, but a constant and steady sound of the Ants getting ready to fight: preparing armour and weapons, the engines of the automotives, the propellers of the fixed-wing fliers, and not a single human voice to be heard.

‘Out here,’ he said finally. Sperra was slowly uncurling as Che put her boots on. Stepping outside made her head swim because of the sheer quantity of movement all around. The entire Ant force was afoot, forming into its traditional tight units of shield and crossbow. There were several thousand infantry in her view alone, and every single one of them knew where he or she should be.

Sperra ducked out after her just as the engines of the flying machines began to settle into a low grumble beyond the tents and the machines themselves to slowly crawl across the ground.

‘Apparently the Wasps tried to attack at dawn,’ Achaeos explained, his voice sounding oddly empty. ‘A strike force of fifty or so intended to destroy the fliers. The Queen had put the Mantis-kinden on guard, though. They can see well in the dark, and their bows can shoot further than any Wasp sting.’

‘Are you all right?’ Che asked him. He sounded shaken and numb.

‘Our scouts came back,’ he said. ‘The Empire outnumbers us by about three to two, but the Ants don’t seem to think it makes much difference. It’s tactics and discipline, not numbers, apparently.’ There was a ragged edge to his words, emerging as though he had not the least interest in the conflict that was about to unfold.

‘Achaeos, what’s wrong? Tell me!’

‘I have dreams, Che,’ he told her. ‘Terrible dreams. The Darakyon is hounding me but I cannot understand it. It is going mad, it seems, over something new that it cannot get through to me. Something terrible is going to happen, Che.’

‘Here? In the battle?’

‘Something dire enough to make this battle look like children brawling,’ he said.

The engines of the automotives roared suddenly, and the entire Ant army set forth together, every single man and woman of the infantry marching precisely in step. Sperra poked her head further out of the tent and swore in a small, lost voice, as thousands of men and women all around them were suddenly on the move and falling into place. It felt as though the whole world was leaving them behind.

Technically, all three of them had been seconded to join the field surgeons, as they each had some experience of medicine in various forms. There would be a blessed pause before any casualties came back, though, and Che wanted to see for herself exactly what was going on. She looked around for a vantage point and picked one of the transport automotives, empty of everything except rations now. With a clumsy flick of her wings she cast herself up at the overreaching cage of struts that defined its cargo area, clung tight and hauled herself up until she could stand on them, looking out over the battlefield. She was just in time for the first of the orthopters to drone overhead, just taking off but still going fast enough for the downbeat of their wings to buffet her. She sat down hurriedly just as Achaeos and Sperra joined her on her perch.

Plated with shields, the units of Ants were themselves like great crawling insects. The centre of the Sarnesh battle array was made up of them, square after square plodding forward with a single will. Interrupting these black metal lines, armoured automotives drove forward at walking pace, their brand-new nailbows glinting proudly in the sun.

On either side, the soldiers of the Ancient League were a diffuse cloud, now getting a little ahead of the line, now being reined in again. Che pictured all those Mantis-kinden, all running as individuals, some with arrows to bowstrings, others brandishing swords, claws or lances. She saw in her mind’s eye the tight clusters of Moth-kinden with short-bows and knives and blank white eyes.

Ahead of the Sarnesh advance, the Wasp army moved like a living thing. Behind their soldiers, blocky flying machines began to lurch into the air.

‘The scouts said they had “armoured heloropters” or some such,’ Achaeos reported.