Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky (best young adult book series .txt) 📕

flying straight at the driver’s bench of the lead automotive. He had two small punch-swords, like glorified brass knuckles only with foot-long blades projecting from them and little pearly round shields to cover the backs of his hands. He had cut apart the two Wasps he found there almost instantly and was away even as the slavers realised they were under attack, dodging and arcing in the air to come about for the other vehicle as the crackle and snap of sting-fire lanced the air around him. By that time Evandter had made himself known.

The prince’s retinue was low on armaments. The two women had a tatty shortbow each and a varied selection of arrows. Darien had his swords. There had been nothing left to arm the Mantis but Evandter had not complained. As Cordwick ran in, utterly unremarked, he saw why. Evandter was killing the slavers. He raced through them with an erratic, zig-zagging swiftness, never staying still for longer than it took him to strike a blow. Each time he crossed Cordwick’s eyeline he had something different: a club, a shortsword, a spear, all ripped from the hands of the Wasps and turned on them without mercy. Between these chance acquisitions, taken up and cast down without care, his barbed arms spoke for him. He fought close up, tearing throats, ramming his spines through eyeslits, ripping at groins and armpits and guts, wherever the blood was easiest to get to. Then Darien was back, killing off the driver and officer in the other cab even as they tried to follow Evandter’s red progress. Added to the mix, sporadic arrow-shot came from beyond the edge of the fray, catching the Wasps off guard as their attention was monopolised by the killers in their midst.

Cordwick reached the first automotive unspotted, less by any great stealth on his part than that he had become the least conspicuous thing in the locality by some margin. The locks securing the heavy bars were solid and unsophisticated. He had already manufactured some new picks from discarded military surplus on the road, a securing pin and some stout wire becoming the tools of his trade. They were makeshift poor tools, but it was a clumsy lock and he had its measure, springing it in half a minute and passing on to the next.

All the while he was aware of Darien and Evandter fighting. Asthey circled around the fixed point of the wagons, on the ground and in the air, he understood that they were working as a matched pair, driving the Wasps into each other’s path, herding and dividing them. It was as though they had worked together for years, or were linked mind to mind as the Ant-kinden were. Or, Cordwick thought, it’s as though they really, really want to duel one another, and have just expanded the killing space between them until all the Wasps fit into it.

The second lock took longer, more for lack of repair than greater complexity. By the time he had tripped its tumblers the fight was done and Evandter was stalking from body to body, either extinguishing any remnant sign of life or mutilating the corpses, it was unclear which.

The prisoners had formed an uncertain, awkward mob between the two machines, looking about them at the devastation. As a mass, they spelled out the words, “What now?” Cordwick agreed with them. All very well for Darien to come down and shed some blood to save his conscience, but would he feed them? Would he take them someplace safe? Cordwick freely admitted that the Prince and the Mantis had produced a skilled piece of bloody-handed performance art, but in his eyes there was nothing that clearly defined the supposed hero from the admitted villain. Killing people, even wicked people, was hardly a skill confined to the virtuous.

He glanced at Evandter and saw his thoughts mirrored in the man’s sneer. It was clear the Mantis would happily butcher the prisoners as well, and solve their problems with his characteristic finality.

“Listen to me,” Darien said. He had hopped up onto the top of one of the automotives. Despite the grimy clothes, the bandit’s mail, he had an undeniable authority about him. He did not have their trust, but he had their attention.

“If any one of you wishes to remain in the hands of the Empire, stay with the machines and they will find you. Tell them our descriptions, tell them you could not prevent us. It may help. I speak now to those who will venture a little for their freedom.”

They had quieted entirely but their stare remained suspicious, waiting for him to name his price.

“Who among you has any woodcraft? Hunters, woodcutters, poachers, bandits even. I will not judge you. Step out and make yourselves known.”

Cordwick wouldn’t have moved, but almost a score did, stepping to form their own small band away from the rest, until Darien asked them to separate, to each stand alone.

“Now, you others, take yourselves to these men and women, so that each one has followers.” Darien made no attempt to organise or divide them and the result was uneven, some of the self-professed woodsmen having a few, others having more than a dozen. The Prince nodded approvingly nonetheless.

“Perhaps a tenday’s travel from here to the west is the border between the free Commonweal and the captive principalities, newly drawn. Hear me: make for that. Avoid towns and villages. Avoid the roads. Travel by night where you can: our eyes are better than theirs. Each group of you must move alone. The border itself is not secured, not yet. The Wasps will make it a line of forts and watchposts soon enough but for now their numbers are spread across all their stolen lands, and they have not the hands to bar the door to those who have a will to escape them. Head west, and do not stop until you are free.”

“And if they catch us?” one of them asked bitterly.

“Then say nothing of this, nor of