Read Online Salute the Dark by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Free Book Online

seized upon him in the sure knowledge that Ants like him all knew their business when it came to
war.
    And here he was in the small hours, the train pulling closer towards Sarn, with both a responsibility and a reconciliation that he never wanted.
    The feel of the engine, thrumming through the wooden floor beneath his feet, changed noticeably: the train was slowing. Throughout the carriages, soldiers would be rousing on feeling this change
of pace, or their officers would be shouting them awake.
    ‘Will you look at that,’ Parops exclaimed, from the seat opposite in what was nominally the officers’ carriage. ‘It looks like the place is already under
siege.’
    Balkus leant out of the window, seeing hundreds of fires and, beyond them, the dark heights of the walls of Sarn. ‘What in the wastes . . . ?’ he murmured. The train was swiftly
passing them now, all those little campfires, and the tents and makeshift shacks that sprouted around them. ‘This lot wasn’t here when you and Sten came?’
    ‘All new to me,’ Parops confirmed.
    Balkus tried to get a clearer impression of the people huddled about those fires, aided by the train’s slowing pace. They were a ragged lot – he saw the pattern quickly because he
had expected it: lots of children, old people, few men or women of any fit age to bear a sword.
    ‘Refugees,’ he decided.
    ‘From where?’ Parops asked him.
    Balkus looked out again, recognizing Beetle-kinden, Flies, many others. ‘Everywhere that lies east of here, I’d guess,’ the big Ant decided, the thought of such displacement
settling on him heavily. ‘Where are they supposed to go when the Wasps get here?’
    The train rolled on, seemingly heedless, passing inside the city walls and coasting to a slow halt at the Sarnesh rail depot. Balkus stood up, feeling a hollowness inside, a gap into which the
idle thoughts of his kin everywhere around were already leaking. It all looked so painfully familiar to him: the gas lamps glowing throughout the squat, square buildings of Sarn proper, whilst on
the other side of the train gleamed the disparate lights and lanterns and torches of the Foreigners’ Quarter. There were soldiers everywhere: he saw them up on the walls, installing new
artillery, or waiting by the train to load and unload, or just marching and drilling, making ready.
    ‘The last time I saw so many Ant-kinden under arms,’ he said, ‘they were trying to kill me.’
    ‘You realize everyone expects you to do the talking, I hope,’ Parops said.
    ‘Why me?’ Balkus stared at him. ‘No, anyone but me.’
    ‘Your fellow commanders are all Beetle-kinden,’ the Tarkesh pointed out, ‘which in their eyes makes you the logical choice, because you at least can overhear what the Sarnesh
are saying to one another.’
    ‘It’s been a long time,’ Balkus replied slowly. He could indeed feel the hum and buzz of Ant-kinden conversation from outside the train. He had been actively fighting to blot
it out. It had been such a very long time. But we now need to know if my former countrymen will deal honestly with us.
    ‘Pox,’ he spat, ‘you’re right.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Parops reassured him. ‘As the leader of Free Tark, I’ll be right there beside you. They’ll love that.’
    * * *
    It should have been a bleak and blustery day suitable for their departure, but the mocking sun was bright in a cloudless sky, beating down on the Collegium airfield as if a
summer day had been imported early.
    Stenwold had spent the last two days arguing bitterly with – it seemed – almost everyone. Lineo Thadspar had done everything in his power to persuade Stenwold not to go at all.
Stenwold had done everything he could to persuade Tynisa to go with him, instead of just casting herself into the void by going in search of her father.
    ‘Tisamon can look after himself,’ he had insisted.
    ‘Tisamon will go looking for a fight,’ she had told him. ‘And if that one doesn’t kill