One thing that is, to a certain extent, unavoidable, is that telling a story through individual stories results in compromise, and The Chains of Helleron isn't quite as self-contained and satisfactory as I'd like, for there is a certain proportion of it that only makes sense as a segment of a sequence — notably characters that are introduced but do not get much of the action. In the end I've settled for this, on the basis that there should be a third story along eventually that will help everything along. Working on the later books of the actual Shadows of the Apt series, I've discovered something similar in macrocosm. As the series grows, I am put to greater foreshadowing of future events in order to maintain the series structure. Each book will have its own story arc, its beginning and its end, but a certain amount of material will be unable to resolve, pending developments in later books.

You can find The Sun of the Morning here and, if you've not read it, do get it under your belt before attempting the new one.

After that, you can find The Chains of Helleron here.

(1) Yes, I know Black Company predates Band of Brothers (the book and the miniseries, albeit not the wartime experiences on which they are based).

There is a somewhat peculiar genesis for this particular story that centres on a live role-playing group that I and some friends created, and for which I wrote an extensive backstory at the time. As I quite liked what I'd written, but couldn't exactly publish it more widely in its original form, I've taken some of the plot points and adapted them for this story, and its (hopeful) sequels. We'll see how it works out.

Anyway, on that point, I should probably give a nod of thanks towards, particularly, Dave Young, Jamie Jones, Kieran Walker, Andy Hodgson and Dave Huxter, and of course the inimitable Andy Connell.

The story is here, and please enjoy.

Grahame writes, of himself:

"

Well, what can I say about me? Just the usual sort of fluff. In 1792 I was washed up on the shore of southern Sumatra in a coffin-like box made of fused manatee bones. With no memory of my former life I was brought up by a family of  humanoid lizard haruspices and introduced in my teens to the discrete yet complimentary worlds of high fashion, the reading of entrails and gurning. Needless to say, I excelled at all.

On my 118^th birthday* I was sent out into the world to make my fortune, and when that didn’t particularly happen I turned to the written word as both solace and muse. I both wrote and appeared in several films by no-budget Internet shysters Shock! Horror! Probe! (Bikini Zombies From The Moon, for which I will probably be apologising for the rest of my days, and Shine Dog, in which you may see the exalted Shadows of the Apt author stretching his acting chops), and last year I was a top-10 runner up in SFX magazine’s annual short story competition Pulp Idol, with my fanciful tale “Mickey and the Nixies”. My first time in a book. I liked it. Roomy.

Since that exalted day I have, due to recurrent existential crises (AKA laziness) fallen back onto my twin vices of self-abuse and cooking sherry. Despite my Web presence, which embarrassingly remains to this day, I hold no truck with your Internets. I have no “web-sight” and I neither “twitter” nor “blog” though in the future this may change as my mayfly interest flits hither and yon, in the manner of a fist in search of a face.

Today my time is spent recumbent in a leatherette chaise-longue stuffed with the armpit fur of 10,000 ocelots, plugged into the collected works of Kajagoogoo, thinking fondly of days past. It is a simple life, but it suffices.

Enjoy the story, a fanciful tale which came to me in the manner of a dream. Though a dream with less to wipe up afterwards.

“Too shy-shy, hush hush…” Ah, poetry.

*My long life I ascribe to the vast consumption of Shipham’s Bloater fish paste and

the total avoidance of the sex act. By salubrious happenstance, the first leads naturally to the second."

Anyway, the story is here.

(1) in the sense of recondite

The latest Shadows of the Apt short story is to be found here.

A lot of this batch of stories are, as you may have noticed, taking place specifically up in the Commonweal during the Twelve-years War with the Empire, a conflict over before Empire in Black and Gold starts, and taking place in lands that we're unlikely to actually see first hand for some time. So why?

Nothing in Empire makes sense without the Twelve-year war. Salma, for example, is a child of that war. He would have been around eight years old when it started. It dominated most of his life. His father and his foster-sister were both casualties of it, as were many other people he knew.

And then there's Thalric, whose duty committed him to atrocity in that same war, who was just a young officer when Myna was taken, but came out of the Commonweal clash a bloody-handed veteran.

But most importantly, there is the Empire. The Empire was already a great and accelerating force when it commenced its invasion of the Commonweal, but it was in its battles with the Dragonfly-kinden that it honed its skills, especially its new technologies. Those skills are now to be turned on Stenwold's people and the rest of the Lowlands.

And of course, it was a near thing, in the end, once Myna and its neighbouring cities were conquered. What a small change of strategy would have seen the imperial forces chasing Stenwold all the way back to Collegium seventeen years ago, rather than turning their attention north?

Download the story on PDF here

ironclads-by-adrian-tchaikovsky

Art by David Mumford

The great and insular Dragonfly Commonweal, the Lowlands’ northern neighbour, has been declining for centuries, unable to sustain order and peace across its many principalities. A state already tottering has been left in ruins after a twelve-year campaign by the Wasp Empire. With thousands dead in battle and thousands more enslaved, still the Commonweal seems unable to muster any response, and individual princes, dissatisfied with the Monarch’s inaction, try to conduct their own war against the Empire by assisting the Lowlanders to the south.

The Inapt Model Army: the Warband and the Levy

The traditional Inapt or pre-revolutionary army, as might have been fielded by the Moth-kinden before they were cast down by their slaves, is one of inequality. A minority of the troops on the field were skilled warriors, of whom the bards sang and the poets spoke: their rivalries, duels and clashes were recorded in frankly interminable detail by the wordsmiths of the time, and, of the balance of the soldiers brought to battle, it was only said that these heroes slew their hundreds, and their tens of hundreds.

The chief warriors of the Moth armies were Mantis-kinden, and their way of making war has changed little over the centuries. They form their warbands, loose-knit mobs of however many warriors have the inclination. They move swiftly over the countryside, using all stealth despite their numbers, and they launch sudden ambushes or attacks against an unwary foe, or simply meet a wary one head on in the field. Each Mantis, with all the skill of his or her kind, fights alone: spear, claw, bow, rapier and the spines of their arms are their weapons. They carry the day by speed, ferocity and individual prowess. This is the old way, the way they would still practice, should anyone bring an army against them.

Whilst Mantids prefer to fight alone, in the old days their Moth masters often massively reinforced their (never great) numbers with slave levies: Ants and Beetles of the Lowlands were pressed into service and sent out to be butchered by the champions of the other side. The great hero-warriors were the deciding force in the battle, and the levy were merely used to slow them down.

Even before the revolution this was changing. Although Beetle-kinden were never destined to be great warriors, the Ants had a strong martial tradition, and they began to produce their own arms and armour in readiness for the wars their masters would commit them to: they developed tall shields and forged their own mail and practised their combat manoeuvres, honed to iron discipline by their mind-sharing Art. The reason the Moths prevailed so often against their Inapt rivals, back in the murky Dark Ages, was often that their levy was markedly superior to the rabble fielded by the other side. Although the Mantis-kinden remained unmatchable for individual skill, Moth strategists began to adapt their battle plans to take account of their slaves' greater efficiency. Ironically, of course, those same efficient slaves would soon after overthrow them and banish them to their high, dark places, spelling the end for their way of war.

The Dragonfly Commonweal

The Commonweal armies still fight in much the same way: they have a small core of Dragonfly and Mantis warriors who are warriors from birth, lethally skilled with sword and bow, and they have a mass of levy who, in peacetime, are farmers, artisans and craftsmen and seldom if ever take up a weapon. These levy, mostly Grasshopper and Dragonfly peasants, are generally armed with long spears, mobbed together in great rambling units, and sent towards the enemy, whilst the noble warriors run and fly amongst and over them. This style of war was what the Commonwealers brought to the Twelve-year War when the Wasps invaded their lands. The Commonweal armies fielded were vast, frequently outnumbering the attackers ten to one or more, and it was the sheer size of these forces that stretched the war out so long, rather than their effectiveness.

The Commonweal has one other noteworthy tradition: it is one of the only armies in the known world to make much use of land-based cavalry. Whilst most armies have a small mounted scout force, Dragonfly nobles often charge into combat ahorse, en mass, casting spears and loosing arrows as they go. After the initial contact the ;riders would take to the air (2), leaving their ;well-trained mounts to fight on their own behalf whilst they ;shot arrows from above. ;Against surprised or ill-disciplined forces, such as the bandit armies they were formerly used to combating, such a solid strike is often a swift battle-winner, but if the enemy holds then disciplined infantry and archers, such as the Wasps possess in abundance, will generally prevail. Although some ancient Dark Age armies also used cavalry, and even chariots, their modern use as a significant part of an army is limited to the Commonweal.

Spiderlands armies

Spider-kinden armies have developed in a very different direction, more varied and decidedly more haphazard. When a Spider-kinden Arista wishes to raise an army, she has at her own disposal those small forces, house guards and the like, that her family keeps on retainer. For substantial forces she must then ;turn to the various cities that her family has influence in, and to other families that owe her house favours or obligations. Raising an army is a matter of bitter argument, negotiation, promises and threats, and each city provides a different array of troops, depending on the kinden and the local speciality. A Spider-kinden host, therefore, is usually a patchwork affair, with a very broad variety of troop types, none of which are usually present in tactically useful quantities. Supplementing this the Spider Lady-Martial will raid the family coffers to hire mercenary bands, which are never in short supply in the Spiderlands. These can range from the dregs of banditry to highly-skilled elites.

As an example, a Spider-kinden host could see, side-by-side: Spider skirmishers with sword and bow, Scorpion line-breakers with two-handed swords and axes, Fire Ant engineers, Fly-kinden slingers, Ant mercenary heavy infantry, Dragonfly airborne archers, spider-mounted scout cavalry, dragonfly-mounted archers, Beetle-kinden mercenary artificers with armoured automotives and savage jungle Ant warriors along with several hundred of their insect friends.

Spider armies, although disorganised, slow to muster, slow to march, can grow to remarkable sizes, as once a war effort appears to be underway, formerly uncommited Aristoi houses will decide that they have no wish to be left out, and turn up with their own troops whether invited or not. Government and direction of these forces often devolves to a collection of equal-ranked representatives of the major houses present. Despite this picture of waste and inefficiency, Spiders are a clever people, and their history is replete with a number of ingenious strategists. Their ability to out-think and predict their opponents is notable.

The New Model Army: Ant-kinden after the revolution

Ant-kinden are arguably the best soldiers in the world, standing shoulder to shoulder. Their linked minds allow entire armies to react as one, and give commanders the ability to deal with battlefield developments as they happen, with no possibility of lost news, misunderstood commands or confusion. As against this, Ants have two major problems. Firstly, they are not great innovators. They have been masters of war in the Lowlands for long enough that they have settled into particular ways of doing things. As a kinden they lack the imagination and curiosity that marks out their Beetle neighbours. Secondly, their style of fighting has developed to deal with other Ants. Ants fight Ants. Their city-states have been in mutual opposition since anyone can remember, and their warfare is designed to deal with the strengths of their own kind.

The great bulk of any Ant army is heavy infantry: tall shields that interlock easily, reinforced chainmail, short swords. Every third man or so will carry a crossbow, and frequently there will be a rank of crossbowmen behind the shields in a battle-line, shooting bolts into the faces of the enemy shieldmen. The Ant heavy infantryman is a versatile, capable and undaunted soldier, and for five centuries the Ants have done little but tweak their soldiers' armour and weapons.

As well as these great blocks of infantry, the Ants field scouts, either horsemen, Fly-kinden or simply lightly-armoured infantry. As Ant scouts can report back to their officers instantly, their reconnaissance is usually extremely good. There are also units of specialists equipped with more powerful weapons, such as nailbows or repeating crossbows, who can be concentrated or spread throughout the army at need. There are also a few other specially-trained units, such as engineers, extra heavy 'sentinel' infantry and animal-handlers.

Ants are also skilled artillerists, although their actual machines, catapults, ballistae and trebuchet with a few more recent leadshotters, are often not of the most recent designs. The Sarnesh army, which owing to its ties to the Beetles of Collegium is somewhat more advanced in its technology, has begun to field armoured automotives in battle, using them as weapon-carrying battering rams to break enemy lines.

Most Ant armies will also have a limited airborne contingent, usually of armed orthopters or similar flying machines, but to date Ant wars are ground wars, and airpower has played at most a minor role.

The Black and Gold

Only a few Wasp-kinden manifest the mindlink that is universal amonst Ants, and so they have little of that iron and all-encompassing discipline. However, the Art gives Wasps two major advantages over their neighbours. Most of them can fly, and all of them can use the burning energy of their Sting, allowing them to strike at range. Wasp armies use very little heavy infantry, usually just a core of massively-armoured sentinels and some units of armoured spearmen that make up from a tenth to a fifth of the army proper (3). The vast majority of Wasp soldiers are the Light Airborne, warriors armed with sword, sting and sometimes spear, wearing a cuirass of banded mail, and fully capable of attacking from the air. The Wasp army is therefore extremely mobile, with large numbers of troops able to ignore enemy positions and fortifications and attack where they choose. This flexibility and speed is often sufficient in and of itself to defeat slower armies such as earthbound Ant-kinden and, although the Empire has sought out many more modern advantages, this remains their greatest strength.

The Wasps are also more versatile thinkers than Ant-kinden, and quick to make use of new tactics and toys. When they conquer a subject race they take anything of use and incorporate it, either as new technology for their artificers or as new auxillian troops for their armies. Wasps are very good at using the strengths of their slave races to their advantage, usually with very little care over those slaves’ longevity. From the efforts of their own artificers, and from the pillaged designs of their victims, they have also built up a respectable tally of artillery and a crude but efficient mechanised airforce of heliopters to supplement their Airborne and insect-riders.

As their Empire has developed, the Wasps have had to organise on a greater scale than the individual Ant city-state, and this has further strengthened their armies by allowing them to develop specialist corps that recruit and prosper independently of any given force: engineers, slavers, provisioners and merchants, all contribute to the war effort. Least spoken of, but perhaps most significant amongst these is the Rekef, the imperial secret service, whose outlander forces precede the army proper, weakening the enemy by sabotage, rumour-mongering, agitating and assassination.

(1) Their subsequent encounters with the Wasp Empire will put a fair-sized dent in this supremacy.

(2) No horsemen amongst the kinden have yet come up with the idea of stirrups. The Dragonflies use a "castled" saddle with high front and rear to absorb the shock of the charge, and stirrups would prevent them from taking to the air freely from horseback.

(3) Towards a fifth if the army is reinforced with auxillian heavies such as Ant or Bee-kinden warriors.

;

The Lowlands is sandwiched between two traditional neighbours, and a third has recently turned up. This last is the most significant outside force, the titular Empire in Black and Gold, and will get its own section, but the elder cultures to the north and south deserve some explanation, as they will also have their part to play. In contrast, the city-states of the Atoll Coast to the west, and the nomads of the Dryclaw desert to the east have little to say for themselves. The Atoll Coast is far, and the cities there small, clinging to the coast and looking to each other and the sea. The presence of the Ant city-state of Tsen there discourages military exploration, and there is little trade or diplomatic contact. The recent innovation of flying machines has not yet quickened dialogue between the Lowlands and its eastern neighbours, although this must happen eventually. The Scorpions of the Dryclaw are by now an entirely derivative culture, in contrast. Continued raiding and trading with Helleron, Tark and the Spiderlands has tamed them, although they would never admit it. They have lost the independence and ferocity of their own eastern neighbours, and are instead a mere adjunct to the slave trade these days.

To the north of the Lowlands is the Dragonfly Commonweal, the largest single state known to exist, and the oldest. The Commonweal is more northerly and at a higher altitude than the Lowlands, and its climate is less temperate. The winters frequently bring snow, and the northern reaches are bracing even in the summer. During the Days of Lore there was frequent diplomatic traffic between the Moth-kinden and the Dragonflies, and a careful understanding of borders and the balance of power. However, even then, the Commonweal operated an isolationist foreign policy. When the Moths went to war with other powers of the Dark Ages, it was without aid from their neighbours, although perhaps such aid was never asked, the Moths being a proud people.

Since the revolution the Dragonflies have snubbed their southern neighbours, finding little in the technological uprising to interest them. As a people whose closely-held traditions are dominated and dictated by a faith in magic, the former slaves now dominating the Lowlands had nothing to offer save offensive ideas. Initially, at least, the Lowlanders were also unable to take to the air much, and the great Barrier Ridge, that relic of an age-old geological catastrophe, served to grant the Commonweal its desired security. Those Beetle-kinden merchants who did struggle their trading stock around the Ridge have found themselves politely turned around. The Commonweal has no interest in anything the Lowlands can produce, even less interest in the thought and society that produces it, values its own wares too highly to place them in the hands of barbarians, and in any event does not practice a cash economy. The peasantry deals entirely in barter, whilst the nobility deals in a kind of refined barter by promissory note, a currency that the Lowlanders are simply not good for.

The elegant Dragonfly-kinden form about half the citizens of the Commonweal, and all of its aristocracy, with the balance being mostly filled by Grasshopper-kinden peasantry. There are also substantial colonies of Mantis-kinden, whose outlook differs from the brooding, vengeful Lowlander breed to the extent that they have not had their age-old power and supremacy shattered by upstart slaves. A scattering of other kinden make up the mix, many of them not seen in more southern climes. The distant borders of the Commonweal are mostly the province of barbarians, at least as the Commonwealers tell it: to the north are the steppes, with nomadic tribes of various kinden, especially the Locusts who occasionally embark on one of their pointless rampages against their neighbours. To the east are various squabbling hill tribes, or so it was until very recently. The advent of the Empire has had a dramatic impact on the Commonweal’s decline.

The Commonweal is, and has been since records began, a feudal autocracy organised into numerous principalities. The sole and absolute ruler of this vast state (1) is the Monarch. Although the nobility as a whole is hereditary, the office of the Monarch is not. It is in fact not uncommon for a royal child to succeed a parent, but bloodline is not at least the ostensible reason for this. Succession is determined by a counsel of seers who select from the available children of nobility, offspring of the Monarch and of the various Princes Major. Whether this is a valid or incorruptible way of choosing an absolute ruler depends, of course, on what you think of the validity of magical divination.

The Monarch is the soul of the Commonweal. The Monarch’s word is absolute and binding, and when the Throne makes a promise, that promise must be kept no matter what. This has been a founding principle of the Commonweal and, when the winds of fate have inexplicable chosen a rash or foolish Monarch, it has contributed to the state’s gradual decline. It is not that the Monarch is infallible, merely that he or she must strive to be so. In the old days this apparently worked.

Beneath the Monarch there are the Princes Major, each with a principality to govern, and beneath them there are the Princes Minor, the lesser nobility, who in turn hold court for the headmen of the villages within their domains. This feudal system has lasted for centuries, and even though the cracks are now beginning to gape, something should be said for the philosophy that has allowed it to endure even this long. The Dragonfly ideology is not based on a divine right to rule (2) but on responsibility. A village headman is responsible for the welfare of a village: if things go wrong then he or she is, in essence, to blame. A Prince Minor is responsible for those headmen, the Prince Major to his subordinate princes, and the Monarch for the whole deal. Those in authority are entitled to respect, to tithes, to levy armies even, but only because they are supposed to use the power they wield solely for the good of those that grant it them. Dragonfly nobility lives simply and frugally by the standards of, say, the Spiderlands Aristoi, or even of a Helleron merchant-lord. When a prince or even a Monarch fails, especially if they are unable to make good on a public promice made, it is not unusual for suicide to be the result. (3)

In order to foster such cross-class bonds of mutual responsibility, the Dragonflies practice a curious system of “kin-obligates”. Children are fostered with other families, frequently of a different trade, social class and even in a different principality. The prince learns to live like a pauper, the herdsman knows the burdens of government. This tradition has allowed what is overall a cumbersome and fallible system to persist for many centuries without revolution or upheaval.

Of course, all social systems are at the mercy of human nature, and the Commonweal has not functioned as intended for centuries. Its decline has been almost too slow to recognise at the time, and by the time it was evident even to the Monarch the difficulties plaguing the great state were in all likelihood irreversible. There have been bad Monarchs, negligent Monarchs, Monarchs obsessed with their private interests. Princes must shift for themselves in such times, and some go astray. Princes who might have toed the line under a firm hand may indulge their bad natures or plot against their neighbours. Old injuries rise to the fore. Perhaps a prince dies without issue, a domain goes ungoverned. Banditry, always a festering problem in the Commonweal’s great and often wild spaces, rises up. Bandit lords set themselves up in the seats of princes, or princes descend to brigandage. All gradual, all over many years, but for a long time the Monarchs have been unable to regain ground lost to the ravages of entropy, and by now there are whole principalities where the servants of the throne are not safe, and only warlords rule. The Commonweal is slowly settling into the ashes of history.

It might seem that, given the great state’s geographical isolation and cultural stagnation, it would have little relevance to the Lowlanders, or any story involving them. The Empire has changed all that. After subduing the cities of Myna, Szar and Maynes, the Imperial armies faced a choice: go south, and invade the Lowlands, or go north and invade the Commonweal. On such questions, the future course of history hangs.

Of the Lowlands, the Empire knew only that the inhabitants were keen traders, and the city of Helleron was proving a good source of raw materials, finished goods and mechanical expertise. The Commonweal treated the Empire’s ambassadors with the same lofty disdain as it had always used to rebuff the Lowlander merchants. The Emperor of the time, Alvdan the First, made the logical choice, and the Imperial armies moved to the Commonweal’s borders.

It is possible that both sides engaged in serious underestimation before the conflict began. The Commonweal had no understanding of the Empire’s engineering expertise, and the Empire surely did not appreciate just how big the Commonweal was. The resulting war would last twelve years. The course of the war is best described as a single long, drawn-out retreat by Commonweal forces. The Monarch raised armies of thousands upon thousands of levies, bolstered by the well-trained retinues of princes and the Monarch’s own elite agents, known as the Mercers. The Imperial forces were outnumbered from the start, but incomparably better equipped, more uniformly well-trained and certainly more motivated. Despite a few notable Commonwealer successes, namely a number of high-profile assassinations and the almost total destruction of the Sixth Army by a Commonwealer surprise attack, the Commonweal forces were smashed at almost every turn. All they accomplished was, by sheer numbers and force of will, to slow the Empire’s advance to a gruelling crawl, year after year, making the invaders dread the start of each harsh Commonweal winter.

In the end, after twelve years of blood, a rebellion in the subject city of Maynes made it temporarily inconvenient for the Empire to continue its advance. In order to stabilise its gains the Empire offered terms to the Monarch, which the Dragonflies were in no position to refuse. Three entire principalities were signed over to the Empire in the Treaty of Pearl, an area comprising almost twenty percent of the Commonweal, and providing the Wasps with a perfect platform for further expansion.

Once the Maynes rebels had been put down, of course, the question of where to send the Imperials armies next was put to the Emperor, now Alvdan Second of that name. As the Wasp-kinden were possessed of considerable airpower, both mechanically and by their Art, it was proposed that the Barrier Ridge would be no impediment to a northward strike against the Commonweal, in which they would not even have to violate the borders drawn by the Treaty of Pearl. Of course, in order to put themselves in such a position they would have to secure the land south of the Commonweal, lands that the Imperial spies, the dreaded Rekef, had by now thoroughly itemised and infiltrated. It was mooted to Alvdan the Second that, before a second expedition against the Commonweal, the Lowlands were by now ripe to be brought into the Imperial fold. At the same time, and in the absence of any coherent response from the Monarch, the more forward-thinking Princes Major began to send agents south for the first time in centuries, in search of potential allies…

(1)   Sole and absolute in theory, at least.

(2)   As of course they have no belief in a divine, although their concept of a preordained fate comes close.

(3) What a thought — that one's politicians are expected to pay a price for uncovered dishonesty! What strange, barbaric customs these insect-people have.