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There was nothing between him and the leader of his enemies, and he was immortal.

‘Pride of the Sixth!’ he roared, and charged. The princess had her blade out, but she was backing away still, stumbling as she ran into a tree. Her people had been all about her, but they were running too, not one of them willing to face the Wasp-kinden.

Then the old Mantis was back, and he had a spear levelled, coming in from Varmen’s sword side, the tip of the weapon already past his guard. Varmen lifted his blade to cut the man down, but something struck him a solid, jarring impact that left him completely still, all his surging momentum stolen away. The glory of the Sixth ebbed from him. He was immortal no longer. The dream had passed.

He stared at the Mantis, who met his visored gaze evenly, even respectfully. The white-haired old man still held his spear, but the head of it was gone, the shaft splintered. This moment between them seemed to last for ever.

Then Varmen nodded, understanding, and turned to go. He heard the princess’s voice shouting after him, demanding his death, but not one of her people would approach him, not even now. Feeling numb, more distant with every step, he trudged out of the camp, and they did not follow him, not yet, not then. It was almost as if a rearguard had taken up station behind him, the shadows of the Sixth guarding his slow retreat.

Maure found him just as his strength gave out and he was forced to sit, backplate resting against a tree, as he slumped down on to the forest floor. He felt her tugging at his helm, but managed to lift a hand to stop her.

‘Like this,’ he wanted to say. ‘Go as I lived . . . when I lived.’ But the words were so soft that they did not leave the quiet of his helm.

Her hands found the spearhead where it had lodged in that same hole the snapbow bolt had made at Malkan’s Stand, when progress had killed off his way of life. She did not try to remove it, just knelt there beside him, with her arms wrapped about his dented and bloody mail, and waited for the end.

The spectacle of Varmen had not been enough to distract all of Salme’s defenders, and when Che and Thalric broke from the camp there were enough who decided that chasing a fleeing Wasp and Beetle through the forest at night was safer than facing up to a defiant Wasp by firelight. The arrows kept skipping through the air even as Thalric tugged at Che’s arm, forcing her to run at his longer-legged pace and brutally hauling her to her feet again whenever she stumbled. The pain was vicious, legs sore from so many days enforced riding now shooting fire into her with every step, but the enemy were ahead and above, and outpacing them no matter how fast Thalric dragged at her.

‘Can you fly?’ he called back to her.

‘Easier than run,’ she agreed. Not necessarily faster, she knew, for her kinden did not have it in them to be graceful in the air, but on the other hand . . .

She gripped Thalric’s hand tight and took off at a tangent, wings unfurling from nothing and shimmering about her back. She was heading for the densest part of the forest, wheeling around tree trunks and between branches. There was an initial tug as Thalric resisted her, asserting his own judgement over hers, but then he let her guide him into the deeper, darker woods, with the Dragonfly-kinden at their heels.

They had good eyes, the Dragonflies. In daylight they could hover high in the sky and still watch the details of the land far beneath. In the night, their sight was as good as a Mantid’s or Fly-kinden’s in piercing the dusk. Not as good as Che’s, though. To her gifted eyes, the night itself was banished, the world picked out clearly in shades of grey, enjoying that rare Art of her people that let them see the world as their former Masters, the Moth-kinden, did. She was not graceful but she was sure, choosing her path through the upper reaches of the forest as though it were plain daylight. Now the Dragonflies’ swiftness betrayed them. They could not navigate as she could, so they must either slow down to her speed or risk losing