Enemy A(n)t the Gates

154. The Bell Tolls for Thee

Titus was relieved to find Morrelia had been returned as promised not an hour after the Legion withdrew from the battle. The instant the surge of Mana arrived, Titus had stood down in his fight with the Keeper, and the bruan’chii stood aside. The purpose of the tree-people had been to stymie the Legion, and their mission was accomplished.

The Keeper had been gracious, but the leaves had not, rustling with obvious happiness at seeing her enemies fail in their task. Titus didn’t care. Including the auxiliaries, hundreds of good Legionaries had been lost in this endeavour, and even the safe return of his only child couldn’t completely snuff the morose feeling in his chest.

Legionaries fought monsters and died doing it all the time. This was a reality of the world. He was just never able to completely shut away the pain of his soldiers dying under his command. His wife would say he lacked maturity, but then, she was always more suited to command than he was. She was in charge of the whole bloody Legion at this point, after all.

“Morrelia,” he said, embracing his daughter when she reached him. “I’m glad to see you are safe.”

She’d been escorted back by a group of humans led by Enid Ruther to the end of the tunnel that led toward the nest. Titus had recalled all his troops to this point and was still waiting for some of the further out groups to return.

He pushed his daughter back so he could look into her face and saw the mixed emotions there. Happiness, shame, guilt. No doubt she blamed herself for losing control of her berserker Skills in the midst of battle and getting captured. She had so much promise; if she learned from her mistakes, she would be a commander before too long.

He placed a hand on her head.

“Your mother will be so pleased to see you again. If you’d died just before she finished her commission, I fear she would have collapsed the Iron Mountain down on her own head.”

It was a poor attempt at a joke, and the more Titus thought about it, the more realistic a scenario it seemed.

Watching the expression on her father’s face shift from joking to a glum realisation made Morrelia laugh and the knot inside her eased slightly with the release of tension. She’d betrayed the Legion, but she believed it had been for the right reasons. With any luck, they would never return, and the colony would continue to be peaceful and cooperative with everyone they came across. If so, she would never have to regret too strongly the decision she made here.

“I hope you and your people are able to retreat safely before things get too crazy down here,” Enid said. Then she frowned. “I also hope you never come back.”

It was far more grace than he could expect to receive from opponents he’d been fighting not an hour previous.

“I thank you for your words,” Titus said. “I do not know where the Legion will send us next. With this new wave coming so close on the heels of the last one, there will be problems all over Pangera. We defend many remote communities from the Dungeon, and our people are stretched thin.”

“I know the work you do to defend the helpless, and it is appreciated around the world,” Enid snapped. “If only you’d devoted yourselves to doing that instead of coming here and trying to kill people that didn’t need killing. I’ve lost a lot of good folk and so have you.”

The commander could only shake his head.

“The two tasks are one and the same. We came here to protect people from what these monsters will become. I hope you realise the mistake you have made before it’s too late.”

With nothing left to say to each other, the two sides parted ways. Titus got back to organising his forces, counting the dead, ensuring the injured were cared for and arranging logistics. He would need to get his Legion to a gate as soon as possible, and he was determined that none would be left behind. After two more hours, every head had been accounted for and the Legion began their march. They were exhausted and drained, but none complained. Better a hard stretch of travel now, followed by rest, than a never-ending battle against the monsters who were already beginning to spawn from the walls.

Enid sighed as she watched them go, then turned back to walk up the tunnel to the nest. Already, the ants were swarming over the ruins of their once pristine tunnel, trying to re-establish their defences before the wave hit in force. It was amazing the damage that good people with bad ideas could do, she reflected. Though doubtless, Titus would say the exact same thing about her. Not wanting to dwell on such depressing thoughts, she turned her mind to the things she would do next and the list quickly grew.

First of all, she needed to contact the families of those who had fallen. An unenviable job, but a necessary one. She remembered many times her husband would take on this duty, informing the loved ones of those who hadn’t made it back from a delve. Shoulders square, Enid walked briskly. There was work to be done.

When the High Blade Balta had awoken, he instinctually felt they’d lost. That he lost. Not only the duel, but the expedition, his reputation, and that of his House. When confirmation came from contacting the Abyssal Legion that the reincarnator yet lived, he knew he’d been ruined.

The reputation he staked, the favours he called in, all for nothing. Less than nothing. The wave wouldn’t finish the ants as some of his advisors hoped, he was sure of it. In fact, he was scornful of those who were prepared to think it. The ants had been stronger, far stronger, than he expected, and thousands of golgari had been lost in the tunnels. When he returned to the empire, the disgrace of this failure would haunt the House of Balta for years. He was so frustrated he could burst.

Full of spite and bitterness, he barely paid attention as the lesser nobles arranged their swift retreat to the nearest gate. They would need to travel hard, and even then, they wouldn’t make it before the monsters started to spawn. Yet more trouble awaited them. When they finally began to move, the golgari expedition was a silent and morose column of Warriors and Shapers, each lost in their own thoughts. Such was the manner of the defeated.

Inside the nest, the colony had not paused to rest for even a moment. The council launched into action only to find that their various caste members had already leaped into their work. The carvers were everywhere, in the tunnels, working on the gates, shaping stone and metal with the assistance of the soldiers who were doing the heavy lifting, many of them injured.

The healers worked frantically, trying to turn over as many wounded as possible in as short a time as they could manage. If an ant was eighty percent healed, they were out the door, Biomass and their own regeneration would take care of the rest. The more severely damaged colony members were overflowing the long-term wards within the nest, and tunnels were co-opted for emergency treatment areas.

The colony had lost many over the duration of the conflict. The final toll, when it was eventually counted, was over ten thousand members of the family who had fallen in the fighting. Fortunately, the Queen’s had not ceased egg production during the long siege, and the total population of the colony hadn’t much changed. Even so, many excellent ants had perished, and they were mourned.

The colony grieved in the only way they could: work.