I Became an Ant Lord, So I Built a Hive Full of Beauties-Chapter 497: Night of Talking

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The mountain did not sleep so much as it was supposed to.

It dimmed its torches. It quieted its halls. It let the groans of wounded men blur into the deeper groan of stone shifting its own weight. Anyone standing on the outer slopes would have seen only a dark, hunched shape against the desert, a tooth shadowed by clouds.

Inside, no one believed the lie.

Shadeclaw believed it least of all.

He stood on the upper bend of the main ramp with his back to the wall and his eyes turned outward, helmet pushed up, antennae tilted to catch every scrap of sound. The ramp had been scrubbed with hot water and sand until most of the red was gone. The stone still drank the last of it in small, dark patches.

Behind him, seven hundred tired drones tried not to look like seven hundred tired drones who should have been a thousand. They were in shifts now. Half on the wall. Half in the barracks or the halls below, sleeping the heavy, uncomfortable sleep of people whose bodies had decided for them.

Shadeclaw was supposed to be among the latter.

He had lasted exactly three minutes with his mandibles clenched and his eyes closed before his body had apparently recalled that he was Shadeclaw, son of no one important, claw of the Lord, and therefore constitutionally incapable of remaining horizontal while his hive might be in danger.

He had waited until Luna’s back was turned, slid off his pallet, grabbed his harness, and climbed back up the ramps before guilt could catch up and smack him on the back of the head.

Now, he stood watch.

The desert was a black bowl. Vorak’s camp was a smear of ordered light on the far side, small banners of fire pricking the dark. Their shape had changed since the afternoon. More order. More vents. A different pattern of shadows where new lines of fortification had been dug.

"Teeth," Shadeclaw muttered to himself. "You really are going to lay teeth in the ground."

He did not like the way the air felt. It carried too many strange hums. Ward lines. Traps. The faint whine of prepared spells that had not yet been given targets.

He dropped his helmet back into place and opened a thin line on the Net.

"Yavri," he pulsed. "Report."

In the watcher galleries above, Yavri blinked, lifted her head from over a slate full of hastily scribbled notes, and frowned.

"The desert is doing what the desert does," she sent. "Cooling. Being grumpy. Collecting ghosts. Vorak’s people are busy, but not marching. They are setting. Drilling. They will not come before dawn; our Lord was right about that much."

"And the forest side?" Shadeclaw asked. "Any movement by the north gullies."

Yavri hesitated.

"We had a ripple along the westward line an hour ago," she admitted. "Something passed just outside the wards and did not challenge them. The wards growled. The thing did not growl back. It slipped past."

Shadeclaw’s antennae twitched.

"You did not think to escalate that to me earlier," he said, not quite managing to keep the dry irritation out of his tone.

"I did," Yavri said. "You were busy trying to pretend to sleep. The Lord was actually sleeping, or something resembling it. I made a judgment call. The ripple was... odd."

"Odd how."

"Not hostile. And not one of ours," Yavri said. "It felt like... someone walking around the edge of a camp they knew very well. You know the way Lirien walks past her own scaffolding. She knows where every board is. This felt like that, but with the wild."

Shadeclaw made a low, thoughtful sound.

"Could it be Vorak’s scouts circling around for tomorrow," he asked. "Trying to see if we have an open back."

"Maybe," Yavri said. "Except the wards would have recognized their stink by now. Scratch that. They already have. The pattern was not the same."

"What did you do," Shadeclaw asked.

"I moved three watchers to the northern eye and told them if they saw something that looked like a problem, they should not shout first," Yavri said. "They should listen. If the thing bites, then we shout."

Shadeclaw considered that.

"Keep at it," he said at last. "I do not like unknowns, but I like tired watchers making mistakes even less. If it gets closer, tell me and the Lord both. For now we have a general to plan for."

He cut the Net before Yavri could send the comment she was obviously holding back about him being one of the tired watchers making mistakes.

Behind him, the night crept toward them in small degrees.

Vorak did not sit.

He had a perfectly good chair in his command pavilion. Two, in fact. One behind the table where his maps lay and one off to the side where visitors could arrange themselves and their arguments. He had used both many times, on many fields.

Tonight, he stood.

The table before him held more than paper. A sliver of polished stone showed the mountain from a distance, a faint echo of the glass disc he had used on the ridge. A series of small clay markers, each marked with a different sigil, rested in ordered lines to one side. The old woman from earlier sat on a low stool in the corner, slate across her knees.

She was writing again. She always wrote. Vorak had never seen anyone read the slates except her. He suspected no one else could.

"The vanguard is sleeping," she said, without looking up. "Those who can. The rest are lying down and pretending, which is half the battle with men like yours."

"Straeg?" Vorak asked.

"Your six star’s body is cooling in the dead-pit with the others," she said. "They are muttering about him. Some are praising. Some are deflecting blame onto him because it is easier than putting it on you. This is good."

"Why," Vorak said.

"Because they would like you to win so they can blame you for their suffering afterward," she said. "If they blame Strange for today, they will not need you to fall to feel that the ledger is balanced."