War Master's Gate

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Stenwold Maker was once a lone voice of resistance to the Wasp Empire in his home city of Collegium. Now he is an elder statesman, the man who rallied the Lowlands against Imperial ambitions, and they give him the title ‘War Master’. With the aid of Collegium’s aviators and technological prowess he has driven the Empire back from his city’s gates and smashed its air power, but the battle is a long way from won. The Eighth Army is still threatening Sarn to the north, and the Second Army, though thrown back, has not admitted defeat. Moreover, half the Lowlands remains in the possession of the Empire and its Spider allies. Stenwold has risked and lost a great deal to get to this point, compromising his morality and alienating his allies, and still the might of the Empire seems unstoppable.

General Tynan, commanding the Second Army, sees things very differently. Mauled by Collegium’s air superiority, he is caught between the prospect of an advance into a fight that will butcher thousands of his soldiers and the immutability of his orders, which forbid a retreat. A decent man, a hero to his people, a loyal and obedient soldier, he has wished more than once that he had killed Stenwold Maker when the man was in his grasp. Twice now he has been at the gates of Collegium with his army, known as ‘the Gears’, and twice those gears have been thrown into reverse. Once, the death of the Emperor called him back, and perhaps there is no shame in that, but this second time he has been roundly beaten. His one compensation is that he can at least share the sting of it with his co-commander, the Spider-kinden Mycella of the Aldanrael, an uneasy ally now become Tynan’s closest confidant.

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