He signalled, and a dozen Wasp soldiers came to attention. ‘Now get these people back to their work,’ he said. ‘Bring all the foremen up here, though. I have one final thing to say to them.’ He turned to Totho and the others, seeming very pleased with himself.
‘Your comments?’
‘They will not serve you willingly,’ Kaszaat said. ‘Not at first. Surly and angry, they are.’
‘It’s only natural,’ Drephos said, not a bit daunted. ‘They are a skilled workforce, though, and only in Helleron is such skill so taken for granted. Nowhere else could you lay hands on so many trained people. We must therefore ensure that their talents are put entirely at our disposal.’ He turned again as two men and one woman were brought up to the gantry. ‘Well now,’ he addressed them. ‘You are my foremen, are you?’
Two of them merely nodded but one of them was quicker on the uptake and said, ‘Yes, Master.’
‘Master,’ Drephos echoed. ‘Such a versatile word, is it not?’ They looked at him blankly, and he elaborated. ‘Amongst your kinden, of course, it is a great term of respect. Your College scholars, your magnates, the great among you, are called ‘Masters’. Among the Wasp-kinden it is any man who owns a slave, and therefore has rights of life or death over that slave.’ His smile was thin and hard-edged. ‘So it will now be the choice of you and your workers just what interpretation we shall apply to that word. Do I make myself understood?’
He had, and they nodded unhappily, and murmured the title for him.
‘I am anticipating troublemakers,’ he told them. ‘The lazy, the impertinent, the disobedient, the talentless.’
‘Oh no, Master,’ said the woman amongst them. ‘We’ll be sure of that. No slackers in our houses. No backtalk either.’
‘You misunderstand me,’ said Drephos. ‘I am anticipating them. There are such in any body of workers, perhaps a dozen in every factory.’
The foremen were exchanging glances, approaching the point of denying it and then drawing back.
‘I am anticipating,’ Drephos explained happily, ‘that they will be singled out by you there, and reported to my soldiers. I am anticipating that my guards will have some three dozen such malcontents brought to me within the first five days of work here. Choose those who contribute least, or stir up trouble, or whom you personally dislike, whatever you will, but I will be very unhappy if my anticipations are not borne out.’
The two men nodded slowly now, looking as miserable as Totho had seen anyone in a long time, but the woman said, ‘Excuse me, Master, but . . . what shall be done with them, once your guardsmen have them?’
‘They will be allowed to participate in other parts of the creative process,’ Drephos told her. She paled a little at that, and then the soldiers began ushering all three away.
‘Some promise there, I think,’ Drephos mused, glancing back at his cadre of artificers. Besides Kaszaat and Totho there were two Beetle-kinden that must surely be twin brother and sister, a halfbreed that looked to mingle Wasp and Beetle blood, and a hulking nine-foot Mole Cricket whose weight made the whole gantry creak.
‘Master Drephos . . .’ Totho started, feeling deeply uneasy about it all.
‘Ah, Totho,’ Drephos said. He was clearly in a fine mood today. ‘You have seen the prototype?’
‘I have, Master Drephos, but . . .’
‘What do you think?’ Drephos began descending the stairs to the factory floor where the workers were being given their new machining projects, designs and specifications for unfamiliar parts and pieces.
‘The new loading mechanism seems to work very smoothly,’ Totho said, drawn from his original intent by the need to discuss the finer aspects of the technical work. ‘It will need to be machined very exactly on the finished version, though. There will be little room for error, to avoid jamming.’
‘That would be a problem anywhere else,’ Drephos agreed, ‘but here in Helleron the skills and the equipment have come together in glad harmony. In the Empire we would have had to compromise, but the Emperor’s generals have made their plans as if they had my very wishes in mind, because Helleron is ours, and here we are.’
‘Aside from that, I think we may have to redesign the grooving within the barrel, or at least test variations of spacing and angle.’
‘Granted,’ Drephos said. ‘Test it then. Conclusions in two days. By then we should be ready for the spiralling lathe work on the first batch.’
‘First batch, Master?’ Totho enquired.
‘You weren’t thinking of making just one of them, surely?’ Drephos grinned at him, teeth flashing in his motley-coloured face. ‘Like a showpiece? A museum curiosity? What do you think these factories are for, Totho?’
‘All for . . . you can’t mean it, surely?’ Totho felt weak, stumbling on the stairs so that Kaszaat had to reach out and grab his arm to steady him.
‘Explain to Master Totho how we do things,’ Drephos flung the words over his shoulder.
Kaszaat was grinning, and most of the others smiled at least a little, their newest colleague still learning how things were done.
‘One project at a time is the rule,’ Kaszaat explained. ‘When we really get to work, when the war effort calls, all resources are devoted to one project. This time you’re the lucky one. It’s your project. Three factories, hundreds of workers, all of us, all concentrated on your devices.’
The thought made his head swim. It was all happening far too fast for him.
‘I had better start my testing,’ he said. The other artificers were already fanning out across the factory, each heading to his or her own task. Kaszaat was about to go as well, when Totho caught her arm.
‘Tonight I . . . Could I talk . . . come to talk to you, tonight? I need . . . I just need . . .’
‘You just need someone,’ her smile was ambiguous, ‘and I can be that someone. Perhaps I need a someone also, sometimes.’
Twenty-Six
‘The gates are sealed,’ said Lineo Thadspar. He looked older than ever.
‘Did the last train get away?’ Stenwold asked him.
‘No, they were too long in loading it.’ The Speaker of the Assembly sat down at a War Council that was greatly different in constitution to the first one. As the Vekken army had neared there had been many who had decided that war was, after all, not for them, and others had surfaced in whom an undreamt-of martial fervour had been kindled. The stone seats were lined with College Masters, artificers and city magnates who had found in themselves the means to greet the hour. And that hour had now come.
‘They were still leaving by the western gate until an hour gone, but the Vekken are just outside artillery range of the walls on all sides now, and anyone leaving would fall straight into their hands,’ reported Waybright, one of the survivors of the original council. ‘They have not totally encircled us, but they have set up regularly spaced camps.’
‘They’ll want you to try to attack them at the gaps, to see them as divided,’ Balkus said seriously. Nobody had exactly invited him here, but he went where Stenwold went, and unlike most there he had experience of Ant war firsthand. ‘But we – the Ant-kinden – we’re never divided. You should remember that.’
‘We’re in no position to attack them, in any event,’ Lineo Thadspar said.
‘Precisely how strong are these gates?’ Kymon asked. He had a rough map of the city before him and he traced its boundaries with a stylus. ‘This is a weak city against force of arms. The walls are pierced all over. You have a river, the rail line, the harbour. The gates themselves, how strong are they?’
‘We learned a few tricks after our last clash with the Vekken,’ Thadspar said.
‘Likewise the Vekken,’ Stenwold cautioned.
‘That’s true, but I hope we’ve learned faster than they. It is, after all, what we are supposed to be good at, here at the College.’ Thadspar leant over Kymon’s map. ‘Our gates have secondary shutters that slide down from within the wall. My own father’s design, as it happens. T
hey are of dense wood plated with bronze, and they should withstand a hefty strike from any ram or engine you care to name. There is a grille that has been lowered where the river meets the city and, while they may eventually break through it, they will at least not surprise us by assaulting that way. We have gates across the rail arch, too, and I have engineers buttressing them even now. The harbour . . . has certain defences. What is their naval strength, anyone?’
‘Nine armourclads, plus one really big one,’ someone reported from the back. ‘And two dozen wooden-hulled warships. Plus four dozen small vessels and half a dozen very large barges that they’re holding back. Supply ships, I suppose.’
‘They will attack the harbour soon,’ Kymon cautioned. ‘I myself have been given the west wall to command. Who has the south?’
‘I do,’ Stenwold confirmed. He could feel the tension in the room slowly screwing tight, the image in everyone’s heads of Ant-kinden in perfect step making their encampments around their city of scholars. ‘I’m open to any suggestions.’
‘What about the supply situation on our side?’ Way-bright asked. ‘We’ve had people leaving in droves these last few days, and yet there have never been so many within our walls. All the satellite villages west of here have emptied, some of the people have come here with nothing but the clothes on their backs.’
‘We have always husbanded our harvests well,’ Thadspar said. ‘We will ration what we have, and we need hold only until the Sarnesh arrive to relieve us.’
‘Masters,’ Stenwold said, ‘I will now say something we have all thought, to ourselves. The Vekken were defeated last time because the Sarnesh relieved us, although we held them for tendays before that happened. The Vekken know this. Even they are not so blinded by pride and greed that they will have forgotten.’ He looked around at them, face by face, and so few of them would meet his gaze.
Kymon did. ‘You’re saying that the Vekken believe Sarn will not aid us. Or that even Sarn’s aid cannot tip the balance.’
‘A secret weapon?’ someone suggested.
‘All speculation,’ Thadspar insisted. ‘Why should Sarn not aid us?’
‘We have no idea of the situation,’ Stenwold insisted. ‘It is simply this. The Vekken are here. They do not relish defeat, and so they must believe they can win.’
‘Perhaps they seek to capture the walls before Sarn can even get its army here,’ Waybright said. ‘If they already had the city, Sarn might turn back.’
‘All I am saying is that we cannot fight this war on the assumption that the Sarnesh will rescue us sooner or later,’ Stenwold said. ‘If we fight, we must fight to drive them away with whatever strength we have ourselves.’
They did not like that. He could see that none of them wanted to accept it. A holding action, they thought, just until . . . Kymon met his eyes and nodded.
A messenger burst in, a young Beetle girl quite out of breath. ‘Their artillery is shooting at us!’ she said. ‘What do we do now?’
Kymon stood. ‘All officers to your posts!’ he snapped. ‘Stenwold?’
‘Here.’
‘If the harbour falls, the city falls, and they’ll attack it, tomorrow or the next day at the latest. Everybody listen: if you have someone coming to you with means to defend the harbour, send them to Stenwold. Everything will count.’
The Vekken were very efficient in their mustering. When Thalric and Daklan had put the Empire’s invitation to them an army had been raised in mere days. The Vekken, like all Ants, were soldier-born. The soundless call had gone out into the city, and without a spoken word it had been answered by the thousands of the war host of Vek. There had then been the matter of material, machines, supplies. It was a matter long settled, though, for Vek had been looking for this war for decades, awaiting the moment when Sarn’s protective hand was lifted from the reviled city of scholars. The supplies were already laid in, the machines in readiness, the crossbow bolts and engine ammunition neatly stockpiled. Each year the tacticians of Vek had convened and added what further elements they could to the plan, while their artificers continued their patient progress.
So, when they had arrived and surrounded the city, it had been a wonder of discipline. There was not a man but who knew to the inch where his place was. The engineers had begun instantly bringing forward their machines: lead-shotters, catapults and scorpions, trebuchets and ballistae, a great host of destruction of every kind that the artificers of Vek could conceive of. The smaller machines were unloaded from carts, or had progressed under their own mechanical power. The larger were constructed on the spot even as the artificers made their calculations, their crews untiring and careful to a fault. To the watchers on the walls of Collegium it seemed that the Vekken battle plan unfolded as smoothly as a parchment, spreading out and around their beloved city.
Akalia did not watch her men prepare. She had no need. They were already in her head, each section and squad informing her of its readiness. They gave her a perfect map of the field in her mind’s eye, the composite of all that each soldier saw. Sitting in her tent she was also everywhere her forces were.
There is no time like now, she instructed her people, and called for her tacticians. They responded almost as one, alert for the order. At the same time her engineers were tensioning and charging their siege weapons, all of them, all at once.
Test your ranges, she told them mentally, and one from each battery loosed, sending rocks or shot spinning high towards the pale walls of Collegium. Attend me, she told her officers, and stepped out into the afternoon light to see the first plumes of stone dust that her ranging shots had raised from the walls, or the dust from the earth where they had fallen short.
Correct your ranges, she instructed, feeling the artificers all around making their measurements, their practical mathematics of elevation and angle.
Loose one round, she decided and, even as she sent the order out she felt the ground quiver beneath her feet as all her engines rocked back simultaneously with the force of their discharge. A fair proportion of the machines still lacked the range, but this time more missiles found the walls than failed. The city of Collegium was briefly swathed in puffs of stone dust, as though it were letting off fireworks.
What damage? she asked. Forward of their artillery positions were officers equipped with telescopes, raking the walls for any weaknesses, and their reports were rapidly passed back: None, sir. No damage sighted, sir. Some slight scarring, sir.
She had expected nothing less, because Beetles, for all their inferior characteristics, knew how to lay stone on stone. The tacticians of Vek had counted on that when they designed this expedition. They were still assembling much of the artillery: great trebuchets, leadshotters and rock-throwers to attack the walls; grapeshot ballistae to rake the battlements clean of soldiers at closer range; engine-powered rams and lifting towers for the troops to take the walls. There were even experimental grenade-throwers, delicate, spindly things designed to throw small, volatile missiles deep into the city beyond.
The fleet had blockaded the rivermouth and was now waiting for her signal to make its assault, but the walls would come first. She was a traditional soldier, and she preferred traditional methods to the unknown concerns of a sea landing.
Let it all come down, she sent out the order. Pound the walls until sunset. Let the dawn tell us the result.
‘Soldiers off the walls!’ Kymon bellowed, though he was ignoring his own advice by striding along the east wall as the missiles came in. Many landed short, throwing up plumes of earth from the fields or impacting amongst the straggle of buildings out there: Wayhouses, storehouses, farmers’ huts, all abandoned now. Some struck the wall itself, and he felt the impact shudder through his sandals. A few even flew over to smash stonework in the city below. He stopped and backed up a few steps, waiting, and a lead ball clipped the very battlements ten feet ahead. He had found a disaffected Kessen youth amongst the volunteers and put him to good use. Now Kymon could walk blithely amongst his troops and inspir
e them with his disregard for the enemy, whilst all the time the boy was watching the incoming assault and giving him warning.
The walls of Collegium had their own artillery, but the Vekken army had brought up a whole host of it, more than even he had thought they possessed. The defenders’ engines were outnumbered four to one along the west wall, where the brunt of the attack was concentrated. Soon, he well knew, the barrage would begin to creep towards the wall-mounted weapons so as to clear the way for the Vekken infantry.
But where Vek had strength, Collegium had intelligence. Here before him was a team of artificers working at one such weapon. As he watched the great catapult began to revolve, descending foot by foot into the stonework of its tower with a groaning of gears and a hiss of steam. Further along the wall they were winching great iron shields into position about a repeating ballista.
Kymon dropped to one knee and peered over the city side of the wall. There was a detachment of some three hundred city militia below and he shouted at them, ‘Clear the way!’ He gestured furiously. ‘Left and right from me! Clear the way!’
Most of them got the idea and just ran for it, dodging to either side. A moment later a great rock whistled over Kymon’s head to spin past them and smash into the wall of the building beyond, pelting them all with a shrapnel of fist-sized stones. He saw a few fall to it, but most were clear. It was far more frustrating than he had thought, to command soldiers he could not commune with mind to mind.
And they were such a rabble too. They brought determination and enthusiasm, but little discipline. Some were the city militia, decently enough armoured but more used to quelling taverna brawls and catching thieves than to fighting wars. The bulk of Collegium’s armed force was simply those citizens bold enough to put themselves forward for it. Some brought their own weapons, others had been armed from the College stores. Anyone with any training as an artificer had been given something from the workshops: repeaters, piercers, nailbows and wasters, or whatever ’prentice pieces were lying around. Some attempt had been made to sort them into squads similarly armed, but the mess of men and women beneath Kymon bristled with a ragged assortment of spears, swords, crossbows, clubs and agricultural implements.
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