Dragonfly Falling

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  He stood again, waiting for despair to wash over him, but instead found a strange kind of pride. If these defenders had been Ant-kinden of his own city it would have been shameful, but they were not. They were Beetles, mostly, but there were others, too: Flies, rogue Ants, Spiders, halfbreeds, even some Mantids and Moths. They were truly the host of Collegium, the city which had opened its gates to the world.

  He came to the catapult emplacement to find the weapon more than half hidden now, steadily grinding itself down below the level of the wall. There was a man, a College artificer, crouching by the battlements with a telescope and some kind of sextant, making quick calculations.

  ‘Is this going to work?’ Kymon had forgotten the man’s name, but when the goggled face turned up to him he recalled him as Master Graden, who taught applied fluid mechanics.

  ‘I am assured it will. Not my department, obviously, but the mathematics are simple enough,’ Graden explained. ‘Incidentally, Master Kymon, my invention – have you had a chance to consider it? The sand is to hand, and my apprentices have it ready to place on the walls.’

  It seemed that almost every artificer in Collegium believed that they had an invention that could help the war effort. Kymon was no artificer, but the mention of sand jogged his memory further.

  ‘Have it ready,’ he said, more as a sop to the man’s pride than anything. ‘Every little thing may help.’

  He passed on towards the next emplacement. Behind him another lead shot struck the wall, making it shiver beneath his feet like a living thing.

  ‘It doesn’t look like they’re coming,’ one of his soldiers said to him. Stenwold shook his head.

  ‘They’re coming, but not just yet. I need the chain ready in time. It must be our first line of defence.’

  ‘But the mechanism hasn’t been used in—’ The soldier waved a hand vaguely. ‘I don’t know if it’s ever been used, Master Stenwold.’

  ‘Oil it, fix it – replace the cursed thing if you have to. Don’t be the man whose failures make the city fall.’

  It was unfair, but the man fell back, face twisting in shame, and ran off to do his job. Stenwold turned briefly to the men who had answered his call, but his attention was drawn back to the sea. This had been the harbourmaster’s office, and the view from it would have been beautiful if not marred by the ugly blots of the Vekken fleet. The armourclads, iron-plated or iron-hulled ships with monstrously powerful engines, formed the vanguard, waiting out in anchored formation with smoke idling from their funnels.

  ‘How are we going to stop them?’ Stenwold asked, for Collegium had no navy. The few ships in harbour were only those which had not seized the chance to flee before the harbour was blockaded, and they were definitely not fighting ships.

  ‘The harbour has its artillery defences, as well as the chain, Master,’ reminded Cabre, a Fly who was an artificer from the College. ‘They were designed with wooden ships in mind, though, and they’ve not been updated in thirty years. You know how it is. When Vek came last it was overland, and nobody thought . . .’

  ‘And we’ll now pay for that lack of imagination,’ Stenwold grumbled.

  ‘We don’t know if they could even dent the armourclads out there,’ Cabre admitted, scratching the back of her head.

  ‘What else have we got?’ Stenwold asked.

  ‘Master Maker?’ It was a Beetle-kinden man who must be at least ten years Stenwold’s junior. For a Beetle he looked lean and combative.

  ‘Yes, Master . . . ?’

  ‘Greatly, Master Maker. Joyless Greatly. I have a cadre of men, Master Maker. Some twenty in all. I have recently been working on an invention for the Sarnesh, but I cannot think that they would object to our using it in our own defence.’

  And he does not add, ‘until they get here’, Stenwold noted. Joyless seemed to him a name of ill omen. It tended to denote children named by their fathers after their mothers had not survived the infant’s birth. ‘Go on, Master Greatly.’

  Joyless Greatly stared challengingly about the room, at a dozen or so artificers who had been sent to Stenwold’s care. ‘I have developed a one-man orthopter, Master Maker. I have one score and ten of these ready to fly, though only my twenty men are trained to fly them.’

  It seemed impossible. ‘Thirty orthopters? But where . . . ?’ Stenwold asked him.

  ‘They are not what you think, Master Maker. These are worn on the back, as you will see. When the fleet approaches, or when the army comes to our walls, I will take my men out. We will drop grenades and incendiaries on them. Their ships may be hulled with iron, but they will not have armoured decks. We can drop explosives into their funnels, or on their weapons.’

  ‘They will shoot you down,’ Cabre warned him, but there was a fire in Greatly’s expression, of either patriotism or madness.

  ‘Let them try, for I will outrace their bolts and quarrels. Master Maker, we may be your second line of defence, but we shall attack.’

  ‘There are other flying machines as well,’ ventured an elderly Beetle woman Stenwold could not recall, save that she had something to do with the airfield. ‘Some two dozen of various designs that have been brought within the city. With the assistance of Master Greatly’s force we might at least harry them during their advance.’

  ‘And meanwhile I can train new pilots for the other machines,’ added Joyless Greatly.

  ‘Do so,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘More, please. Anyone?’

  ‘Excuse me, Master Maker.’ The speaker was an Ant-kinden with bluish skin, and Stenwold had no idea even where he came from, never mind who he was. He was no warrior, though, despite his race. Inactivity had left him thin from the chest up and broad below.

  ‘Yes, Master . . . ?’

  ‘Tseitus, Master Maker.’ The Ant’s gaunt face smiled. ‘I have an aquatic automotive which, Master Maker, I have been working on for many years.’

  ‘One boat, Master Tseitus—’

  ‘Not a boat, Master Maker.’ Tseitus glanced around suspiciously at the others as though they would, at this late juncture, seek to steal his idea. ‘It goes beneath the waters.’

  Stenwold stared at him. ‘A submersible automotive?’

  ‘She is beautiful, Master Maker.’ Tseitus’s eyes gleamed. ‘I have taken her into Lake Sideriti. You would not believe what wonders there are beneath the waters there—’

  ‘But for now you’ll put her into the city’s service?’

  ‘This city is my life, Master Maker. And if there might be any funding, in the future, for my project—?‘

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Stenwold said hurriedly. ‘Let us just save the city first, and then I cannot imagine that the Assembly will not reward its saviours. Your submersible boat, what can it do?’

  ‘Go beneath the waters,’ repeated Tseitus, and then after a brief, awkward pause, ‘Drill into the hulls of their ships. Attach devices that others here may devise. Is there some explosive that may work underwater?’

  ‘I haven’t—’ Stenwold started but, as though summoned magically by the concept, one of the other artificers was already raising a hand.

  At dusk, Akalia called for the Vekken artillery to be stilled. There was no sense wasting their ammunition in speculative and inaccurate night-time shooting. By the last light, her spotters had confirmed some light damage to the west wall where she had been heaping most of her missiles: some ragged holes punched in the crenellations, and a few patches that might repay a barrage over the next few days and even open up the whole wall. And once the wall was down in even one place her real assault could begin.

  There had not been a single answering shot. It had been somewhat vexing the way most of the artillery positions atop the wall had been protected from her own, but it made little enough difference if they were content to hide behind their walls until she battered them down.

  There would be casualties to the Collegium artillery when the assault went in, but no war was without casualties and her men understood that.

  They cannot have the ran
ge to match us, one of her commanders had suggested. She could only shrug at him. For whatever reason, though, the Collegium artillery had remained silent.

  Her commanders had secured the camps, in the highly unlikely event that the Beetle-kinden were planning some kind of night raid, and so finally she retired to her tent. The Wasp-kinden Daklan wished to speak with her, she knew. She had considered letting the foreigner stew but decided that, as matters were progressing so well, it would do her good to remind him of the superiority of those he was allying his Empire to.

  ‘Commander Daklan,’ she addressed him, and then looked to the other man. ‘And it is Commander Thalric, is it not?’

  ‘It is, Tactician,’ Thalric said. It pleased Akalia that he did not try to deny the Ant rank. In her mind she was doing him more honour than he deserved.

  ‘And you are pleased with what you have seen, so far?’ she asked the two Wasps. ‘Your vengeance against Collegium will soon be accomplished, will it not?’

  ‘Indeed, Tactician,’ said the other one, Daklan.

  ‘One might wonder what the foolish Beetles have done, to inflame such a far-off enemy,’ she said, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘You know the Beetle-kinden, how they can never leave well enough alone,’ Daklan said quickly. ‘The Empire has its actions focused east of here, as you know, and it seemed likely to us that Collegium would interfere in some way.’

  ‘They are a pack of meddling old men,’ Akalia agreed derisively. ‘Look at what they have done to Sarn, and in so short a time. They’ve gelded an entire city with their absurd ideas!’

  ‘True, and well put,’ Daklan concurred. She sneered at his ingratiating manner, but it was fitting, she supposed. It was certain that they feared her and wished her to think well of them.

  ‘Tell me, Tactician,’ said the other one, Thalric. ‘How do you consider that first bombardment? It seemed to be a little . . . unorthodox to me.’ Daklan glanced at him sharply, perhaps because this was something they had agreed to leave unsaid, but Akalia shrugged. ‘You are imprecise with your words, Commander Thalric. With us Ant-kinden you must say what you mean. What do you mean?’

  Thalric was ignoring Daklan’s frown. ‘Their wall artillery, Tactician.’

  ‘That was curious,’ she agreed. ‘I have asked my artificers for possible causes. It may be that they have let their artillery become useless with age, although that seems unlikely even for Collegium. However, they are not a valorous race. Perhaps their engineers did not dare take to the walls to man them under our shot.’

  ‘Perhaps that is it,’ Thalric said, but she could see a look on his face that she did not like.

  ‘You are here only on sufferance,’ she reminded them. ‘I shall have no impertinence from you foreigners.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Daklan said quickly. ‘We are merely . . . unused to such a great display of artillery. Our wars work in different ways.’ She saw Thalric’s face twitch at that sentiment, but she could not read his reaction.

  ‘You are dismissed,’ she told them suddenly. It was late, anyway, and she would need a rested night, to command on the morrow. She must consider what to do with these Wasp-kinden, too. Perhaps it might be best if they became casualties of war. She watched them walk away, a tension between them, men who would be arguing as soon as they were out of her sight. Another divided and chaotic kinden, then. When the time came they would be no match for the perfect order of Vek.

  Akalia went straight to her tent and had a slave unbuckle her armour. Then she fell asleep in anticipation of the morning’s work.

  She was awakened instantly by the first crash and sat bolt-upright, feeling the ground shake beneath her. Her entire camp was awake, but for a terrifying moment nobody knew what was going on.

  Sentries report! Her mind snapped out, but there was no answer amongst the babble of replies. Her sentries knew of no attack, and yet the camps were under attack. Men were dying, snuffed out instantly, but very few of them. Instead she was hearing a waxing tide of alarm from her engineers, from her artificers.

  What is going on? she demanded of them, sensing them rush about in the darkness, that clouded, moonless pitch-darkness. Fires were being lit, men were rushing into formations with still no idea of what was going on. One unit of a hundred men was abruptly half its number down, a great rock having found them in the night, crushing the heart from their battle order.

  Report! she demanded once more. I will have executions for this. It is intolerable.

  Then the word came rushing through the army like wildfire. Their artillery was being destroyed.

  How? she demanded. How are they attacking us? It must be men, some stealthy team sent out, but even as she thought that, the ground shook once again.

  And the impossible answer came back, They are shooting from the walls.

  For a moment she could not think. She had no answers, and none of her officers had any answers, and so the entire army was paralysed by indecision. The ground shook again, and once more, and the artificers’ minds passed on to her the sound of smashed wood and crushed metal.

  At last the only remaining course came to her. Move the artillery back. Disassemble it if it cannot be moved!

  On the walls of Collegium the artillery had either been winched back up or uncovered, and now the artificers of the most learned city in the Lowlands practised their art. All day they had taken their measurements and worked out their angles. Men used to the classroom and the lectern had crouched behind battlements and scribbled their calculations. Some of them had died, crushed by shot, raked by stone splinters. Now the fruits of those labours were borne on the air by the engines of Collegium. The night was almost moonless, and small specks of fire were all that was revealed to them of the Vekken encampment, but the engineers and artificers of Collegium held lamps by their sheets of calculations and adjusted their angle and elevation by minute degrees.

  And the catapults and ballistae, leadshotters and trebuchets of the Collegium walls spoke together, flinging hundredweights of stone and metal at the invaders.

  Some of them missed, of course, either by chance or bad calculation, but all around the city the Vekken army was awoken by the sound of its own siege emplacements being destroyed: trebuchets splintering under blindly targeted rocks, and leadshotters ripped apart by explosive-headed ballista bolts. The thinking men and mathematicians of Collegium, carefully and without passion, set about undoing any gains that the Vekken army had made during the previous day.

  When dawn came, it was clear that more than three-quarters of the artillery the Vekken had so carefully placed the previous day had been smashed beyond hope of repair, and although the invading army had more to bring forward, it seemed any chance of simply knocking down Collegium’s walls had been dealt a fatal blow.

  Twenty-Seven

  In his dream Achaeos was deep within the Darakyon: not on the outskirts, where he had taken Che to show her the darkness of the old world, but in the heart of it, where he had been just that once before. He was there, in the crawling, twisted heart of the shadow-forest, whose inhabitants he had impudently demanded aid from – whose inhabitants had arisen to his call, but not at his command. The cold of their touch as they had then rifled through his mind was still burned on his memory like a brand. And in return for showing him the way to where Cheerwell was imprisoned, they had exacted a price.

  He owed them, and such debts were always honoured, and seldom repaid happily.

  In his dream, Achaeos stood surrounded by the knotted and gnarled trunks of the Darakyon’s tortured trees, and he had seen, with the night-piercing eyes of his kinden, the things that dwelt under their shadow. Never had he more wanted to experience the blindness, the darkness, that other kinden complained of. These denizens had been Mantis-kinden once, he knew. Something of that remained, but it was overwritten in a heavy hand by crawling thorns, by pieces of darkly gleaming carapace, by the spines of killing arms, by rough bark and tangling vines and glittering compound eyes.

  They
were legion, the things of the Darakyon, and they stared at him mutely. Their whisper-voice – pieced together from all the cold, dry sounds of the forest – was silent. There was a message, though, in their wordless scrutiny of him. He sensed reproach. He had disappointed them.

  In his dream he cried out to them, demanding to know what it was he had done, or had not done, and still they stared, and their meaning decayed from mere dissatisfaction to despair. No words yet, but he heard them clearly still, from the very way they stood: Why have you forsaken us? Why have you failed us?

  ‘What must I do?’ he demanded of them. ‘Tell me what has gone wrong.’

  Overhead, in the gaps between the twining branches, the sky flashed with lightning, back and forth: the night riven over and over with golden fire, yet never a rumble of thunder to be heard.

  They pointed, each and every one of them, fingers and claws and crooked twigs dragging his attention towards one tree, that seemed the same as all the rest, and he strained his eyes to see their meaning.

  Something bloomed on the shrivelled bark of that trunk, and at first he thought it was a flower, a dark flower that shone wetly as the lightning danced. Then it quivered and ran, thick and flowing, down the tree’s length, and he saw that it was blood. Of all the horrors of the Darakyon he recalled, this was new – this was unique to his dreaming.

  Achaeos opened his mouth to question, but he saw now that all the trees, every tree in the forest’s dark heart, and then all the trees beyond, were bleeding, the stuff welling up from invisible wounds and coating the trunks, pooling and oozing on the forest floor. Overhead the bright lightning lashed back and forth, gold on black, gold on black.

  He stepped back as that encroaching red tide reached him, but it was rolling forth on all sides, and the things of the Darakyon were melting into it, still regarding him with an air of betrayal.

  ‘What?’ he called out to them, and it seemed that his Art-made wings opened without him willing them, so that he was lifted high into the stormy sky, seeing the Lowlands spread beneath him: the Lowlands and then the Empire and the Commonweal and beyond. The stain spread out from the Darakyon, the tide of blood heedless of boundaries and city walls: Helleron and Tharn were gone, Asta and Myna. Now, across the map that was so impossibly presented to him, fresh wounds appeared in the face of the world – Capitas, Collegium, Shon Fhor, Seldis – cities drowned in blood that arose in fountainheads from the depths of the earth, and in those wounds there were crawling things like maggots, long twining many-legged things that should never have been allowed back into the light.