Dragonfly Falling

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Tactician, word arrived from her engineers.

  Report, demanded Akalia. In her mind’s eye she saw the west wall of Collegium as her scouts could now see it through their glasses. The patient voice of one of her artificers guided her through the stress fractures, cracks and damage that her engines had done to it over the last few days.

  The wall is holding out better than we had anticipated, the artificer explained. The Beetle-kinden mortar remains semi-solid indefinitely, and so there is a great deal of flexibility in the wall. However, damage to the stones themselves is now quite widespread. There is considerable cracking and, even with the artillery left to us, we have been able to accurately expand the stress areas that you see here.

  Just tell me when, Akalia snapped at him.

  There was a moment’s pause in which the artificer conferred with his colleagues.

  We think today – late today or early tomorrow. We were considering holding until tomorrow in any event, to give us more time for the assault, and—

  No! she ordered. Today! If we can possibly be within Collegium’s walls today, then we must make all efforts. The artificers of Vek have so far proved themselves inferior to these Beetle peasants on every level. You know what you must do to change that.

  The artificer capitulated hurriedly. She had the sense of him hurrying off to order an increased barrage from the siege engines.

  This had gone on too long already. The greater Wasp city-state must have already done its job, because her scouts would have spotted Sarn’s approach by now, but she still felt that the scholars and merchants of Collegium were laughing at her behind their walls.

  Not for long, though. The King of Vek had given her free rein on how to punish the resistance of the city, after she had taken it, and that thought was her only consolation as she waited for the walls to fall.

  ‘Master Kymon!’ the man was shouting. ‘They’re coming!’

  He panted to a halt and Kymon just had to stare at him and wait for his wind to return. If this had been an Ant-kinden defence he would know already what it was the man had seen, not only in words but by the very image. His halfbreed Kessen watcher was dead, though, and he had to rely on word of mouth. This was unbearably frustrating.

  At last he snapped, ‘What did you see? Troops? Engines?’ Above them the Ant artillery was still pelting away at the wall. Each shot made the stones shift and shudder so that Kymon had pulled his cowering soldiers back from them in case they suddenly fell, even though Collegium’s architects had assured him that they were far from cracking.

  ‘Engines, Master Kymon, with soldiers behind. Ramming engines, I think.’

  Under cover of the bombardment, Kymon knew. The Vekken had already tried rams against all the gates on and off, and the metal-sheathed shutters had dented but never given in. They would be disappointed again.

  He was suspicious, though, for even the Vekken had some sense of strategy. ‘What about towers?’ he demanded.

  ‘Back with the men,’ his lookout reported. ‘The rams are in front.’

  ‘And these rams? Like the ones we’ve seen before?’

  ‘I’m not an artificer, but—’

  ‘Just tell me!’ Kymon barked. He would never have had to shout at Ant-kinden either, but sometimes, with these slow city people, it seemed the only way.

  ‘Not quite, Master Kymon. Bigger, with a different end to it.’

  Kymon cursed the man silently for not being able to just show him. Even so, his military instincts were telling him bad things.

  ‘Pull back from the wall!’ he shouted.

  ‘We’re already—’

  ‘Further, you cretins! Or I will personally flog every last one of you!’

  His men began to shamble away, talking amongst themselves and lagging. Kymon bared his teeth and fought down his temper.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  He rounded on the speaker and almost shouted down his throat before he saw it was Stenwold.

  ‘The Vekken are trying something new,’ he explained shortly. ‘How long before they reach the wall, boy?’

  The lookout spread his hands helplessly.

  ‘Well, how fast were they moving?’ Kymon asked him, thinking that—

  He picked himself off the hard flags of the street, head ringing, and saw all around him that his men, even Stenwold, were strewn about, similarly jolted off their feet.

  ‘Get up!’ he bellowed at them, hearing his own voice as strangely distant. They looked dazed, stunned. Stenwold’s eyes were wide.

  ‘They sent a petard against the wall!’ Kymon informed him, knowing that he was speaking too loud. Even as he said it, another explosion rocked them from a hundred yards south, and a third followed on its heels. The Vekken were using engine-mounted explosives driven directly into the stones so as to crack the city open. He turned fearfully, looking for the wall.

  The Beetles of Collegium had done well, for it still stood, but it was obvious that it would not stand for very much longer. He watched how the latest explosion rippled the stones like canvas in a breeze.

  The Vekken artillery kept on launching, and he saw great chunks of stones still bound with mortar falling out to crash onto the streets right in front of his men.

  ‘On your feet, all of you!’ he screamed at them, and there was something in his voice at last that reached them. They were clustered together too close, they were shaken, terrified, even. As more stones fell from the wall he strode out before them, shield on one arm, drawn sword in his right hand.

  ‘Listen to me!’ he shouted at them. ‘The wall will fall and it was always going to. You, boy!’ He pointed at the ashen lookout. ‘Go to the other walls, get men with the right materials to repair a breach. Go now!’ As the lad ran off Kymon glared at the rest of them. ‘You, though, you’re staying here with me, and those Vekken bastards are going to be inside your city in minutes, you understand? They’re going to punch a breach in that wall with their engines and then come flooding through, soldiers in better armour than yours, with better training than yours, and you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to hold them at the wall. You’re bloody well going to stop them getting into your city. You understand me? Not my city. I’m a Kessen and I wouldn’t have a city like this to defend for all the wasting world, but your city, and the only people in this whole city who can keep it yours are you! You men and women standing before me now!’ He was conscious of a greater shattering behind him which was echoed in the stir of the soldiers before him – and that Stenwold Maker now had a repeating crossbow in his hands and had cranked back the string.

  ‘When they come through,’ he bellowed at them, ‘they will loose their crossbows first, to try and clear the way. I want shieldmen at the front, everyone with a decent-sized shield. Behind them, crossbowmen, Master Maker here will take his shot when he sees the best time, and you all shoot when you see him do it. There will be a lot of rubble. They will have to move forward over it. You will just have to stand still, so make that count for you.’

  He stared at them, seeing city militia, artisans, shopkeepers, factors and merchants, dockworkers, porters, immigrant labourers, street-brawlers, black-marketeers and a handful of professional mercenaries.

  You’ll just have to do, he thought, and then, If I had a command of Kessen marines we’d sort these bastards out.

  And he turned, and the wall came down.

  It was so close on evening, the sky darkening almost visibly. The Vekken had left it to the last minute, but their artillery had finally done its job. The widescale weakening created by the petard engines and the incessant pounding of the trebuchets and leadshotters had first knocked holes in the wall and now it was tumbling, great clots and sheets of stone peeling away until the wall before and to the left of him was dissolving into an utter chaos of tumbling masonry.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted at his men and, when they did not move, he went himself,. trusting to their shame to carry them with him.

  The rubble had barely finish
ed shifting when he began to climb it, and for a terrible second he thought he was the only one there. Then there were shields to the left and the right of him, a motley collection of a dozen different styles, and now he was at the top of the breach, seeing Vekken soldiers hauling themselves up towards him.

  ‘Brace!’ he shouted, and ducked behind his own shield. Most of the men around him did the same, but there were always a few who were slow or who thought they knew better, and this time it proved fatal. Crossbow bolts slammed into his shield, three or four actually punching their square-sectioned heads through to gleam like diamonds in the backing.

  Then Stenwold was at his shoulder, raising his crossbow so that it almost rested on Kymon’s shield and then pressing the trigger, and a score of crossbows fired with him, and two score more a heartbeat afterwards. The Vekken were climbing the rubble with their shields held high, but a dozen fell anyway, the close-ranged bolts sticking in their armour, and more fell amongst their crossbowmen following immediately behind.

  Then the Vekken were making a final push up the shifting stones, and Kymon braced himself again, feeling his heart hammering out to him its message that he was too old for a battlefield by ten years at least.

  He rammed his shield forwards into the first man that came his way, impacting so hard on the man’s own that the Vekken was sent tumbling back down. Another man took his place, though, one of a stream of Vekken soldiers that was pushing forwards up into the breach, and the serious business of killing at the blade’s point then began.

  The harsh hammering of a nailbow sounded nearby as Stenwold’s bodyguard elbowed his way into the second rank and began to shoot the enemy indiscriminately in the face. Kymon was absorbed in his own trade, though. He was a trainer of men, a College Master, but most of all he was a swordsman. These Ants coming against him were soldiers, but he had always been something more than that, and he showed them. He taught them a dozen fatal lessons of the shortsword, his blade striking like a scorpion’s sting, forward, left and right, so that the soldiers advancing near him began to pay him more heed than his fellows, thus becoming easier prey for the men either side of him.

  All down the line, though, the battle was shifting. The defenders of Collegium were laying down their lives. They were selling them dearly, giving no ground, and making the Vekken pay for each inch they climbed, but the Ants fought as an impeccable unit, while the defenders fought like a ragged line of individuals. Kymon could feel the tide turning, no matter how many he killed or how skilled his blade.

  ‘Hold!’ he bellowed. ‘Hold for Collegium!’ He was aware, when he could pause to think, that the defenders were still faring far better than they should, and that the Vekken were not fighting with that sharp edge that Ant-kinden usually possessed. There was something in their faces, something haggard and bruised, that was blunting them.

  For a second the line swayed forwards again, whether from his words of encouragement or from the defenders’ own desperation. Ant soldiers went backwards, lost their footing, and it seemed that the advance might be halted, but then they gathered themselves, as Ants always did, and surged back up.

  ‘Hold!’ Kymon shouted once again and, miraculously, something went out of the Vekken advance. Abruptly the men attacking the breach were no longer backed by hundreds of others. The Ant attention had been somehow split.

  He felt something strike him in the chest, clipping the rim of his shield. At the base of his vision he could see the quilled end of a crossbow bolt that had driven through his mail. It seemed to hurt far less than it should.

  His line was failing, even though all the Ants beyond the foot of this hill of rubble were turning north, trying to move out of the way but constricted by their neighbours, their minds all obviously sharing the same focus.

  Something struck him in the head, ringing from his helm, and he found himself falling back . . . no, Stenwold had him. Stenwold and his Sarnesh bodyguard, carrying him back.

  ‘The line . . .’ he managed to gasp.

  ‘Hold still,’ Stenwold told him. There was more said but, although the Beetle’s lips moved, Kymon could hear none of it.

  He drew his breath to demand that Stenwold speak up, but there was no breath to draw, and he understood that the bolt had pierced his mail, had pierced his lungs, perhaps. The sky above them was growing dark far faster than the oncoming night alone could have managed.

  He sent his mind out, futilely, for some last contact with his own kind, but he was the last man of Kes remaining within the walls of Collegium, and when he died, even clasped in Stenwold’s arms, he died alone.

  Stenwold looked to the line, then, but incredibly it still held, and the Ants seemed to be trying to retreat, and there was a great cheer that Sarn had come, Sarn had come at last. Stenwold rushed forwards, and in his mind’s eye there was a vast host of Sarnesh soldiers crowding the horizon, but instead he saw merely the shapes of Sarnesh automotives powering towards the breach in the wall. There were two still moving, and the caved-in wreck of a third some distance back, where the Vekken artillery had found it. The remaining two were driving in at top speed, though, their clawed tracks chewing up the dusty, bloody earth, and he saw the Vekken soldiers at the fore linking shields, bracing themselves ridiculously against the charge.

  Artillery began bursting around them, and Stenwold saw one of the machines take a terrific blow that stove in one side and yet did not stop it moving. The machines were loosing their own weapons now, repeating ballista bolts smashing the Ant shield-wall full of holes. The Vekken had a siege tower out there, half-extended, and the undamaged automotive struck it a terrible blow that dented the whole front of the machine, but smashed the tower’s lifting gear totally, spilling men and broken machinery in its wake.

  Stenwold wanted to close his eyes as they struck, but he could not – he could only stare. The Vekken artillery was smashing into its own infantry in its haste to destroy the automotives, and then the unstoppable momentum of the machines had taken them right into the main block of soldiers, and hundreds of the Vekken shieldmen were simply crushed beneath them.

  The damaged machine was meanwhile slewing away from the city, one of its tracks jammed, and a moment later Stenwold saw fire break out around it, the fuel tanks for its engine catching light. The Vekken were fleeing from it, and it exploded, scything through them with jagged metal. The final machine was still driving for the breach, scattering the Vekken in its wake. A leadshotter struck it a glancing blow, spinning it round so that it was facing away from the city, and Stenwold saw Vekken Ants climbing onto it, swarming over it like their very namesakes, and prying hatches open.

  With a final effort, the last of the Sarnesh Lorn detachment threw its tracks into reverse and began to climb the rubble backwards. The Vekken had clawed their way on board before it was halfway up, and Balkus grabbed Sten-wold’s arm and pulled him back, fearful for his safety.

  Doctor Nicrephos was waiting for them, the frail old Moth looking impossibly out of place so close to the front line. ‘It is time!’ he was shouting. ‘We must go!’

  ‘Anywhere but here,’ Balkus agreed.

  Stenwold looked back to see the last automotive slew backwards into the breach, using its armoured length to bridge the gap in the wall. There was a thump and flare from inside that must be a grenade going off, and then the mauled machine fell still.

  Beyond the wall the Vekken began to retreat to their camp for the night, but they would be back again in the morning, perhaps for the last time.

  The Fly-kinden, Kori, ducked in and closed the door solidly behind him. In the moment it was open they could all hear the distant sound of exploding grenades.

  ‘Well this is lovely!’ he exclaimed. ‘I do hope the Empire sends us someplace nice like this again!’ He hooked his cloak off and cast it into the corner of the taproom. They had the taverna to themselves after the owner had gone off to fight.

  ‘You’ve taken your time,’ Gaved snapped. ‘We’d about given up on you.’


  ‘Big city, Wasp-boy, so even a man as talented as me takes time to get around it. And this whole Ant invasion gets in the way sometimes.’ Kori stretched. ‘Someone get me something to drink. I feel a need to toast the Emperor.’

  ‘Over a fire, no doubt,’ muttered Eriphinea the Moth. She slung him a wineskin, which he caught on the wing while hopping up onto a table.

  ‘Have you located it?’ Scyla demanded of him. The other two were also on their feet now, waiting for his report.

  ‘Relax, I’ve found the building,’ the Fly assured them. ‘Private collection? Barred and bolted, more like. No simple job to get in. Briskall, the old hoarder, he’s obviously gone to ground with all his treasures. Won’t come out until the siege is over, or the Vekken come to break down his doors.’

  ‘Can we break through his doors?’ Eriphinea asked doubtfully. ‘These Beetles and their locks . . .’

  ‘I’m the knees with locks,’ Kori told her. ‘I’m the utter knees. I’m more worried about finding our trinket once we get in there.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Scyla said disdainfully, ‘we can’t miss it. That’s an imperial guarantee.’

  ‘Oh sure, sure.’

  ‘We’ll have no difficulties locating it,’ the Moth insisted flatly. That silenced them, and they stared at her. Her blank eyes gave them nothing back.

  ‘Would you care to qualify that, Phin?’ Gaved asked her.

  ‘Not in any way that you could comprehend,’ she said, not harshly but as a simple statement of fact. ‘He knows.’ She pointed at Scyla. The Spider, finding their attention on her, scowled.

  ‘She’s right,’ Scyla said shortly. ‘We’ll know it. Her and me.’

  ‘Well whatever,’ said Kori. ‘You sniff it out, and I’ll get us in, and the Wasp here can watch the door. We have the place and the means.’

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ Gaved said.

  ‘Let’s wait till dusk, shall we, so people don’t see us housebreaking,’ Kori suggested.

  ‘There’s a war on! Who’s going to care?’ the Wasp demanded.