There was a great cheer from the defenders, for the ram had gained a gap of no more than four feet either side of the automotive for the Vekken to press through, but then the Vekken were coming regardless, surging through the gaps in tight order with their shields raised. The repeating ballista slammed its bolts into them, knocking them back two or three at a time, and stones were pushed off the battlements above to crash down into the packed intruders, battering their shields aside. Arianna and the other archers needed no further orders now. They were shooting into the Vekken as they came, arrows and bolts and slingstones bouncing from shields or whipping past them. For a moment, one mad moment, it seemed that the Vekken did not have the force to seize the gaps, that they would be driven back so that the defenders could retake those narrow breaks and hold them against all comers.
They were Ant-kinden, though, and in the simple business they were engaged in there were no finer soldiers anywhere, and once that moment of hope had gone, they pushed through, despite the bolts and the stones, and over the heaped bodies of their kin, and onto Collegium ground.
As soon as he saw that the archers could not hold them, Stenwold drew a great breath and cried out, ‘Forwards!’ and, because there was no time to wait, he was first in, trusting to them to follow where he took them.
He met the Ants with their shield-line, and without expectations, but he was an old fighter. No Ant soldier, but he had held a blade for longer than these Vekken men and women had been alive. In those first seconds he surprised himself by killing two of the enemy, lunging past their shields as they skidded on the last loose stones. On either side the mismatched shields of Collegium pressed, and there was still a fair barrage falling on the enemy from above.
And there was no more to think about, no regrets, no worries, just the savage, simple business of putting his blade into as many Vekken as he could reach. It was turned by shields, turned by armour or by other blades, but he did not let up, stabbing and cutting with a fury, because this was his city and these were his people and if Collegium fell, then the whole world fell with it into a dark age that would make the Age of Lore seem like enlightenment.
He was dimly aware that Balkus was now beside him, the only other man in the front rank without a shield. Balkus, with a shortsword in each hand, battering down Vekken shields with brute force, always keeping an eye out for Stenwold, as if some mindlink had joined them in their extremity, so that he could anticipate each blow even as Stenwold registered it, putting a sword in the way to deflect it.
They were losing ground, but not as swiftly as they should. The sheer savagery of the Collegiate charge had shaken the attackers, put them back on the shifting stones. Ant faces were impassive at best, but Stenwold thought he could see something like bafflement within their eyes. They were soldiers, superior in every way to this mixed-race rabble that confronted them, so how could they be held up for even a single minute? They locked shields and pressed, but they were confronted with men and women who were totally cornered now, nothing to lose and nowhere to go. They died, of course, those defenders of Collegium. Tradesmen were run through, merchants wearing ill-fitting armour were hacked down, labourers and militamen fell with crossbow bolts buried deep. There was not one of them who went easily, though, and even as they fell they dragged at their enemies, pulled their swords down, hooked shields with their fingers. A thousand acts of final bravery and defiance, shaking the Vekken advance, if only for a moment.
And seeing this hesitation, Stenwold’s heart soared with pride in his city, and a lunging Ant laid his arm open and he fell back, sword falling from his grasp. Balkus killed the man who had wounded him that same instant, and already a shield was raised to take his place, but Stenwold was reeling, being passed back through the crowd until he was standing clear, with Arianna descending on him and swiftly tearing a strip off her robe to bandage him.
‘I can fight!’ he insisted, but she dug her fingers into the wound until he stood still enough for her to finish. ‘I can fight!’ he said again, looking round for a sword.
‘War Master!’ someone was shouting and, feeling dizzy, he turned to look. A man he felt he should recognize was running towards him, waving his arms. ‘War Master!’
‘I’m here! What news?’ He could barely hear himself over the fighting behind him.
He knew this man – one of his own soldiers from the harbour guard—
His heart sank and he could have virtually mouthed the words along with the man: ‘War Master! The harbour! They’re coming in at the harbour!’
Stenwold turned, torn by doubt, seeing the line surge back and forward, the final throes of Collegium’s defence. He was responsible for the harbour, though, and there were people needed there.
He hoped that Balkus would be enough for them. The big Ant was still standing, splashed with blood, working himself into a frenzy.
‘Take me there!’ he commanded, and the harbour man ran off, leaving him to lurch in his wake, with Arianna holding his good arm to help him along.
The sight that met him at the harbour was worse than he had feared, though, and worse than he had dreamed possible. There were already two tugs dragging the drowned armourclad out of the way, and beyond it the sea was full of ships, painted across with dozens of sails.
Thirty-Eight
The bulk of the Wasps could retreat far faster than the Ants could follow, and they took flight down the rail track towards their camp, their rail automotives and their massed artillery. The sentinels and many of the armoured shield-men, however, could not simply fly away. Faced with no choice, and with a fierce desperation that left a lasting impression on their enemies, they stood their ground, holding up the Ant advance still further so that their comrades could escape. In a tight square of armoured men, surrounded on all sides by the implacable Sarnesh soldiers, they fought on with bitter determination until every last man of them was dead.
The Ants re-formed their lines, their shield-lined formations, with some of them that had sustained heavy casualties breaking up to form new groups. Others near the back began to move the wounded out. Two automotives had been smashed before the leadshotters had been silenced, and a third had ground to a halt with artificers hurriedly prying armour off to get at its engine. The Sarnesh went about reassembling their battle order with the minimum of fuss, with calm deliberation. The Wasps were allowed to fall back, to exhaust themselves in the panic of flight. The Ants would follow at their own inexorable pace.
The warriors of the Ancient League were another matter. They had not stopped when the Sarnesh had redrawn their lines. They harried the Wasp-kinden mercilessly, chasing them in the air, raking them with arrow-shot. It seemed at first that they might continue their hunt all the way to Helleron. Che, trying to focus her telescope on the nimble figures in green and grey, abruptly overshot them. There was nothing but black and gold now in her field of view. She took the glass away, trying to see what was going on.
The Mantids and their allies were now falling back, surging to meet up with the plodding Sarnesh lines. Beyond them the Wasps were making a new stand, rallying into another wall of shields and ready airborne. Behind them . . .
She felt just then that things had started to tip, although she could not have said why. She was no tactician, but something spoke inside her.
A rail automotive had pulled in to the broken end of the rails in a great plume of steam. More Wasp soldiers were rushing out of it, hurrying forwards to join the battle. Reinforcements from Helleron, she saw, but something new had communicated itself to her. She could not be sure what.
There were Ants all around. One word to them would be a word to the whole army. She had no words, though. She had nothing she could warn them of.
Still. ‘You should take care,’ she said to the nearest Ant surgeon, ‘your people at the front.’
He was washing blood from his hands and he stared at her as if she were mad. Out on the field, transport automotives were removing the bulk of the wounded. The worst would be treat
ed here, the rest removed to Sarn. The surgeons were hard pressed to keep the pace.
‘The Queen is consulting with her tacticians,’ the surgeon said suddenly, and Che realized that she had been heard after all. The man’s eyes unfocused for a moment, and then he said. ‘We will press ahead. We must destroy them, drive them until they can fly no more, and then wipe them out. We must break their siege engines in order to protect our walls.’ He nodded. ‘It will be a long, hard fight.’ She realized the last words were his, and the rest had been the Queen’s.
During the first clash of the battle the Wasps had been able to bring forward more of their siege train, another batch of leadshotters and a few of the smaller catapults that could be wheeled out intact rather than needing assembly on the spot. The Sarnesh automotives would have a harder time of it from now on. Even as Che watched, the first artillery engines began to discharge, their shot mostly flying wide or short, and the Sarnesh advance continued with the same patient progress, the wide sweeping wings of scattered Mantids and Moths surging a little ahead of it.
The next batch of the wounded had now arrived, and she gave up her watching, went to do what good she could with bandages and needle. It unnerved her, tending these wounded Ants. They did not curse or scream, because each was taking strength from all the others, from their suffusing solidarity. Somehow a show of pain would have been more reassuring to her. All around her the Ant surgeons worked in skilled communion, linked with each other and with their patients. It made Che feel clumsy and awkward. They even gave her the least of the wounded to tend.
There was a moment – she remembered it well later – when all the soldiers around them stopped, just for half a second, all at once, and she knew that out on the battlefield something new had happened. She tied off the wrapping on the man she had been working with, and took up her glass again.
The Ant advance had stopped as they tried to work out what had happened. The fresh Wasp troops from the rail automotive had formed a double line ahead of them, but at a range that a heavy crossbow would find stretching. They had loosed some manner of weapon, though. The rattle of missiles had struck all the way along the Ant line, short darts like nailbow bolts that had bounced from shields or got stuck in armour, although a few unlucky soldiers had been injured in the face. Beside them, a few of the lightly-armoured Mantids had fallen.
The Sarnesh started their march again, the automotives grinding solidly along beside them. Wasp artillery-shot was falling sporadically about them, and another of the armoured vehicles was brought to a halt when a stone shattered its left track. The advance was undaunted, though between the officers at the leading edge of the Sarnesh army a quick analysis was taking place of what new weapons the Wasps possessed and how they might work.
The twin archer lines of the Wasps suddenly sprang forward in a flurry of wings, covering ten yards in a great flying leap. It was a chaotic display, obviously unpractised. For a moment they were everywhere, in utter confusion, and then they were struggling to get themselves in place as the other troops, who had so recently fled, moved forwards again to back them up.
As one the Ant soldiers picked up their pace. The leading officers could see more of the weapons now, and they seemed to be firepowder bows of some sort, like nailbows, but there had been no smoke and no sound other than a distant crackle when they had loosed.
Drephos had driven him hard in order to be here now. It was only because the foundries of Helleron were so well supplied, so easily turned to any mechanical endeavour, that it had worked at all. Totho had been working day and night, and forcing his workforce through the same punishing schedule. Towards the end he had allowed them three or four hours of sleep at most. How they had hated him, the halfbreed that fate had set over them, and now Dre-phos’s right-hand man.
The factories were still working now, of course, but Totho had left them to the care of other hands. Drephos had come to him one day, after his life had become just a murderous round of unceasing manufacture, and told him, ‘It’s time.’
‘Time for what?’ Totho had asked dully.
‘Time for the real test, Totho.’ The master artificer had earlier been radiant with enthusiasm, eagerly rubbing his disparate hands together. ‘The soldiers have practised. They are passable, and the efficiency of your invention easily makes up for the deficiency in their training. We are ready to take your gifts to General Malkan.’
‘You want me to go with you?’
‘Are you going to tell me you don’t deserve it?’ Drephos had asked him. ‘Totho, I am very proud of you. I made absolutely the right decision when I took you in. The least I can do is let you witness your creations in action.’
Which means the warfront. Totho had opened his mouth, and a host of words had thronged there, as he stood looking into Drephos’s expectant face. I don’t want to go to war. I don’t want to see my work killing other people. But he had remembered Drephos’s words about hypocrisy. I am a weaponsmith. I owe it to my victims to be there. As a personal service.
‘I’ll go pack, Master,’ he had said, and Drephos’s answering smile had actually cheered him.
The rail journey would have been intolerable had he not been so tired. They had crammed every soldier they could into the pirated carriages, their kit, their supplies and disassembled war engines, spare parts for fliers. It had been a mobile war waiting ready to be deployed. Drephos and Totho had been given no more space than the soldiers, huddling shoulder to shoulder with bad-tempered Wasp artificers and officers. It would have been intolerable if Totho had not slept through almost all the journey, awaking with an artificer’s senses only when the automotive began to slow.
There had been a great deal of babble at that point and when Totho had asked what was going on, a gesture from Drephos had silenced him. The master artificer was already on his feet, armoured hand clutching a leather strap to steady himself and listening hard.
‘The battle’s just begun,’ he had announced. ‘We cut matters a little fine.’ Pitching his voice higher to carry across the crowded carriage he had called out, ‘Now, listen, I have orders! I want a messenger to bring General Malkan to me instantly. I want all the snapbowmen ready to engage immediately. I want them drawn up in ranks beside the rails, loaded weapons to hand. Pass the word back!’
Although the entire journey had been a protracted grumble about Drephos and his presumption, when he did give an order the officers moved briskly. The automotive ground to a screeching halt and began spilling Wasp-kinden from every door, doing their best to find their places. Totho could see the bulk of Malkan’s army trying to re-form, evidently severely bloodied by the Sarnesh troops. It’s exactly like the stories, he thought, arriving just in the nick of time to save the day.
The snapbowmen that were Drephos’s new experiment made their ragged ranks, but he drove them forwards, forwards until they had passed the fleeing host of the first engagement, until Totho, running with them, could see the dark line of the Sarnesh advance, the great wall of shields.
One of them loosed, perhaps just a fumble of the trigger, and abruptly they were all shooting, together and individually, and Drephos was shouting at them. The master artificer had his breastplate on over his robes, but he still looked nothing like a soldier or an imperial officer. He cursed the soldiers with utter fury, though, threatening them with impalement on the crossed spears unless they reloaded and stood ready.
When he turned back to Totho, though, he was calm personified. ‘Well out of effective range here,’ he said, ‘but did you see?’
‘See, Master?’
‘Our bolts reached the Ant lines,’ Drephos confirmed, and he was smiling as though he had just been given a present. ‘Within range, from here. The Sarnesh even stopped for them. Your remarkable invention, Totho!’
Abruptly he was all business again, looking around at his soldiers. ‘On my order, I want a ten-yard jump forwards to put us properly in range. Ready yourselves!’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Now!’
Totho had to
run, to catch up with the line again, but Drephos flew. He flew badly, very awkwardly, like a wounded man, but he put himself through it nonetheless to stay alongside his secret weapon. Totho’s secret weapon. By the time they arrived, the Wasps were just about in order, forming their two lines, one kneeling and one standing. It was a familiar formation that crossbow units all over the Lowlands used.
‘Stand ready!’ Drephos called. He had officers for this task, of course, but they stood there dumb whilst he made his own voice hoarse. He was quivering with excitement, uneven features stretched in a mad grin. ‘Charge your bows!’
In ragged unison the Wasp snapbowmen cranked back, pressurizing the air in the weapons’ batteries. Totho could see in his head just how they worked, the designs he had made when he was still an apprentice at Collegium.
‘The rest is trimming,’ Drephos had explained to him, after the first test. ‘Your battery is the revolution! We could put a firepowder primer there instead of your device, and use the long tooled barrel, but firepowder is clumsy. The discharge rocks the weapon, and so you have no accuracy at any range, and it’s dangerous and expensive to boot. Your discharge of air barely makes the weapon shudder as it vents, and it is both safe and free. A revolution, Totho! War marches on another step!’
There was something obscene about Drephos’s expression now. The excitement that shook the man was almost sexual.
‘Loose!’ he yelled.
The leading edge of the Ant advance simply disintegrated, men and women collapsing backwards with nothing but surprise and pain. There were round holes punched in shields, split rings in chainmail, and soldiers all the way along the line were abruptly dead without warning, even as the snap-snap-snap of the bows sounded all around Totho.
In a split second, the Ant tacticians must have made their decision, for the Ant lines were abruptly charging forwards with all speed despite the distance, going from a steady plod to an outright run without warning and without confusion. They outstripped their Mantis allies for a moment, and they avoided their own fallen without fail, not even slowing. For any other army, moving in full armour over such a distance, it would have been madness, but they were the strongest soldiers in the world, wearing mail for years until it became a second skin. It could be done, and they did it.
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