With a great roar, he leapt for the next automotive to grumble past, swinging himself up beside its artillerist and the smallshotter mounted there.
The Esca Magni kicked into the air, that first beat of the orthopter’s wings hammering at the ground, throwing the craft straight up, clawing itself away from the yawning pull of the ground. All around Taki, and below her, the rest of Collegium’s air power was launching, their Stormreaders ungainly and impossible for that first moment, before transforming into things native to the sky.
She gave the Esca its head, let it find its path over the city, her eyes fixed on the eastern sky. The bright sunlight seemed alien to her after so many battles in darkness. Glancing left, she saw a flight of Mynan machines painted in their black and red, whilst a long string of Collegiate pilots trailed off on her far side. She spotted Corog’s machine powering ahead, the tip of a great broad arrow that was slowly forming behind him.
Contact! came the flash from one of the locals, and a moment later Taki revised her picture of the sky, for the enemy were far closer than the had anticipated, already diving out of the sun on their first attack run. She cursed herself for falling into useless patterns, for today’s fight would owe precious little to any of their previous engagements.
Her lamps stuttered and glowed as she tried to shove a mass of orders into the minds of her fellows, in a pitiful echoing of the interplay of thought amongst the enemy. On me; attack full forwards; break off; circle back; drawn them with us. Knowing, even as she made the attempt, that they would lose the thread of the message before getting halfway through it. In the end she just sent Follow my lead! three times, as she made her run.
Piercer bolts flashed and danced about her, the closest Farsphex spotting her — probably they even knew her by now, by her smaller, fleeter craft and her flying style. She jinked left, trusting to the skill of her fellows to adjust, opening up with her own rotaries and scoring a handful of glancing strikes before she and her opponent were past one another, just flashing blurs gleaming in the sun. Her enemy would have to deal with her allies, she with his.
She abandoned her line immediately, because the sky before her was being cut into pieces by shot from both sides. Instead she drove upwards, straight at one of the enemy, forcing him aside because she was feeling madder than he — then she slung the Esca right. She found the flank of a Farsphex before her just as she imagined she would, bobbing up ten feet to avoid the bolt the Fly-kinden bombardier loosed at her, then unleashing everything her weapons had to give.
She drew a line of punctures across the top of the enemy’s hull before tracking into its open side-hatch. Then she was close enough to discern the red ruin she had just made of the bombardier, a man of her own kinden torn apart by weapons meant to destroy machines. She pulled up hurriedly, sick in her stomach and desperately trying to unsee what she had just witnessed.
But it’s war. What did I think would happen? The thought did nothing to erase that bloody image.
Then bolts were falling on her like the patter of rain, and reflexes kicked sentiment aside and slung her, almost upside down, looping out of the way of the oncoming enemy and aside from his friend, who was trying to pinion her — and she was past the two of them, knowing that neither had the angle to get on her tail. Already she was looking for a new target.
Scain swore as the Farsphex rattled about, bouncing Pingge away from the ballista, forcing her to climb uphill towards it one moment, fall past it the next. She was only glad that she was not being ordered to bomb anything right then. The way her aim was being shaken about, the good people of Collegium wouldn’t know which was was up.
That thought stuck in her throat, suddenly not funny. Then Scain was cursing again, muttering reports from the other pilots, requests for assistance, attempts to bring their formation together and destroy the enemy. For a moment a Stormreader flashed past the open hatch and she dragged the ballista about, but the target was gone as soon as she had registered it.
Then they were in an abruptly deserted sky, coasting over the silent and seemingly empty city as if this was a dream, and they the only thing in it. Scain was still muttering, and she caught fragments of his constant stream of consciousness: ‘… massing over the centre…’ ‘refusing to engage…’ ‘Aarmon scores a hit…’ ‘Tarsic’s down…’ ‘why are they all…?’ The pilots were all on extra rations of Chneuma to make up for having had almost no sleep since the night’s bombing raid.
There was a rattle, and three points of sky opened up in the hull beside Pingge, making her scream more with shock than with fear. Instantly Scain was hauling the machine into a tight turn, and she expected more damage, the enemy right behind them, but it seemed the Collegiate flier had fled as soon as Scain reacted. A moment later — peering down the narrow neck of the craft and over Scain’s shoulder — she saw the sky full of duelling monsters. The entire strength of both sides, practically every orthopter Collegium and the Second Army could muster, was now engaged in a deadly, graceful sparring, vicious and brutal for the men and women within the cockpits, and yet, seeing it from her detached perspective, as they plunged towards it, it seemed a dance where everyone knew the steps, a beautiful interweaving such as the darting shuttles of the looms back in her factory could never have managed.
Scain roared something wordless, and she felt the hammering of the rotaries through the metal floor beneath her. Past his head, in that great populated skyscape, a Stormreader shuddered and lurched, twisting desperately to be rid of him, but he followed its evasions like a Rekef man scenting treason, and abruptly the target’s two wings were not beating — were shredding apart under the ferocity of his attack — and then Scain was breaking off and letting his victim make the long fall alone.
A single bolt struck somewhere behind, near the tail, and Scain was already slinging the Farsphex sideways hard enough to make every rivet groan. Another Collegiate machine flashed by, already clutching at the air for an equally tight turn, and Scain thrust their flier forward to put distance between them and their enemy, whilst in his mind he had already summoned help.
Pingge knew she should now be crouching behind her ballista, waiting for that absurd chance that would allow her a shot, but she could not tear her eyes away. Everywhere she looked, the aviators were coming towards the final engagement of their pure and private war, trying to kill each other with every scrap of skill and mechanical genius their respective sides possessed. Stormreaders whirled away with shattered hulls, dead hands still resting on the stick, Farsphex trailed smoke from burning engines or broke up as the convolutions of their pilots and the damage they had taken passed some critical tolerance. It was terrible, it was awe-inspiring. She could not look away.
A fierce flash of flame showed an orthopter consumed, flaming and dropping, either a Stormreader struck by a lucky bolt from a bombardier’s ballista, or a Farsphex taken by an even luckier strike from the roof-mounted repeaters the Collegiates were using. Watching the disintegrating, burning thing whirl towards the city below, Pingge could not even tell whether it had been friend or foe.
Thirty-Eight
Standing east of the Collegiate camp, guessing that behind her most of the non-combatants were making their escape already, Straessa recognized a bad idea when she saw it. The last of her people was falling into position, and it seemed the explosion that had killed Praeda Rakespear was still echoing in her ears. She had not even been able to discover if her chief officer was dead or alive.
There was a tug at her sleeve and she glanced down to see Sartaea te Mosca, who should have been with the surgeons. The Fly woman, friend and hostess and occasional lecturer in Inapt studies, looked desperately grave, out of all proportion to her size.
‘Keep safe, now.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Straessa said. ‘No promises.’
The hoped-for smile flickered ghostlike over te Mosca’s face, then faded. ‘There will be stretcher teams following behind the lines, so get your wounded sent back immediately, if
you can. Just call out “Stretcher” and, if they hear, they’ll come, no matter what.’
‘Where did you find them?’ Straessa demanded. ‘You’ve learned how to magic people out of thin air, now? Wish you’d taught that in class.’
‘Oh, volunteers,’ the Fly said casually. ‘From the camp, you know: artificers, cooks, prostitutes, whoever we had. I was surprised, really. So many of them wanted to help. It’s their Collegium, too, after all.’
Straessa made to reply, but then three clear, shrilling blasts reached her, and she reached for her own whistle, relaying the order even before her mind had decoded it. Advance. Ah, right. She squeezed te Mosca’s hand, and then the Fly was half-slipping, half-flying away, back to the camp where the surgeons were already preparing themselves for the butchery to come.
Her maniple knew the sign, and for a moment she thought that they would not go with her, would just watch her march off on her own and then quietly slip away. Then they were falling into step, remembering their training in fits and starts. The majority had their snapbows, but about a third — the Inapt or the plain bad shots — had pikes upright and ready. In the second rank, Gerethwy had the considerable weight of his mechanized snapbow shouldered.
To their left and right, other maniples of the Coldstone were making a similar advance, doing their best to keep up with the swiftest of their neighbours — a piecemeal uniformity of movement being achieved by army-wide committee, in true Collegiate fashion. Unlike the traditional shield line that Ant-kinden had been so keen on, right up to the invention of the snapbow, each square was loose-knit, and there were gaps between the formations, because to be tight-packed and unable to move would be suicide in this war.
They were the front line — the anvil, as Straessa had said — and that image was foremost in her mind as she led her men out, with a snapbow slung at her side and her rapier at her belt. Ahead was only dust, and then, even as she looked there were shapes smashing their way out of it: the enemy automotives.
She remembered how fast they were, from the trench-works, but here, from on foot, they seemed a good deal faster.
‘Ready to disperse!’ she yelled out, watching their approach and trying to calculate trajectory. They really are coming in very fast now.
This was the Collegiate plan, on facing with the Sentinel automotives: plain avoidance and a stark admission that they had nothing to stop them. On the other hand, there were only around twelve of the machines with the Second, and there was simply a limit to the damage a handful of such monsters could do to an entire army.
The phrase is ‘acceptable losses’.
Straessa braced herself, then a moment later she realized that her maniple was to be spared. The unit to her left was breaking, though, the formation disintegrating into fleeing individuals in an undignified muddle as the Sentinel bore down on them, so that, when the armoured machine thundered through, only a luckless pikeman was caught by its charge, abruptly a broken corpse hurled high by the impact. Snapbow bolts rattled uselessly against the machine’s metal hide, and she saw some manner of return shot cut down two more soldiers before it was on its way again, rushing into the heart of the Collegiate army, desperate to get its jaws into something more substantial.
They were still advancing, dispersed units reforming and hurrying to catch up, because the enemy airborne and infantry would be following right behind. Straessa risked a look right and left. Towards the trailing edge of the right flank, one maniple had somehow got it completely wrong, spread too late or not at all. She saw a trail of ragged corpses, a gaping hole in their already patchwork line, stretcher-bearers rushing to separate the dead from those who might yet be saved.
‘Eyes behind, someone,’ she heard herself order. ‘I want to know when those bastards decide to come back.’
Beyond the advancing infantry’s edge, she saw one wing of the Collegiate automotives start out, overtaking those on foot within moments, dozens of disparate machines converted for war, along with the heavier, slower war engines of the Sarnesh. Each sported some manner of mounted artillery, but they seemed fleeting and frail compared to the Sentinels. And they’re what the Sentinels are after. The plan’s working so far. She guessed that her side’s war machines had started off back centre in the formation, so the gaps between the infantry blocks would lead the Imperial scouts to believe that Collegium would be running its auto-motives through the centre, in order to smash the Empire’s ground infantry, just as the Sarnesh had done at the Battle of the Rails. As soon as the infantry had started the advance, though, the automotives had swerved out towards the flanks, and thus the questing Sentinels would not find their prey.
But they’ll be right back when they realize it, and that’s going to be bloody soon.
‘Airborne!’ someone shouted, and Straessa looked up to see the sky abruptly busy with shapes that resolved themselves into Wasp soldiers dropping down towards them.
‘Pikes up! Snapbows aim and ready. Pick your marks!’ All along the line similar orders were being given. The maniple spread out a little, by long training, their sharp spearpoints jutting at slanting angles so that the enemy could not simply drop amongst them with sword and sting, whilst the snapbows were all levelled together, with little precision lost from their time drilling despite the fact that everyone there was surely as terrified as she was.
If it wasn’t for them watching me, I’d run, she decided.
‘Loose!’
The Wasps were arcing in, already levelling their weapons as they descended, but they had plainly intended touching the ground before shooting, and Straessa’s first salvo caught them still in the air. They were moving fast and spread out, so she had not expected much, but of the two score descending towards her people, a good eight or so were abruptly falling rather than flying, and her maniple was already reloading without her having to order it.
‘Pick your marks, forward!’ Half of her immediate problem was about to drop into the gap between her maniple and the unit to the left of her, because they saw the broken order of the Collegiate troops as a weakness to exploit. The other Wasp squad was coming down in front, ready to stand ground and hold them off until the heavier troops arrived. She could see them quite clearly: lean, rangy men in light armour striped in black and gold, armed with a snapbow, a shortsword and their Art. They had been at the front of every war the Empire had brought to its neighbours, at every expansion of the Imperial borders. She wondered how many thousands had already given their lives for such a fundamentally stupid cause.
‘Loose!’
And the snapbows of her maniple’s first three ranks raked into the enemy even as they touched down. She saw a good number fall — taken in that moment when landing stripped them of their speed. The rest were shooting back, but they were outnumbered now and, at some word from their sergeant, they took wing and put more distance between themselves and their enemies, waiting for reinforcements that would surely be with them at any second.
The other squad of Airborne had landed mostly intact between the two maniples, intending to take the enemy in the flanks, but those tough little square formations of the Companies had no flanks. Instead, the soldiers on that side were already facing towards them, three ranks deep and shielded by the pikes, and the same reception was waiting for them from the maniple to their other side.
The Collegiate snapbowmen were only given time for a single volley into them, catching the Wasps already returning to the air, recognizing an indefensible position when they saw it. A moment later, Straessa could see that the initial rush of the Airborne was pulling back all the way along the line, and then the three whistle blasts went up again from somewhere, and they were on the move.
General Tynan travelled at the heart of his army, at the apex of a small phalanx of armoured automotives, but in the open back of one so that his messengers could come and go as swiftly as possible. The conflict was widespread, and from the ground he had no clear picture of what was happening. He relied on his Fly-kinden and the swiftest o
f the Wasps to bring him news.
A Wasp soldier dropped in front of him now, one cheek smeared with blood. ‘First contact with the Airborne, sir. Our men driven back. Casualties light to moderate.’
‘How do their formations conduct themselves?’
‘They can fight on all sides, sir,’ the soldier reported — a man who had only moments ago been involved in that same skirmish. ‘They’re not so packed together as to give the best target, but their spears and their shot make closing with them difficult.’
‘Our own spears are closing on them?’
‘And they’re still advancing towards us. They seem decently armoured — medium infantry at least, and reasonably drilled.’
Tynan glanced across to his guest, Mycella, who likewise kept a flock of airborne spies at her beck and call.
‘I need some of your skirmishers,’ he told her.
She smiled at him, and he read there fondness and a certain anticipation of bloodshed. Spiders had never held back from the strike, when it counted.
‘What orders should I give them?’
‘Our medium infantry blocks are about four times as big as theirs, so we’ll be engaging several of their squares to each of our own units.’ The strategy fell into place in his mind even as he spoke. ‘If we can separate them further from each other that will give us a chance to surround them and destroy them individually, but as they are now, the space between each square is a killing ground for them.’
‘And you want my skirmishers to step into it?’
‘Send your mercenaries, if you want. I’m hoping that these Collegiates won’t hold their calm once we have them in a packed melee. Let your people push some of their squares together, break others further apart. Then let our superior order tell.’
He could give her no orders, of course, but she considered the matter and then gave a string of concise commands to one of her people, to be carried to the mercenaries’ adjutant, Morkaris.
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