War Master's Gate sota-9

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘What the pits are you doing?’ Madagnus demanded. He had been sighting up at the Wasp vanguard, calculating ranges, and nearly fell over Gerethwy’s apparatus on his way to the nearest leadshotter crew. ‘Get that out of here.’

  ‘Chief, this is my new weapon,’ the Woodlouse student objected. ‘You won’t believe it, I’ve rigged a repeating snapbow to a ratiocinator and-’

  ‘Son, this is not the time for experiment,’ his chief officer interrupted him flatly. For once, Madagnus looked scowling sober. ‘Get that out of here, I said.’

  Gerethwy frowned. ‘Chief, you don’t understand.’ It seemed as if he was about to deliver a lecture to enlighten the man.

  ‘I don’t have time for you,’ Madagnus told him. ‘Get this junk off the wall. Get yourself off it, too. You can’t even shoot straight. You’re no use to me.’

  The Woodlouse gaped at him, mouth forming unspoken words of protest.

  Straessa took his arm. ‘Gereth, just go. Get yourself somewhere safe,’ she said softly.

  He stared at her in a look of utter betrayal, his maimed hand twitching towards the crate, and then he was dragging it back down the steps.

  A street further back from the wall, in the incongruous surroundings of a rooftop garden, Eujen Leadswell was trying to stay calm. He had a maniple of his Student Company surrounding him, armed with pike and snapbow, while, to left and right, every rooftop that would take them had another. In the end the Assembly had not trusted his latecomer soldiers with manning the wall or the gate, but this line of defence had been judged within their capability. Now he could see the new wall engines — the longrange ones — loosing at targets somewhere beyond the wall, and the other engines were being readied and aimed.

  ‘Nobody here can fly?’ he demanded. Nobody could, as he had known already. The troops stationed on the wall — Coldstone Company and Outwright’s Pike and Shot — were supposed to send messengers back to keep him informed, but that appeared to have been overlooked. Let’s face it, they don’t think we’re up to much as soldiers. ‘Learn to Live’ indeed, and starting with trying to learn our own battle plan. He tried to spot Straessa but there were too many soldiers there, at this distance seemingly crammed elbow to elbow. She would be just one more helm and backplate amongst many.

  In the streets below was gathered the strength of Maker’s Own Company, maniples spread out in case of enemy artillery, but ready to hold the gate or sally forth as needed, with the heavy armour of the Vekken to back them up. Kymene’s Mynans, a notably smaller contingent, had a mobile brief to reinforce the wall or the gate as required. Eujen could only take comfort in the fact that Remas Boltwright’s Fealty Street Company was even further from the fighting, held in reserve to deal with possible incursions by the Airborne. We rate higher than that, anyway.

  There was a twitch of alarm amongst his troops as Averic dropped down at the roof’s edge, fending off an over-eager pike-head.

  ‘Everyone’s in place, Chief,’ he told Eujen. ‘We’re on pretty much every roof within bowshot of the walls.’

  Eujen nodded, on the point of saying, Go and find Straessa, Make sure she’s all right, even though the real fighting had not even started yet. But that would not be a responsible course of action. He was going to live up to the rank the Assembly had bestowed on him. He was going to do the Right Thing.

  There was a hollow boom, then he saw smoke rising from the wall. The tense glance he shared with Averic spoke volumes. That was the first leadshotter. How fast are they coming? And what happened to the Stormreaders?

  ‘Averic, go and poach a Fly-kinden from one of our maniples. No, make it two: I need messengers or I’ll never find out anything,’ he decided. The Wasp student’s hand moved, a gesture hastily suppressed, and Eujen realized that his friend had been about to salute him.

  ‘And Averic?’ he added, as the Wasp’s wings flashed from his shoulders. ‘Go check on. . Officer Straessa, if you get the chance.’

  ‘Will do.’ With a brief, wan smile, Averic stepped off the rooftop and swerved away over the city. Another half-dozen leadshotters spoke, then, a hollow percussion that rolled back and forth along the wall.

  Down at ground level, Stenwold heard out the hurried, somewhat garbled report of the air battle impatiently. Before the messenger had finished, he had already considered a half-dozen plans and eventualities. He had seen the Wasp army in action many times before, but they did not stand still, and each engagement had brought some manner of new artifice to change the nature of the battlefield. So what comes now? The remaining Imperial air power was an unknown question, but for the moment it seemed that the field had been abandoned to more traditional tactics: the mass movement of fighting men.

  ‘Commander Termes, Chief Officer Padstock,’ he began formally, regarding his two subordinates. The Vekken Ant was expressionless as ever, but there was a hard anticipation on Elder Padstock’s face. She wanted to kill Wasps in the name of her city, Stenwold knew. ‘I’m heading up the wall to get a first-hand view,’ he told them. ‘I’ll send orders down, to brace the gate in the worst case, to sally out in the best. Until then, eyes on the sky. I’m expecting company soon.’

  ‘War Master,’ Padstock acknowledged. Termes just nodded wordlessly.

  Stenwold climbed the steps at speed, because, if he slowed, then he might just grind to a halt altogether. The weight of his breastplate and helm combined with score of aches, pains and old wounds to nag at him, and he consoled himself with thoughts of the magical time of after this. .

  Chief Officer Outwright, of the Pike and Shot, was young enough to be Stenwold’s son, and looked young enough to be his grandson. His armour shone like the best silverware, but his face was ashen and frightened when Stenwold reached him. His attention had been focused across the wall, of course, where the Wasps were navigating the complex earthworks with steady determination, closing and closing even as more and more wall engines began bedevilling them. Stenwold saw that they had chosen a mixed marching order: there were solid blocks of their heavier infantry out there, but they were surrounded by a looser-knit shifting mass of soldiers that must be the Light Airborne, and whose open order denied the Collegiate artillery good targets. There were plenty of small siege engines amongst the Wasps, though, making heavier work of the terrain and attracting much shot from the walls. Even as Stenwold watched, a lucky leadshot impacted near one, the missile exploding into shrapnel as its internal charge went off. The distance was too great to count casualties, but the Imperial engine — some sort of modified leadshotter — seemed to have ended up on its side.

  ‘Be ready, Outwright,’ Stenwold told the young chief officer. ‘They’re taking a lot of damage from our engines. They’ll try to do something about that soon, when they’re close enough to make a swift rush of it. Just remember your briefing.’

  ‘Yes, War Master,’ Outwright gasped. Thankfully his company had experienced officers who were already relaying the order: Ready snapbows, ready pikes. Stenwold clapped the man on the shoulder, a public gesture to boost his morale and his soldiers’ confidence, and carried on along the wall, looking for Madagnus,

  The Ant artillerist was sighting up one of the magnetic bows, and Stenwold could feel, as much as hear, the crackle from its charged lightning engine. A moment later the air relaxed as the machine discharged, its explosive-tipped bolt vanished from its groove, and Madagnus was obviously cheered by the result, because he was cackling to himself even as he dragged at a lever to recharge the device. Down the wall from him, a pneumatic repeating ballista was just starting to loose, its pistons banging out a solid rhythm as it began throwing bolts into the front line of the enemy.

  Stenwold looked out at the Second. They were just about close enough, he reckoned. A lot depended on the speed and stamina of their Airborne, but there seemed to be a distinct order now imposed over the somewhat unruly ranks. He took out his glass and extended it, scanning the lines, seeing definite preparation, the magnification enough to see individual faces,
to spot sergeants passing amongst their men, mouths opening to shout silent orders. More than Airborne, too: as well as the Wasp heavies, he saw a good number of Spider troops, also in loose skirmish order, and starting to move ahead of their Imperial colleagues. But they don’t fly, and so they don’t bother me as much.

  It was back to basics for the Wasp army, at least for now. The Light Airborne, their traditional strength, was about to test itself against Collegium marksmanship.

  ‘There!’ Madagnus barked out. ‘Let’s take a crack at that monster.’

  He was indicating a Sentinel, the armoured, woodlouse-like form humping and scrabbling over the broken terrain without obvious difficulty. Stenwold had seen the automotives in action first-hand at Myna and, once the wall had come down, they had been a terror in the street-to-street fighting, but he did not see them as a priority. Because it won’t come to that. Because we will hold the gate, and they do not have the means to break the wall.

  The Sentinel was making quick work of the earthworks, its multiple legs scrabbling and pulling it over anything it encountered, and the magnetic ballistae had not been intended for such a mobile target, but Madagnus apparently took this as some sort of a challenge. His lips moved, counting to himself, and he wound the engine degree after degree until he was leading the galloping Sentinel by the required distance.

  Then he loosed, soundlessly, only a shudder in the air to indicate it, and cried out with triumph as he scored a hit. Stenwold looked out at the stricken machine — close enough to need no glass now — and saw it shake itself just like an animal, as though getting its armour plating to fall back into place again. A moment later it was moving on again, not even a serious dent to show for the impact.

  ‘Right.’ The set of Madagnus’s jaw presaged dangerous risk-taking, and Stenwold grabbed his arm.

  ‘Go for the threats to our gate, Chief. Priorities, remember.’

  The Ant stared at him blankly for a second, then nodded briefly. ‘Ramming engines,’ he confirmed.

  There was a series of shouts and snapbow shot from down the wall, and for a moment Stenwold thought he had missed the Second’s attack, but it was one of the great hornets, far from the Imperial airship and still mad for blood, that had come droning over the wall. The snapbowmen were far better suited to destroying such creatures than were the pilots who had shared the air with them but there were still some scores of the beasts circling out there.

  He had just turned again to look out at the enemy when the Wasps made their move, and the entire front seven ranks of the Second Army exploded, thousands of soldiers taking to the air in a vast cloud, and he felt a ripple of shock pass through the entire Collegiate wall detachment. Then the Airborne were coming for them like a storm, and he heard the cries of officers on both sides: ‘Pikes out and hold! Snapbows ready!’

  The Airborne had taken dozens of cities like this, making a mockery of traditional fortifications, but, back during their heyday, there had been nothing as accurate as a snapbow in their enemies’ hands. Even the Sarnesh crossbowmen at the Battle of the Rails had inflicted savage casualties on them. Stenwold did not envy those attackers their duty, even as he prepared himself to kill as many of them as he could. He had his little pocket snapbow already out, and two score bolts he did not intend to waste.

  On the ground, the Imperial ramming engines were grinding on towards the gate, with the heavy infantry to back them up. The Airborne alone would not be able to engage the wall for long, and the Empire would need to get its better-armoured troops inside the city soon. Without serious artillery to break down the walls, without the provisions for a long siege, that meant that they would have to force the gate and hope to hold it somehow.

  The shock of seeing the Imperials suddenly in flight was still evident in the faces of many of the Company soldiers about him, but enough of them had their snapbows levelled even as the artillerists bent to their task of singling out the ramming engines as they advanced.

  ‘Ready!’ called out a young officer nearby — that Antspider woman, Stenwold recognized; Eujen Leadswell’s friend. ‘And loose!’

  The stuttering racket of hundreds of snapbows exploded from around him, rippling along the wall as the other maniples took their cue. Stenwold saw soldiers falling from the sky, here and there, but the great mass of oncoming enemy seemed undiminished. All around him the Company soldiers were recharging and reloading their bows and, although they had trained and trained again, and although many of them had actively fought before, now their hands shook and he saw plenty of faces taut with fear. Because this is our home and they’ve come this far.

  ‘And loose! Pikes brace!’ the Antspider shouted. When she had discharged her own snapbow she slung it over her shoulder and drew a rapier from her belt. Beside her, Madagnus focused on targeting another ramming engine, muttering calculations to himself with utter absorption, as though nothing else in the world mattered.

  Then the Airborne were on them. All along the wall, the Inapt soldiers of the Companies had levelled their pikes so as to make a mass onslaught by air as costly as possible, and nobody had actually imagined that the Empire’s soldiers would just blunder right in, but that was exactly what happened. Whether it was bravery or stupidity or merely momentum, Stenwold never knew, but he had a chance to get off one shot with his little snapbow — too close to miss, right into a man’s face — and then he was almost thrown off the wall altogether, with a Wasp solder scrabbling on top of him, his sting-warm hand finding Stenwold’s face. A moment later a Company soldier had put a bolt into the assailant, the impact sending the Wasp convulsing off Stenwold, and down, down towards the streets of Collegium. Stenwold sat up and dragged his sword from its sheath.

  All around him was a bitter, frantic melee. The men of the Airborne were trying to get to the wall engines, and in that same moment Stenwold saw the fighting wash over a leadshotter along the line, the artillerists cut down by sting even as they were sighting up, and then a handful of Wasps trying to lever the weight of the machine off the wall entirely, before the Company soldiers could get to them. Interspersed with the human soldiers had come a handful of their insects, not acting to any battle plan but just mad for killing, their sheer carapaced bulk slamming into the Collegiate soldiers, stings and jaws jerking convulsively even as they died. Most of the pikes had been abandoned by now — many with luckless Wasps still impaled on them — and the Company soldiers were switching from sword to snapbow as chance allowed them. Stenwold saw the Antspider, standing practically back to back with Madagnus, as she lunged forwards an impossible distance to pierce a Wasp’s throat, then drew back to parry a sword blow aimed at her chief — whilst a pair of Fly snapbowmen crouched in her shadow and shot at whatever presented itself.

  Overhead, the air was full of shot. More and more airborne were arriving every moment, but the Student Company archers positioned a street back — unengaged so far — were sniping at every safe target, meaning every Wasp still in the air. The Imperial death toll was horrific in those first moments, and there was a terrible expression to be seen on the faces of the Wasps. These were the men who had marched here under constant attack from the Stormreaders, and had then faced the last of the Felyen. They had already paid in friends and blood to get this far, and, if they failed now, it would all have been for nothing.

  Straessa took down another soldier as he landed — ramming in between his ribs even before he had a chance to see her. Everywhere there were knots of fighting Wasps — her own maniple had been broken apart as the Imperials simply dropped in amongst them, stinging and stabbing indiscriminately. Her only point of stability was Madagnus and his magnetic ballista — and the sound of her own voice, constantly rallying anyone nearby to stand firm with her.

  Another soldier stooped on her, but he was dead even as he dropped, taken by one of Eujen’s sharpshooters, and the next flier wore Collegium colours and she still came within an inch of skewering him.

  Averic wore a buff coat and a Collegiate lobster-tail h
elm, and that was just enough to overcome the reality of his kinden.

  ‘What the pissing pits are you doing here?’ she demanded, jabbing her blade straight over his shoulder at another of the Airborne as the man landed, but this time beyond even her longest reach. ‘And don’t say Eujen was worried about me, or I really will kill you.’

  His conflicted expression confirmed the truth of that, or maybe the world didn’t just revolve around her and it was the mass death of his own kin that was torturing him. Even so, when another wave of Airborne was abruptly on them, she saw his hands flashing with his own sting, standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

  She saw an opening, and fumbled for her snapbow, the sword tucked awkwardly under one arm. Behind her, Madagnus gave out another shout of joy as he crippled one of the ramming engines.

  She had her snapbow to her shoulder, trying to sight along it, when a newly arrived Wasp came up from below the level of the wall and rammed himself into her, the two of them going down in a tangle of limbs. Averic was beside her instantly, hauling the man off. Straessa saw the Airborne instinctively reach out with an open hand, and she yanked at the man’s arm even as Averic’s own sting hammered into the soldier’s chest, melting the armour there but not piercing through. Then the soldier had backhanded the Wasp student, kicking to his feet with a flare of wings, and Straessa stabbed him clumsily through the unprotected leg.

  He fell away, and she lost track of him a moment later, because she saw Madagnus get shot. A snapbow bolt came skimming along the line of the crenellations and struck him under the arm even as he aimed, and he pitched sideways with an outraged expression.

  ‘Chief!’ But by the time she got to him, he was almost all gone. He had a moment to clutch at her arm, no recognition in his eyes, and his last words became just a spray of bloody mist.

  She saw Stenwold Maker himself close by, discharging a Wasp snapbow at one of the Airborne, and then lurching over to the wall to measure the rate of Imperial progress down on the ground. She shouted to him that her superior was down, but he heard none of it.