War Master's Gate sota-9

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Then he was shouting back at her and pointing down, but she could not make it out, not a word, and then he was drawing back from the wall, still shouting, bellowing even — something about an attack? But surely that was old news: the Wasps were already here. .

  They were not alone. She saw the first arm hook over the top of the wall, and Stenwold lunged forwards to hack at it — no finesse, but then none was needed. A moment later the Spider-kinden appeared all along the wall top, because there were other ways to deal with fortifications than with wings.

  Straessa cursed, darting forwards to run her sword through a lithe, lightly armoured figure even as the man dragged himself up over the wall. ‘Averic, get reinforcements up here! Get the Mynans, or Eujen, or someone!’

  And he was gone, wings a-blur, and she turned to see the Spider-kinden already making a stand atop the wall. Just a score of them so far, but more were on their way, hundreds more.

  There was a ferocious hammering, louder than all the other sounds of war except the leadshotters, and one face of the mustering Spider front caved in. She saw a big Sarnesh Ant in a mail hauberk shouldering forwards with a nailbow, knocking Sten Maker aside whilst fitting another magazine to it. Straessa darted in on Maker’s other side, crossing blades briefly with a Spider soldier, letting him get the measure of her before rolling her shoulder forwards to jab at him, even as he tried to pull back out of her reach. Then the Collegiate lines went shuddering back, another flood of Spider-kinden cresting the wall even as the Airborne renewed their attack, and she saw ahead of her, clambering over, a man she recognized from the night fight.

  He wore his black armour, still, and he must have been a strong climber to make it up in all that weight, but now that he was here he was laying about himself with that double-handed axe — just the right weapon to carve a space amid the close-quarters fighting. The nailbow hammered again, but the big Ant was shooting up at the Airborne now, while the armoured Spider officer was pressing ever forwards, keeping close to the Collegiates he was fighting to deny anyone a clear shot at him.

  Mine, she decided, and was cutting a course to meet the axe-wielder, stabbing out at any Wasp or Spider in the way, but stepping onwards to meet the man as neatly as if they had made arrangements beforehand.

  She thought she had him — lancing for his face below the rim of his open helm — but he got that axe of his in the way far faster than she anticipated, and turned his parry into a hasty swipe at her head that she swayed aside from. They were jostled by a dozen other skirmishes all around them, hardly ideal space for either weapon now, but they made do and, if he could not get his blade to her, he beat at her with the haft or the butt, and she punched him in the face with her guard.

  Then a shudder went through the melee, and she saw that the Mynans had arrived at the far side of the Spider incursion, recognizing the flash of their black and red colours. They had shortswords and daggers to back up their snapbows, and most of them had cut their teeth in the resistance: vicious, dirty fighting on the streets of their occupied city. Abruptly the Spiders were no longer pressing forwards, but just trying to hold whatever ground they had, and the axeman thrust the haft of his weapon before him and pushed hard, hurling her back into the press of her fellows even as her rapier point scraped off the mail over his groin. Then the axe was swinging freely, and she had to drop almost to her knees to get out of its way. He was shouting something, some encouragement to his fellows, and she struck upwards, aiming for the thin mail under his arm. He twisted at the last moment, and her blade caught on the lip of his breastplate and bowed alarmingly. Then a flagging snapbow bolt ricocheted from his helm and he lurched backwards, his pale face clenching in pain, He was still whirling his axe about him, but the tide had turned, carrying him further away from her, and she was not sure that was a bad thing.

  The Spiders were retreating over the wall now, leaving plenty of their dead behind them, and the attack of the Airborne slackened off as the Wasps tried to regroup. Straessa found Stenwold Maker at the wall, looking outwards. The balance of the Second had made good time, but where was there for them to go? The gate was still closed, and where were their rams?

  ‘The engines?’ she shouted.

  ‘Gone!’ he called back. ‘I don’t see any that made it to the gate!’ Although there were still plenty of Airborne out there, some of the soldiers on the wall were starting to shoot down at the Imperial infantry. ‘I need a messenger for Maker’s Own Company. They should be ready for a sally once the Empire starts its retreat.

  ‘They’re going to retreat, then?’ Straessa asked him.

  ‘What else is left to them?’ he demanded.

  The big Sarnesh turned up just then. ‘Maker.’

  Stenwold’s glance at him was evasive, ‘Balkus? You didn’t have to come.’ A Fly-kinden passed by, distributing ammunition, and Stenwold grabbed the small woman and sent her down to Elder Padstock with new orders.

  ‘I need your help for my city, Maker,’ the man called Balkus explained. ‘That means I need you alive.’

  Stenwold opened his mouth, but the next voice to be heard came from somewhere along the wall: ‘They’re going for the gate! Artillery!’

  Many of the soldiers up on the wall were shooting straight down now, and Straessa saw several artillery pieces testing the limits of their aim, declining as far as they could go.

  ‘Hammer and tongs,’ Stenwold spat. ‘They’re trying the Sentinels. They must be desperate.’

  Then the Airborne were coming back, trying to keep the increasingly punishing snapbow shot off the infantry by offering themselves up instead as fleeter, harder targets, and Straessa could spare the gate no more thought.

  Stenwold, though, was still watching. So far, there were a good half-dozen Sentinels ranged before the gate, with others still crawling about the field before the walls. They were not troubled by the wall engines, for those few able to angle low enough to shoot at them saw their leadshot and bolts just scarring and denting that armour, without seeming to touch the workings or the crew within. Stenwold was forced to fight down an uneasy thought. There is someone within, is there not? The sure and fluid movements of the Sentinels had always seemed more like those of things alive in their own right than something piloted by the hands of man. Then the first of them was backing up, legs moving in an intricate dance as it prepared to charge the gate.

  This is ludicrous, he found himself thinking. These aren’t ramming engines. But even as he thought it, he saw that, below the blind and covered eye that was its leadshotter barrel, someone had mounted a blunt, square-sectioned point, like an ugly little horn just at the right level for the centre of the gates.

  Stenwold felt cold within himself, and looked about for a messenger, but the Wasp Airborne was on the attack all around, and he had nobody available but himself. With sword drawn, he found the steps and half-ran, half-skidded down them towards ground level and the gate.

  He found some preparation there: three lines of Vekken soldiers stood before the gates, in the shadow of the wall’s arched tunnel, and someone had already mounted a set of metal braces to reinforce the great bronze shutters that had been lowered into place to back up the gate. Here would always be the weakest point of a wall, but Collegium made solid gates even so.

  ‘We need more bracing!’ he was shouting, as he reached the ground and started running in earnest. ‘Padstock! Termes! More bracing!’

  Then he felt the impact through his feet even as he heard it, realizing that the Sentinel had scrabbled its way forwards, visualizing the great weight of articulated metal rushing on with that horrifyingly sudden speed. Ahead of him, he saw the gate shutters bow, the inner wood of the doors crunching under the tremendous impact, the five bars straining in their sockets, and the metal shutters themselves — all that Stenwold could actually see — warping visibly. One of the braces — a girder of solid steel angling out from the gate’s centre to the ground — buckled all at once, and instantly Vekken soldiers went rushing forwards, m
anhandling its redundant weight out of the way so that a new one could be put in place.

  The next impact came even as they were at it, and Stenwold had only a moment to think, Impossible! There can’t have been time for it to back up! But of course there had been more than one Sentinel out there, and a new one had come thundering in even whilst the first rammer was backing away. The gates groaned like a wounded giant, and abruptly the Vekken had dispersed, splitting into neat units to fetch more bracing forwards, abandoning any idea of a quick sally out to rout the enemy.

  Then the Airborne came.

  This was their plan, he understood: they must have abandoned the wall top altogether, for suddenly the air and ground on this side of the gates was full of them, Wasp soldiers came shooting and stinging and stabbing — and dying from the very moment they arrived, but fighting to keep the gate from being reinforced. In their midst, the crazed insects brought by their airship still blundered and savaged, men and beasts alike in their utter carelessness for their own lives. For that first brief moment, the Vekken and the soldiers of Maker’s Own were caught unawares, ceding the Wasps a tenuous foothold before the gates, but then the Ants had adjusted to circumstances, descending on their enemies with silent determination, swords out and wreaking a terrible carnage in that enclosed space. Stenwold saw the Mynans hurrying down the nearest steps to provide reinforcement, and the Student Company archers on the overlooking rooftops were taking advantage of every clear shot they could. But the Wasps would not be driven back — the Airborne and their insects driving themselves into a killing frenzy to hold their ground — and all the time the rhythm of the Sentinels pounding against the gate was quickening, each driving in at top speed, with a force that seemed to rock the very foundations of the wall, before rattling smoothly back even as the next one charged.

  Twenty-Eight

  His was a kinden steeped in treachery and cunning from the very dawn of history. To those Inapt scholars who knew of the Assassin Bug-kinden legacy, his kin were a byword for duplicity — and they had paid the price, but the Moths still shuddered to think how close they had come to ruling the world. His Art made even his hands into killing weapons that could shear through steel.

  He was of a profession, an old and honoured profession, that made deception its watchword, that wore the faces — the minds even — of others as easily as another might put on a coat. And he was a veteran who had honed his magical and his physical skills over decades.

  And, beyond that, he was learned. He had been a parasite within the archives of the Moth-kinden, who had kept him half prisoner and half guest, as a tool to be used in dire need only. More recently, he had worn an Imperial rank badge and seen how the gears of the Empire turned.

  All Esmail knew now was that he was woefully out of his depth, meddling in — no, not even meddling but being dragged into — matters that no sane man would ever want anything to do with.

  He should have backed out when he first met the Empress. . or perhaps followed his orders and tried to kill her — tried, he suspected, being the relevant word. Instead he had listened to her golden words, her promises; he had studied her and seen the bewildering potential that chance and fate had somehow hatched within her. A queen amongst magicians, the inheritrix of the ancient world: what could such a woman not achieve?

  And he had been a fool, an overawed fool.

  And too late the Worm had been mentioned, and he had understood the flaw in that plan, just as had old Gjegevey. He had previously counted himself lucky that Seda was power without finesse — for how else could he have hidden from her, after all? But that same power, yoked to the driving acquisitiveness of an Empress, lacked the discernment to know what to reach for, and what to hold back from. And she knew about the Worm, and she saw there just power, because they had been powerful.

  And it was here her feet had led her — or the idiot Gjegevey had led her — to the Master Seal, the keystone in the edifice that had rid the world of the Worm.

  And still he had held back because of that promise, that potential. . for when would the world see such a chance to restore the balance of history, but in her?

  He could still hear the conflict as he moved through the mist-shrouded forest, and a little focus sufficed to gain a hazy picture of it. He sensed Tisamon hard pressed, being forced to give ground to keep between his increasingly mobile enemies and his mistress.

  Everything had changed.

  He was keeping his mind tight shut now. It had been a shock when that other voice had bludgeoned its way in, with the same raw, clumsy power as the Empress. More of a shock had been the understanding behind it, which had caught him unprepared and seen what he was — cracking Ostrec’s stolen shell by elegant and unconscious intuition. As she did so, he had seen small shards of her, too: yes, she knew of his profession and had faced such spies before. Yes, she knew of his kin, even. That same power as Seda’s, but yoked to a very different and more contemplative mind.

  The Empress had spoken about her, the hated Beetle girl, who had somehow assumed the same mantle: her sister, her joint heir. Esmail had not understood until now.

  And he had a terrible, seductive thought, Perhaps something may be saved? Perhaps this girl, this Cheerwell Maker, might be manipulated. Surely easier than trying to steer the Empress?

  And another thought — one that no man in his position ought to allow himself: Perhaps she would not even need manipulating.

  And she had survived. The Empress’s minions had gone for her, and had fallen one after the other, until now only Tisamon barred the way.

  And here stood Esmail, between them and the Empress, using all his craft to cloak himself from anyone’s attention.

  If he returned to Tharn right now, or somehow found a way to share thoughts with one of their Skryres, what orders might he be given? Depends on which Skryre, arose the depressing thought. He was on his own now, as a spy always was in the end: cut off from his masters and with only his faltering judgement to rely on.

  And here was the Empress herself, just ahead, with that fool old Woodlouse and the turncoat Wasp in Moth’s robes, brought to bay at last. Any moment now, Tisamon must surely give way, and then the Beetle girl’s followers would break through and kill the Empress themselves, and what would Esmail have gained?

  He found inside himself an unending supply of fear. The Empress terrified him. To take action and lose his cover terrified him. To do nothing terrified him even more. He stepped forwards.

  Seda’s head swung towards him almost blindly, and he braced himself for an assault, magical or physical. He underestimated his spycraft and her own distraction, because her expression revealed only relief.

  ‘Ostrec, get over here!’ she snapped. ‘Tisamon can’t hold them off for long.’

  And indeed he could hear the clatter of steel, and imagined the followers of the Beetle girl twisting and turning, and Tisamon giving ground step after step.

  ‘Majesty,’ he said heavily.

  ‘Draw your sword,’ she instructed him, and he did so, to allay her suspicions. He was more dangerous without it, with both hands free. He closed the distance between them in three easy strides.

  ‘This way.’ And she was off, and now he felt that pulling point, the centre of this place, so that Seda trod a spiral path towards it like a moth to a candle. Argastos. Of course, because if she could subvert and appropriate that power, she might still win,

  Unless I stop her.

  Gjegevey went labouring after her — she had surely stopped only to give the old man time to catch his breath — and his face wore the set and despairing expression of a teacher whose student had gone beyond him without learning important truths. Well, your fault, Woodlouse, if that is so. Tegrec had been helping him along, but now he was running after Seda too, and Esmail read in him the nervous gait of a man close to breaking. All the better.

  ‘Ostrec!’ Gjegevey wailed and, despite himself, he turned back, virtually hauling the old man’s arm up about his shoulders and hustling
this wheezing, hunched encumbrance along. To get me closer to the Empress, he reassured himself, but just then his motives were so muddled as to be beyond divination.

  Ahead. .

  They were running short of trees, ahead, which meant he was running out of time. The ground suddenly rose there, forming a hill too rounded to be natural, faced and plated with slabs of grey stone: a piecemeal carapace whose gaping cracks sprouted weeds and briars and even stunted trees. There was a gate there, too, set into an outcrop of the hill and framed in stone, the doors themselves made of thousands of little flakes of wood, suspended off a frame, like the scales of a moth’s wing, wormy and blackened by age.

  They had been gilded once, he understood. For this is Argax, seat of Argastos, greatest war leader of the ancient world. The knowledge came unbidden and unwanted. Not a barrow, but a hall once. Nobody builds doors into a barrow.

  Gjegevey broke from him and actually outstripped him, hobbling frantically with his staff, ‘Majesty!’ he called out, and Esmail knew this was his moment — if moments existed for misbegotten creatures such as himself.

  Seda turned, and on her face there was a strange mixture of elation and desperation. She had found Argastos’s lair and yet, at the same time, she had only moments left to discover how to draw power from it, and even Esmail himself could sense no obvious breach in the place’s armour. The undoubted magic was not simply for the taking.

  Because it’s in someone’s hands already? But he was speeding up now, hard on Gjegevey’s heels, and cast that thought aside.

  ‘Help me, Gjegevey,’ the Empress commanded. ‘Quickly — they’re coming.’

  And Esmail found it in his heart to pity her then, just a young Wasp girl risen higher than ever a woman of her kinden had before, but frightened, at the end of her resources. Who would not have done the same as she had, in her position.