She heard the roaring of the automotives even over all the clamour of battle, and then the Ant lines were splitting, as if by some pre-planned clockwork mechanism. A lead-shot strike caved in the front of one vehicle, which began to gout smoke. Another shot punched into the packed Ant lines, smashing through the centre of one formation, and then raking the side of the one immediately behind, leaving three dozen dead at a stroke. The Wasps surged forwards at some points, held back at others, and the automotives drove on like hammers, nailbows shooting until they jammed, and the Wasp line was broken like porcelain, all its unity lost.
In the centre the remaining sentinels had formed a fighting square and were contesting to the last with pike and shield, seeming nigh-invulnerable in their all-encasing armour, but there were Wasps fleeing backwards all along the line, getting in each other’s way, even fighting with one another, and the Ant advance continued as steadily as before.
Thirty-Seven
The city was running short of places to house the wounded, let alone the dead. Where the messenger took Stenwold was one of the College’s workshops where apprentice artificers had toiled and studied in happier times. Into a small room beyond a long hall that was almost carpeted with the ice-packed dead they had brought the body, and laid it on an artificer’s work table. This unknowingly appropriate gesture affected Stenwold more deeply than anything else.
They had not been able to get Scuto’s body to lie flat, of course, what with the hunchback and the man’s other deformities, and so it was resting on its side, looking as awkward in death as life, propped up on its own projections that had scratched long lines into the wood as they had worked him off the stretcher. Amidst all those spines and thorns and burned, blistered skin, they had not cared to remove the three quills of crossbow bolts that were sunk deep into Scuto’s flesh. Stenwold was sure that they had been the final death of him, and not the grenade that had scorched across his nut-brown skin and smashed one of his hands. Scuto had always been a tough one.
His mockery of a face, that had resembled nothing more than a grotesque puppet carved idly from wood, was locked in a grimace that showed all his hooked teeth. Stenwold put a hand out to close his friend’s eyes, but managed only to spike himself on one of the Thorn Bug’s points.
Scuto had been pulled from the Sarnesh automotive that had blocked the breach, and Stenwold realized that if he had stayed a moment longer he would have witnessed it himself. Scuto had been dead before they had ever drawn him out, though. There would have been no last words, no farewells. Stenwold understood that only one of the Sarnesh Lorn detachment had survived, and she was not expected to live long despite all the doctors were doing for her.
‘Why?’ Stenwold asked. ‘Why did he come?’ He looked up at Balkus, and saw the man’s normally solid features twisted in grief. Balkus, he recalled, had known Scuto a long time, at least as long as Stenwold himself.
‘He always looked after his people,’ the Ant said. ‘He must have heard about the siege here. We were his people, Stenwold — you and me. Waste and blast the bloody man. Did he think I couldn’t take care of myself?’ Balkus’s fist slammed down on the table. ‘You stupid, stupid bastard! What did you think you were doing?’ There were no tears on the big man’s face, but his voice, the utter loss in his voice, more than made up for it. Ants grieved privately and mind to mind, Stenwold knew, but Balkus had been away from his own kind for many years, had forgotten the touch of their company, and his pain came out in words just like any other kinden’s.
Stenwold tried to picture those last terrible moments in the automotive, the desperate fighting hand to hand, the grenade’s explosion, the driver trying to keep control of the racing vehicle, trying to get it within the walls of Collegium, past the Vekken soldiers and their crossbows.
It came to him that for once he had done the right thing in sending all the others off: Che and Achaeos, Tisamon and Tynisa. For once, at least, where Stenwold now was had become the place not to be.
I am running out of friends. Scuto was the oldest and the closest of the dead, but he had Kymon on his conscience too, and poor Doctor Nicrephos, and so many of the faces that he had been introduced to so recently, only to have them snuffed out in the fighting — people like Joyless Greatly, like Cabre who had manned the harbour defences, or Tseitus in his submersible.
‘What time is it?’ he called out. ‘Anyone know?’ ‘I think I heard the third clock not long ago,’ Arianna said. She had been keeping prudently out of the way, by the door.
‘Until dawn, then?’
‘Two hours and half an hour more, Stenwold. No more.’
‘We should try for at least some sleep,’ he said tiredly.
‘The Vekken will be back with the dawn, and they have
made a breach now. I do not know how we can keep them
out of it.’
‘I’m not going to sleep, not tonight,’ Balkus said flatly. ‘I’m going to go to that breach, and when they come I’m going to kill every bloody Vekken I see. And when I run out of ammunition I’ll use my sword, and when that breaks I’ll use my fists.’ He was a stranger then, broad-shouldered and threatening, an Ant setting about doing what Ants were best at, which was killing their own kind.
Stenwold had thought that the Vekken would have to come over the crashed automotive to take control of the breach, and he had his soldiers lined up with crossbows ready to shoot them as they crested the top, but his lookout had just called from the broken wall and told him that they were bringing up a ram. A ramming engine, if they could coax it up the mound of debris, would punch the automotive aside in just a few blows, leaving the breach wide open for the Vekken infantry to rush in. Taking over Kymon’s command, Stenwold had gathered every man and woman who could hold the line and placed them here, but the Vekken soldiers were better at close work by far. This would be the last stand, he knew, the last moment before the Vekken surged into the city and overran it.
The Great College, he thought, the Assembly, the Sarnesh alliance. All the centuries of innovation, philosophy, art and diplomacy that had been hatched within these walls, and now the ignorant hands of the Vekken would carry it away and dismantle it.
‘Artillery’s ready, War Master,’ one of his artificers reported. The wall had been judged too unsteady to mount more engines on it, but they had found from somewhere a pair of ballistae, and he had them flanking his forces on either side now. One was a light repeater, the other a massive and ancient Ant-made piece they must have dredged from a museum. It would probably do no more than loose a single bolt.
‘Angle so that you can hit the ram, when it starts to push the automotive out of the way,’ he told them, knowing that by then it would already be too late, that the breach would be well opened.
On the walls, in place of the artillery, he had posted everyone else: old men and women, the injured, the young and a plethora of Fly-kinden who would only get trampled underfoot in a ground-level melee, all up there with whatever they could get their hands on. Some had crossbows, but others had hunting bows, stonebows, even slings and rocks for throwing. Some industrious citizens had even carried a few dozen of the fallen stones from the wall up to its top, to pitch over onto the Vekken.
Even as he looked up at them the shooting started, men and women of Collegium putting their heads over the battlements to let slip a bolt or arrow or stone and then ducking down fast. The clatter of answering quarrels came fast after, and Stenwold saw several, the slow or the unlucky, hurled back from the wall within the first few seconds.
‘Stand ready!’ he called to his forces. He wanted to deliver an encouraging speech, such as the one Kymon had given, but he, whose life had been measured in words often enough, found himself without them.
He had already found a greying militia officer to be his second in the all too likely event that something happened to him. Third in command was Balkus because, if it came to that, they would need the man’s fighting spirit more than any gifts of leadership.
; ‘Heads up,’ the Ant muttered to him, and he scanned the wall, looking for some new threat. Balkus was glancing backwards, though, and he turned to see Arianna running to join him.
‘No!’ he shouted at her. ‘Wait for me back at the house, please!’
‘What kind of fool do you think I am?’ she asked him. She had found a leather cuirass from somewhere, and there was a strung shortbow over her shoulder. ‘If you fail here, do you think they won’t kill me anyway?’
‘But. I want. ’ I want you to be safe. He stared at her helplessly, and with pointed determination she took her bow and nocked an arrow to it.
‘Let her fight,’ Balkus said. ‘We need her. You’ve seen all who’s left here. We need everyone.’
‘The ram’s coming in!’ the lookout shouted. A glance at the archers on the walls showed that they were shooting almost straight down now, and that others were heaving great stones up to the lip of the battlements.
‘Artillery ready!’ Stenwold shouted, and drew his sword. Between the Vekken and Arianna, he did not see the strength his followers derived from that simple, calm motion.
There was a hollow boom, and the automotive jumped a foot forwards, and then slid another foot down the loose stones, and Stenwold could hear the ram’s engines straining, imagined its toothed wheels clawing for traction.
‘And loose!’ shouted the artillerist artificer, and the repeating crossbow began its work, sending bolt after bolt, as fast as Stenwold’s heart was beating, into the gap the ram had created between the automotive and the wall. The big old ballista had misfired, and six men were frantically rewinding it, cranking the string back while the bolt was replaced.
‘Shields ready!’ Stenwold called out, and his rabble of citizens and militia formed up into a mockery of a military formation. Every single man or woman with any kind of shield stood in the front rank, some with no more than a few nailed-together planks on a leather strap as a handle. At each end stood the archers, crossbows levelled shakily, or arrows ready at the string. Arianna had run to join them. The look of desperate bravery on her face made his heart ache, and all the more so because it was mirrored on every face around her.
With a tremendous crack the ancient ballista hurled its eight-foot bolt forwards, the wooden arms shattering into pieces with the force, but the missile drove straight through the ram’s hull, and Stenwold saw a sudden venting of smoke and heard the engine squeal in protest and then die.
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.
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