War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The clawed gauntlet stabbed out. Thalric’s sword was out of line and too slow to parry, and yet the killing stroke never reached him. Amnon had lunged and hooked a hand about Tisamon’s pauldron, dragging him back, his sword stabbing down.

  The point scraped off Tisamon’s mail, the dead man twisting in time to shrug off the force of it, and backhanding Amnon with a faceful of spines, sending the Beetle staggering away, clutching at his eye. Thalric struck again, only to have his sword slapped aside, and then Tisamon kicked him solidly in the chest, pitching him over backwards – and took Amnon’s lunging sword on his forearm, the edge savaging his gauntlet, the blade of his claw drawn back along the line of his arm, inside Amnon’s guard.

  It flicked out with a spasm of Tisamon’s fingers, the point resting for a second on the rim of Amnon’s breastplate, before he drove it in with one sure, sudden motion, its keen edge cleaving halfway into the big Beetle’s neck.

  Che cried out in horror, and for a second she was fumbling at the last traces of Amnon’s life, fully intent on turning the man into an abomination akin to the thing that Tynisa was battling. But she did not know how, and she could not replicate the magic – and a moment later she was glad of that.

  Tisamon paused a moment, whether in respect or simply receiving new instructions, and Che reached out to Icnumon – all power and no subtlety, just like the Empress herself – and unravelled him, pulling apart the knot of blood and magic that was keeping him in motion, so that his body collapsed with a final gasp of relief, and he was allowed to die.

  By then Tisamon was on the move again, and coming straight at her, but Tynisa was there to defend her, and Thalric as well . . . and Che cast her mind out towards that errant false Wasp whom she could still sense out there and gave him an ultimatum.

  Act now, she ordered him, allowing no room for negotiation.

  And he did.

  Twenty-Seven

  ‘What just happened to the orthopters?’ Straessa demanded. She had no telescope, and the only glass within reach was at the eye of Madagnus, her commanding officer. There was a sort of a cloud that had suddenly sprung up around that looming airship, though, now dispersing into . . . were those other flying machines? There was some sort of ferocious air battle going on, which hadn’t been the plan explained to the ground forces.

  And speaking of ground forces . . .

  The Second Army was making its advance, too far away for her to see anything more than solid blocks of black and gold broaching the uneven, churned-up ground that would funnel them into the hammer of Collegium’s artillery.

  Madagnus swore and rammed the telescope into her hands. ‘Get the magnets ready! Loose as fast as you can – put as much shot into them as you’re able.’

  The magnetic ballistae were already charged, so the first volley went off in glorious unison, explosive bolts breaking into bright flashes of fire across the Imperial front lines. There were only a dozen of these weapons along Collegium’s wall, all the artificers had been able to build, and they had been intended for destroying the Empire’s greatshotter artillery, which had been mostly lost on the road to Collegium. All their range and accuracy meant little against the great mass of the Second Army.

  Then they were recharging from their lightning engines, and that meant just dead time in which the Empire’s soldiers crept closer and closer. The earthworks were slowing them down, but not as much as they should have done: most of the Imperial army could fly, after all, and even armoured men could manage a brief hop over obstructions. Straessa could see knots of soldiers struggling with siege engines, though, carrying ramps to ease them up the jumbled path the Collegiates had dug for them. She remembered how much sweating, back-breaking work all that digging had entailed. And now we see if it was worth the effort.

  Judging that the Empire was still a way off from reaching snapbow range, she lifted the glass to view the aerial battle, steadying it as best she could to try and make out something of what was going on.

  By that time it was mostly over. The great Imperial airship hung there, listing slightly, its hull seemingly peppered with holes, but the skies around it were almost clear of orthopters, for those winged forms madly circling the vessel didn’t look like . . . Straessa blinked, lowering the glass when at last she understood what she was looking at. But that wouldn’t work, surely? But even now there were Stormreaders overhead, yet so very few of them, and many virtually limping through the air with wings battered and torn. And the Imperial Air Corps? The only blessing was that it seemed to have gone to ground as well, and Straessa wondered just how discriminating those infuriated insects had been.

  The flying elite that had dominated the battlefield up until now had been abruptly swept away. The war had been reclaimed for the ordinary soldiers, such as the thousands of Wasps presently toiling towards them, heedless of the magnetic ballistae, and now getting within range of the other wall engines.

  They’re certainly keeping up a pace, Straessa thought, slightly nervously.

  Someone dumped a crate full of what looked like random pieces of metal beside her, and she looked round, into the face of Gerethwy.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s finished,’ he declared. His eyes were red-rimmed and wide, the look of a man with too many ideas and not enough sleep. ‘My rational snapbow, Antspider. I just need space to set it up.’

  ‘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 on
ly 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.