War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘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 helm, 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.

  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 aroun
d 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, manhandling 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.