War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Stenwold stepped forwards, at that moment no more than an extra defender against the tide, and a bolt ripped into him, cutting through his armour and between his ribs and exiting almost in the same instant, puncturing a clean hole all the way through, marked with a spray of blood.

  He sat down, more surprised than anything. There was pain, but it came only when he breathed in. When he let the breath go there was just coughing, and blood on his hand when he took it away from his mouth.

  He found he could not stand up. The strength that had carried him this far in his fight against the Empire had abruptly deserted him.

  Someone was shaking him, which wasn’t helping. He saw Elder Padstock loom over him, her face aghast as it had never been during the fighting. Stenwold tried to reach up to comfort her, but his arm seemed far, far away.

  ‘Get him out of here!’ she was saying. ‘Get him to the surgeons!’

  They must be talking about me, he realized. He tried to tell her that she had more important things to do, but he could only cough.

  Beyond her, the Wasps were breaking through, He could only watch, see the last moments of the battle for the gateway, the bloody-minded determination on both sides, no quarter given, not an inch of ground won save in blood and bodies.

  Then he was being lifted, a heavy old Beetle man cradled in the arms of a broad-shouldered Ant. Balkus.

  Padstock turned back for the fight, chambering another bolt in her snapbow, and Stenwold saw her stagger, struck in the gut by one shot that punched its way out through her backplate. The next bolt snapped her head back, as though she was suddenly looking for the enemy amid the stones of the gateway above her. He saw her fall.

  Then Balkus was lurching away, and Stenwold was denied the last moments of the city’s defence, the unspoken heroism of the end, such as never finds its way into the histories.

  He felt Balkus stumble to one knee with a gasp, but then the man was up again, shambling and staggering, but putting distance between them and the gate.

  A moment later there was a man buzzing about them, a high-pitched voice demanding to know what had happened: Laszlo.

  ‘Where’s the nearest surgeon?’ Balkus demanded, his voice strained, and then, ‘Piss on your cursed boat, we can’t make it all the way to the docks! Where’s a surgeon, please!’

  ‘I’ll get one, I’ll get one!’ Laszlo promised, and he was off, with Balkus yelling, ‘And a stretcher!’ after him,

  They were three streets away from the gate now, and Stenwold found himself being lowered into a sitting position, his back against the wall of someone’s house. There were soldiers running past them, in both directions. Nobody seemed to be in charge but at least none of them was a Wasp, not yet.

  Balkus sat down beside him. ‘Maker . . .’

  Stenwold managed to turn his head. There was a terrible pallor to the Ant’s skin, and where he had slid down the wall Stenwold could see a red smear. He tried to speak, but the words collapsed into little more than a grunt.

  Balkus took a deep breath. ‘If you make it. When this is over. If you win.’ He grimaced. ‘Don’t let Sarn have Princep. You owe me that, now. Do something. Don’t let them ruin everything.’

  A long pause.

  ‘And look after Sperra.’ The Ant gave long sigh. ‘This is a pisspoor way to go. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Not gone yet,’ it was just a whisper that Stenwold managed, but Balkus seemed to hear it. He did not answer, though.

  Then people were crowding him, and he recognized the purple sashes of the Student Company. ‘It’s the War Master!’ And someone saying to get him to the College, where a lot of the healers and stitchers had been stationed.

  ‘Take him,’ he hacked out the words, jabbing a weak finger at Balkus, not knowing if the Ant lived or not.

  The Light Airborne were persistent, but Straessa’s remaining command were allowing them nothing. Atop the wall, they had formed a tight cluster bristling with pikes, and with enough snap-bows to make the Wasps hurt every time they came close. One flank had already gone – she saw Wasps all over the wall there – but Kymene’s Mynans were holding firm on the far side, not so many of them as before, but they were solid, not giving an inch. And it seemed to the Antspider that the Airborne’s fervour was now slackening off. Are we beating them back? Surely we are.

  Beside her, Castre Gorenn loosed her last shaft, slung her bow carefully on her shoulder, and then took up a pike that a fallen soldier had dropped, Straessa speculated grimly how many snapbow bolts her followers had left between them. She wondered how the rest of the Companies were faring, and what Eujen was doing. In that fraught time, as she loosed shot after shot, dragging her increasingly heavy sword free whenever the enemy got too close, she had time to wonder about a lot of things.

  Then she heard her name called, and a moment later Averic almost bounced off the wall. He was looking pale, and with one sleeve slashed open and bloody. Someone hauled him upright and he clutched at Straessa, gasping ‘Get off the wall!’

  ‘We can’t. The defence—’ she started.

  ‘The gate’s lost!’ Averic managed to say. ‘Get down now or they’ll be coming up the stairs for you.’

  ‘Averic, seriously, we can’t just—’

  ‘Outwright’s is already going, those of his that can. The Spider-kinden are at them already. You’ve got to move,’ he insisted. He put a hand absently to his slashed sleeve and seemed surprised to see the blood there.

  Straessa cursed and peered beyond the Mynans, to where Outwright’s Pike and Shot should be holding their space of wall. To her lurching horror she saw that, yes, they were fighting fiercely, sword to sword, but getting off the wall as well in a desperate rearguard action that looked just one death from a rout.

  She had a moment to think about the right thing to do, but she had already made that decision when the Companies had marched against the Second in the field, the last time they came. She had chosen to save the lives of her people then, and she would do so now.

  ‘Gorenn, get over to Kymene and tell her what Av’s just told us.’

  The Dragonfly nodded and launched herself along the wall, her wings a skittering blur, dodging aside from one of the Airborne who tried to sting her.

  ‘Down the steps! Back into the city!’ Straessa cried out. ‘Keep it ordered, keep the pikes up, and shoot any bastard who tries it on with us! Come on, we’re moving!’

  She helped Averic to his feet. ‘What’s Eujen doing?’

  ‘Sending me to help you, last time I saw him,’ the Wasp student replied with a bleak, brief smile. ‘The Student Company is the front line now. No idea what Fealty Street are doing, but Maker’s Own and the Vekken took the worst of it. I need to get back to Eujen.’

  ‘If I know him, he’s watching us right now,’ Straessa remarked. ‘And you need a surgeon.’ She sounded so very calm, and inside her something was yammering, We’ve lost the gate, we’ve lost the wall!

  Down at the foot of the wall, her soldiers broke quickly across the open ground, before reforming between the buildings across the square. Straessa was one of the last down, running alongside Kymene and her Mynans, as snapbow bolts lanced past them. Once in cover, they could look back and see the Wasps and their Spider allies claiming the wall a slice at a time, descending on any remaining defenders and routing or killing them. Four Sentinels stalked in through the gateway and created a cordon between them that no Collegiate felt ready to brave, whilst behind them soldiers fortified their position, erecting temporary barricades out of the material of the gates themselves.

  Straessa and the others waited and watched, and above them Eujen’s Student Company watched too, waiting for the inevitable moment when the Wasp tide rolled forwards and swept into the streets, and the real battle for Collegium would begin. But the Second Army simply secured its entry to the city, thronged the wall-top with its soldiers, and waited, too.

  Then, with evening beginning to veil the sky in the west, a lone Fly-kinden in Imperial unifo
rm stepped forth, somewhat hesitantly, from the newly established Imperial lines and walked out, closed fists held up, with a message for the Assembly.

  They convened in the ruins of the Amphiophos, as before, but in sparser ranks. Some had fallen on the wall or at the gate, no doubt. Others perhaps did not want to be noted as a member of that august body, in case there should be some Imperial scrutiny of the minutes of this latest gathering.

  Jodry Drillen, a great, baggy weight of a man, robes awry and dirty, eyes shadowed by lack of sleep, stood up before them, a neat little slip of paper in his hand, barely large enough to be called a scroll. He was scanning the faces of the attendees, as if seeking allies.

  Eujen Leadswell watched him. Unlike the elected representatives of the city, who had mostly bowed to protocol sufficiently to make some attempt at robing up, he remained in his armour, buff coat and breastplate, with his helm tucked beneath his arm. Beside him was Remas Boltwright of the Fealty Street Company, who had somehow failed to lead his soldiers into battle at all, waiting in reserve all that time for a call to arms that, he said, had never come. The two of them – and neither of them exactly veterans – were here representing the armed might of Collegium. Kymene had refused to attend;Taki, spokeswoman for the pilots, was in the infirmary; and the rest of the Company chief officers were dead, as was Termes of Vek.

  Eujen saw Jodry’s lips move, as though the man was rehearsing, but someone shouted out, ‘Can’t hear you!’ – an echo of the old Assembly, if there ever was one – and the Speaker’s head snapped up. For a moment his eyes darted about, and Eujen knew exactly who he was looking for, and which notable absence was weighing on everyone’s minds. But finally he spoke.

  ‘General Tynan of the Second has sent us an ultimatum,’ he explained. ‘We are to surrender, he demands.’

  He did not seem inclined to elaborate, but his eyes kept sliding off to one figure out of many, a man Eujen recognized as Helmess Broiler, ever Jodry’s political opponent. Broiler was sitting quite peaceably, however, making no attempt to leap up and rouse the rabble.

  ‘Terms, Drillen!’ someone else called from the back. ‘What terms?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Drillen challenged the questioner. ‘Surrender our city, really? Are we countenancing such a thing?’

  ‘Speaker, at least tell us what the Wasp wrote,’ said a woman Eujen recognized from the Artificing faculty of the College.

  Jodry nodded tiredly. ‘If we surrender now, then our soldiers will be allowed to lay down their arms and return to their trades without sanction, nor will there be repercussions against ourselves – us Assemblers – save for some small list of names who are counted enemies of the Empire.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I am proud to find my own name there. My mother once said I would amount to nothing.’

  Some three or four raised a smirk at that. No more.

  ‘Added to this, the Assembly will be permitted to advise the new governor . . . the usual assurances that Collegium will become a valued part of their Empire, and . . . that Imperial rule will be imposed on our streets with no more force than proves necessary.’ As he uttered the words, his voice shrank until it seemed just a ghost of itself, but his gaze, shifting about him at his peers, was firm. ‘Do I need to recount to you what they say will happen if we resist? I’m sure you can imagine their threats – to our soldiers and our citizens and ourselves.’

  Several Assemblers had stood, wishing to speak, and Jodry’s thick finger had picked out one – one of his allies perhaps – but two or three others were already speaking over the top of each other, demanding that Jodry tell them everything, demanding that the Empire come and speak in person, one even swearing defiance. Eujen looked from face to face, and abruptly it seemed that everyone there was talking together – trying to hush each other or shouting at each other, or most of them shouting at Jodry. Suddenly they all seemed to be on their feet – with even a scuffle between two elderly Assemblers on the far side of the ruin. There was a kind of chorus, amidst the chaos, that came to Eujen’s ears. It was a tally of grief and human cost. He heard people demanding if Jodry knew how many had died, how much had been destroyed – their levelled surroundings were suddenly no longer a warning to never forget, but a reminder of just how much the Empire had made them pay already. Jodry had his hands extended for calm and his lips moved, but not a word reached Eujen’s ears intact.

  And then, finally, he could be heard. ‘Please, Masters, please!’ A ripple of silence passed over the face of the ruin, touching each in turn, until only Jodry’s voice troubled the quiet.

  Stenwold Maker had arrived.

  He was supported by two members of Eujen’s own Student Company, and they were making a crippled snail’s pace of it. He looked as ghastly as an exhumed corpse – not just from the mass of bandage swathing his chest and shoulder, but there were livid, angry spots like plague-marks blotching his skin. The Faculty of Medicine had been working on him as recently as an hour ago, and Eujen knew they had been trying all manner of serums and alchemy on the worst injured, where experimental failure would be unlikely to make things worse. Eujen had heard of a few notable successes out of their treatments, and the fact that Stenwold Maker was here, however close to death he looked, seemed proof of that.

  All eyes were on him as he shuffled forwards and was lowered onto a tumbled stone, where he sat like a dead weight, staring at the ground. A Fly-kinden man – Eujen recognized Laszlo, whom he had encountered briefly during the battle – dropped down to stand beside him, looking the worse for wear himself, bruised and dirty and deathly weary.

  ‘We cannot give up our independence,’ the Fly spoke into the silence, and Eujen could just see Stenwold’s lips moving and prompting him. ‘Mar’Maker says – listen to me! – what you’ve lost up till now is nothing . . . Yes, they have killed your people and destroyed your homes but, if you let them, they will destroy your freedom. Collegium was a slave city once, he says . . . slaves of the Moths, before the revolution. For five centuries this city’s been free, the jewel of the world . . . in trade, in learning, in the philosophy of its government,’ he stumbled a little over the words, but his voice sounded strong and clear. ‘Give in to the Wasps, he says, and you will end that era. You will close that book of history, and you’ll let the Wasps write the next.’

  Stenwold lifted his head with visible effort, and a shudder went through him, a sign of the physicians’ serums still at work within his body, either to mend or to ruin him.

  Jodry’s eyes flicked to Helmess Broiler once more. The man was keeping a keen eye on proceedings, but still he made no sign that he intended to speak. Instead another man stood up, across the gathering, some merchant magnate from the look of him, and he was speaking before Jodry could invite him to.

  ‘Speaker, War Master.’ No ranting agitator this, just a sad, worn-down man on the wrong side of middle age. ‘We know this. We all know the stakes. You put this war before us, and we went into it with our eyes open. I voted for it myself. And we’ve accomplished so much. We broke their air power, and we cast them back the first time. We fought them on the field, and we’ve made their lives miserable all the way back here. And yet they’re here. We’ve done everything, and they’re still here.’

  He had the whole Assembly listening, and Eujen wondered whether this man had ever before enjoyed such a rapt audience.

  ‘I lost a warehouse to their bombs,’ the Assembler continued. ‘Others lost their homes, their workplaces. Many lost their lives. And when we went out to meet them on the field . . . well, there were plenty who didn’t come back. And how many young men and women have gone up in one of those Stormreaders, never to land safely?’ The tremble in his voice, valiantly fought down, spoke of some personal loss. ‘There are no Felyen left. None. An entire culture, yet they broke against the Second Army, and now they’re no more – not their home, nor any of them, not a one. And the killing at the wall just today, my friends, my children . . .’ For a moment he did lose control, his voice cracking and the
raw, molten grief glaring out from within it. But then he paused for breath and was his own man again, forcing all that terrible depth of loss away, holding it at arm’s length. ‘And, yes, we can make them pay for every street. We can fight them for each house. But they will destroy those streets and those houses, just to take them from us. They will destroy the whole city, if they must, if we will not give it to them. Look at what they have done so far, and look at everything they have taken from us. Masters, we do not have so much to lose, now. The men and women whose lives we would throw at them, there are not so very many of them left. Please . . .’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Jodry demanded, but the man was already breaking down, sitting with his face in his hands, no more words left in him. The Speaker looked about, trying to assess the mood of his fellows. ‘Listen to me. Listen!’

  ‘A vote!’ A new voice, crisp and clear and hard-edged.

  Jodry turned to face his old enemy. Helmess Broiler had chosen his moment.

  ‘A vote!’ the man repeated, now standing. ‘Come, you’ve had your say, Jodry, and the War Master has had his, by surrogate. And we’ve all heard what Master Wisden has had to say. Furthermore, we’ve all been out there! We’re seen it, the war and its leavings. So let’s bring this to a close and vote. Do we take what mercy General Tynan has offered us? Choose wisely, or you may not get another chance to wear these robes.’

  There were many there who looked to Stenwold, but the War Master just stared at the ground, and the Fly-kinden beside him stood mute, and at the last Jodry could put it off no longer.

  Before nightfall the Assembly of Collegium, by a reasonable majority, had agreed to accept what terms the Empire might offer, word to be sent to General Tynan at first light. The war was over.

  Part Three

  Gates of Dusk

  ‘Through the Gate’

  – MOTTO OF MAKER’S OWN MERCHANT COMPANY