‘When they come
through,’ he bellowed at them, ‘they will loose their crossbows first, to try
and clear the way. I want shieldmen at the front, everyone with a decent-sized
shield. Behind them, crossbowmen, Master Maker here will take his shot when he
sees the best time, and you all shoot when you see him do it. There will be a
lot of rubble. They will have to move forward over it. You will just have to
stand still, so make that count for you.’
He stared at them,
seeing city militia, artisans, shopkeepers, factors and merchants, dockworkers,
porters, immigrant labourers, street-brawlers, black-marketeers and a handful
of professional mercenaries.
You’ll
just have to do
, he thought, and then,
If I had a
command of Kessen marines we’d sort these bastards out.
And he turned, and the
wall came down.
It was so close on
evening, the sky darkening almost visibly. The Vekken had left it to the last
minute, but their artillery had finally done its job. The widescale weakening
created by the petard engines and the incessant pounding of the trebuchets and
leadshotters had first knocked holes in the wall and now it was tumbling, great
clots and sheets of stone peeling away until the wall before and to the left of
him was dissolving into an utter chaos of tumbling masonry.
‘Go!’ he shouted at his
men and, when they did not move, he went himself,. trusting to their shame to
carry them with him.
The rubble had barely
finished shifting when he began to climb it, and for a terrible second he
thought he was the only one there. Then there were shields to the left and the
right of him, a motley collection of a dozen different styles, and now he was
at the top of the breach, seeing Vekken soldiers hauling themselves up towards
him.
‘Brace!’ he shouted, and
ducked behind his own shield. Most of the men around him did the same, but
there were always a few who were slow or who thought they knew better, and this
time it proved fatal. Crossbow bolts slammed into his shield, three or four
actually punching their square-sectioned heads through to gleam like diamonds
in the backing.
Then Stenwold was at his
shoulder, raising his crossbow so that it almost rested on Kymon’s shield and
then pressing the trigger, and a score of crossbows fired with him, and two
score more a heartbeat afterwards. The Vekken were climbing the rubble with
their shields held high, but a dozen fell anyway, the close-ranged bolts
sticking in their armour, and more fell amongst their crossbowmen following
immediately behind.
Then the Vekken were
making a final push up the shifting stones, and Kymon braced himself again, feeling
his heart hammering out to him its message that he was too old for a
battlefield by ten years at least.
He rammed his shield
forwards into the first man that came his way, impacting so hard on the man’s
own that the Vekken was sent tumbling back down. Another man took his place,
though, one of a stream of Vekken soldiers that was pushing forwards up into
the breach, and the serious business of killing at the blade’s point then
began.
The harsh hammering of a
nailbow sounded nearby as Stenwold’s bodyguard elbowed his way into the second
rank and began to shoot the enemy indiscriminately in the face. Kymon was
absorbed in his own trade, though. He was a trainer of men, a College Master,
but most of all he was a swordsman. These Ants coming against him were
soldiers, but he had always been something more than that, and he showed them.
He taught them a dozen fatal lessons of the shortsword, his blade striking like
a scorpion’s sting, forward, left and right, so that the soldiers advancing
near him began to pay him more heed than his fellows, thus becoming easier prey
for the men either side of him.
All down the line,
though, the battle was shifting. The defenders of Collegium were laying down
their lives. They were selling them dearly, giving no ground, and making the
Vekken pay for each inch they climbed, but the Ants fought as an impeccable
unit, while the defenders fought like a ragged line of individuals. Kymon could
feel the tide turning, no matter how many he killed or how skilled his blade.
‘Hold!’ he bellowed.
‘Hold for Collegium!’ He was aware, when he could pause to think, that the
defenders were still faring far better than they should, and that the Vekken
were not fighting with that sharp edge that Ant-kinden usually possessed. There
was something in their faces, something haggard and bruised, that was blunting
them.
For a second the line
swayed forwards again, whether from his words of encouragement or from the
defenders’ own desperation. Ant soldiers went backwards, lost their footing,
and it seemed that the advance might be halted, but then they gathered
themselves, as Ants always did, and surged back up.
‘Hold!’ Kymon shouted
once again and, miraculously, something went out of the Vekken advance.
Abruptly the men attacking the breach were no longer backed by hundreds of
others. The Ant attention had been somehow split.
He felt something strike
him in the chest, clipping the rim of his shield. At the base of his vision he
could see the quilled end of a crossbow bolt that had driven through his mail.
It seemed to hurt far less than it should.
His line was failing,
even though all the Ants beyond the foot of this hill of rubble were turning
north, trying to move out of the way but constricted by their neighbours, their
minds all obviously sharing the same focus.
Something struck him in
the head, ringing from his helm, and he found himself falling back . . . no,
Stenwold had him. Stenwold and his Sarnesh bodyguard, carrying him back.
‘The line . . .’ he
managed to gasp.
‘Hold still,’ Stenwold
told him. There was more said but, although the Beetle’s lips moved, Kymon
could hear none of it.
He drew his breath to
demand that Stenwold speak up, but there was no breath to draw, and he
understood that the bolt had pierced his mail, had pierced his lungs, perhaps.
The sky above them was growing dark far faster than the oncoming night alone
could have managed.
He sent his mind out,
futilely, for some last contact with his own kind, but he was the last man of
Kes remaining within the walls of Collegium, and when he died, even clasped in
Stenwold’s arms, he died alone.
Stenwold looked to the
line, then, but incredibly it still held, and the Ants seemed to be trying to
retreat, and there was a great cheer that Sarn had come, Sarn had come at last.
Stenwold rushed forwards, and in his mind’s eye there was a vast host of
Sarnesh soldiers crowding the horizon, but instead he saw merely the shapes of
Sarnesh automotives powering towards the breach in the wall. There were two
still moving, and the caved-in wreck of a third some distance back, where the
Vekken artillery had found it. The remaining two were driving in at top speed,
though, their clawed tracks chewing up the dusty, bloody earth, and he saw the
Vekken soldiers at the fore linking shields, bracing themselves ridiculously
against the charge.
Artillery began bursting
around them, and Stenwold saw one of the machines take a terrific blow that
stove in one side and yet did not stop it moving. The machines were loosing
their own weapons now, repeating ballista bolts smashing the Ant shield-wall
full of holes. The Vekken had a siege tower out there, half-extended, and the
undamaged automotive struck it a terrible blow that dented the whole front of
the machine, but smashed the tower’s lifting gear totally, spilling men and
broken machinery in its wake.
Stenwold wanted to close
his eyes as they struck, but he could not – he could only stare. The Vekken
artillery was smashing into its own infantry in its haste to destroy the
automotives, and then the unstoppable momentum of the machines had taken them
right into the main block of soldiers, and hundreds of the Vekken shieldmen
were simply crushed beneath them.
The damaged machine was
meanwhile slewing away from the city, one of its tracks jammed, and a moment
later Stenwold saw fire break out around it, the fuel tanks for its engine
catching light. The Vekken were fleeing from it, and it exploded, scything through
them with jagged metal. The final machine was still driving for the breach,
scattering the Vekken in its wake. A leadshotter struck it a glancing blow,
spinning it round so that it was facing away from the city, and Stenwold saw
Vekken Ants climbing onto it, swarming over it like their very namesakes, and
prying hatches open.
With a final effort, the
last of the Sarnesh Lorn detachment threw its tracks into reverse and began to
climb the rubble backwards. The Vekken had clawed their way on board before it
was halfway up, and Balkus grabbed Sten-wold’s arm and pulled him back, fearful
for his safety.
Doctor Nicrephos was
waiting for them, the frail old Moth looking impossibly out of place so close
to the front line. ‘It is time!’ he was shouting. ‘We must go!’
‘Anywhere but here,’
Balkus agreed.
Stenwold looked back to
see the last automotive slew backwards into the breach, using its armoured
length to bridge the gap in the wall. There was a thump and flare from inside
that must be a grenade going off, and then the mauled machine fell still.
Beyond the wall the
Vekken began to retreat to their camp for the night, but they would be back
again in the morning, perhaps for the last time.
The Fly-kinden, Kori,
ducked in and closed the door solidly behind him. In the moment it was open
they could all hear the distant sound of exploding grenades.
‘Well this is lovely!’
he exclaimed. ‘I do hope the Empire sends us someplace nice like this again!’
He hooked his cloak off and cast it into the corner of the taproom. They had
the taverna to themselves after the owner had gone off to fight.
‘You’ve taken your
time,’ Gaved snapped. ‘We’d about given up on you.’
‘Big city, Wasp-boy, so
even a man as talented as me takes time to get around it. And this whole Ant
invasion gets in the way sometimes.’ Kori stretched. ‘Someone get me something
to drink. I feel a need to toast the Emperor.’
‘Over a fire, no doubt,’
muttered Eriphinea the Moth. She slung him a wineskin, which he caught on the
wing while hopping up onto a table.
‘Have you located it?’
Scyla demanded of him. The other two were also on their feet now, waiting for
his report.
‘Relax, I’ve found the
building,’ the Fly assured them. ‘Private collection? Barred and bolted, more
like. No simple job to get in. Briskall, the old hoarder, he’s obviously gone
to ground with all his treasures. Won’t come out until the siege is over, or
the Vekken come to break down his doors.’
‘Can
we
break through his doors?’ Eriphinea asked doubtfully.
‘These Beetles and their locks . . .’
‘I’m the knees with
locks,’ Kori told her. ‘I’m the utter knees. I’m more worried about finding our
trinket once we get in there.’
‘Don’t forget,’ Scyla
said disdainfully, ‘we can’t miss it. That’s an imperial guarantee.’
‘Oh sure, sure.’
‘We’ll have no difficulties
locating it,’ the Moth insisted flatly. That silenced them, and they stared at
her. Her blank eyes gave them nothing back.
‘Would you care to
qualify that, Phin?’ Gaved asked her.
‘Not in any way that you
could comprehend,’ she said, not harshly but as a simple statement of fact. ‘He
knows.’ She pointed at Scyla. The Spider, finding their attention on her,
scowled.
‘She’s right,’ Scyla
said shortly. ‘We’ll know it. Her and me.’
‘Well whatever,’ said
Kori. ‘You sniff it out, and I’ll get us in, and the Wasp here can watch the
door. We have the place and the means.’
‘Let’s go, then,’ Gaved
said.
‘Let’s wait till dusk,
shall we, so people don’t see us housebreaking,’ Kori suggested.
‘There’s a war on! Who’s
going to care?’ the Wasp demanded.
‘Night-time is always
better,’ Scyla said. ‘In war they kill looters out of hand, in my experience,
which is just what we’d look like.’
‘Darkness is always
best,’ Eriphinea confirmed.
The Wasp threw up his
hands. ‘Nightfall it is,’ he said. ‘Always assuming we can even get the thing
out of the city.’
‘Neither Ants nor
Beetles fly, so they seldom watch for fliers,’ Scyla reminded them. ‘We got in.
We can get out.’
‘Unless what they say
about Ant women is true,’ Kori said.
‘And what is that?’ Phin
asked him archly.
‘That they can fly
non-stop for a whole night the first time you knock them up.’ The Fly grinned
lewdly.
‘And you believe that?’
‘No, but I could have a
lot of fun putting it to the test.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘And we’ve got a few
pleasant hours to wait, assuming the Vekken don’t kill us. Anything to eat
around here?’
‘Are you sure this is
the place?’ Stenwold asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ Doctor
Nicrephos insisted. ‘You cannot understand, but I am driven – drawn – and I
know not by what, but this is definitely the place.’
‘Keep calm, Doctor,’
Stenwold advised him, but Nicrephos was obviously anything but calm. Something
had a hold of the old man, something that was now shaking him to his very
bones.
There were four of them
there loitering outside in the street and looking suspicious. Stenwold had
brought Balkus, of course, and because he had gone home first to wash, because
he could not bear the thought of Kymon’s blood on him, Arianna had joined them
and was here too. He was not sure whether she entirely understood what was
going on here but, when Stenwold had left for this errand, she had been tagging
along behind him.
He spared her a fond
smile, and resisted the urge to reach for her hand. ‘This is Master Briskall’s
place,’ he said, belated recollection coming to him. ‘I knew I recognized it.
He used to be an archivist at the College, but there were questions as to where
some of the exhibits were disappearing to . . .’