Dragonfly Falling

Twenty-Six

‘The gates are sealed,’ said Lineo Thadspar. He looked older than ever.

‘Did the last train get away?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘No, they were too long in loading it.’ The Speaker of the Assembly sat down at a War Council that was greatly different in constitution to the first one. As the Vekken army had neared there had been many who had decided that war was, after all, not for them, and others had surfaced in whom an undreamt-of martial fervour had been kindled. The stone seats were lined with College Masters, artificers and city magnates who had found in themselves the means to greet the hour. And that hour had now come.

‘They were still leaving by the western gate until an hour gone, but the Vekken are just outside artillery range of the walls on all sides now, and anyone leaving would fall straight into their hands,’ reported Waybright, one of the survivors of the original council. ‘They have not totally encircled us, but they have set up regularly spaced camps.’

‘They’ll want you to try to attack them at the gaps, to see them as divided,’ Balkus said seriously. Nobody had exactly invited him here, but he went where Stenwold went, and unlike most there he had experience of Ant war firsthand. ‘But we — the Ant-kinden — we’re never divided. You should remember that.’

‘We’re in no position to attack them, in any event,’ Lineo Thadspar said.

‘Precisely how strong are these gates?’ Kymon asked. He had a rough map of the city before him and he traced its boundaries with a stylus. ‘This is a weak city against force of arms. The walls are pierced all over. You have a river, the rail line, the harbour. The gates themselves, how strong are they?’

‘We learned a few tricks after our last clash with the Vekken,’ Thadspar said.

‘Likewise the Vekken,’ Stenwold cautioned.

‘That’s true, but I hope we’ve learned faster than they. It is, after all, what we are supposed to be good at, here at the College.’ Thadspar leant over Kymon’s map. ‘Our gates have secondary shutters that slide down from within the wall. My own father’s design, as it happens. They are of dense wood plated with bronze, and they should withstand a hefty strike from any ram or engine you care to name. There is a grille that has been lowered where the river meets the city and, while they may eventually break through it, they will at least not surprise us by assaulting that way. We have gates across the rail arch, too, and I have engineers buttressing them even now. The harbour. has certain defences. What is their naval strength, anyone?’

‘Nine armourclads, plus one really big one,’ someone reported from the back. ‘And two dozen wooden-hulled warships. Plus four dozen small vessels and half a dozen very large barges that they’re holding back. Supply ships, I suppose.’

‘They will attack the harbour soon,’ Kymon cautioned. ‘I myself have been given the west wall to command. Who has the south?’

‘I do,’ Stenwold confirmed. He could feel the tension in the room slowly screwing tight, the image in everyone’s heads of Ant-kinden in perfect step making their encampments around their city of scholars. ‘I’m open to any suggestions.’

‘What about the supply situation on our side?’ Way-bright asked. ‘We’ve had people leaving in droves these last few days, and yet there have never been so many within our walls. All the satellite villages west of here have emptied, some of the people have come here with nothing but the clothes on their backs.’

‘We have always husbanded our harvests well,’ Thadspar said. ‘We will ration what we have, and we need hold only until the Sarnesh arrive to relieve us.’

‘Masters,’ Stenwold said, ‘I will now say something we have all thought, to ourselves. The Vekken were defeated last time because the Sarnesh relieved us, although we held them for tendays before that happened. The Vekken know this. Even they are not so blinded by pride and greed that they will have forgotten.’ He looked around at them, face by face, and so few of them would meet his gaze.

Kymon did. ‘You’re saying that the Vekken believe Sarn will not aid us. Or that even Sarn’s aid cannot tip the balance.’

‘A secret weapon?’ someone suggested.

‘All speculation,’ Thadspar insisted. ‘Why should Sarn not aid us?’

‘We have no idea of the situation,’ Stenwold insisted. ‘It is simply this. The Vekken are here. They do not relish defeat, and so they must believe they can win.’

‘Perhaps they seek to capture the walls before Sarn can even get its army here,’ Waybright said. ‘If they already had the city, Sarn might turn back.’

‘All I am saying is that we cannot fight this war on the assumption that the Sarnesh will rescue us sooner or later,’ Stenwold said. ‘If we fight, we must fight to drive them away with whatever strength we have ourselves.’

They did not like that. He could see that none of them wanted to accept it. A holding action, they thought, just until. Kymon met his eyes and nodded.

A messenger burst in, a young Beetle girl quite out of breath. ‘Their artillery is shooting at us!’ she said. ‘What do we do now?’

Kymon stood. ‘All officers to your posts!’ he snapped. ‘Stenwold?’

‘Here.’

‘If the harbour falls, the city falls, and they’ll attack it, tomorrow or the next day at the latest. Everybody listen: if you have someone coming to you with means to defend the harbour, send them to Stenwold. Everything will count.’

The Vekken were very efficient in their mustering. When Thalric and Daklan had put the Empire’s invitation to them an army had been raised in mere days. The Vekken, like all Ants, were soldier-born. The soundless call had gone out into the city, and without a spoken word it had been answered by the thousands of the war host of Vek. There had then been the matter of material, machines, supplies. It was a matter long settled, though, for Vek had been looking for this war for decades, awaiting the moment when Sarn’s protective hand was lifted from the reviled city of scholars. The supplies were already laid in, the machines in readiness, the crossbow bolts and engine ammunition neatly stockpiled. Each year the tacticians of Vek had convened and added what further elements they could to the plan, while their artificers continued their patient progress.

So, when they had arrived and surrounded the city, it had been a wonder of discipline. There was not a man but who knew to the inch where his place was. The engineers had begun instantly bringing forward their machines: lead-shotters, catapults and scorpions, trebuchets and ballistae, a great host of destruction of every kind that the artificers of Vek could conceive of. The smaller machines were unloaded from carts, or had progressed under their own mechanical power. The larger were constructed on the spot even as the artificers made their calculations, their crews untiring and careful to a fault. To the watchers on the walls of Collegium it seemed that the Vekken battle plan unfolded as smoothly as a parchment, spreading out and around their beloved city.

Akalia did not watch her men prepare. She had no need. They were already in her head, each section and squad informing her of its readiness. They gave her a perfect map of the field in her mind’s eye, the composite of all that each soldier saw. Sitting in her tent she was also everywhere her forces were.

There is no time like now, she instructed her people, and called for her tacticians. They responded almost as one, alert for the order. At the same time her engineers were tensioning and charging their siege weapons, all of them, all at once.

Test your ranges, she told them mentally, and one from each battery loosed, sending rocks or shot spinning high towards the pale walls of Collegium. Attend me, she told her officers, and stepped out into the afternoon light to see the first plumes of stone dust that her ranging shots had raised from the walls, or the dust from the earth where they had fallen short.

Correct your ranges, she instructed, feeling the artificers all around making their measurements, their practical mathematics of elevation and angle.

Loose one round, she decided and, even as she sent the order out she felt the ground quiver beneath her feet as all her engines rocked back simultaneously with the force of their discharge. A fair proportion of the machines still lacked the range, but this time more missiles found the walls than failed. The city of Collegium was briefly swathed in puffs of stone dust, as though it were letting off fireworks.

What damage? she asked. Forward of their artillery positions were officers equipped with telescopes, raking the walls for any weaknesses, and their reports were rapidly passed back: None, sir. No damage sighted, sir. Some slight scarring, sir.

She had expected nothing less, because Beetles, for all their inferior characteristics, knew how to lay stone on stone. The tacticians of Vek had counted on that when they designed this expedition. They were still assembling much of the artillery: great trebuchets, leadshotters and rock-throwers to attack the walls; grapeshot ballistae to rake the battlements clean of soldiers at closer range; engine-powered rams and lifting towers for the troops to take the walls. There were even experimental grenade-throwers, delicate, spindly things designed to throw small, volatile missiles deep into the city beyond.

The fleet had blockaded the rivermouth and was now waiting for her signal to make its assault, but the walls would come first. She was a traditional soldier, and she preferred traditional methods to the unknown concerns of a sea landing.

Let it all come down, she sent out the order. Pound the walls until sunset. Let the dawn tell us the result.

‘Soldiers off the walls!’ Kymon bellowed, though he was ignoring his own advice by striding along the east wall as the missiles came in. Many landed short, throwing up plumes of earth from the fields or impacting amongst the straggle of buildings out there: Wayhouses, storehouses, farmers’ huts, all abandoned now. Some struck the wall itself, and he felt the impact shudder through his sandals. A few even flew over to smash stonework in the city below. He stopped and backed up a few steps, waiting, and a lead ball clipped the very battlements ten feet ahead. He had found a disaffected Kessen youth amongst the volunteers and put him to good use. Now Kymon could walk blithely amongst his troops and inspire them with his disregard for the enemy, whilst all the time the boy was watching the incoming assault and giving him warning.

The walls of Collegium had their own artillery, but the Vekken army had brought up a whole host of it, more than even he had thought they possessed. The defenders’ engines were outnumbered four to one along the west wall, where the brunt of the attack was concentrated. Soon, he well knew, the barrage would begin to creep towards the wall-mounted weapons so as to clear the way for the Vekken infantry.

But where Vek had strength, Collegium had intelligence. Here before him was a team of artificers working at one such weapon. As he watched the great catapult began to revolve, descending foot by foot into the stonework of its tower with a groaning of gears and a hiss of steam. Further along the wall they were winching great iron shields into position about a repeating ballista.

Kymon dropped to one knee and peered over the city side of the wall. There was a detachment of some three hundred city militia below and he shouted at them, ‘Clear the way!’ He gestured furiously. ‘Left and right from me! Clear the way!’

Most of them got the idea and just ran for it, dodging to either side. A moment later a great rock whistled over Kymon’s head to spin past them and smash into the wall of the building beyond, pelting them all with a shrapnel of fist-sized stones. He saw a few fall to it, but most were clear. It was far more frustrating than he had thought, to command soldiers he could not commune with mind to mind.

And they were such a rabble too. They brought determination and enthusiasm, but little discipline. Some were the city militia, decently enough armoured but more used to quelling taverna brawls and catching thieves than to fighting wars. The bulk of Collegium’s armed force was simply those citizens bold enough to put themselves forward for it. Some brought their own weapons, others had been armed from the College stores. Anyone with any training as an artificer had been given something from the workshops: repeaters, piercers, nailbows and wasters, or whatever ’prentice pieces were lying around. Some attempt had been made to sort them into squads similarly armed, but the mess of men and women beneath Kymon bristled with a ragged assortment of spears, swords, crossbows, clubs and agricultural implements.

He stood again, waiting for despair to wash over him, but instead found a strange kind of pride. If these defenders had been Ant-kinden of his own city it would have been shameful, but they were not. They were Beetles, mostly, but there were others, too: Flies, rogue Ants, Spiders, halfbreeds, even some Mantids and Moths. They were truly the host of Collegium, the city which had opened its gates to the world.

He came to the catapult emplacement to find the weapon more than half hidden now, steadily grinding itself down below the level of the wall. There was a man, a College artificer, crouching by the battlements with a telescope and some kind of sextant, making quick calculations.

‘Is this going to work?’ Kymon had forgotten the man’s name, but when the goggled face turned up to him he recalled him as Master Graden, who taught applied fluid mechanics.

‘I am assured it will. Not my department, obviously, but the mathematics are simple enough,’ Graden explained. ‘Incidentally, Master Kymon, my invention — have you had a chance to consider it? The sand is to hand, and my apprentices have it ready to place on the walls.’

It seemed that almost every artificer in Collegium believed that they had an invention that could help the war effort. Kymon was no artificer, but the mention of sand jogged his memory further.

‘Have it ready,’ he said, more as a sop to the man’s pride than anything. ‘Every little thing may help.’

He passed on towards the next emplacement. Behind him another lead shot struck the wall, making it shiver beneath his feet like a living thing.

‘It doesn’t look like they’re coming,’ one of his soldiers said to him. Stenwold shook his head.

‘They’re coming, but not just yet. I need the chain ready in time. It must be our first line of defence.’

‘But the mechanism hasn’t been used in-’ The soldier waved a hand vaguely. ‘I don’t know if it’s ever been used, Master Stenwold.’

‘Oil it, fix it — replace the cursed thing if you have to. Don’t be the man whose failures make the city fall.’

It was unfair, but the man fell back, face twisting in shame, and ran off to do his job. Stenwold turned briefly to the men who had answered his call, but his attention was drawn back to the sea. This had been the harbourmaster’s office, and the view from it would have been beautiful if not marred by the ugly blots of the Vekken fleet. The armourclads, iron-plated or iron-hulled ships with monstrously powerful engines, formed the vanguard, waiting out in anchored formation with smoke idling from their funnels.

‘How are we going to stop them?’ Stenwold asked, for Collegium had no navy. The few ships in harbour were only those which had not seized the chance to flee before the harbour was blockaded, and they were definitely not fighting ships.

‘The harbour has its artillery defences, as well as the chain, Master,’ reminded Cabre, a Fly who was an artificer from the College. ‘They were designed with wooden ships in mind, though, and they’ve not been updated in thirty years. You know how it is. When Vek came last it was overland, and nobody thought. ’

‘And we’ll now pay for that lack of imagination,’ Stenwold grumbled.

‘We don’t know if they could even dent the armourclads out there,’ Cabre admitted, scratching the back of her head.

‘What else have we got?’ Stenwold asked.

‘Master Maker?’ It was a Beetle-kinden man who must be at least ten years Stenwold’s junior. For a Beetle he looked lean and combative.

‘Yes, Master.?’

‘Greatly, Master Maker. Joyless Greatly. I have a cadre of men, Master Maker. Some twenty in all. I have recently been working on an invention for the Sarnesh, but I cannot think that they would object to our using it in our own defence.’

And he does not add, ‘until they get here’, Stenwold noted. Joyless seemed to him a name of ill omen. It tended to denote children named by their fathers after their mothers had not survived the infant’s birth. ‘Go on, Master Greatly.’

Joyless Greatly stared challengingly about the room, at a dozen or so artificers who had been sent to Stenwold’s care. ‘I have developed a one-man orthopter, Master Maker. I have one score and ten of these ready to fly, though only my twenty men are trained to fly them.’

It seemed impossible. ‘Thirty orthopters? But where.?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘They are not what you think, Master Maker. These are worn on the back, as you will see. When the fleet approaches, or when the army comes to our walls, I will take my men out. We will drop grenades and incendiaries on them. Their ships may be hulled with iron, but they will not have armoured decks. We can drop explosives into their funnels, or on their weapons.’

‘They will shoot you down,’ Cabre warned him, but there was a fire in Greatly’s expression, of either patriotism or madness.

‘Let them try, for I will outrace their bolts and quarrels. Master Maker, we may be your second line of defence, but we shall attack.’

‘There are other flying machines as well,’ ventured an elderly Beetle woman Stenwold could not recall, save that she had something to do with the airfield. ‘Some two dozen of various designs that have been brought within the city. With the assistance of Master Greatly’s force we might at least harry them during their advance.’

‘And meanwhile I can train new pilots for the other machines,’ added Joyless Greatly.

‘Do so,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘More, please. Anyone?’

‘Excuse me, Master Maker.’ The speaker was an Ant-kinden with bluish skin, and Stenwold had no idea even where he came from, never mind who he was. He was no warrior, though, despite his race. Inactivity had left him thin from the chest up and broad below.

‘Yes, Master.?’

‘Tseitus, Master Maker.’ The Ant’s gaunt face smiled. ‘I have an aquatic automotive which, Master Maker, I have been working on for many years.’

‘One boat, Master Tseitus-’

‘Not a boat, Master Maker.’ Tseitus glanced around suspiciously at the others as though they would, at this late juncture, seek to steal his idea. ‘It goes beneath the waters.’

Stenwold stared at him. ‘A submersible automotive?’

‘She is beautiful, Master Maker.’ Tseitus’s eyes gleamed. ‘I have taken her into Lake Sideriti. You would not believe what wonders there are beneath the waters there-’

‘But for now you’ll put her into the city’s service?’

‘This city is my life, Master Maker. And if there might be any funding, in the future, for my project-?‘

‘Yes, yes,’ Stenwold said hurriedly. ‘Let us just save the city first, and then I cannot imagine that the Assembly will not reward its saviours. Your submersible boat, what can it do?’

‘Go beneath the waters,’ repeated Tseitus, and then after a brief, awkward pause, ‘Drill into the hulls of their ships. Attach devices that others here may devise. Is there some explosive that may work underwater?’

‘I haven’t-’ Stenwold started but, as though summoned magically by the concept, one of the other artificers was already raising a hand.

At dusk, Akalia called for the Vekken artillery to be stilled. There was no sense wasting their ammunition in speculative and inaccurate night-time shooting. By the last light, her spotters had confirmed some light damage to the west wall where she had been heaping most of her missiles: some ragged holes punched in the crenellations, and a few patches that might repay a barrage over the next few days and even open up the whole wall. And once the wall was down in even one place her real assault could begin.

There had not been a single answering shot. It had been somewhat vexing the way most of the artillery positions atop the wall had been protected from her own, but it made little enough difference if they were content to hide behind their walls until she battered them down.

There would be casualties to the Collegium artillery when the assault went in, but no war was without casualties and her men understood that.

They cannot have the range to match us, one of her commanders had suggested. She could only shrug at him. For whatever reason, though, the Collegium artillery had remained silent.

Her commanders had secured the camps, in the highly unlikely event that the Beetle-kinden were planning some kind of night raid, and so finally she retired to her tent. The Wasp-kinden Daklan wished to speak with her, she knew. She had considered letting the foreigner stew but decided that, as matters were progressing so well, it would do her good to remind him of the superiority of those he was allying his Empire to.

‘Commander Daklan,’ she addressed him, and then looked to the other man. ‘And it is Commander Thalric, is it not?’

‘It is, Tactician,’ Thalric said. It pleased Akalia that he did not try to deny the Ant rank. In her mind she was doing him more honour than he deserved.

‘And you are pleased with what you have seen, so far?’ she asked the two Wasps. ‘Your vengeance against Collegium will soon be accomplished, will it not?’

‘Indeed, Tactician,’ said the other one, Daklan.

‘One might wonder what the foolish Beetles have done, to inflame such a far-off enemy,’ she said, her eyes narrowing.

‘You know the Beetle-kinden, how they can never leave well enough alone,’ Daklan said quickly. ‘The Empire has its actions focused east of here, as you know, and it seemed likely to us that Collegium would interfere in some way.’

‘They are a pack of meddling old men,’ Akalia agreed derisively. ‘Look at what they have done to Sarn, and in so short a time. They’ve gelded an entire city with their absurd ideas!’

‘True, and well put,’ Daklan concurred. She sneered at his ingratiating manner, but it was fitting, she supposed. It was certain that they feared her and wished her to think well of them.

‘Tell me, Tactician,’ said the other one, Thalric. ‘How do you consider that first bombardment? It seemed to be a little. unorthodox to me.’ Daklan glanced at him sharply, perhaps because this was something they had agreed to leave unsaid, but Akalia shrugged. ‘You are imprecise with your words, Commander Thalric. With us Ant-kinden you must say what you mean. What do you mean?’

Thalric was ignoring Daklan’s frown. ‘Their wall artillery, Tactician.’

‘That was curious,’ she agreed. ‘I have asked my artificers for possible causes. It may be that they have let their artillery become useless with age, although that seems unlikely even for Collegium. However, they are not a valorous race. Perhaps their engineers did not dare take to the walls to man them under our shot.’

‘Perhaps that is it,’ Thalric said, but she could see a look on his face that she did not like.

‘You are here only on sufferance,’ she reminded them. ‘I shall have no impertinence from you foreigners.’

‘Of course not,’ Daklan said quickly. ‘We are merely. unused to such a great display of artillery. Our wars work in different ways.’ She saw Thalric’s face twitch at that sentiment, but she could not read his reaction.

‘You are dismissed,’ she told them suddenly. It was late, anyway, and she would need a rested night, to command on the morrow. She must consider what to do with these Wasp-kinden, too. Perhaps it might be best if they became casualties of war. She watched them walk away, a tension between them, men who would be arguing as soon as they were out of her sight. Another divided and chaotic kinden, then. When the time came they would be no match for the perfect order of Vek.

Akalia went straight to her tent and had a slave unbuckle her armour. Then she fell asleep in anticipation of the morning’s work.

She was awakened instantly by the first crash and sat bolt-upright, feeling the ground shake beneath her. Her entire camp was awake, but for a terrifying moment nobody knew what was going on.

Sentries report! Her mind snapped out, but there was no answer amongst the babble of replies. Her sentries knew of no attack, and yet the camps were under attack. Men were dying, snuffed out instantly, but very few of them. Instead she was hearing a waxing tide of alarm from her engineers, from her artificers.

What is going on? she demanded of them, sensing them rush about in the darkness, that clouded, moonless pitch-darkness. Fires were being lit, men were rushing into formations with still no idea of what was going on. One unit of a hundred men was abruptly half its number down, a great rock having found them in the night, crushing the heart from their battle order.

Report! she demanded once more. I will have executions for this. It is intolerable.

Then the word came rushing through the army like wildfire. Their artillery was being destroyed.

How? she demanded. How are they attacking us? It must be men, some stealthy team sent out, but even as she thought that, the ground shook once again.

And the impossible answer came back, They are shooting from the walls.

For a moment she could not think. She had no answers, and none of her officers had any answers, and so the entire army was paralysed by indecision. The ground shook again, and once more, and the artificers’ minds passed on to her the sound of smashed wood and crushed metal.

At last the only remaining course came to her. Move the artillery back. Disassemble it if it cannot be moved!

On the walls of Collegium the artillery had either been winched back up or uncovered, and now the artificers of the most learned city in the Lowlands practised their art. All day they had taken their measurements and worked out their angles. Men used to the classroom and the lectern had crouched behind battlements and scribbled their calculations. Some of them had died, crushed by shot, raked by stone splinters. Now the fruits of those labours were borne on the air by the engines of Collegium. The night was almost moonless, and small specks of fire were all that was revealed to them of the Vekken encampment, but the engineers and artificers of Collegium held lamps by their sheets of calculations and adjusted their angle and elevation by minute degrees.

And the catapults and ballistae, leadshotters and trebuchets of the Collegium walls spoke together, flinging hundredweights of stone and metal at the invaders.

Some of them missed, of course, either by chance or bad calculation, but all around the city the Vekken army was awoken by the sound of its own siege emplacements being destroyed: trebuchets splintering under blindly targeted rocks, and leadshotters ripped apart by explosive-headed ballista bolts. The thinking men and mathematicians of Collegium, carefully and without passion, set about undoing any gains that the Vekken army had made during the previous day.

When dawn came, it was clear that more than three-quarters of the artillery the Vekken had so carefully placed the previous day had been smashed beyond hope of repair, and although the invading army had more to bring forward, it seemed any chance of simply knocking down Collegium’s walls had been dealt a fatal blow.