Dragonfly Falling

Five

‘I was right here in my front office,’ Parops told them. ‘I had a crossbow and a telescope, but after I while I just used the telescope. It was quite something to see.’ He indicated the view from his slit window.

‘Nothing’s happening now,’ Totho pointed out. There was a tray of bread and spiced biscuit on Parops’s desk, and he was aware that Skrill seemed to be working her way through it all methodically.

‘That’s war: boredom and boredom and then everything’s far too interesting all of a sudden,’ Nero confirmed. He was sitting on the desk looking at Skrill and obviously trying to decide what she was.

‘So what happened?’ Salma asked.

Parops put his back against the wall beside the arrowslit. ‘Take a look at the disposition,’ he invited. Salma did so, seeing only a large extent of land between the city walls and the Wasp camp, which was dotted with a few tangled heaps of wood and metal.

‘First off, they moved their engines in,’ Parops explained. ‘They started shooting straight off and they must have some good artillerists, because in only a few shots they were sweeping the wall-tops with scrap from their catapults, forcing everyone’s head down. They were loosing some at the walls, too, lead shot rather than stone, I think. We were shooting back from embedded positions like the one atop my tower. You can see evidence of some of our successes out there, but with our lot flinching back all the time it took a while to make the range to them. And of course nobody was getting a peaceful time of it. They had their men flying over the wall amidst the rocks.’

‘Sounds risky for the men,’ Salma said, studying the tents, making out what he could with his keen eyes.

‘A good few of the incomers got squashed, no doubt, but nobody seemed to care on either side,’ Parops confirmed. ‘They were frothing mad, attacking everything along the length of the wall itself, or just charging off into the city in bands of eight or ten. Shields and a chitin cuirass was all they had, most of them, and javelins, and that fiery thing they do with their hands. They didn’t seem like proper soldiers, to be honest — more like a rabble.’

‘A rabble is what they were,’ Salma confirmed. ‘The Wasps call them Hornets, but they’re just Wasps really. We saw a lot of them in the Twelve-Year War when they invaded my own people’s lands. They’re from the north-Empire, nothing but hill-savages. Your average Wasp is a touchy fellow at the best of times, but the Hornets are downright excitable.’

‘And clearly expendable,’ Nero added.

‘Right,’ confirmed Salma. ‘So what happened?’

‘Well, we had crossbowmen on the walls, and line soldiers defending the artillery,’ Parops explained. ‘Their first charge, coming with all that rock and lead, took its toll, but we knew they were a flying kinden, so we had ranks of crossbowmen stationed beyond the walls as well. Any that lingered on the battlements or tried to press into the city were picked off. We think the toll was about four hundred of them, in all, and just thirty-seven of ours. Most of those fell to their artillery and first charge, too. After that we were well dug in.’

‘And are you calling it a victory?’ Salma asked him.

‘Opinion is divided,’ Parops admitted. ‘Some who fought on the walls say it was, but I, who was just watching from inside here, say not. They had their tacticians out, carefully seeing how it went, so I’m suggesting to my superiors that they’ll do better next time.’

‘Wise man, good advice,’ the Dragonfly told him.

‘So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?’ Totho asked. ‘We can’t just sit here. We have to get word to Stenwold.’

‘The city is sealed,’ Parops said sadly. ‘That’s the one thing we and the Wasps seem to agree on, as we’re not letting anyone out, and neither are they. If you left without permission from the Royal Court you’d be shot by our crossbows, and even if you weren’t, they have flying patrols on the lookout all the time.’

‘They’ll try to recover the broken engines after dark,’ Totho said suddenly. ‘They’ll send slaves to do it, probably.’ He had taken Salma’s place at the slit window. ‘Your artillerists should keep the ranges, and keep watch.’

‘Night artillery’s always a challenge,’ Parops said. ‘I’ve said it, though. Let us hope they take it up.’

Totho frowned at that ‘I’ve said it,’ and then realized what the man meant, remembering the mindlink that the Ancestor Art gave to all Ants. It united them within their own walls and equally divided them from their brothers in other cities.

Skrill finished another mouthful of bread, and took a swig of beer from the nearby jug. ‘I ain’t fighting no siege,’ she said.

‘They wouldn’t have you anyway,’ Nero told her.

‘Now I ain’t good enough for your siege?’

‘We fight together, as one,’ Parops explained. ‘Foreigners on the walls would only get in the way. No offence, but that’s how it is.’

Skrill shrugged.

‘On the other hand,’ Nero said, ‘if the walls do come down, then we’re all invited.’

‘Did their engines break through anywhere, when they turned them on the walls?’ Totho asked. He closely examined the arrowslit, seeing how its flared socket was set into a wall three feet thick at least.

‘A few stone-scars but nothing structural,’ Parops said. ‘They’re going to need a bigger stick to get through these walls. Nero tells me my kinden aren’t renowned for having new thoughts, but one reason for that is that the old ones have always served us pretty well. We know how to build a wall that won’t come down.’

‘And of course, this is another thing their. tacticians out there will have noted. That they will need more. ’ Totho mused. ‘What are their artificers like, Salma?’

‘I’m no judge,’ the Dragonfly admitted. ‘They’re like people who put big metal things together. That’s about my limit.’

‘It’s an odd thing,’ said Nero, ‘but the best imperial artificers, in my experience, are Auxillians: slave-soldiers or experts from the subject-races. True Wasps always prefer to be proper warriors, which is more about the fighting and less the tinkering around. I’ve had a good look out there and a lot of the big toys are in hands other than the Wasps’.’

‘Can they be turned?’ Totho asked immediately. ‘They’re slaves, after all. If they turn on their masters, with our help, they could escape into the Lowlands-’

Salma was shaking his head and Nero chuckled. ‘You’d assume, with all their experience as slave-owners, that the Wasps would have spotted that one, boy. Which is exactly why they have. Any funny business from those poor bastards down there, and their families will get to know about it in the worst way. And, besides, if some platoon of Bee-kinden, hundreds of miles from home, does decide to go it alone, you think they’ll be welcomed any, in Tark? Or anywhere else? And home for them is now within the Empire’s borders, so any man jumping ship will never get to see it again.’

Salma nodded. ‘I should tell you something, I think, at this point.’

Nero and Parops exchanged glances. ‘Go on, boy, don’t hold it in,’ the Fly-kinden prompted.

Salma’s smile turned wry. ‘I didn’t come here just for Stenwold’s war, or even my own people’s war. Not just to fight the Wasps, anyway.’

Totho nodded, remembering. Salma had barely mentioned the lure that had drawn him on this errand, which had originally been Skrill’s errand alone. Totho had almost forgotten that himself, amidst the catalogue of his own woes.

‘Don’t keep us in suspense,’ Nero said.

‘A woman, I’m afraid.’ Salma smiled brightly. ‘I came here after a woman.’

‘A Wasp woman?’ Parops asked.

‘No, but I’m told she’s with the camp. With some order of theirs, the. Grace’s Daughters, is it? No, Mercy’s Daughters.’

‘Never heard of them.’ Nero said. ‘So what about it?’

‘I will be leaving Tark at some point,’ Salma said, ‘whether your monarch approves or not. Because she’s out there somewhere and I have to find her.’

Nero’s glance met that of Parops. ‘Must be wonderful, to be young,’ the Fly grumbled. ‘I almost remember it, a decade of making a fool of myself and getting slapped by women. Marvellous, it was. Your mind seems set, boy.’

‘I mean what I say.’

‘Then at least choose your moment,’ Parops said. ‘Work with the city and let us get to trust you. Because there will be a sortie sooner or later. We’re not just going to sit here and watch them ruin our walls, you realize.’

‘Forgive me, but so far your city doesn’t seem interested in working with any of us,’ Totho pointed out.

‘That was then,’ Parops told him, taking the jug from Skrill and taking a swig from it. ‘Now you are, nominally, on our side, and people want you to talk to them.’

Salma’s grin broadened. ‘Now that’s unfair. There was a delightful Ant-kinden lady earlier who wanted nothing more than for me to talk to her.’

And at that there was a rap on the door and, when Nero opened it, she was standing right there, the Ant interrogator, staring straight at Salma.

Alder made a point of not wearing armour. Not only should there be some privileges for a general, but he hated being fussed over by slaves and servants, for with one arm he was unable to secure the buckles.

The largest tent in the Wasp encampment was not his living quarters but his map room. If assassins chose to head for it at night in search of generals to kill then that was entirely agreeable with him. He had sent a call out to his officers to join him, and if he had known that an Ant tower commander had dubbed them ‘tacticians’ he would have found it highly amusing. The term might just fit himself but, as far as planning this siege went, his was a perilously lonely position.

He was a man made for and unmade by war: lean and grey, though athletic still. He remembered a time when the title ‘General’ was reserved for men commanding armies. Now back at the imperial court there were generals of this and that who had never even taken the field. In his mind he preserved the purity of the position.

He was of good family, in fact. That had taken him to a captaincy. After that each rung of the ladder had been hard-won, climbed under enemy shot, and slick with blood. His face had a rosette of shiny burn-scar across nose and right cheek. His right arm had been amputated by a field surgeon who had not expected him to live.

That surgeon still received, at each year’s end, twenty-five gold Imperials from the amputee’s personal coffers. General Alder remembered the competent and the skilled.

So why, he asked himself, am I left with these misfits as my command staff? He lowered himself into one of the four folding chairs, watching his staff file in. The Officer of the Camp was Colonel Carvoc, an excellent administrator though an almost untried soldier, now seating himself to the general’s left. His armour was polished and unblemished. To Alder’s right came the Officer of the Field, Colonel Edric. Edric was a man of strange appetites and humours. An officer of matchless family, he spent his time amongst the hill-tribe savages that passed for shock troops in this army. He always went into battle, by his own tradition, in their third wave. He even wore their armour, and a chieftain’s helm with a four-inch wasp sting as a crest. With coarse gold armbands and a mantle of ragged hide, he looked every inch a tribal headman and not at all an imperial colonel.

The fourth chair remained empty, but Alder’s third and most problematical colonel was usually late and kept his own timetable. The general’s hand itched to strike the man every time he saw him, but some talents were precious enough for him to suffer a little insolence. For now at least.

The others were assembling in a semicircle before those seats: field brigade majors, the head of the Engineering Corps, the local Rekef observer posing as military intelligence. Behind them were the Auxillian captains from Maynes and Szar, their heads bowed, hoping not to be singled out.

Still Alder waited, whilst Colonel Edric fidgeted and played with the chinstrap of his helm.

His missing colonel remained absent, but she came at last. He had not ordered her to attend. Supposedly he could not, although he could have had her marched into his tent or out of the camp any time he wished. Instead, he kept a civil accord with her because an officer who was seen to drive away any of the Mercy’s Daughters was an officer soon disliked by the men.

‘Norsa,’ he said, although he had greeted none of the others.

‘General.’ Norsa was an elderly Wasp-kinden woman in pale lemon robes, walking with the aid of a plain staff. Alder’s respect for her was based in part on that staff and the limp it aided, which had been gained in battle, retrieving the wounded.

‘Colonel Edric. The morale amongst your. adherents?’ Alder asked.

‘Ready to make a second pass on your word, General,’ Edric confirmed.

‘I suppose we should be grateful that they’re all so stupid,’ Alder said, noticing the sudden crease in Edric’s forehead. The fool believes it. He’s gone native. In that case it was an illness that time would soon cure.

‘Major Grigan. We lost three engines, I counted.’

The Engineering Corps major nodded, not meeting Alder’s eyes. ‘We can retrieve parts, and we have enough spares in the train to construct six new from the pieces.’

‘Your estimation of their defences?’

Grigan looked unhappy. ‘Maybe we could go against them again tomorrow. Don’t think we made too much impression. Can’t be sure, sir.’

‘I want your opinion, Major,’ Alder said sternly.

‘But he doesn’t have one, General,’ snipped out a new voice, sharp and sardonic. Here was the errant colonel at last and, despite the man’s usefulness, Alder always preferred a meeting where he did not appear.

‘Drephos,’ Alder acknowledged him.

‘He prefers to defer to my opinions, since my judgment is sounder.’ The newcomer swept past Grigan with a staggering disrespect for a man of his heritage. He wore an officer’s breastplate over dark and decidedly non-uniform robes. A cowl hid his face. ‘General, the normal engines just won’t dent those walls.’

‘Well, Colonel-Auxillian Drephos, just what do you suggest?’

‘I have some toys I’m longing to set on the place,’ Drephos’s voice rose from within the cowl, rippling with amusement, ‘but I’ll need the cover of a full assault to do so. Specifically, throw enough men at those emplacements atop the towers, as their crews are too skilled for my liking.’

‘Well we wouldn’t want to see any of your toys broken,’ Alder said.

‘Not when they’re going to win your war for you.’ With his halting tread Drephos took up the final seat, on the other side of Colonel Carvoc. ‘We all know the plan, General,’ he continued. ‘And the first part of the plan is to knock a few holes in those walls of theirs. Give me the cover of a full assault and I’ll work my masterpiece. Stand back and watch me.’

‘A full assault will cost thousands of lives,’ Carvoc noted, ‘and it will be difficult to sustain it for long.’

‘Don’t think I’ll need all that long. Mine are exquisitely clever toys,’ Drephos said, delighted with his own genius as usual. ‘I’d suggest that you start by putting your usual tedious engines up front, give them something to aim at. While you’re at it, give the archers on the inside something to think about. We all know Ant-kinden: if it works, they won’t change it. Which always means they only try to mend something after it breaks. And if something breaks messily and finally enough, well, we artificers know that sometimes things just can’t be fixed.’

Salma awoke as she slipped from his bed. There was wan light spilling sullenly from the two slit windows up near the ceiling, and it caught the paleness of her skin. He had never known skin so pale, like alabaster with ashen shadows. In that grim, colourless light she seemed to glow, picked out from all the surrounding room.

Her name, he recalled, was Basila. Her second interrogation had been gentler than the first, and the third, after the hours of night, gentler still. He had not believed, quite, that these Ant-kinden even possessed a concept for the soft arts, as his people called the intimate act. They seemed all edges and planes and cold practicality. There had been heat aplenty, though, until he wondered just how many women across the city he was making love to simultaneously. She was stronger than he was, and fierce, constantly wresting control from him, an officer commandeering a civilian. For a man used to casually seducing women, it had been quite an experience.

He watched, eyes half open, as she pulled on her tunic and breeches. She was lacing her sandals before she noticed his watching attention.

‘You might as well sleep,’ she said.

‘I’m awake now. It’s dawn already?’

‘It is. I have duties.’

He watched as she shrugged on her chainmail, twisting for the side-buckles from long practice. He knew, or at least suspected, that they would not lie together again, that it had been merely curiosity that had drawn her to him. For his part it had been, at least, a way of showing the world and this city that his destiny had not escaped entirely from his own grasp.

Back in Collegium his liaisons had been the titillation and scandal of the Great College, scandal most particularly among those he had passed over or those who would have indulged in the same liaisons if they had dared. The strait-laced of Collegium would not have believed it, but Salma’s own kinden had a strict morality of coupling. It divided the world of the preferred gender into two parts, not based on race or social standing or anything other than the subjective feelings of the individual concerned: sleep where you wish, amongst those who mean little to you, and amongst those to whom you mean little. Amuse yourself as you will, but with those close to you, those who love you or those you love, bestow your affections only where they are sincerely meant.

He had never elaborated on this creed for Collegium, for there it would not have been understood. He had never lain with Tynisa who had, he knew, wanted it. Particularly he had never lain with Cheerwell, who would have agreed, for all the wrong reasons, if he had asked.

Basila buckled on her sword and, seeing Salma smiling at her, ventured a small one of her own.

‘Off to a hard day’s beating people?’ he asked, and her smile slipped. He assumed it was annoyance at him, but then she said, ‘It is dawn. The enemy is advancing on the walls.’

He dressed as fast as he could, his belongings having been returned to him. He took up the stolen Wasp sword without even buckling on a scabbard. Basila was now gone to join her unit or await prisoners or whatever she had to do. She had left him to cower here behind doors like the slaves of Tark and await his fate, and that cut deep.

He found Totho emerging from the next-door room just as he left. For a second he had time to wonder whether the halfbreed artificer had heard anything of the previous night’s activities, before recalling that Basila, of course, had been silent throughout.

So Totho heard nothing but the whole city knows we did it. He had to grin privately at that.

‘What’s going on?’ Totho asked sleepily.

‘The Wasps are attacking. Get your sword and bow.’

‘But the Ants won’t let us fight-’

‘Totho, if enough of the Wasps get over the wall, then our hosts’ preferences won’t come into it.’

Salma bolted up the stairs as Totho turned back for his gear.

They had been billeted in the rooms beneath Parops’s tower. Salma chose the first outside door, the ground-level door, and stopped with it half open, frozen.

The space before the gate was filled with ranks of Ant-kinden soldiers with crossbows and plenty of quarrels. Above them the walls, their crenellations slightly scarred from the previous day, were lined with more of them, and some of those had greater weapons. There were nailbow-men there with their blocky, firepowder-charged devices, and two-man teams with great winch-operated repeating crossbows resting on the walls.

They were shooting. All the men on the walls were shooting, either straight ahead or slightly upwards. Salma heard the grinding thunder of mechanisms, and the arm of the trebuchet atop Parops’s tower flung itself forward, slinging its load of man-sized stones in a high arc. All along the slice of wall that Salma could see, other engines were busy doing the same.

Then the Wasps were at the wall itself, and what he had only been told about became real.

The first wave was a great ragged sweep of spear-wielding savages who hurtled into a field of crossbow bolts. There were already deep holes punched in their scattered mass. Salma watched almost three in four get ripped from the sky in that first instant, as soon as their silhouettes appeared in the sky above the walls. Some were killed outright. Others screamed and plummeted from the air to be finished on the ground with pragmatic brutality. The surviving attackers paid them no heed. Some alighted on the walls. Others ploughed into the waiting men below or scattered across the city. They were in a blood-rage, foaming at the mouth, hurling their spears and blasting with their stings, drawing great slashing swords from their belts to lay about them. One came down close to the tower’s entrance, flinging his lance with such force that it punched right through an Ant’s chainmail, knocking the man off his feet. Salma leapt out instantly, taking to the air and dropping on the attacker with sword extended. Another Ant was there already, and the Wasp savage took both sword-blows simultaneously. He howled in something that was more rage than pain, swinging his own blade at Salma and then at the Ant soldier, cutting a long dent in the latter’s shield before falling.

There was a second wave of them at the walls already, coming too swiftly for many of the soldiers to have reloaded, although the repeating bows had taken a savage toll of the incursors. There was now hand-to-hand fighting all along the wall, and attackers kept dropping, or sometimes falling, down into the courtyard before the gates.

Salma had never seen Ants in combat before. There was no confusion here, no hesitation. The invaders were set upon efficiently, without haste. All found that any Ant they attacked was ready for them as those they tried to surprise turned to see them. The Ants had a hundred pairs of eyes watching each one’s back. The Wasps took a toll with their stings and their frenzied hacking, but how small that toll was! Most of their second wave had been turned into corpses, all for the loss of no more than two dozen defenders.

‘Get back inside, you!’ one of the Ants shouted over at him. ‘No place here for a civilian.’

‘I’m not a civilian!’ Salma called back. ‘Look, I have a sword!’

The man was about to answer him when something pulled his attention upwards. They were all looking up, and across all those raised faces one expression was asking: ‘What.?’

And then they were moving. Without a word, without panic or cries of alarm, they scattered as best they could. Those at the edge of the square were backing quickly into the side streets, others were pushing up against the wall itself. Some found the shelter of doors or doorways. All this in the space of seconds. Salma would have remained standing still if an Ant had not cannoned into him, pushing him back into the tower door, where he collided with Totho so that all three of them fell in a heap.

The first explosion came across the other side, just left of the main gate. A crack of sound, a burst of fire and stone and dust, flinging half a dozen soldiers up and away, shearing through the next nearest squad with jagged metal and shards of stone. Up above, the trebuchet was winching itself ponderously round, while other enemy missiles were landing now, some right before the gates and others impacting on nearby buildings in a sporadic and random rain of fire. Wherever they struck, they split and burst, cracking stone and flinging pieces of their shells in scything arcs. Soldiers everywhere were holding their shields up, falling back to what cover they could find. Each second yet another fireball burst close about the gates, and there had been so many soldiers gathered there a moment ago that each missile claimed at least one victim. Salma, clinging to the doorframe, saw shields punched inwards by the invisible fists of these explosions, a nearby door smashed to kindling, men and women given a second’s notice before being blown apart.

Yet there were no screams, and it seemed horribly unreal with that essential element missing. The Wasps that had come in first had screamed and shouted in fury and terror, but the Ants even died in silence, save for whatever last words they conveyed through that essential communion between them. In their last moments, he wondered, was that link a blessing for the fallen, or a torture for those still standing?

The artillery atop the wall was still pounding away, and Salma could see the Ant-kinden weapons, the ballistae, catapults and all the other murderous toys of the Apt, pivoting and tilting to get the range of the enemy siege engines. Totho went struggling past him, repeating crossbow cradled in his hands, even as another wave of Wasps passed overhead. These were the ones that Salma was familiar with, more disciplined and better armoured: the imperial light airborne. There were crossbows enough to deal with them but they had seized their moment and swiftly struck before the defenders had regrouped. Some circled overhead, spitting down with their stings, while others bedevilled the wall or passed into the city. There were strangers amongst them, Salma spotted: men of another kinden wearing breastplates and leathers in the imperial colours. One of these passed low over the crouching soldiers, and cast something behind him that erupted in a plume of fire and shattered paving flags.

Salma felt his wings flare into being before he had even decided what to do next, and an instant later he was springing for the wall-top. He caught a descending Wasp as he did so, the force of his flight driving his blade between the man’s armour plates and doubling him up in agony. Salma let the sword go, pushing upwards the height of the wall to leap up next to another Wasp soldier while the man was grappling with one of the defenders. Salma twisted the blade from his hand and stabbed him with it before even alighting on the stone walkway.

It was not chaos, but it was not far off. Beyond the wall the plain was crawling with war machines. Many of them were still flinging their explosive burdens inside the city despite the presence there of their own men. The walkway of the wall had become a mass of small skirmishes. The Ants were stronger and more unified, but the Wasps could fly and they took full advantage of it, dragging men and women off the walls or stinging their victims from on high and swooping down on them from all angles.

But the defenders below were rallying. The crossbow-shot began to pick up, Wasp attackers plucked from the air by the increasingly thick and accurate barrage. There would be no chance for Salma to take wing now without the risk of being taken for an invader. He looked about for a chance to intervene and then a Wasp leapt at him from over the battlements, almost knocking him off the walkway altogether. He grappled fiercely with the man, each keeping the other’s sword away. The Ants were fighting all around him but each would be waiting for a mental cry from him for help and Salma could not give it.

The Wasp was the stronger and he began forcing Salma back so that he was pushed half out off the wall, hanging over the battlefield beneath. The rough stone ground into Salma’s ribs, but then he got a knee up into the man’s groin and twisted around, using the soldier’s own force to pitch him headfirst into space.

The man’s wings rescued him, but he took a crossbow bolt even as they did, and fell. Salma dropped to one knee behind the shelter of the crenellations and tried to take stock of what was going on. Most of the flying attackers had been dealt with but their artillery was still moving. Salma risked a quick look over the wall.

Some of the enemy engines had been destroyed, but others were still active and an explosive missile struck Parops’s tower even as he watched. The Ant artillery seemed to be concentrating on the engines that were still advancing. He could see two of those in particular that seemed mostly armoured metal plates, like great woodlice, grinding forwards with their own mechanical power. One rocked under the impact of a scattering of great stones that put huge dents in its armour.

There were more fliers streaking overhead. One of the firepots landed on the walkway close by, throwing him from his feet and casting three Ant-kinden off the wall entirely, down onto their brethren below. As the next flier streaked close over the wall-top, he jumped up and rammed his sword home. The impetus of the man’s flight nearly dragged Salma from the wall, but he succeeded in wrestling his opponent onto the walkway.

Something beyond the walls exploded thunderously, with enough force to shake every stone beneath his feet. He dropped onto the man he had just stabbed, his head ringing with the din, and then dragged himself upright to look.

The armoured engine was gone. Instead there was a crater ten yards across, and splintered metal thrown ten times that distance.

Its brother engine was unfound by the artillery so far, and now it began to attack. A fat nozzle in its front opened and spat a great stream of black liquid out onto the wall, coating and clinging to the stones. The Ants were shooting down on it but it was inside the arc of their artillery fire and crossbow bolts simply shivered to pieces or bounced from its plating. Salma watched in horror as the black stain spread across the face of the wall, before the flood slowed to a trickle and stopped.

The engine began to retrace its steps towards the Wasp camp, crawling backwards without even turning round, and the artillery did not assail it. Instead, the Ants were waiting to see what happened.

Nothing happened. The black liquid simply hugged the wall. Whatever terrible effect the Wasps had anticipated did not materialize.

Salma dropped back down and rested his back to the stone crenellations. He saw beside him the body of the last man he had killed. It was one of the others, not a Wasp but a stocky, dark-skinned man in partial armour, with flat, closed features. He still lived, just, his eyes moving to seek out Salma’s own. Then he died.

What city? What kinden? Where had the Wasps taken this luckless man from, to force him to fight enemies not his own, to have him die in panic and pain far from his home?

On the face of the wall, the black liquid had evaporated, leaving only a great blotchy stain to disfigure the walls of Tark.

The plated engine’s retreat was the signal, and the Wasp assault slowed, the commands moving around as fast as they could be shouted. One more wave of soldiers, too enthusiastic for their own lives, flew out unsupported into the Tarkesh crossbow-shot, while the wall artillery made the imperial engines’ return a hazard, sending rocks and ballista bolts hurtling at them to the very far extent of their range. The imperial soldiers who regained their camp were the whole ones, or those with only light wounds. All others had been left to the sharp-edged mercies of the Ant-kinden. If they could not fly, they died.

General Alder watched the survivors, so few of them now, struggle back into camp. The two waves of Hornets had been wiped out to a man, and only a third of the light airborne had made it back, with half of the Bee-kinden engineers he had risked. By traditional military standards the assault had been a disaster. Generals had been executed for such performances, he thought bleakly. This had better not be the battle they remember me for. Morale would be low in the camp tonight, and would only get lower. His soldiers would still fight, but they would lack fire, for the discipline of the Ants would destroy them. The Wasps would inevitably batter themselves to death against the defenders’ steel resolve. Of all things I hate fighting Ant-kinden. Every step forward’s nothing but bloody butchery.

He cursed wearily. Those wounded fortunate enough to have returned would be under the care of the field surgeons now, or else the healing skills of the Daughters. Later he would walk amongst them, as was his tradition, and it was more than just show put on for the men. The general felt the responsibilities of his position keenly.

For now, though, there was one meeting that he was anxious to get over with, and the spark of anticipation he now felt was that it might just give him an excuse to have the maverick artificer killed.

‘Get me the Colonel-Auxillian,’ he snapped at his attendant staff, and one of them flew off to locate the man.

Colonel Edric was at that moment coming over to make his report, in all his barbaric splendour. Alder found himself vaguely surprised that the man was still alive, but then recalled: Third wave is his tradition. Lucky for him we pulled out when we did.

‘Colonel, speak your piece.’

‘Sir.’ Edric had not forgotten himself so far as to miss his salute. ‘We made progress, sir, we really did. I’m told that the combination of engines, troops and the grenades broke up the defenders so that we were able to send a whole wave of the airborne over the wall without resistance.’

‘Really, Colonel? And amongst the hill-tribes, this is considered progress?’

‘Sir?’

‘And will you take the city with just one wave of the light airborne?’ Alder shook his head. ‘Go see to your men, Colonel. Those few that are left.’

There was a bitter taste in his mouth, and he had nobody to share it with. That is what it means to be in command. But of his subordinate colonels, Edric was too savage and Carvoc too dull. Only Norsa, of the Daughters, could possibly understand his feelings. He promised himself that he would visit her tonight, share a bowl of wine and talk of this in tones that would not be overhead. An imperial general shows no weakness to his men. His bleak thoughts could not hide from his own scrutiny, however, nor would he disown them. We have done poorly today, and that bastard Drephos is to blame.

He saw the man in question now, swathed in his robe as always, with not a crease or scratch on him. As he watched the Colonel-Auxillian make his way over, his gait slightly offset from some old injury, his face was just a blur under the cowl, but Alder was sure that he could glimpse a smile there.

‘Drephos,’ he growled, ‘explanations, please?’

The cowled man made an amused noise. ‘It’s war, General. Surely you know your own business.’

Alder’s one remaining hand caught him by the collar, twisting the cowl half across his face. ‘For what cause have you spilt the blood of so many of my men?’ he demanded.

‘For your cause, General,’ said Drephos, his voice showing no sign that Alder held him by the throat.

‘I don’t see any of the walls down, Drephos,’ Alder snapped. He knew that Wasp lives were less than nothing to this man. Spending life in the Empire’s name was one thing, while spending it to fuel the Colonel-Auxillian’s private games was quite another.

‘Let us have this conversation again in two days’ time,’ Drephos suggested. ‘Then you might see something quite different.’