The Air War

Thirty-Four

Reaching the Amphiophos was a nightmare journey through disintegrating streets, encountering the dispossessed, the grieving, the blank-faced Merchant Company soldiers who could not help. The city’s familiar landmarks had been picked up and strewn like a child’s toys. Collegium was large and the enemy orthopters had been few, relatively speaking. The Beetle-kinden would survive, but still the scale of the damage was daunting. An unopposed incursion finally served to show what the hard work of the Collegiate airmen and women had been achieving as the nightly fruits of their failing defence.

The bombing was tailing off by the time Stenwold reached the first rubble foothills of the Amphiophos, and it was a bitter thought that only a shortage of bombs could be behind their retreat.

They will come in greater numbers tomorrow. That is what this has all been about. If I am wrong about Banjacs’s machine, though… then I will have invited the end. The thought of that same end being inevitable sooner or later, if Banjacs failed, was not one to comfort him.

Like little ants whose nest has been kicked over. That was the image that came to Stenwold as he set eyes on Collegium’s fallen heart of governance. Visible in the light of those fires still blazing, the shell and rubble of the place was crawling with the living, and he knew they were searching for the dead. He saw clerks and Company soldiers, servants, cleaners, concerned citizens, some still in nightshirts, all of them picking over the collapsed grandeur of the sprawling building. The Amphiophos’s heart was of ancient Moth construction, and succeeding generations had re-edified it, adding wings and rooms, domes, gardens, spires and suites, but all with surprising taste, preserving the pre-revolution elegance of the original white stone, so that the whole formed a bridge to a distant past that the Beetles had otherwise turned their backs on. From these halls the Moth-kinden had ruled their coastal city of Pathis, and the subject people who would, in the end, overthrow them. From these same white halls the founding parents of Collegium had set their course: embracing not arms and grudges and feuding like their Ant neighbours, but learning and tolerance and thought. The College and the Amphiophos, and the whole of Collegium sprang from that source, mind and heart.

One of the new wings was still standing, its windows just jagged empty sockets, but the interior merely singed rather than gutted. The rest had been laid waste. Domes had cracked like eggshells, often one wall and a section of curved roof still tottering, the rest fallen amidst a devastation of tapestries and murals and mosaics and art, and of lives too. The western end was still on fire, the water crews fighting to beat down the flames. The rest… Stenwold had never seen such a wasteland, not even in Myna. The attack on that city had been brutal but swift, but Collegium had been pounded and pounded, night after night, and now…

The expressions on the faces of those around him were haggard and gaunt with grief and incredulity, thoughts retreating deep inwards as the hands worked, shifting stones, searching for survivors or for simple confirmation of mortality. There were sobs from a few, but most simply forced themselves to it like automatons, building up a head of grief that would strike them the moment they rested.

In the midst of all this, he found Jodry.

The Speaker for the Assembly came shambling out from between roofless walls, his formal robes torn and soot stained, skin disfigured with bruises. There was a gash on his scalp that had been clumsily, hastily dressed. He stumbled and tripped over the fallen stones, hugging to him a burden that Stenwold could not identify for a moment, and then realized was a mass of papers bundled together awkwardly, charred and ripped and sodden in turn.

Jodry dumped them to the ground, and Stenwold saw that there was already a couple of other similar mounds, a meagre harvest of scrolls and books that were now in too poor a state to be sold in a Helleron street market.

‘Jodry,’ he called, and the man looked up, eyes bloodshot with the smoke, haunted by knowledge.

‘Sten.’ The fat man’s voice was the ghost of its former self.

‘What are you…?’ For a moment Stenwold wondered if the Speaker had gone mad.

‘The records, Sten. The minutes, laws, Assembly debates… our government, Sten.’ Jodry gestured helplessly at the ruined papers, even as his secretary, Arvi, staggered out with another pile, looking as battered and begrimed as his master.

‘But these…’ Stenwold crouched to begin leafing through the nearest pile. Loose pages from manifests, transcripts, judgements, accounts, but nothing connecting to its neighbours, nothing complete or whole, each pile almost whimsical in its juxtaposition, books compiled by idiots for illiterates.

‘It’s all we have. It’s Collegium,’ Jodry whispered. ‘It just needs… sorting out and filing, Sten…’

‘Jodry, for the world’s sake, sit down. Get something to drink. Arvi, surely you can…?’

Wearily, the Fly reached into his tunic and produced a flask. Stenwold had the impression that it was not from Jodry’s stock, rather for the little man’s private consumption, but he passed it to his master without comment. Jodry tipped it back, gagged at whatever was inside, and then choked over it for long enough that, on looking Stenwold in the face again, there was a measure of composure once more in his eyes.

Neither of them said it. Neither of them uttered the words, We did this. The thought travelled between them as though they had rented a mindlink from the Ants for the occasion.

Stenwold shook his head. ‘It could have been any night, Jodry. It would have come, sometime. The very inevitability of this, and all the other variants of this, was why we… why we made our decision.’

Jodry nodded wearily. ‘Banjacs’s house still stands,’ he said. ‘The College lost the Awlbright workshops and machine rooms, and they put a hole through the Prowess Forum roof, though that one didn’t go off. And the rest, Sten… the list of homes and shops and lives.’ He looked up, frowning. ‘What happened to your ear?’

In truth, Stenwold had almost forgotten, having just slapped some ointment on the wound — a pain worse than the original — to kill off the animicules before he left the house. ‘Assassin,’ he explained curtly. His own difficulties seemed trivial by comparison.

‘Someone assassinated your ear.’ Jodry managed a half-inch worth of weak smile. ‘Well that sounds as though the general warning we got was a good one.’ The smile was gone. ‘More paperwork, then. Who was attacked? Who did they get? I know poor Bola Stormall was shot dead outside her house. We sent soldiers off to guard everyone who seemed likely, but we couldn’t protect everyone.’

‘And they couldn’t attack everyone, either. And the men who came for me won’t be moving on down the list, for certain,’ Stenwold put in fiercely.

Jodry nodded wearily, unwilling to accept even that meagre victory, and then his eyes lit on something beyond Stenwold. Eujen Leadswell and the Wasp Averic had trailed after him to the devastation of the Amphiophos, and were now standing, humbled and aghast at the sight of the ruin.

‘They came to warn you, then,’ Jodry noted. ‘The Wasp boy guessed you’d be top of their list.’ For a moment it seemed that he might gloat, perhaps suggest that Stenwold take Averic off for an interrogation by the soldiers of the Maker’s Own. Seeing this diminished man before him, Stenwold would almost have preferred that.

And he could not honestly say to himself that a thorough questioning of Averic, as a potential enemy agent, had not occurred to him. He felt like two men inside: the rational Collegiate and the man who had fought the Empire most of his life. Both of them were eminently logical and consistent within their world views, entirely persuaded by their own arguments, and yet they did not seem to be on speaking terms with each other any more.

‘Get some rest,’ he told Jodry gruffly. ‘All this…’ A gesture at the scattered, pointless papers.

‘I know,’ the Speaker for the Assembly agreed miserably. ‘But I needed to do something. I couldn’t just let it…’

‘Go,’ Stenwold insisted, and then stalked over to his followers.

‘Well, you’ve done a service for the city,’ he forced himself to admit. ‘You have the thanks of the Assembly, or will have, once it can be assembled.’ He overdid his attempt at friendliness, and saw Eujen’s gaze cut through it with the cynicism of the young.

‘Perhaps you could repay us by answering one question, Master Maker. What happened last night? Where were our orthopters? The Empire raped us from the air.’

‘There were defenders.’ Stenwold strode past them, aware of them following him, as he knew they would. But he was heading for a stretch of rubble that had been picked over already, with no ears to overhear.

‘Where were they? Master Maker, we were on the streets all the way from my lodgings to your townhouse, with a stop at the College on the way, and precious little sign of anyone of ours in the air.’

‘Collegium is a large city.’ Stenwold turned to face him, feeling half the warrior, half the statesman, but wholly the combatant.

‘This was different,’ Eujen insisted, not letting go. ‘Different to all the other times. I swear to you I saw barely a Stormreader in the sky.’ The boy faced off against him, fists clenched.

‘Perhaps our orthopters were engaged elsewhere — on the attack perhaps?’

‘ Is that what happened, Master Maker?’

And at last Stenwold recognized the tone behind the challenge: a plea for reassurance. Not a political opponent, this, but a Collegiate citizen whose home was at stake: a student barely grown, wearing the sash of an invented Company, playing at soldiers in a real war.

But I can’t tell him. I certainly can’t tell the Wasp. The secrecy is the entire point. He stared at Averic, gaunt and silent at Eujen’s shoulder. He would not meet Stenwold’s eyes, but there was something there to be confronted nonetheless: the fact that these two, that the Wasp in particular, had saved lives last night — Stenwold’s included.

The choices spread before him like a fan opening. Walk away: these two could stir up trouble, but they could force no answers from him. Counter-attack: why not have the Wasp answer some questions — he knew more than he had told, for all that his information had served to the good. Surrender: but Stenwold had spent too much of his life fighting for that, hadn’t he?

He stared at the two of them, the spymaster and the soldier in him trying to draw up a harsh word, a put-down that would set the impertinent boy in his place and simplify his own life again. I don’t need this. Haven’t I enough to worry about?

In that second, glowering into Eujen’s angry, hurt gaze, he saw himself as Jodry had come to see him: a man going too fast downhill, driven by his obsessions, unwilling to let go of his grudges; old, and set in his ways the way old men get. He saw Eujen, too, the young intellectual with a cause that he was willing to fight for no matter what the institution thought. When did we change places? Wasn’t I standing on his side of the line, last time I looked?

He sat down suddenly, rubble shifting beneath him, sensing Eujen’s instinctive lurch forward to assist him. Have they not earned some answers — even the Wasp? Some small part of the truth, at least?

‘Tomorrow,’ he told them. ‘I have no answers for you now, but tomorrow… I will send for you, and I will take you to where all of this will make sense.’ Or if it does not, then we are lost, and who cares what you think then?

‘We knew something was wrong from about ten minutes in,’ Aarmon reported wearily. They were in Tynan’s tent, though the general was elsewhere, readying the troops for the first engagement with the Collegiate foot. Instead, the intelligencer Colonel Cherten was taking centre stage, sitting on Tynan’s camp stool with borrowed authority, as the same pilot delegation stood before him: Aarmon, Scain, Nishaana, with Kiin, Pingge and Tiadro as their diminutive shadows.

‘They met us closer to the city than usual, and with less force, but the efficiency of their first response is variable. We assumed the balance of their machines would come from some unexpected angle. They never came. Instead we broke their formation and chased them all the way to the city. There was some scattered resistance after that, mostly individual orthopters, and their ballistae batteries, of course, but…’ A small gesture of the hand, barely opening the fingers. ‘Where were their machines? Where were their pilots? Colonel, we know them by now, the best of them, those that have survived this long fighting against us. No names, but I could identify at least a dozen, maybe a score of their aviators. None of them was in the sky over Collegium last night. I even sent a few machines back-’

‘Against orders,’ Cherten noted with a crisp smile.

‘Sir, when we’re in the air, the only orders that count are mine.’ Aarmon was a bigger man than Cherten, and amongst friends, and for a moment the chain of command strained and creaked between them, the intelligence officer off balance for a second before forcing an easy smile to his face, waving the comment off.

‘Continue.’

‘I had assumed the Collegiates had finally realized that they were losing, night after night, and had committed their air power against the army here, hoping to do enough damage to make taking the city on the ground impossible. I sent machines back to give that warning, and to rouse those who were off shift.’ He gestured towards Scain, who had served as the messenger. ‘But they never came here. Our entire reserve sat in their Farsphex and waited, but they never came at all. Can I ask about our intelligence operation in Collegium, sir?’

Cherten frowned, because that was a taboo question from anyone outside Army Intelligence. Pingge was well aware that Cherten was reckoned to be a Rekef agent placed within Intelligence, information obtained from some channel of gossip of the pilots most recently out of Capitas. Whatever games the Rekef was playing with its junior cousin right now, the pilots had no idea, save that any such internal division did not bode well.

‘And why might that be pertinent, Major?’ Cherten asked archly, recovering his superiority.

‘If your agents have assassinated a large number of the enemy pilots, that accounts for it, sir,’ Aarmon explained bluntly. ‘If not, we need another explanation, because something is definitely going on.’

For a long time Cherten just stared at him, holding the impenetrable veil of the intelligence service closed, but then he shrugged. ‘We have agents in the city, and they will be liaising with the Aldanrael spies already in place, preparing a kill list and working through it. Viable targets are likely to be their leaders, not the body of their aviators.’

Pingge sensed the slight sense of relief among the pilots, and understood them immediately. They had come to know the enemies who clashed with them night after night, whose faces they never saw but whose technique, individual style and skill were as familiar as a sparring partner’s. They had lost friends and comrades to those foes, but there was an honour to that rivalry, and Pingge knew all the pilots believed in it. When the time came, that was how they would go — an endless moment of torn metal and blood, fire and falling. A pilot’s death was owed to each of them as the due of their place in the sky’s aristocracy. Death by the assassin’s blade was a groundsman’s death, and their enemies deserved better.

‘I have had some reports from our opposite numbers amongst the Spiders, but they’re uncertain at best,’ Cherten went on. ‘Give me your thoughts, Major.’

‘Assuming there wasn’t some colossal mistake on their part — for instance, sending their machines somewhere way off the mark to counter some attack we didn’t make — then it comes down to this: they had machines, however many, that they didn’t use. So: either they are saving the remains of their strength for the actual assault, and have decided not to defend their city, or they want us to think them undefended, to make us complacent. It may be that they have amassed a greater force than we are aware of, and want us to bring all our force so that they can challenge it.’

‘Are you saying you think this is a trap?’ Cherten asked him levelly.

‘It might be, sir. We were tearing strips from their city last night. Either they cannot defend or they seek a single strike that will cripple our air power. Maybe they have redesigned their machines, or they have reinforcement pilots from Sarn or elsewhere, or they are simply desperate enough to risk all by committing everything they have. Both sides have understood, from a tenday ago at least, that they are failing to hold us. Each night that their pilots have lessened the impact of our bombs, they have also reduced their ability to defend against us when the army arrives.’

‘You know our orders demand commitment now in the air.’

‘Sir, what intelligence has come from the city? I can make no suggestion without that.’

Cherten looked uncomfortable. ‘It is difficult… most of the Spider spies are Inapt, so information regarding technical subjects will always be unreliable. There is a suggestion that Collegium is suffering shortages, to the extent that they are unable to keep their machines airworthy, that they are husbanding their strength against the actual siege. But with the Inapt it’s hard to be sure what they think they mean. So, suggestions…?’

‘If they have a great force prepared, then anything short of full commitment could see us lose whatever force we send out,’ Aarmon said, laying out the options methodically. ‘If we hold back on the basis that they may possess some overwhelming force, we lose a night’s work, give them more time to repair and rebuild, and we’ll only discover the truth of their plan when the army reaches the walls tomorrow.’ Aarmon paused for a moment, and Pingge knew that thoughts were flying between him and the others. ‘If they are just saving everything they have to throw at us during the siege, then it would be better if we could draw them out tonight. If they truly wish to draw us to one final battle, if they believe that they have a chance to destroy our air strength, then… if they have amassed so many additional fliers then our army’s chances against the walls are doubtful.’

Colonel Cherten snorted at that, and all six of the aviators — Wasps and Flies, men and women — stared at him.

‘I think you overestimate the importance of your machines, Major Aarmon,’ the intelligence officer declared, ever so slightly patronizing, and Pingge thought, Oh, pits, he doesn’t understand.

‘Sir, General Tynan must be made aware of all I have said, to make an informed choice,’ Aarmon persisted.

‘Oh he’ll hear it,’ Cherten agreed. ‘The senior officers will meet with our General and our Lady-Martial, and you will hear of our decision shortly,’ he assured them. ‘In the meantime, ensure that your orthopters are ready to fly, armed, fuelled and serviced.’

Who’d have thought so much of soldiering was digging holes?

Straessa, known as the Antspider, or ‘Sub’ to her men, watched the earthmovers slugging away at the ground, grinding out trenches that would be five feet deep when they were done, their drivers working to a complex plan laid out back at the camp by a committee of whoever seemed sufficiently interested. Certainly her own chief officer, Marteus, had not been remotely bothered, plainly considering it work not fit for soldiers. So it was that Straessa’s detachment were here now, standing about with snapbows on their shoulders watching the machines dig. Three detachments of twenty had come out there to bake in their armour, their automotive transports having slewed to a halt in an untidy clutter behind them. The day was scorching, with not a cloud in the sky. Weather like that will kill more people than the bows do, if the battle’s held in it, she considered. Sartaea te Mosca was already passing amongst the soldiers, reminding them to drink regularly, taking water bottles back to the automotives for refilling from the barrels they carried. The transformation in the Fly-kinden lecturer fascinated the Antspider. Back at the College she had taught ancient mystical techniques that nobody believed in to students incapable of truly understanding them, and was denied even a full mastership by an institution that was always on the point of obliterating her role entirely. She had pottered about, hosting and socializing, and being both inoffensive and ubiquitous. Meanwhile everybody forgot that she had come to the College from Dorax, where the old Moth ways still held sway. Only her name, Sartaea, was even an echo of her origins, and she otherwise seemed such a mild little creature that she could not possibly carry even a ghost of the Bad Old Days.

Now she was all business, tending to her charges, refusing to take no for an answer. No larger or more obtrusive, but te Mosca seemed to have become almost a force of nature, impossible to argue with. If only she had run her minuscule department with such iron, then she would by now either be a full Master or exiled from Collegium for good.

‘Tell me something comforting,’ Straessa called out to her, as she passed.

‘We can’t possibly lose,’ te Mosca replied promptly. Her smile was grim and small, but at it least it was still in place. ‘The omens have foretold a great victory.’

‘Tell me something comforting and true.’

The Fly shrugged, the smile turning bittersweet. ‘Ah, well, there you have me.’

The air was laden with dust, a choking morass of it that the earthmovers threw up, gritting the eyes and throat, a smothering blanket that only intensified the heat. It’s just as well I know this is important. Seems like the sort of nonsense they’d give out for punishment detail in other armies.

The theory was sound, though. When the armies finally clashed — any day now — the Collegiates would make their stand in these earthworks, shielded from enemy shot and shell, defended by a fence of stakes, currently resting on the beds of the automotives, with entrenched artillery to support them. The broken ground of the trenches would trip up even the new Imperial automotives, whilst the Collegiate machines would sally down pre-planned safe paths in order to attack the enemy supply and siege engines.

Straessa pulled down the neckerchief she was using to screen the dust from her lungs, and took a swig of water, more to forestall a telling-off from te Mosca than because she felt the need for it. The Fly-kinden woman veered off, satisfied, and went to berate Gerethwy instead. The lanky Woodlouse youth stared down at her as though he had never seen anything so impertinent in all his life, but within a few moments he too was uncapping his own flask, giving in to the inevitable.

That was when a call went out from on high. They had a few with them who possessed the Art of flight, and there was a rota of lookouts, but Straessa had not expected to need them. After all, the enemy were miles away, according to the scouts.

A Fly-kinden dropped down hard enough to buckle at the knees.

‘They’re coming!’ he shouted.

She fought back all the stupid things she would have said before some Ant had been fool enough to trust her with a rank, however inferior — all the What? and Who? and Are you sure? — and instead just barked out, ‘Report!’ as she ran over. All around her, soldiers were readying their weapons, charging, loading, not calmly but not panicked either.

‘Half-dozen automotives coming along fast, Sub,’ the Fly choked out.

‘The army?’

‘Just the machines, Sub.’

Six automotives? For a moment she felt like laughing. The Collegiate forces could surely defeat them or drive them off. They had sixty soldiers, three armed transports and the earth-movers. The look on the Fly’s face brought her up short, though. ‘Tell me.’

‘Like woodlice, Sub, but they were moving as fast as a horse can gallop, it looked like, and heading straight for us. Sub, these are the ones we’ve heard of — the ones that did Myna.’

‘Sub!’ someone else called out to her, pointing. There were dustclouds building rapidly to the north-east, the enemy’s machines coming on fast!

‘Everyone to the automotives!’ she shouted. ‘Move it, all of you! That means you on the earthmovers too!’

Technically Straessa did not have overall command, for each detachment was under its own sub-officer. At least one of the other officers was shouting at his men to stand and shoot. And we should have worked this sort of thing out before. The Beetle-kinden had no rigorous tradition of giving and obeying orders, though, being a people who loved discussion.

Still, her own people were on the move, and at least some of the others. The bulk of the earthmover drivers were still at work, though, and Straessa pounded over to them, shouting at them to get going.

‘We’ll never get the machines away in time,’ one of them objected. He was a big Beetle of middle years, and plainly did not want to be told what to do by some halfbreed student.

‘Sod the machines. Get yourselves out!’ she snapped at him.

‘If I lose this machine-’ the Beetle started, plodding to a fault, and then there was a hollow boom nearby, a thunder and a whirling plume of dust, the echo of it almost lifting Straessa from her feet. One of the other earthmovers had been staved in as though an invisible fist had struck it. A moment later its fuel tank exploded with a wretched pop, flames creeping weakly from the burst seams.

The Beetle needed no more encouragement, but was already running for the transports, and then so was almost everyone else. Straessa held on for one moment more, horrified and fascinated, watching the shapes loom out of the dust. Those high-fronted, armoured forms of overlapping armour plates, that single lidded eye that opened only when the machines ground to a skidding halt for a moment, when it flashed and belched as the leadshotter behind it let loose. There was only this half-dozen, but their swift and rushing movement struck a primal fear into Straessa that she had not known she could own to.

A moment later she was pelting towards the transports herself, aware that she had left her escape surely too late. Even as she thought it, though, one of the rugged wheeled vehicles slewed to an untidy halt next to her, its open back crammed with her soldiers. She saw a young Beetle-kinden girl pedalling the mounted ballista around to face the enemy, while Gerethwy had his mechanized snapbow resting on the back rail.

She leapt up, caught at an outstretched hand and was hauled in, even as the driver kicked the vehicle into motion again, wrestling with the gearings until they were grinding away satisfactorily once more. She heard Gerethwy’s weapon discharge with a hammering snap-snap-snap. She had already opened her mouth to tell him to stop, that there was no point wasting ammunition at this range, when the first of the enemy automotives had ploughed alongside them, clattering past on its nest of pistoning legs, in pursuit of one of the other transports.

Her mouth remained open.

Gerethwy trained his weapon on it, the snapbow bolts ricocheting hopelessly, without a chance of penetrating those thick armour plates. A moment later, the ballista loosed, the explosive bolt leaping the narrow gap between the vehicles, to bloom and burst against the side of the enemy, knocking it off course a little but leaving only a soot mark and a shallow scar.

‘Down!’ someone called out, and then their own automotive rocked, veering dangerously towards the enemy machine beside them with its port wheels off the ground. Behind, receding, ascended the plume of a near-miss, and beyond that another of the implacable enemy, getting up speed again.

‘Incredible!’ Gerethwy shouted. ‘Look how fast they accelerate! We couldn’t get up speed in twice that time!’ He shook his head, the student artificer in him clearly taken by the things, however deadly they were. ‘Still, I’ll wager we’re faster on the flat-’

There was the sound of thunder from ahead and to their right, and they saw one of the other transports abruptly flip sideways, its rear axle and wheels disintegrating as it was caught by a low shot from one of the pursuing enemy, and Gerethwy shut up, long face ashen. There had been bodies flung up in that moment, human ragdoll shapes revolving in the dust. Fellow soldiers, comrades, people they knew.

The ballista was shooting again, loosing bolts back at the machines in their wake, every distraction or deviation winning them a few seconds’ grace. If they did not have to stop to shoot, we’d be done for, Straessa realized. But Gerethwy had been right: now they had got up to speed they were pulling away, the two transports. Although a few more geysers of dust and dirt fountained up nearby, the enemy was falling behind.

All they had won here was their lives. They had lost the earthmovers, lost the chance of preparing their ground properly, lost a third of their force or more.

And we have seen the enemy. It was an uncertain blessing at best.

A small hand touched her arm, and she looked down to see Sartaea te Mosca. There was blood on the Fly’s fingers, and Straessa was surprised to find it was her own, from a shallow line cut into her forearm by some errant shard of metal or broken stone.

‘Tell me something comforting,’ she said to the Fly, sitting down and letting the little woman smear a stinging ointment on the wound. But Sartaea te Mosca had nothing to say.