The Air War

Thirty-Eight

Standing east of the Collegiate camp, guessing that behind her most of the non-combatants were making their escape already, Straessa recognized a bad idea when she saw it. The last of her people was falling into position, and it seemed the explosion that had killed Praeda Rakespear was still echoing in her ears. She had not even been able to discover if her chief officer was dead or alive.

There was a tug at her sleeve and she glanced down to see Sartaea te Mosca, who should have been with the surgeons. The Fly woman, friend and hostess and occasional lecturer in Inapt studies, looked desperately grave, out of all proportion to her size.

‘Keep safe, now.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Straessa said. ‘No promises.’

The hoped-for smile flickered ghostlike over te Mosca’s face, then faded. ‘There will be stretcher teams following behind the lines, so get your wounded sent back immediately, if you can. Just call out “Stretcher” and, if they hear, they’ll come, no matter what.’

‘Where did you find them?’ Straessa demanded. ‘You’ve learned how to magic people out of thin air, now? Wish you’d taught that in class.’

‘Oh, volunteers,’ the Fly said casually. ‘From the camp, you know: artificers, cooks, prostitutes, whoever we had. I was surprised, really. So many of them wanted to help. It’s their Collegium, too, after all.’

Straessa made to reply, but then three clear, shrilling blasts reached her, and she reached for her own whistle, relaying the order even before her mind had decoded it. Advance. Ah, right. She squeezed te Mosca’s hand, and then the Fly was half-slipping, half-flying away, back to the camp where the surgeons were already preparing themselves for the butchery to come.

Her maniple knew the sign, and for a moment she thought that they would not go with her, would just watch her march off on her own and then quietly slip away. Then they were falling into step, remembering their training in fits and starts. The majority had their snapbows, but about a third — the Inapt or the plain bad shots — had pikes upright and ready. In the second rank, Gerethwy had the considerable weight of his mechanized snapbow shouldered.

To their left and right, other maniples of the Coldstone were making a similar advance, doing their best to keep up with the swiftest of their neighbours — a piecemeal uniformity of movement being achieved by army-wide committee, in true Collegiate fashion. Unlike the traditional shield line that Ant-kinden had been so keen on, right up to the invention of the snapbow, each square was loose-knit, and there were gaps between the formations, because to be tight-packed and unable to move would be suicide in this war.

They were the front line — the anvil, as Straessa had said — and that image was foremost in her mind as she led her men out, with a snapbow slung at her side and her rapier at her belt. Ahead was only dust, and then, even as she looked there were shapes smashing their way out of it: the enemy automotives.

She remembered how fast they were, from the trench-works, but here, from on foot, they seemed a good deal faster.

‘Ready to disperse!’ she yelled out, watching their approach and trying to calculate trajectory. They really are coming in very fast now.

This was the Collegiate plan, on facing with the Sentinel automotives: plain avoidance and a stark admission that they had nothing to stop them. On the other hand, there were only around twelve of the machines with the Second, and there was simply a limit to the damage a handful of such monsters could do to an entire army.

The phrase is ‘acceptable losses’.

Straessa braced herself, then a moment later she realized that her maniple was to be spared. The unit to her left was breaking, though, the formation disintegrating into fleeing individuals in an undignified muddle as the Sentinel bore down on them, so that, when the armoured machine thundered through, only a luckless pikeman was caught by its charge, abruptly a broken corpse hurled high by the impact. Snapbow bolts rattled uselessly against the machine’s metal hide, and she saw some manner of return shot cut down two more soldiers before it was on its way again, rushing into the heart of the Collegiate army, desperate to get its jaws into something more substantial.

They were still advancing, dispersed units reforming and hurrying to catch up, because the enemy airborne and infantry would be following right behind. Straessa risked a look right and left. Towards the trailing edge of the right flank, one maniple had somehow got it completely wrong, spread too late or not at all. She saw a trail of ragged corpses, a gaping hole in their already patchwork line, stretcher-bearers rushing to separate the dead from those who might yet be saved.

‘Eyes behind, someone,’ she heard herself order. ‘I want to know when those bastards decide to come back.’

Beyond the advancing infantry’s edge, she saw one wing of the Collegiate automotives start out, overtaking those on foot within moments, dozens of disparate machines converted for war, along with the heavier, slower war engines of the Sarnesh. Each sported some manner of mounted artillery, but they seemed fleeting and frail compared to the Sentinels. And they’re what the Sentinels are after. The plan’s working so far. She guessed that her side’s war machines had started off back centre in the formation, so the gaps between the infantry blocks would lead the Imperial scouts to believe that Collegium would be running its auto-motives through the centre, in order to smash the Empire’s ground infantry, just as the Sarnesh had done at the Battle of the Rails. As soon as the infantry had started the advance, though, the automotives had swerved out towards the flanks, and thus the questing Sentinels would not find their prey.

But they’ll be right back when they realize it, and that’s going to be bloody soon.

‘Airborne!’ someone shouted, and Straessa looked up to see the sky abruptly busy with shapes that resolved themselves into Wasp soldiers dropping down towards them.

‘Pikes up! Snapbows aim and ready. Pick your marks!’ All along the line similar orders were being given. The maniple spread out a little, by long training, their sharp spearpoints jutting at slanting angles so that the enemy could not simply drop amongst them with sword and sting, whilst the snapbows were all levelled together, with little precision lost from their time drilling despite the fact that everyone there was surely as terrified as she was.

If it wasn’t for them watching me, I’d run, she decided.

‘Loose!’

The Wasps were arcing in, already levelling their weapons as they descended, but they had plainly intended touching the ground before shooting, and Straessa’s first salvo caught them still in the air. They were moving fast and spread out, so she had not expected much, but of the two score descending towards her people, a good eight or so were abruptly falling rather than flying, and her maniple was already reloading without her having to order it.

‘Pick your marks, forward!’ Half of her immediate problem was about to drop into the gap between her maniple and the unit to the left of her, because they saw the broken order of the Collegiate troops as a weakness to exploit. The other Wasp squad was coming down in front, ready to stand ground and hold them off until the heavier troops arrived. She could see them quite clearly: lean, rangy men in light armour striped in black and gold, armed with a snapbow, a shortsword and their Art. They had been at the front of every war the Empire had brought to its neighbours, at every expansion of the Imperial borders. She wondered how many thousands had already given their lives for such a fundamentally stupid cause.

‘Loose!’

And the snapbows of her maniple’s first three ranks raked into the enemy even as they touched down. She saw a good number fall — taken in that moment when landing stripped them of their speed. The rest were shooting back, but they were outnumbered now and, at some word from their sergeant, they took wing and put more distance between themselves and their enemies, waiting for reinforcements that would surely be with them at any second.

The other squad of Airborne had landed mostly intact between the two maniples, intending to take the enemy in the flanks, but those tough little square formations of the Companies had no flanks. Instead, the soldiers on that side were already facing towards them, three ranks deep and shielded by the pikes, and the same reception was waiting for them from the maniple to their other side.

The Collegiate snapbowmen were only given time for a single volley into them, catching the Wasps already returning to the air, recognizing an indefensible position when they saw it. A moment later, Straessa could see that the initial rush of the Airborne was pulling back all the way along the line, and then the three whistle blasts went up again from somewhere, and they were on the move.

General Tynan travelled at the heart of his army, at the apex of a small phalanx of armoured automotives, but in the open back of one so that his messengers could come and go as swiftly as possible. The conflict was widespread, and from the ground he had no clear picture of what was happening. He relied on his Fly-kinden and the swiftest of the Wasps to bring him news.

A Wasp soldier dropped in front of him now, one cheek smeared with blood. ‘First contact with the Airborne, sir. Our men driven back. Casualties light to moderate.’

‘How do their formations conduct themselves?’

‘They can fight on all sides, sir,’ the soldier reported — a man who had only moments ago been involved in that same skirmish. ‘They’re not so packed together as to give the best target, but their spears and their shot make closing with them difficult.’

‘Our own spears are closing on them?’

‘And they’re still advancing towards us. They seem decently armoured — medium infantry at least, and reasonably drilled.’

Tynan glanced across to his guest, Mycella, who likewise kept a flock of airborne spies at her beck and call.

‘I need some of your skirmishers,’ he told her.

She smiled at him, and he read there fondness and a certain anticipation of bloodshed. Spiders had never held back from the strike, when it counted.

‘What orders should I give them?’

‘Our medium infantry blocks are about four times as big as theirs, so we’ll be engaging several of their squares to each of our own units.’ The strategy fell into place in his mind even as he spoke. ‘If we can separate them further from each other that will give us a chance to surround them and destroy them individually, but as they are now, the space between each square is a killing ground for them.’

‘And you want my skirmishers to step into it?’

‘Send your mercenaries, if you want. I’m hoping that these Collegiates won’t hold their calm once we have them in a packed melee. Let your people push some of their squares together, break others further apart. Then let our superior order tell.’

He could give her no orders, of course, but she considered the matter and then gave a string of concise commands to one of her people, to be carried to the mercenaries’ adjutant, Morkaris.

The Wasp scout returned to the sky, winging back towards the front to report on the clash of lines, whereupon Tynan beckoned another over.

‘Send to Colonel Mittoc,’ he directed. ‘Have him keep a close measure of the range to Collegium’s walls. We don’t need to reach the city; we only need to be close enough. Have him get the best use out of these greatshotters we’ve been given.’

The man saluted and was gone, heading for the rear. Even as he did a Fly-kinden took his place.

‘Sir, enemy automotives flanking us.’

Tynan stood up, shading his eyes and peering over to where the Fly directed, seeing only flashes of the sun reflecting off metal at the far edge of his force. ‘What are they doing?’

‘Making inroads, sir. They’re a mongrel lot but they’re all armed. Our troops there are trying to hold them, but we’re taking losses from their artillery and their wheels.’

‘Where are the Sentinels?’ Tynan growled.

Amnon’s automotive bounced and rattled over the scrubby ground in the vanguard of a great straggling wedge of machines that had coursed its way almost unopposed down one side of the Second Army. The enemy had not known what to do with them — and they were gone before any orders could be given. A steady drizzle of opportunistic snapbow bolts and arrows had banged and rattled off the automotives’ sides, and at least one machine had slewed to an halt, its driver hit, but Amnon’s wing of the mechanized assault was almost untouched so far.

They were turning now, beginning to drive in towards the marching formations, and at the same time the Imperial soldiers were mustering their response. He saw units turning to face the Collegiate machines, kneeling or standing with massed snap-bows levelled, but beyond he could see Light Airborne gathering above.

He heard three whistle blasts, keening over the roar of the engines, two short and one long, meaning Charge. Beside him, the artificer manning the smallshotter swung the weapon ahead, squinting through the slot in the metal plate someone had bolted onto the engine to cover her. Amnon took up his own snapbow, though his hands itched for his sword hilt.

‘Down!’ advised the driver, and at the same time they scavenged a burst of speed from somewhere, wheels leaping over the uneven land as they rushed the enemy line. Thus, on both sides, an uneven arrowhead of ramshackle machines were turned into a hammer to crack open then Second Army’s flank.

Amnon had been knocked back by the sudden acceleration, and so he was already out of the way when the snapbow lines loosed. In his mind, the sound was like a sudden squall of rain against the metal plates shielding the vehicle. He saw the low-set automotive to his left suddenly swing towards him, its driver dead at the stick, and a moment later it had flipped over entirely, bouncing and jumping enough to fling out the bodies of its crew.

‘Watch the skies!’ he roared, as loud as he could, but the chances were that nobody heard him over the roar of the machines and the incoming hail of a second snapbow volley. A moment later the Imperial line broke, the soldiers trying to get out of the way of the metal tide. Most had left it too late. They were armoured too heavily to fly, so it became a matter of sheer chance whether they were struck or passed by, buffeted to the ground.

Amnon stood up again, unwisely, but he needed to see what was going on. Over there were the transporters, but they were too far, too deeply buried within the enemy, and the Airborne were coming down. He shot upwards, killing his target neatly, but knowing that he had no time to reload. A moment later his sword was clear of its scabbard, and the Wasp stooping down on him, blade drawn back and off-hand blazing, was cut from the air as soon as he came within reach. All about Amnon, the Airborne were trying desperately to drop onto the automotives, and some even managed it while others missed, either left behind or — for the luckless — caught in front of the rushing machines.

Nevertheless, they were taking their toll. Taking stock for just a moment, Amnon saw at least four machines had gone off course or halted, falling instant prey to the Wasp landbound infantry.

He hacked at another man that came for him, but the Airborne soldier veered out of reach, only to take a snapbow bolt in the back and tumble away — Amnon never knew whether the shot had come from his own people or the Empire. Nobody was doing well out of a skirmish fought at this speed. Then there was a hollow boom audible well over the engines, and one of the Collegiate machines went from full charge to full stop within a moment, its front staved in by the fist of a leadshotter ball, its stern lifting high with frustrated momentum, until it had turned over completely.

The whistle signal went up again, just two short blasts: Fall back and regroup. Amnon ground his teeth as his automotive wheeled around — smallshotter still barking out its answer to the Imperial artillery — and rattled back the way it had come, along with its fellows.

‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded. ‘We were reaching them!’ That was a lie and he knew it, but the enemy transporters — with their part-assembled greatshotters — had been within sight at least, and to turn away now was maddening.

‘Their automotives are coming back, Master,’ the driver replied, and a new stillness came over Amnon as he scanned the dust-covered, soldier-cluttered landscape for the Sentinels.

The block of Imperial infantry looming ahead seemed absurdly vast compared to their own modest squares. It came stomping across the plain torwards them in perfect time, the sun glinting on the spearheads and making the gold of their armour flare. In the old days such a unit would have relied entirely on spear and sting, with support from some Auxillian crossbowmen, but some attempt had been made to modernize, and Gerethwy, peering through his glass, now reported that the second rank was armed with snapbows.

‘I make out four ranks,’ Straessa noted. ‘Only the second has ’em, you say?’

‘Is what I see,’ the tall Woodlouse-kinden confirmed.

A whistle blast was sounded, long then short: Halt and loose. Straessa passed it on, hoping very dearly that all these orders were originating from someone who knew what they were doing. She called out, ‘Ready!’ needlessly, for her soldiers knew the signal and their weapons were charged, each bringing snapbow to shoulder, even as they slowed. And then, ‘Loose!’

The maniples to left and right managed to shoot at approximately the same time, catching the Imperial infantry as they were still advancing, and she saw the ranks of the big unit — four hundred soldiers or more in all — rupture and ripple under the impact. They slowed then, and she distantly caught the sound of their officers’ voices, eclipsed almost immediately by her own shout of, ‘And loose!’ She was trusting to her people to have reloaded by now.

They had, their volley ripping into the tight-packed enemy even as they formed up. Straessa was surprised to see just how much damage they had done, the number of sprawled bodies and crawling wounded. And now they shoot back, she thought, and her mouth bellowed, ‘And loose!’ leaving her faintly amazed that her shopkeeper soldiers had got off three complete volleys before the Wasps had managed a reply.

The concerted sound of the Wasp second rank discharging their bows sounded like a great clap of hands, and bolts went whistling past her even as she heard it. The man next to her took one in the eye, a woman in the third rank took one straight through the chest, past breastplate and coat without slowing much. A Mantis-kinden pikeman cursed and dropped with red spreading across his thigh. The call went out for stretchers before Straessa even needed to order it.

She could name all three of the casualties, two of whom were now beyond anything the surgeons could do for them. Yet in her mind was the thought, Is that it? and on her lips, ‘And loose!’ All the while, her eyes kept watching the bludgeoning that her little force — and all the other little bands of Merchant Company soldiers — were inflicting across the front lines of the enemy.

‘I reckon it’s one in three down, for them.’ Gerethwy didn’t trust his mechanized bow at this range, so instead he kept his glass on them, unflinching even when a passing bolt plucked at the sleeve of his buff coat.

‘And loose! What’s going on?’ Straessa lowered her own weapon, hands automatically palming a bolt from the box at her waist and slipping it into the breach; then cranking the air battery to charge it, the mechanism smooth and easy as if it was new oiled from the workshops. Even as she asked that question she understood. Wasp infantry was the army’s mailed fist, used for breaking the enemy lines by main force, and in close quarters. They were stacked shoulder to shoulder, in contrast to the looser spread of the Collegiates, so that the incoming shot could barely miss them. And the Collegiates had three snapbows per four men, while the Empire had just one.

Sod me, the Antspider thought, slightly awed, we’re winning.

Then someone shouted, ‘Fliers coming in,’ and she saw that the Wasp Light Airborne was back to support the infantry. There were a great many of them, a cloud of flying men arching overhead, but this tactic had not worked against the Ants at the Battle of the Rails, and the Collegiates were ready for it. Straessa directed her people to worry about the Imperial infantry, who were plainly realizing that their only hope was a solid charge to get into spear-range. The Collegiate squares behind the front line, mostly unbloodied so far, would be training their snapbows on the incoming Airborne and, though the fliers had the same weapons, shooting on the wing was a challenge for a Fly-kinden marksman, let alone a regular Wasp soldier. And snapbows were quite accurate enough to pick off fast-moving targets.

Straessa saw the Wasp infantry form up to advance — so few of them now compared to just moments ago — but the constant volleys of shot got the better of them, and soon they were pulling back and then disintegrating completely, individual soldiers making their getaway at the best sprint they could manage. For a moment she thought they had broken, but then she saw another unit of them marching in, the runners simply getting out of their way. No doubt these newcomers would have learned some hard lessons from the last minute of fighting, and it was plain that, if allowed to close, their tighter ranks and superior numbers would crush the Collegiate lines.

‘And loose!’ again and again. No need to tell her soldiers to aim for the invitingly large target that the new formation presented, so that the Wasps were bleeding from the moment they were within range. Despite the distance, they were already running, but still keeping almost shoulder to shoulder, shackled by their out-of-date training. It was a race, then, to see whether simple attrition would turn them aside and snap the spine of their charge before they could arrive. Seeing so many men coming on so fast, Straessa felt her mouth go dry. If they struck, her little band would become like leaves in a storm. The pikemen had their weapons levelled, some straight ahead, others tilted at angles upwards against the Airborne. Bolts were slanting down at them now from the skies above, the Airborne trying to break their firing pattern, but the attention of the squares behind was keeping the bulk of the enemy off the front line.

‘Sub! In from the side, Sub!’ someone called, and she looked about wildly, until she saw what was meant. From either side of the big Wasp formation, a stream of swifter figures was cascading, no battle order to them, just a swift, loose mob outstripping their allies in their haste to get at the Beetle lines.

‘Spider-kinden to our left,’ Gerethwy identified calmly. ‘And that’s, hm, Scorpions to the right.’

Straessa’s square was positioned dead centre of the maniples now facing the Wasp unit’s charge, so the newcomers were not her problem just yet. If they overwhelmed the Collegiates further down the line, she would know about it quickly enough, but she could do nothing to help or hinder, and she had to trust in her fellows. ‘Eyes front! And loose!’ Her voice was beginning to give out.