War Master's Gate

Twenty-Nine

The wall top was still firmly in Collegiate hands when Laszlo arrived, lurching through the air as he towed a heavy sack behind him. The Airborne kept striking, fighting to keep the attention of the defenders off the infantry below, but the Coldstone Company and the Mynans were holding them at bay. A scattering of surviving hornets was visible in the sky, but the blood-lust that had motivated them seemed to be waning, and more and more were simply departing, or swinging off over the city. Outside, the Sentinels continued their inexorable ramming, four of them taking it in turns, and loosing leadshot whenever they had a clear shot. That the gate had stood firm even this long was a tribute to Collegiate engineering.

Laszlo dropped down and started asking where Stenwold Maker was, but nobody seemed to know, so he worked his way along the wall, ducking away from any skirmishes, putting a knife into any Wasp that he managed a clear stab at, and occasionally loosing his cut-down snapbow or his shortbow at targets of opportunity, depending on range and inclination. The world of the wall top was an alien one to him. Not that he was a stranger to a fight: he had killed men from a ship’s rigging during a storm, and still this random, brutal chaos of a battle was enough to make him wish himself elsewhere. And where the pits has Maker got himself to?

He made a quick hop over to the next maniple of Collegiates, nearly getting himself impaled for his pains.

‘Easy! Easy! I’m just looking for Mar’Maker!’ he shouted.

‘What?’ The Spider halfbreed woman with the quick sword frowned.

Laszlo was about to clarify, when a particularly savage crashing from below stopped his words in mid-flow. He scrambled to the crenellations, looking down to see those gleaming, segmented bulks as they took rapid turn at the gate. When he looked up, something had drained from his face. ‘Oh, piss,’ he said. ‘That looks ugly.’

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ the swordswoman demanded. They were unengaged for the moment, and half of her maniple was standing at the wall’s edge, shooting down futilely at the plated machines, whilst the rest watched the skies.

‘Name’s Laszlo, M- Stenwold Maker’s friend.’

‘Antspider, officer,’ the woman introduced herself. ‘Maker went below.’ She was pointing down at the arch of the gateway. Laszlo had seen a real festering fight going on there, and Wasp soldiers were still darting down to join the fray, risking the raking shot of the Collegiates up on the rooftops. So, of course that’s where he is. Laszlo crouched for a moment: he had not imagined it would be like this. When Tomasso had sent him to find Maker with that pointless, idiotic offer, he had envisaged soldiers in neat rows and the Wasps still on the far side of the wall; a nice, orderly defence befitting Collegium sensibilities.

‘What do you want?’ the Antspider demanded of him.

‘That’s another leadshotter crew down,’ one of her people said expressionlessly.

‘Anyone got spare bolts?’ from another.

‘I came. .’ I came because Tomasso’s about to cast off and there’s a berth for Stenwold Maker if he wants it, but what a stupid thing that would be to say right now. I told the skipper Sten Maker’s no runner, but he wouldn’t listen, oh no. . ‘I’ve got something for the defence, from ship’s stores. I thought. .’ and it had seemed a grand idea, a present for the gallant defenders. Now, though. . He tugged open the sack, revealing the grenades he had taken from the Tidenfree, dated weapons from Spiderlands artificers that the ship’s crew had used when boarding actions went bad, inferior to Beetle make in all ways save that they were made for Fly-kinden hands. ‘I thought. .’ he managed, looking the Antspider in the eye and unable to articulate just what he might have thought. With desperate courage, Laszlo grabbed one and threw the little munition over the wall, aiming for the jostling Sentinels. His aim was perfect, taking it just where one plate slid over another, and at the sharp impact the weapon detonated instantly, a bright flash of fire leaving not even a fresh mark on that scarred carapace.

‘No more useless than our snapbows,’ the Antspider told him, and from below there came a catastrophic cracking sound, enough to shiver the stones beneath their feet. Then a storm of Wasp Airborne were all about them — but these had come up from below, where they had ceased disputing the ground inside the gate. Snapbow bolts darted through their number, picking some off, but they were keeping low to the wall — close enough for the Antspider to have stabbed one if she had been quick enough — denying the Student Company snapbowmen across the street an easy target.

Laszlo and most of the others risked a glimpse over the parapet, despite the sporadic snapbow shot sleeting up towards them. The Sentinels were still in motion, the barrels of those single eyes flashing fire as they cast leadshot at the gate, whilst one was now stepping backwards, almost dainty despite its size, lining itself up for what looked like a final charge.

Laszlo stared at them, watching ballista bolts and shot rock the heavy machines without harming them, seeing those leadshotter eyes blaze. His career had been a varied one, with all the resourcefulness of a pirate who has to make do with whatever’s to hand. He had seen a great many tricks tried, during his young life, and heard of many more. Most of all, he had never given up. Even as a prisoner at the bottom of the sea, surrounded by the killing ocean on all sides, he had not lost heart. It would take more than the Wasp Empire to break him.

‘Antspider, you’ve got archers? Real bowmen?’

Stenwold was out of bolts, but there were handfuls for the taking wherever he looked, in the quivers of the fallen, or just spilled onto the ground. He dropped down beside a dead Wasp soldier and, as his hands worked to strip the man of his ammunition, he considered the convenience of Collegium having inherited this weapon from the Empire in the first place. The standard for snapbow ammunition was more universal than the Helleren mint.

Elder Padstock’s voice came to him from close by — she was trying to shout her soldiers into some sort of order, but the Wasps were not cooperating. They were everywhere — each man operating on his own, striking and flying, keeping on the move, refusing to stand and fight. A couple of their giant insects remained, too, wings shattered and their chitin cracked by shot, but still scissoring their mandibles at every enemy within reach. Enough of the Imperials were getting in the way of the Vekken to ensure that the gates had barely been reinforced, just a few more girders fitted in place before the Ant-kinden had turned to defending themselves. In the close confines of the gateway, their shortswords claimed more of the enemy than the Collegiate snapbows, while the Maker’s Own soldiers resorted to swords of their own, trusting to their heavier armour to counterbalance their lesser skill.

The gates were crashing and shuddering under a solid rhythm now, like a bar of metal being hammered into shape by three smiths all at once. Ordinary rams would not have achieved so much, with their slow, patient battering. Of all the malevolent wonders of artifice this war had brought with it, only the Sentinels had endured to this bitter end.

We should have a gatehouse here, not just a square and a broad avenue, was Stenwold’s desperate thought. Even with soldiers on every rooftop, it should not be so easy to break into our city. But, of course, Collegium’s gates were primarily built to welcome in trade, with defence a distant second. Did we have time to change that, since the Vekken first attacked?

‘Through the Gate!’ Padstock was bellowing, sounding ludicrous really, but it was the war cry of Maker’s Own, and her men took it as the inspiration it was meant to be. Stenwold emptied his borrowed snapbow into the first Wasp he saw — missing even at this range, shooting too high in his fear of hitting his allies. Then another dozen Airborne had crashed into the group of soldiers beside him, and someone kicked him in the chest as he crouched there, bowling him over. He lost hold of the snapbow again and simply picked up a discarded sword, seeing Elder Padstock hack her blade into the neck of a Wasp, bludgeoning him down by main force rather than any attempt at fencing.

The next impact on the gates thundered through the enclosed space like a grenade explosion, carrying with it the snapping of wood and the shrieking of metal wrenched beyond its capability to resist. Stenwold stood there, unused sword in hand, and his eyes registered what the gates had become. The bracing had been uprooted by the impact, a mess of jagged-ended metal that had torn into attackers and defenders alike, and the heavy shutters backing the gate had been twisted apart, revealing the abused and splintered timber beneath, with a dozen gashes of daylight already ripped in them.

The Airborne were instantly departing, and it seemed a victory, a momentary, ridiculous victory, because it would have made more sense for them to stay and try to hold the breach so that their infantry comrades could break through. But their losses, and the anticipation that the gates were about to give way, triggered something in them that had them funnelling back into the open, braving the Collegiate shot to flee back to their own lines. The Vekken and Maker’s Own were left in sole possession of the gateway.

The ravaged gates shuddered and spasmed like dying things under the Sentinels’ leadshot barrage, but still they held, doing generations of Collegiate engineers proud. The Vekken — those that were left — formed a solid shield wall backed by cross-bowmen, a tight-packed formation five men deep, and Stenwold was shouting for them to back off, because that was the previous generation’s war, which Vek — and the Ant-kinden in general — should have discarded by now. He saw a dark face look back at him — perhaps it was even Termes — but they did not shift, instead just bracing themselves and leaving space before the gate for the ram to come through.

But when it did come through, it was far more than a ram of course. The blunt prow of the Sentinel hammered home, and this time the gates parted, wood and twisted metal slamming back against the walls and the voracious machine shouldering through, its front a map of dents and scars, but its armour intact despite that. Its eye opened and the leadshotter spoke, mounted too high for the enemy facing it, but the sheer explosive sound of it staggered them all, and the ball whistled overhead to smash into the front of a building directly across the square, punching out an extra, rough-edged window.

Then the twin rotary piercers, set lower down, opened up — or at least one of them did, the other failing to spin into life at all, a casualty of the ramming. Stenwold watched half the Vekken formation falling, the enemy’s bolts punching through shields and mail and men, chewing through their close-knit ranks like a scythe through corn. The Ants were on the move immediately, though, rushing at the machine, more of them falling to its built-in snapbows, and more still to the Wasp infantry who were pushing in at either side of the Sentinel, desperate to force the breach. Then the Sentinel itself was stepping forwards, unstoppable, inexorable, becoming both shield and hammer of the Imperial army. Snapbow bolts rattled and danced off its carapace, and the Vekken soldiers, trying to climb it and lever apart its plates with all the strength their Art gave them, were picked off without accomplishing anything, until even they were falling back, those of them that could.

Elder Padstock was calling for her soldiers to hold firm, and they held, but all Stenwold could wonder, as he chambered another bolt, was, For how long?

‘We used to do this going ship to ship, you know?’ Laszlo had explained. ‘Inapt archers, Apt toys, you see? Our artificer, Despard, she came up with a plan for putting these fellows just where we wanted them — get a bowman in the rigging and you can shoot the things onto the enemy’s deck or at his mast or whatever.’

As she listened to him, Castre Gorenn heard the usual sort of nonsense babble that people in Collegium spoke, most of which made no sense to her whatsoever. She had seen how the little artificer’s stones in his bag blazed into fire when they struck things, and then he had shown her how, with a little application, they could be tied to an arrow. She would not have listened even that far, save that the little man actually possessed a bow of his own, for all that it was a pitiful piece of work compared to hers.

‘Now, I’m going to prime this for you, so you be careful: put the arrow to the string, and don’t, whatever you do, knock it against anything. We want it to go bang at their end, not ours.’

Laszlo did something to the unwieldy weight that was encumbering the end of her arrow, and then something similar to his own.

‘Now we go hunting, right?’ He grinned at her, and she returned the smile, because hunting was something she did understand.

The Fly-kinden’s wings flashed, and he dropped off the wall on the city side, and she followed suit, taking exaggerated care with the deadly burden she had nocked.

Above them, the Light Airborne were beginning to return to the wall-top, not rushing it now, but shooting down with sting and snapbow, trading shot with the Company soldiers. Gorenn twitched to go back and kill more of them, but the Antspider had told her to help Laszlo and, although she resented the order, she did as she was told.

And then they dropped into the shadow of the gateway and saw the monster that was advancing through it, segment by segment, clambering over the uneven wreckage of the gate braces, and with Imperial soldiers on either side. The defenders — Maker’s Own Company and a ragged ghost of the Vekken detachment — were gradually giving ground, shooting at the soldiers but powerless to halt the terrible machine.

For a moment, Laszlo hesitated, but then he went diving in, skimming the arched ceiling of the gateway, darting close even as the Wasps realized he was there. She saw his arrow leave the string, shooting back towards the front of the Sentinel, aiming between its armour plates, and the flash and bang of the grenade fooled her into thinking he had accomplished something. The machine still ground on, though, and she tried her own shot, striking the Sentinel low down, cutting the feet from a Wasp soldier and flaring bright about the front leg of the advancing automotive. But that armour, too, seemed to be proof against Laszlo’s weaponry, and she saw nothing worse than some charring and scratches. The missile had flown like a bloated autumn beetle, almost dropping from the string, and achieving a range of a few yards at best with no real accuracy.

The two of them dropped back behind the defenders, and a moment later she saw the circular hatch in the machine’s front sliding open. A colossal gout of flame and noise belched forth from it, hurling some projectile faster than her eye could follow. It smashed against the already battered front wall of a house across the way, bringing the entire building down, including with it the soldiers who had been stationed on its roof.

Laszlo had fitted another bulbous weapon to one of his stubby little shafts, but she had seen how close he had gone to get his arrow off, and how only the surprise of the Wasps had kept them from simply shooting him dead as he hovered to make the first shot.

He glanced at her, trying to mask his frustration with a weak smile. ‘This isn’t going to work, is it?’

The Sentinel lurched forwards another few feet, freeing itself entirely from the entangling wreckage of the gate. To Gorenn it was not a machine, for she knew machines. The Wasps had subjugated half her homeland with them, the noisy, stinking, clumsy things. This was something new, because no machine ever moved like that. To her, it was a living monster out of the worst of the old stories.

The Collegiates were now using the edges of the gateway for cover, driven back that far. It was all going to end soon. She had come here as the Commonweal Retaliatory Army, to fight the Wasps that had slaughtered her people in the Twelve-year War, but what had she accomplished?

‘Give it to me. Make it ready to catch fire,’ she told Laszlo.

‘Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to work-’

‘Just do it.’

The pair of them ducked out of the way as one of the Sentinel’s weapons struck stone chips from the nearby flagstones.

‘I have to get back to my ship,’ Laszlo was saying. ‘I have to find Mar’Maker. . I don’t know what I have to do.’ But he was binding another of the little fire-stones to her arrowhead. ‘Seriously, this-’

She brushed him off and, before her, its rounded prow almost fully out into the Collegium street, the great machine flexed and shook itself, settling the plates of its carapace and preparing itself for one last push.

She stepped into the air, arrow to the string, drawing back slowly, almost walking on nothing, so smooth was her ascent. Snapbow bolts spat past her, but only a few. She was nobody’s priority just then, compared to all the Apt soldiers with modern weapons that Collegium was fielding.

The monster looked at her as if it recognized the challenge. She hung in the air before its great blind face and heard the roar of its innards, felt the warmth of its engine breath wash over her.

It opened its great eye, which glared death, just like in the old stories but, knowing those stories as she did, she knew how heroes slew such monsters.

The arrow left the string without conscious thought or aim, and a thousand-year-old tradition met the most sophisticated artifice of the Iron Glove Cartel and the Wasp Empire, with a detour via the piecemeal arsenal of the Tidenfree, as she sent the grenade straight down the barrel of the Sentinel’s leadshotter.

She should have ducked away, then, but in her head she was the hero of myth, and such heroes did not shoot and run. They stood and watched the monster fall, or else they died. She was exactly in line with that killer eye, and if it spoke again, then there would not be enough left of Castre Gorenn to identify her kinden.

The grenade went off. She saw the flare and, for a moment, could not say whether this meant her triumph or her death. A moment later there was a hollow, muted thunder, and the Sentinel leapt a foot backwards, clawed metal feet skidding on the flagstones, and smoke was forcing its way out between its segments, and it was dead.

Then the Wasps began shooting at her in earnest, and Laszlo nipped past and caught hold of her ankle and hauled her out of the way, or she would surely have been killed.

‘Now! Charge them!’ came Padstock’s call. ‘Forward for Collegium! Through the Gate!’

The Wasps either side of the Sentinel braced themselves, with spears jutting forwards and snapbowmen behind, but they were packed together too closely to fight easily, and yet in a column too narrow for many of them to attack. They had been trading shot with the Collegiate archers, but as the Beetles and their allies surged forwards, Balkus pushed to the front and unloaded his nailbow into the closest batch, killing the spearmen in the front and clearing the way for the Vekken, who descended upon them with brutal efficiency. On the far side, a pair of Company soldiers followed his example with a repeating snapbow that miraculously failed to jam. Then the Maker’s Own Company rushed forwards, claiming either side of the smoking Sentinel and holding the gate.

Out there, beyond the wreckage of gate and machine, waited the Second Army in all its strength, yet still being picked apart piecemeal by the soldiers on the wall.

Stenwold claimed yet another abandoned snapbow and joined the other defenders. He could see a great many infantry out there, and now there came a brutal squad of Scorpion-kinden, the Aldanrael’s no doubt, armed with greatswords and already running full-speed as they rounded the gateway. There were pikemen amongst the Collegiate soldiers, but few of them, and it fell to the Vekken to shoulder forwards and hold the gap, shields locked and staving the huge warriors off, so that the Collegiate snapbowmen could bring them down one by one.

‘Maker!’ Balkus was shouting, pointing. Stenwold tried to peer beyond the fighting at what had caught the man’s eye. There was activity at the rear of the ruined Sentinel, but for a blurred moment he could not discern what it was.

‘They’re going to haul it out!’ Balkus yelled over the fighting. ‘We’re dead if they do!’

The engineers working there were shielded by the bulk of their dead machine. Stenwold backed off and round looked for a messenger. ‘Laszlo?’

‘Here, Mar’Maker!’ The little man presented himself smartly. ‘Got a message from the-’

‘No time,’ Stenwold snapped back. Right now it didn’t matter what the man was here for. ‘Get up to the wall, tell them to shoot anyone trying to get this wreck out of the gateway.’

Laszlo hesitated for a moment, caught in mid-errand, and then nodded and was gone, speeding out of the gateway and then straight up the wall.

The Imperial infantry was coming in again, as the last of the Scorpions fell, and now the Collegiates had the same difficulties, with those at the back unable to find a target. The Vekken shields held, though, and it was the Empire’s own hunger to take the gate that betrayed it. Had the Wasps stood off and kept shooting, the Ants would have been cut down in short order, but instead they threw themselves physically into the gap, and met the iron discipline of Vek and the marksmanship of the Merchant Companies.

Stenwold craned sideways, trying to mark the progress of the towing crew. He caught glimpses that showed him that Laszlo had passed on his orders — there was definitely shot coming from above — but flights of the Light Airborne were taking off as well, and he knew that they would tie up the soldiers on the wall.

He was so concerned with this that he missed what the other Sentinels were doing. Nobody noticed, until the Wasps on the right-hand side of the gateway fell back and scattered — by all appearances, a victory for the defenders. What was revealed, however, was the plated countenance of another of the armoured automotives, weirdly hunched so as to lower the aim of its leadshotter eye. There was barely a moment even to shout a warning before the thunderstroke of the weapon eclipsed all else, hammering into that narrow, packed corridor, obliterating the Vekken shield wall and killing a score and more of Company soldiers ranged behind them. Then the Imperial infantry were back, leading with their spears, trampling the wounded and the dying in order to claim that side of the broken Sentinel, just as the fallen machine began to scrape backwards, hauled by the efforts of its brethren.

Padstock was calling for her soldiers to hold fast, encouraging them, almost threatening them, but they were giving ground on both sides now, and soon there would not be two sides at all, but just a great gaping wound in the city’s defences. Stenwold heard Balkus’s nailbow sound off again, another magazine emptied, and then, stripped of ammunition, the big Ant had his sword out.

Stenwold discharged the snapbow over the heads of his fellows, hitting nothing, and then he drew his sword.

‘Collegium!’ he cried. ‘Collegium and liberty!’

Soldiers were crowding past him, pushing in to hold the gap, their faces taut with desperation. The air was thick with snapbow bolts, like little hornets.

Stenwold stepped forwards, at that moment no more than an extra defender against the tide, and a bolt ripped into him, cutting through his armour and between his ribs and exiting almost in the same instant, puncturing a clean hole all the way through, marked with a spray of blood.

He sat down, more surprised than anything. There was pain, but it came only when he breathed in. When he let the breath go there was just coughing, and blood on his hand when he took it away from his mouth.

He found he could not stand up. The strength that had carried him this far in his fight against the Empire had abruptly deserted him.

Someone was shaking him, which wasn’t helping. He saw Elder Padstock loom over him, her face aghast as it had never been during the fighting. Stenwold tried to reach up to comfort her, but his arm seemed far, far away.

‘Get him out of here!’ she was saying. ‘Get him to the surgeons!’

They must be talking about me, he realized. He tried to tell her that she had more important things to do, but he could only cough.

Beyond her, the Wasps were breaking through, He could only watch, see the last moments of the battle for the gateway, the bloody-minded determination on both sides, no quarter given, not an inch of ground won save in blood and bodies.

Then he was being lifted, a heavy old Beetle man cradled in the arms of a broad-shouldered Ant. Balkus.

Padstock turned back for the fight, chambering another bolt in her snapbow, and Stenwold saw her stagger, struck in the gut by one shot that punched its way out through her backplate. The next bolt snapped her head back, as though she was suddenly looking for the enemy amid the stones of the gateway above her. He saw her fall.

Then Balkus was lurching away, and Stenwold was denied the last moments of the city’s defence, the unspoken heroism of the end, such as never finds its way into the histories.

He felt Balkus stumble to one knee with a gasp, but then the man was up again, shambling and staggering, but putting distance between them and the gate.

A moment later there was a man buzzing about them, a high-pitched voice demanding to know what had happened: Laszlo.

‘Where’s the nearest surgeon?’ Balkus demanded, his voice strained, and then, ‘Piss on your cursed boat, we can’t make it all the way to the docks! Where’s a surgeon, please!’

‘I’ll get one, I’ll get one!’ Laszlo promised, and he was off, with Balkus yelling, ‘And a stretcher!’ after him,

They were three streets away from the gate now, and Stenwold found himself being lowered into a sitting position, his back against the wall of someone’s house. There were soldiers running past them, in both directions. Nobody seemed to be in charge but at least none of them was a Wasp, not yet.

Balkus sat down beside him. ‘Maker. .’

Stenwold managed to turn his head. There was a terrible pallor to the Ant’s skin, and where he had slid down the wall Stenwold could see a red smear. He tried to speak, but the words collapsed into little more than a grunt.

Balkus took a deep breath. ‘If you make it. When this is over. If you win.’ He grimaced. ‘Don’t let Sarn have Princep. You owe me that, now. Do something. Don’t let them ruin everything.’

A long pause.

‘And look after Sperra.’ The Ant gave long sigh. ‘This is a pisspoor way to go. I don’t like it.’

‘Not gone yet,’ it was just a whisper that Stenwold managed, but Balkus seemed to hear it. He did not answer, though.

Then people were crowding him, and he recognized the purple sashes of the Student Company. ‘It’s the War Master!’ And someone saying to get him to the College, where a lot of the healers and stitchers had been stationed.

‘Take him,’ he hacked out the words, jabbing a weak finger at Balkus, not knowing if the Ant lived or not.

The Light Airborne were persistent, but Straessa’s remaining command were allowing them nothing. Atop the wall, they had formed a tight cluster bristling with pikes, and with enough snap-bows to make the Wasps hurt every time they came close. One flank had already gone — she saw Wasps all over the wall there — but Kymene’s Mynans were holding firm on the far side, not so many of them as before, but they were solid, not giving an inch. And it seemed to the Antspider that the Airborne’s fervour was now slackening off. Are we beating them back? Surely we are.

Beside her, Castre Gorenn loosed her last shaft, slung her bow carefully on her shoulder, and then took up a pike that a fallen soldier had dropped, Straessa speculated grimly how many snapbow bolts her followers had left between them. She wondered how the rest of the Companies were faring, and what Eujen was doing. In that fraught time, as she loosed shot after shot, dragging her increasingly heavy sword free whenever the enemy got too close, she had time to wonder about a lot of things.

Then she heard her name called, and a moment later Averic almost bounced off the wall. He was looking pale, and with one sleeve slashed open and bloody. Someone hauled him upright and he clutched at Straessa, gasping ‘Get off the wall!’

‘We can’t. The defence-’ she started.

‘The gate’s lost!’ Averic managed to say. ‘Get down now or they’ll be coming up the stairs for you.’

‘Averic, seriously, we can’t just-’

‘Outwright’s is already going, those of his that can. The Spider-kinden are at them already. You’ve got to move,’ he insisted. He put a hand absently to his slashed sleeve and seemed surprised to see the blood there.

Straessa cursed and peered beyond the Mynans, to where Outwright’s Pike and Shot should be holding their space of wall. To her lurching horror she saw that, yes, they were fighting fiercely, sword to sword, but getting off the wall as well in a desperate rearguard action that looked just one death from a rout.

She had a moment to think about the right thing to do, but she had already made that decision when the Companies had marched against the Second in the field, the last time they came. She had chosen to save the lives of her people then, and she would do so now.

‘Gorenn, get over to Kymene and tell her what Av’s just told us.’

The Dragonfly nodded and launched herself along the wall, her wings a skittering blur, dodging aside from one of the Airborne who tried to sting her.

‘Down the steps! Back into the city!’ Straessa cried out. ‘Keep it ordered, keep the pikes up, and shoot any bastard who tries it on with us! Come on, we’re moving!’

She helped Averic to his feet. ‘What’s Eujen doing?’

‘Sending me to help you, last time I saw him,’ the Wasp student replied with a bleak, brief smile. ‘The Student Company is the front line now. No idea what Fealty Street are doing, but Maker’s Own and the Vekken took the worst of it. I need to get back to Eujen.’

‘If I know him, he’s watching us right now,’ Straessa remarked. ‘And you need a surgeon.’ She sounded so very calm, and inside her something was yammering, We’ve lost the gate, we’ve lost the wall!

Down at the foot of the wall, her soldiers broke quickly across the open ground, before reforming between the buildings across the square. Straessa was one of the last down, running alongside Kymene and her Mynans, as snapbow bolts lanced past them. Once in cover, they could look back and see the Wasps and their Spider allies claiming the wall a slice at a time, descending on any remaining defenders and routing or killing them. Four Sentinels stalked in through the gateway and created a cordon between them that no Collegiate felt ready to brave, whilst behind them soldiers fortified their position, erecting temporary barricades out of the material of the gates themselves.

Straessa and the others waited and watched, and above them Eujen’s Student Company watched too, waiting for the inevitable moment when the Wasp tide rolled forwards and swept into the streets, and the real battle for Collegium would begin. But the Second Army simply secured its entry to the city, thronged the wall-top with its soldiers, and waited, too.

Then, with evening beginning to veil the sky in the west, a lone Fly-kinden in Imperial uniform stepped forth, somewhat hesitantly, from the newly established Imperial lines and walked out, closed fists held up, with a message for the Assembly.

They convened in the ruins of the Amphiophos, as before, but in sparser ranks. Some had fallen on the wall or at the gate, no doubt. Others perhaps did not want to be noted as a member of that august body, in case there should be some Imperial scrutiny of the minutes of this latest gathering.

Jodry Drillen, a great, baggy weight of a man, robes awry and dirty, eyes shadowed by lack of sleep, stood up before them, a neat little slip of paper in his hand, barely large enough to be called a scroll. He was scanning the faces of the attendees, as if seeking allies.

Eujen Leadswell watched him. Unlike the elected representatives of the city, who had mostly bowed to protocol sufficiently to make some attempt at robing up, he remained in his armour, buff coat and breastplate, with his helm tucked beneath his arm. Beside him was Remas Boltwright of the Fealty Street Company, who had somehow failed to lead his soldiers into battle at all, waiting in reserve all that time for a call to arms that, he said, had never come. The two of them — and neither of them exactly veterans — were here representing the armed might of Collegium. Kymene had refused to attend;Taki, spokeswoman for the pilots, was in the infirmary; and the rest of the Company chief officers were dead, as was Termes of Vek.

Eujen saw Jodry’s lips move, as though the man was rehearsing, but someone shouted out, ‘Can’t hear you!’ — an echo of the old Assembly, if there ever was one — and the Speaker’s head snapped up. For a moment his eyes darted about, and Eujen knew exactly who he was looking for, and which notable absence was weighing on everyone’s minds. But finally he spoke.

‘General Tynan of the Second has sent us an ultimatum,’ he explained. ‘We are to surrender, he demands.’

He did not seem inclined to elaborate, but his eyes kept sliding off to one figure out of many, a man Eujen recognized as Helmess Broiler, ever Jodry’s political opponent. Broiler was sitting quite peaceably, however, making no attempt to leap up and rouse the rabble.

‘Terms, Drillen!’ someone else called from the back. ‘What terms?’

‘Does it matter?’ Drillen challenged the questioner. ‘Surrender our city, really? Are we countenancing such a thing?’

‘Speaker, at least tell us what the Wasp wrote,’ said a woman Eujen recognized from the Artificing faculty of the College.

Jodry nodded tiredly. ‘If we surrender now, then our soldiers will be allowed to lay down their arms and return to their trades without sanction, nor will there be repercussions against ourselves — us Assemblers — save for some small list of names who are counted enemies of the Empire.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I am proud to find my own name there. My mother once said I would amount to nothing.’

Some three or four raised a smirk at that. No more.

‘Added to this, the Assembly will be permitted to advise the new governor. . the usual assurances that Collegium will become a valued part of their Empire, and. . that Imperial rule will be imposed on our streets with no more force than proves necessary.’ As he uttered the words, his voice shrank until it seemed just a ghost of itself, but his gaze, shifting about him at his peers, was firm. ‘Do I need to recount to you what they say will happen if we resist? I’m sure you can imagine their threats — to our soldiers and our citizens and ourselves.’

Several Assemblers had stood, wishing to speak, and Jodry’s thick finger had picked out one — one of his allies perhaps — but two or three others were already speaking over the top of each other, demanding that Jodry tell them everything, demanding that the Empire come and speak in person, one even swearing defiance. Eujen looked from face to face, and abruptly it seemed that everyone there was talking together — trying to hush each other or shouting at each other, or most of them shouting at Jodry. Suddenly they all seemed to be on their feet — with even a scuffle between two elderly Assemblers on the far side of the ruin. There was a kind of chorus, amidst the chaos, that came to Eujen’s ears. It was a tally of grief and human cost. He heard people demanding if Jodry knew how many had died, how much had been destroyed — their levelled surroundings were suddenly no longer a warning to never forget, but a reminder of just how much the Empire had made them pay already. Jodry had his hands extended for calm and his lips moved, but not a word reached Eujen’s ears intact.

And then, finally, he could be heard. ‘Please, Masters, please!’ A ripple of silence passed over the face of the ruin, touching each in turn, until only Jodry’s voice troubled the quiet.

Stenwold Maker had arrived.

He was supported by two members of Eujen’s own Student Company, and they were making a crippled snail’s pace of it. He looked as ghastly as an exhumed corpse — not just from the mass of bandage swathing his chest and shoulder, but there were livid, angry spots like plague-marks blotching his skin. The Faculty of Medicine had been working on him as recently as an hour ago, and Eujen knew they had been trying all manner of serums and alchemy on the worst injured, where experimental failure would be unlikely to make things worse. Eujen had heard of a few notable successes out of their treatments, and the fact that Stenwold Maker was here, however close to death he looked, seemed proof of that.

All eyes were on him as he shuffled forwards and was lowered onto a tumbled stone, where he sat like a dead weight, staring at the ground. A Fly-kinden man — Eujen recognized Laszlo, whom he had encountered briefly during the battle — dropped down to stand beside him, looking the worse for wear himself, bruised and dirty and deathly weary.

‘We cannot give up our independence,’ the Fly spoke into the silence, and Eujen could just see Stenwold’s lips moving and prompting him. ‘Mar’Maker says — listen to me! — what you’ve lost up till now is nothing. . Yes, they have killed your people and destroyed your homes but, if you let them, they will destroy your freedom. Collegium was a slave city once, he says. . slaves of the Moths, before the revolution. For five centuries this city’s been free, the jewel of the world. . in trade, in learning, in the philosophy of its government,’ he stumbled a little over the words, but his voice sounded strong and clear. ‘Give in to the Wasps, he says, and you will end that era. You will close that book of history, and you’ll let the Wasps write the next.’

Stenwold lifted his head with visible effort, and a shudder went through him, a sign of the physicians’ serums still at work within his body, either to mend or to ruin him.

Jodry’s eyes flicked to Helmess Broiler once more. The man was keeping a keen eye on proceedings, but still he made no sign that he intended to speak. Instead another man stood up, across the gathering, some merchant magnate from the look of him, and he was speaking before Jodry could invite him to.

‘Speaker, War Master.’ No ranting agitator this, just a sad, worn-down man on the wrong side of middle age. ‘We know this. We all know the stakes. You put this war before us, and we went into it with our eyes open. I voted for it myself. And we’ve accomplished so much. We broke their air power, and we cast them back the first time. We fought them on the field, and we’ve made their lives miserable all the way back here. And yet they’re here. We’ve done everything, and they’re still here.’

He had the whole Assembly listening, and Eujen wondered whether this man had ever before enjoyed such a rapt audience.

‘I lost a warehouse to their bombs,’ the Assembler continued. ‘Others lost their homes, their workplaces. Many lost their lives. And when we went out to meet them on the field. . well, there were plenty who didn’t come back. And how many young men and women have gone up in one of those Stormreaders, never to land safely?’ The tremble in his voice, valiantly fought down, spoke of some personal loss. ‘There are no Felyen left. None. An entire culture, yet they broke against the Second Army, and now they’re no more — not their home, nor any of them, not a one. And the killing at the wall just today, my friends, my children. .’ For a moment he did lose control, his voice cracking and the raw, molten grief glaring out from within it. But then he paused for breath and was his own man again, forcing all that terrible depth of loss away, holding it at arm’s length. ‘And, yes, we can make them pay for every street. We can fight them for each house. But they will destroy those streets and those houses, just to take them from us. They will destroy the whole city, if they must, if we will not give it to them. Look at what they have done so far, and look at everything they have taken from us. Masters, we do not have so much to lose, now. The men and women whose lives we would throw at them, there are not so very many of them left. Please. .’

‘What are you saying?’ Jodry demanded, but the man was already breaking down, sitting with his face in his hands, no more words left in him. The Speaker looked about, trying to assess the mood of his fellows. ‘Listen to me. Listen!’

‘A vote!’ A new voice, crisp and clear and hard-edged.

Jodry turned to face his old enemy. Helmess Broiler had chosen his moment.

‘A vote!’ the man repeated, now standing. ‘Come, you’ve had your say, Jodry, and the War Master has had his, by surrogate. And we’ve all heard what Master Wisden has had to say. Furthermore, we’ve all been out there! We’re seen it, the war and its leavings. So let’s bring this to a close and vote. Do we take what mercy General Tynan has offered us? Choose wisely, or you may not get another chance to wear these robes.’

There were many there who looked to Stenwold, but the War Master just stared at the ground, and the Fly-kinden beside him stood mute, and at the last Jodry could put it off no longer.

Before nightfall the Assembly of Collegium, by a reasonable majority, had agreed to accept what terms the Empire might offer, word to be sent to General Tynan at first light. The war was over.