Dragonfly Falling (18 page)

There was a litter of
bodies about it, mostly Wasp-kinden. Some were still moving, and he eyed them
dully. The engine was slewed a little on its side, and he saw corpses in Wasp
colours scattered there, but not actually Wasps.
Artificers
?
Of course they were the machine’s artificers. The Wasps themselves had no
respect for such skills.

He reached out and, as
the Ants continued fighting all around him, he put his back to the skewed
machine and forced it up, working to free one of his brother artificers from
under its weight.

Skrill was yelling
again, and he glanced around in time to see the city wall by the gate begin to
shift. He suddenly felt so very calm about it, because he was right in the
wall’s shadow, and there was nothing he could do about it in time.

Stones began to bulge
out of it, only one at first, and then in whole fistfuls. A man emerged: Totho
could see his shape by the light of the fires, but it seemed impossible, for it
was a man ten feet tall, armoured in great metal plates and wielding an
eight-foot mattock. There were others behind him, and they lumbered out of the
gap as still more Ants rushed in to engage them. Just before they clashed Totho
was struck by the expression of hopeless misery on those giants’ faces.

The huge creature in the
lead swept his spade-headed spear around him like a club, flinging three or
four of the Ants aside with ruined shields, but then the soldiers were on him,
and their attack-insects as well. Totho watched with numb amazement, seeing how
easily the giants fell. There were Wasps following behind them though, armoured
Sentinels pressing forward, their plate-mail easily turning the swords of the
defenders. Some dozen of them plunged into the Ant line and shattered it, even
as the last giant fell, and then there were savages bursting out along with
them, shrieking and casting their spears. Behind them, in turn, came the
armoured Wasp infantry, already lancing out with its stings.

Totho felt the fallen
man he held stir in his arms and he forced the ruined engine an inch further
off him. The man clutched at him as Totho pulled him free, now seeing the
wreckage the fallen engine had made of his legs.

With conflict still all
about him he dragged the dying man away, aware only that this was an artificer,
and therefore a brother in craft.

‘My queen!’ the man
cried. ‘I am done at last.’

Totho lowered him to the
ground. He felt cold and getting colder, but his eyes found Totho’s. ‘You,
Lowlander . . . I am sorry–’

Totho nodded, not
knowing what to say. The man’s hands tugged at his coat, and perhaps there was
some returning recognition there, on feeling the pockets lined with tools. ‘You
must know . . . the air . . . airships! It is the end. I have . . . died for
them, never to be home again. But the airships . . . you must guard . . . !’

There was nothing more
said, just one more death amidst so many.

Salma dived through the
sky like a mad thing, slashing at every Wasp that came near him, though missing
most of them. The aerial forces of Tark were token only. They had their
orthopters and their flying insects, but coming against them the entire sky was
dense with Wasps.

He pulled out of his
dive on coming level with a handful of the winged ants. Ahead of them a mass of
the Wasp savages was gathering like a cloud, spiralling upwards. Salma looked
over to the lead Ant rider, and for a moment there was a touch of mindlink with
him, two soldiers in perfect accord, as if he saw the man’s thoughts and passed
back his own.

You
lead, we follow
, was the man’s message, because Salma was vastly more at
home in the air than they were.

Sword extended, Salma
kicked out towards the circling Hornets, sword extended, and he got close, very
close, before they even saw him. Then crossbow bolts from the insect-mounted
weapons started punching into the flight of Wasps and they scattered wildly.
Salma veered to the left, seeing spears and bolts of light dash past him.
Briefly something caught his eye about their formation, then he was lancing
through them, bloodying his sword on at least three before turning to dance
back towards them. The insects were on them by now, thrumming heavily through
the air, jaws clacking at their nimbler opponents. The crossbows were never
silent, funnel-fed bolts from their hoppers cracking out every second into the
mass of the enemy. Then two of the insects were down and in a moment Salma saw
why.

The Ants were not the
only airborne cavalry deployed above the field. Diving directly past his view
came a giant wasp the size of a horse, with a soldier clinging gamely to its
back. There was no crossbow, in fact no weapon at all, but the man’s hands
yanked and tugged to get the monster to cooperate. It dodged and spun in the
air and then fell on one of the ant-riders, lancing the insect he rode on with
its sting, and crushing the rider’s shoulder with wedge-shaped jaws.

Another buzzed past,
spinning Salma in its wake. Its rider tried to let loose his energy sting, but
the beast began bucking the moment he took a hand from its harness. And then he
was gone, and Salma was slicing through the air towards the scattered savages.

He saw what had snagged
his attention before. There was a leader amongst them, a man in a spike-fronted
helm bawling out orders that sent them hurtling across the city. Salma adjusted
his angle, so as to come in from above and put his sword through their
commander.

Colonel Edric continued
sending his Hornet soldiers out to loot and burn, to create as much confusion
as possible, when one of the men pointed over his shoulder and began shouting a
warning. Edric turned in the air, wings dancing, to see a man – a Commonwealer!
– almost upon him. He threw himself aside, losing his hold in the air and
dropping ten feet before his Art caught him, and the Dragonfly flashed past
him, slicing open the soldier who had warned him. Edric was after the
Commonwealer in a moment, knowing that a score of Hornets would follow
faithfully, and then had to hurl himself backwards as a great dark shadow
roared down from above. It was one of the Empire’s own heliopters, and for a
second Edric’s entire sky was obscured by its metal-plated hull. He heard a
bitter shearing sound as several of his men met the rotors, and then the machine
was trying sluggishly for height, spilling out grenades in a non-stop cascade.

He tried to locate the
Dragonfly, saw the man again spearing towards him. Edric shot a blast of his
sting, but his adversary flitted out of the way. The bulk of the heliopter was
still clawing for height, and he dropped beneath it to give himself space to
think and manoeuvre.

But the Dragonfly was
veering off suddenly, and Edric looked about to see what he was avoiding.

It was a Tarkesh
orthopter with red flames blazing from its cockpit. The heliopter shuddered in
the air as it tried to correct its course, but the orthopter, even as its wing
cables were snapping, shifted its aim lazily and struck against the bigger
machine’s side, staving it in. A second later and one or the other had
exploded, and then they both had, and Edric was hurled head over heels through
the air and across the city.

Feeling a wave of hot
air roll over him, Salma caught himself in the air, still seeking out his
target. There he was, blown almost up against the wall by the force of the two
dying machines. He was right at the gatehouse, amongst the wrecked artillery.
Even as the colonel got to his feet on the stones of the wall, Salma was
stooping down on him.

Barely in time, Edric
saw him coming and dragged his sword from its scabbard. It was a Hornet piece,
big and heavy-edged, and he slashed furiously at Salma as the Dragonfly fell on
him, but Salma was a natural in the air, pitching aside to let the great blade
pass him. His own lunge scored across the colonel’s side and then he had
knocked the man down, and the two of them went tumbling end over end towards
the broken edge of the wall. Edric was now on top and with one hand to his side
he straightened up, raising his sword to split Salma’s skull. At the same time,
Salma stabbed upwards, his blade punching through his opponent’s light armour
and up to the hilt beneath the man’s ribs. The Wasp colonel’s sword fell from
his hand, spinning through the air until it struck the ground far below. A
moment later, Salma sent the man’s body heading in the same direction.

‘What it is,’ Destrachis
shouted above the wind, ‘is that the money goes to Collegium. That’s the way it
works.’

Felise clung on grimly,
trying to catch his words as the rushing air swept them past her.

‘If you do well for
yourself in Helleron . . .’ he continued, quite happy, apparently, to carry on
this conversation at the top of his lungs, ‘if you own a string of factories,
make a mint, then you retire to Collegium. That’s where the respectables live,
and having money like that buys you a lot of respectable, you see?’

She nodded, still trying
to understand. Their automotive jolted at that point, some join or flaw in the
rails, and she nearly lost her grip. If she fell now, though her wings would catch
her safely, she would never catch up with this machine again. Nobody could fly
as fast as the engine was propelling them.

‘And so,’ Destrachis
went on, ‘there’s a market for luxuries. The Collegium rich like to flaunt it,
same as everywhere. Spiderland goods come in up the coast, but for anything
from the north, there’s a real battle to be the first with it. And that’s’ – he
waved an arm perilously around, having hooked onto the automotive’s side with
the other – ‘where this comes in.’

The machine they were
riding was mostly open cage-work. The middle section was for the cargo, five or
six heavily padded crates lashed together on a low-sided hold. At the front was
the engine, which had originally sounded like thunder rolling across the hills
to the west of Helleron, but the sound of it was now mostly merged with the
wind. Parts of it glowed red-hot, while other parts were constantly being
tightened by the three-man crew of artificers. It ran on firepowder and seemed,
even to Felise who knew nothing about such matters, like a dangerous beast
waiting for its moment to attack.

At the back of the
machine was the meagre space the thing set aside for its crew. Two men were
forward now, keeping the engine in tune. One was watching some dials and gauges
that were wholly occult to her. Behind him, Destrachis and Felise clung on
tight.

They were close-mouthed,
tough-looking men, those three. Black Guild artificers, contraband runners,
Beetle-kinden, all of them, and loosely allied to the fiefdom that Felise had
served so well by eliminating the Last-Chancers. They were, above all, supreme
opportunists, as this venture showed.

‘You see, this was going
to be the big business,’ Destrachis further explained. ‘The Iron Road from
Helleron to Collegium by a direct and unbroken rail, instead of having to go
the square way round Sarn. Only they got the rail finished and then some fool
blew up the engine. Thing called the
Pride
, most
expensive automotive ever made, and they blew it up. You’d think someone else
would step in, but no, the fellow who owned the
Pride
has the contract, and he’s blasted if he’s going to let anyone else get the
first ride, so he’s having a new engine built, and meanwhile all these miles of
shiny rails are just sitting here, doing nobody any good! So you see, these
lads decided to jump at the chance. They tell me it’s easy enough to make an
automotive run on rails, and once it’s running on the rails it goes a lot
faster than if it wasn’t.’ He was grinning wildly, his hair streaming and, in
the face of that, she had to smile back. ‘So these lads cornered the market!’
he finished, and she nodded to show she understood.

‘I love machines!’ he
told her. ‘They fascinate me!’

‘But you can’t, really,’
she called back, and she knew that, downwind as she was, her words would not
reach him. He read the remark in her face, though, and his grin merely widened.

‘I don’t
understand
them, but I love them. All the little parts and
pieces!’

Despite the lack of
available space, the artificers had taken them aboard willingly. They were
engaged in a high-risk venture, for there could be brigands or even militia in
their way, but Felise Mienn was the woman who had killed a dozen Last-Chancers
single-handed. When she had asked Destrachis why they were taking him too, he
had told her it was for the same reason.

‘You’re a fighter?’ She
had sounded sceptical. He was a man for the underhand knife, perhaps, but no
warrior.

‘I’m a doctor,’ he had
said, with some dignity. ‘Or at least that was my training. I’ve been a lot of
things since. Anyway, it’s a risky trip we’re on now. Injuries are likely from
the journey or the machine itself. They’ll be glad to have me patching them
up.’

The nameless little
automotive scorched across the miles, the fastest thing in the Lowlands,
according to its crew. Even the
Pride
itself would
not be able to do this journey so swiftly, they boasted, since the power of its
ingenious engine would be hindered by the weight of its carriages.

Felise was amazed that
she could even catch her breath, amazed that the constantly churning engine did
not fly apart or the crewmen get caught in its works or burned at any minute.
The rush of the engine, the sweep of the countryside as it was hustled past
them, the occasional brief image of some small village or herder’s croft, it
all seemed to sing in her heart.

Would
this be such a bad life?
Perhaps she could find these men again, when
she was done, after—

After
what?
For surely there would be no after. The one task that had
sustained her this far would take the world with it once it was done. As though
peering from a brightly lit room into the clouded night skies, she could see no
after.