Dragonfly Falling (69 page)

He had thought about
going to Doctor Nicrephos at that point. The old man had been very agitated,
talking about some artefact that must be given over to his own protection. He
knew it was somewhere in the city, and he believed he could even divine its
location. He had obviously been very serious, but to Stenwold it had made very
little sense.

But then a messenger had
come for him from the north wall, saying that he was needed there urgently.
There was never any time.

His journey across the
city had been nightmarish. Over the last day the Vekken had begun using special
trebuchets, far out of range of any armaments on the Collegium walls. They were
incredibly spindly contraptions, his telescope had told him, and they flung
handfuls of grenades arcing from their slings. These exploded over the city,
showering it with fire and shrapnel, or else burst in flames on the roofs of
buildings. It was a random barrage, doing little damage, but it meant that
nobody in the city was ever entirely safe. Those few who braved the streets had
to keep one eye on the sky, and Stenwold, passing through the streets of his
home city, felt the doom of the place keenly, like a cloud hovering above him.

‘I’m starting to wonder
about how this is going to go,’ he had told Balkus, and the big Ant only
nodded.

In the hour before dawn
a messenger had got through to the city. His name was Frezzo and he had been
expected days before, but an Ant crossbowman had shot him down, and he had been
resting within sight of the city walls, building up the strength to fly again.
However he had insisted, with the honour of his guild at stake, on giving his
news before they treated his wound. The news itself was just one more burden
for the defenders. It appeared Sarn was not coming to their aid. They all knew
that Helleron had gone to the Wasps, but not even Kymon had made the logical
step that a westward-moving imperial army would occupy Sarn’s attention and
thus prevent any chance of rescue from the north.

Kymon and his soldiers
were down off the west wall today, but only because there was no immediate
assault. Instead, what artillery the Ants had left was pelting the wall
mercilessly with rock and lead shot. The artillery on the tower emplacements
was returning the favour in daylight now, and most of it was second- or
third-generation, as more and more engines were smashed by increasingly
accurate incoming missiles. Stenwold had seen some machines being fixed in,
during the pre-dawn, that were just the previous engines reassembled with
desperate haste, and therefore sure to fly apart after a few shots.

The north wall was
bearing the brunt of it today, with tower engines and rams and legions of
Vekken infantry. Stenwold came at a run, expecting disaster, but then he found
himself cornered by an enraged academic.

‘Master Maker! Or I
suppose I have to call you War Master now.’

‘Call me what you want,
Master . . . ?’

The Beetle-kinden was
squat and balding and enraged. ‘I am Master Hornwhill, and I demand that you
discipline these military fellows! It’s an outrage!’

‘What’s an outrage?’
Stenwold asked, trying for calm. Hornwhill was so incensed by whatever had
outraged him that it took Balkus looming menacingly at his shoulder to calm him
down.

‘Master Maker, my
discipline is in the mercantile area. I design barrels, and they are not meant
for military use!’ the man protested. Stenwold goggled at him.

‘What are you talking
about?’

‘This!’ Hornwhill
stomped over towards a row of catapults that the north wall commander had set
up, and which even now were launching their shot in a high arc, right over the wall
and onto the men and machines arrayed on the far side. Hornwhill grabbed one of
the missiles from the engineers and brandished it fiercely. ‘This is my
double-hulled safe-passage barrel intended for breakable goods!’ the excited
artificer exclaimed. ‘Five hundred of them have been seized from my warehouse
and I demand restitution.’

‘Who’s in charge here?’
Stenwold called out, and a dirty-faced engineer popped his head up above the
winding winch of a catapult.

‘Here, War Master!’

How
is it that everyone knows me?
‘Why are you throwing barrels at them?’
Stenwold asked him.

‘Got precious little
else to throw,’ the engineer said cheerily. ‘Besides, these beauties are just
what we need. They crack open when they hit, but they don’t damage their
cargoes, just release them all cosy like. They’re lovely.’

‘Cargoes? What cargoes?’
Stenwold said, trying to block out Hornwhill’s jabbering complaints.

The engineer grinned at
him, still winding back the catapult. ‘Well, I figure we might as well use
every dirty trick in the book, War Master. Last night me and my lad raided
every menagerie, animal workshop and alchemist’s store in the city. I got the
lot in these barrels. I got scorpions, poisonous spiders, stinging flies,
glasses of acid, explosive reagents. I got the Vekken doing a real guessing
game with what’s going to land on ’em next.’

‘Balkus,’ Stenwold said.

‘Here.’

‘If Master Hornwhill
doesn’t shut up and go home, throw him in the river.’

Nothing was going quite
as it should. Akalia was becoming increasingly aware that, in the estimates of
the Royal Court of Vek, Collegium should have fallen by now.

It seemed impossible
that a city-state of tinkerers and philosophers could hold off the elite of
Vek, the most disciplined soldiers in the world. Still the walls stood, though,
the defenders rushing to throw back every incursion. The Beetle-kinden and
their slaves seemed indefatigable, never-ceasing. Every time it seemed the
walls would be taken, the Beetles dragged out some new scheme, and thus held
her off for yet another day.

She shook her head. It
had been a run of disturbed nights for her, and for her men as well. Her ill
dreams had communicated themselves to her army, or else she had been infected
with theirs. She
feared
. In waking moments she would
not even have acknowledged it, but she feared. She feared the derision of her
peers, that no Ant-kinden could escape. She did not fear that Collegium would
never fall, but she feared that she would not take it fast enough, that, had
the King chosen differently, a more skilled tactician would be within the walls
by now.

And those Wasps had run
mad and killed one another. It should be expected from a weaker race, but still
it shook her. She could see no logic to it, no sense at all. Without warning
they had left the camp and butchered each other to the last man. The report of
her sentries had been easily brushed off at first, but the event had returned
to prey on her mind.
Was this some ploy, some new weapon,
some contagious insanity? Will it happen to us?
Her artificers had
assured her that it was impossible, but she found herself losing faith in them.
Clearly the Collegium scholars know things that we do not.
In her mind, in the hearts of all Apt people, there was a tiny worm so deeply
buried that it would never normally see the light. It was a worm born many
centuries before, in the Days of Lore before the revolution – those days when
her kind and the Beetles had both been slaves. It was fear of the unknown, of
the old mysteries. In now facing the scholars of Collegium, Akalia was
rediscovering her fear of the unknown.

Tactician
,
word arrived from her engineers.

Report
,
demanded Akalia. In her mind’s eye she saw the west wall of Collegium as her
scouts could now see it through their glasses. The patient voice of one of her
artificers guided her through the stress fractures, cracks and damage that her
engines had done to it over the last few days.

The
wall is holding out better than we had anticipated
, the artificer
explained.
The Beetle-kinden mortar remains semi-solid indefinitely,
and so there is a great deal of flexibility in the wall. However, damage to the
stones themselves is now quite widespread. There is considerable cracking and,
even with the artillery left to us, we have been able to accurately expand the
stress areas that you see here.

Just
tell me when
, Akalia snapped at him.

There was a moment’s
pause in which the artificer conferred with his colleagues.

We
think today – late today or early tomorrow. We were considering holding until
tomorrow in any event, to give us more time for the assault, and—

No!
she ordered.
Today! If we can possibly be within
Collegium’s walls today, then we must make all efforts. The artificers of Vek
have so far proved themselves inferior to these Beetle peasants on every level.
You know what you must do to change that.

The artificer
capitulated hurriedly. She had the sense of him hurrying off to order an
increased barrage from the siege engines.

This had gone on too
long already. The greater Wasp city-state must have already done its job,
because her scouts would have spotted Sarn’s approach by now, but she still
felt that the scholars and merchants of Collegium were laughing at her behind
their walls.

Not for long, though.
The King of Vek had given her free rein on how to punish the resistance of the
city, after she had taken it, and that thought was her only consolation as she
waited for the walls to fall.

‘Master Kymon!’ the man
was shouting. ‘They’re coming!’

He panted to a halt and
Kymon just had to stare at him and wait for his wind to return. If this had
been an Ant-kinden defence he would know already what it was the man had seen,
not only in words but by the very image. His halfbreed Kessen watcher was dead,
though, and he had to rely on word of mouth. This was unbearably frustrating.

At last he snapped,
‘What did you see? Troops? Engines?’ Above them the Ant artillery was still
pelting away at the wall. Each shot made the stones shift and shudder so that
Kymon had pulled his cowering soldiers back from them in case they suddenly
fell, even though Collegium’s architects had assured him that they were far
from cracking.

‘Engines, Master Kymon,
with soldiers behind. Ramming engines, I think.’

Under
cover of the bombardment
, Kymon knew. The Vekken had already tried rams
against all the gates on and off, and the metal-sheathed shutters had dented
but never given in. They would be disappointed again.

He was suspicious,
though, for even the Vekken had some sense of strategy. ‘What about towers?’ he
demanded.

‘Back with the men,’ his
lookout reported. ‘The rams are in front.’

‘And these rams? Like
the ones we’ve seen before?’

‘I’m not an artificer,
but—’

‘Just tell me!’ Kymon
barked. He would never have had to shout at Ant-kinden either, but sometimes,
with these slow city people, it seemed the only way.

‘Not quite, Master
Kymon. Bigger, with a different end to it.’

Kymon cursed the man
silently for not being able to just
show
him. Even
so, his military instincts were telling him bad things.

‘Pull back from the
wall!’ he shouted.

‘We’re already—’

‘Further, you cretins!
Or I will personally flog every last one of you!’

His men began to shamble
away, talking amongst themselves and lagging. Kymon bared his teeth and fought
down his temper.

‘What’s going on?’

He rounded on the
speaker and almost shouted down his throat before he saw it was Stenwold.

‘The Vekken are trying
something new,’ he explained shortly. ‘How long before they reach the wall,
boy?’

The lookout spread his
hands helplessly.

‘Well, how fast were
they moving?’ Kymon asked him, thinking that—

He picked himself off
the hard flags of the street, head ringing, and saw all around him that his
men, even Stenwold, were strewn about, similarly jolted off their feet.

‘Get up!’ he bellowed at
them, hearing his own voice as strangely distant. They looked dazed, stunned.
Stenwold’s eyes were wide.

‘They sent a petard
against the wall!’ Kymon informed him, knowing that he was speaking too loud.
Even as he said it, another explosion rocked them from a hundred yards south,
and a third followed on its heels. The Vekken were using engine-mounted
explosives driven directly into the stones so as to crack the city open. He
turned fearfully, looking for the wall.

The Beetles of Collegium
had done well, for it still stood, but it was obvious that it would not stand
for very much longer. He watched how the latest explosion rippled the stones
like canvas in a breeze.

The Vekken artillery
kept on launching, and he saw great chunks of stones still bound with mortar
falling out to crash onto the streets right in front of his men.

‘On your feet, all of
you!’ he screamed at them, and there was something in his voice at last that
reached them. They were clustered together too close, they were shaken,
terrified, even. As more stones fell from the wall he strode out before them,
shield on one arm, drawn sword in his right hand.

‘Listen to me!’ he
shouted at them. ‘The wall will fall and it was always going to. You, boy!’ He
pointed at the ashen lookout. ‘Go to the other walls, get men with the right
materials to repair a breach. Go now!’ As the lad ran off Kymon glared at the
rest of them. ‘You, though, you’re staying here with me, and those Vekken
bastards are going to be inside
your
city in
minutes, you understand? They’re going to punch a breach in that wall with
their engines and then come flooding through, soldiers in better armour than
yours, with better training than yours, and you know what you’re going to do?
You’re going to hold them at the wall. You’re bloody well going to stop them
getting into
your
city. You understand me? Not
my
city. I’m a Kessen and I wouldn’t have a city like this
to defend for all the wasting world, but
your
city,
and the only people in this whole city who can keep it
yours
are
you
! You men and women standing before me now!’
He was conscious of a greater shattering behind him which was echoed in the
stir of the soldiers before him – and that Stenwold Maker now had a repeating
crossbow in his hands and had cranked back the string.