Empire in Black and Gold (75 page)

Scuto just passed between them, barely sparing them a glance. He vaulted up into the engineer’s cab at the back of the
Pride
and then came straight out again with a Wasp’s sting searing over his shoulder. His assailant cut down at him, but the shortsword clanged off his breastplate, and then Scuto seized him, hugged him close, a dozen hooked spines tearing into the twisting soldier, scratching his armour. Che found that she wanted to stop clear of the action, not for fear of the Empire, but for fear of Tisamon and his daughter, lest their deadly skills should not discriminate. She forced herself on, and her sword lodged itself in the back of the man Scuto wrestled with.

She felt it scrape against his mail and then plunge into his flesh. It was a shock that went right through her. Her first life’s blood truly shed. It was a horrible feeling, a knowledge for the worse.

And she had no time, no time to adjust. Scuto was already hurling the body away, leaping back up into the cab and holding a prickly hand out for her.

Inside, as the killing went on without, they stared.

It was the face of the lightning engine, and neither of them had ever seen anything like it. The central panel was blurry glass, and behind it there were coiled pillars that sparked and danced and glowed like lit glass themselves. Either side were dials and levers, pull-chains and toggles, and it all meant so little to her. She could see from his face that it meant even less to Scuto.

‘I wish we had Totho here now,’ she said sadly. ‘When I did my mechanics, this sort of thing was just being thought of. I know only the . . . the basics.’

‘Good,’ Scuto said. With a brutal movement he brought the butt of his crossbow down onto the glass, but it barely chipped. ‘Founder’s mark!’ he spat. ‘Must be a foot thick. Can’t even trust grenades on that. You reckon you can overcharge this thing?’

Che looked over the instruments, in the familiar situation of being their best expert on a subject she knew little enough about. ‘Let’s try,’ she said. ‘Let’s just try.’

Scuto risked a look out across the engine field. ‘Try fast,’ he advised. The Wasp wedge had fallen. A pair of survivors was running, and Balkus was already slotting a new magazine into place atop his nailbow to loose at them. Stenwold glanced around, seeing a mess of dead men. Here were Wasps, fallen in close order, attacked from all sides, bodies one atop another. There lay one of Scuto’s Beetle-kinden with his face charred, and beyond was a dead Fly, blank eyes fixed upwards.

Everyone’s eyes were looking upwards in the next moment, as energy bolts started to fall around them. The next wave was here already, swooping down on them with extended, fiery hands, and lances levelled. Balkus loosed smoothly, sending bolt after miniature bolt ripping into them, spinning the flying men off balance, punching them right out of the sky.

‘Cover!’ Stenwold shouted, as one of his Ant-kinden fell trying to reload his crossbow. Sperra was already in the shadow of the lesser engine, frantically turning the winch of her own weapon.

There was a flurry of motion above even as Stenwold cast himself behind the uncertain shelter of an earth mound. He then dared to look, and saw that the entire sky had become a battleground. The Wasp squad was wheeling and passing against some of Achaeos’s people. The Dragonfly flashed through the melee’s centre, a better flier than any of the others, turning even as she flew to slice an arrow through the air that caught an unsuspecting Wasp in the back. The male Mantis-kinden caught an enemy by the belt and carved his claw into the man, two brief moves and then releasing the limp body. Then a bolt caught him in the side and he dropped. He hit the earth still living, but a Wasp had dropped with him, driving his sword into him before the stricken Mantis could recover from the fall. Stenwold shot the victor in the chest as he made to get back into the air.

Someone was shouting a warning but he could not catch the words. A moment later he did not need to. From the side of the Wasps’ camp the clashing of gears told him everything before the monstrous shape of the automotive came into view. It was a squat, armoured thing, an ugly, riveted box with a front like a sentinel’s helm and narrow slits to look onto the outside world. Its four legs arched up like a spider’s and moved it in sudden jerky steps that covered a great deal of ground. There were two great crossbows mounted beneath its blunt nose that were loosing even as it appeared, and on its back a mounted ballista – but it was more than that. Stenwold threw himself down again even as the jagged outline became clear. There was a shield bolted to the weapon to protect the crewman but he had spotted the great wooden magazine beyond it. A repeating ballista, a truly modern weapon. Seconds later began the harsh clack-clack-clack of it as it flung its bolts one after another.

It would soon smash them to pieces, he realized. They had to destroy the thing before it got into its stride.

Within his first two steps from cover his courage left him. He saw the Beetle sentinel cut down by the crossbows at the engine’s fore, collapsing back in a chaos of armour with twin spines jutting through the metal plate over his chest. One of the Tharn Fly-kinden tried to dart overhead, but the ballista winched round smoothly, and the bolt hit her so hard that for a moment she was dead still in the air as the missle passed straight through her, and then she dropped.

The automotive lumbered on, gathering pace. There were other Wasps ranked behind it, another squad at least. Stenwold took a grenade out, wondering how thick this machine’s armour was but knowing there was only one way to find out.

He lit the fuse and counted – a ballista bolt flew past him as he did – and then threw, and he had the range perfect for once. The grenade struck, and as it struck it exploded. For a moment there was fire and nothing else in his view, and then the automotive was there again, rocking back on its spindly legs. The front had been dented by the impact, and at least one of the crossbows below it was ruined, trailing its bow arm uselessly, but after a second the monstrous thing was forging ahead once more.

‘Destroy it!’ he shouted impotently, with no means of doing so.

There was fighting behind the automotive now, for two or three of the Moth contingent had dropped there. Stenwold saw the Grasshopper with the two knives making bloody work, leaping and dancing and scattering bodies aside. The ballista wheeled back to face the machine’s stern, showing Stenwold the back of the bowman’s armoured chair.

‘Now! Go now!’ he shouted, and ran for the advancing automotive without knowing if anyone was following him.

Achaeos slashed once more at the man he was fighting, his long dagger striking sparks off armour, then he was in the air again, spiralling away. Two or three bolts of energy passed him, and he glanced back to see the Wasp soldier barrelling after him, hand extended and face furious. Achaeos threw himself into a loop that left the Wasp spinning in the air and stabbed out as soon as he was in arm’s reach, jabbing the man in the leg. As the Wasp turned to follow him one of Achaeos’s fellows sped past and hooked the man around the neck, clinging on grimly as Achaeos looped back and put his blade in twice, three times, until the Wasp dropped out of the sky. He and his comrade then flew their separate ways across the battlefield.

Achaeos’s warriors were split up now, each acting on his or her own. That was the way they worked, in both raids and warfare. Nobody realized that the Moths ever went to war, but it was midnight skirmishes like this that brought out the warrior in them. He sheathed his dagger, shrugged his bow from over his shoulder and loosened the drawstring holding his quiver closed.

He saw the automotive wade ponderously across the battlefield, the murderous artificer’s device atop it pivoting back and forth, constantly spitting death. Passing over, he saw that some few were even attacking it, and that one of these was Stenwold.

Stenwold was undoubtedly going to die. The fat old Beetle was making almost as much heavy going as the machine itself and the weapon was swinging round towards him like the head of some blind god. Nobody believed in gods, of course, but the artificers had created them anyway.

Achaeos reached for his Art, that trancing Art he had used on Che what now seemed so long ago, and dashed past the slit of the ballista. The first shot spun past him, and the second, and then he felt the shock of contact as his mind, his gaze, caught the artillerist’s.

He dragged on that contact, as his wings took him up and back, and he knew that, for precious seconds at least, the man’s gaze would be drawn with him, the weapon itself swinging away blindly.

Thalric was trying to make sense of the battle, and there was precious little sense to be made. It was the cursed Moth-kinden and their allies. They had taken the fighting everywhere, whereas Stenwold’s sorry lot could have been contained. The fighting at the
Pride
itself had been over a moment ago, and now it was back on, another squad of the light airborne coming down to root out the attackers. Meanwhile the automotive was making steady progress, despite fierce resistance. When it got to the
Pride
the night would be as good as won, but he knew that there were no certainties this night. Stenwold had mustered more allies than he had ever expected. Even the smashing of Scuto’s ring seemed hardly to have broken the Beetle’s stride.

Major Godran was now by his side. The man picked to lead the invasion of Collegium, he was peering towards the
Pride
with any captain’s concern at the fate of his vessel.

‘Will you look at that!’ he choked. He was pointing at the skirmish around the engine, and Thalric saw it too. What a one-sided affair it should have been, the Wasp soldiers stinging down, then dropping with drawn blade to take on so few defenders. What a one-sided affair it was, indeed. There was a Mantis-kinden there who moved like light and shadow both. The stings of the Wasps could not find him, and when they closed to sword’s reach, they died. There was no more subtlety to it than that. Thalric’s eyes could not follow it, but the man seemed to have a lethal aura about him, as though even the air he moved through was fatal to his enemies. He was holding them off. He was more than holding them off. He was slaughtering them.

The automotive continued to manage a slow crawl across the field. They needed something more than that now. Thalric looked for the only useful flier they could mobilize, a spotter blimp with a pair of winched repeating crossbows mounted in its belly. He located its pale bulk overhead, but saw instantly that it was in trouble. There were Moth-kinden attacking it, gashing the gasbag and clinging onto the small gondola as they stabbed at the crew. That particular gambit had died before it even entered the battle. There would be no help there.

Which left one thing.

‘I’ll take a squad in,’ Thalric decided.

‘Are you sure that’s wise, Captain?’ asked Godran.

‘No choice, Major.’ Thalric rapped his fist on the armour of a sergeant. ‘You and yours, with me!’ he said, and kicked off into the air.

Stenwold was halfway to the automotive, with another grenade in his hand, when he saw the ballista cupola wheel back towards him. Even as he saw it he was directly before it, seeing the arms tensioned back, the power in this weapon of bent steel and twined horsehair enough to split him in two.

And yet it did not shoot. He stared at the head of the bolt, metal sheathing it for a full eighteen inches, and then it lurched aside, tilting up at the stars. He lit the grenade, throwing it even as he did so.

He thought the fuse must have been cut too short, because he was punched from his feet almost instantly, the wash of fire singeing his eyebrows and fragments of metal gashing his armour and his scalp. A moment later he saw the cupola rock back with the impact. Then four men were dashing past him. One, the Beetle with the blunderbow, was cut down by the remaining fore crossbow, almost falling onto Stenwold’s legs. Rakka the Scorpion was already past, long-hafted axe raised high, and Balkus and Sperra were following close behind. Stenwold saw Sperra leap into the air and launch a bolt at the bowman behind the ballista, but it merely rebounded from the weapon’s armoured housing. Then the ballista was sweeping around, trying to pick her out of the air, its tireless mechanisms throwing bolt after bolt at her. In the confusion, Rakka gained the side of the automotive.

The huge man had only an axe and, even as he raised it, Stenwold could not understand what he meant to do. Then the Scorpion brought it down where the leg closest to him met the machine’s housing.

It seemed a futile gesture but Rakka was stronger than Stenwold realized, a strength augmented by surging tides of Scorpion Art. The axehead bit deep into the leg’s casing, buckling the pistons and gears operating within. When the automotive took its next step, that same foreleg made only half the gain, slewing the entire machine round.

A sting blast scorched across Rakka’s bare back, and the Scorpion howled in pain. Balkus returned the shot, the chamber of his nailbow flashing again and again. Rakka now had the axe up once more, every ounce of his strength focused on that single point of the machine. With a wordless battle cry he brought it down once, and then twice, even as a second bolt of energy impacted between his shoulder blades. The leg had canted to one side with the first stroke, its joints abruptly frozen. The second blow must have cut almost through it because, when the automotive took its next step, the damaged leg snapped off entirely and the machine tipped forwards, back leg waving in the air, its nose grinding into the dirt.

‘Clear it!’ Stenwold shouted, rushing ahead. Balkus was meanwhile helping Rakka away, whereupon Stenwold lit his last grenade and hurled it at the ballista’s cupola.

It bounced, but he had overshot, and so it struck the sloping hull beyond the weapon and rolled back. Then it thundered to pieces and in its wake the ballista became a shredded splay of metal around an open hatch.

Stenwold looked for Balkus and saw the Ant lowering Rakka’s body to the ground before snatching his nailbow up again. Even before Stenwold could call it, he was rushing forward, stepping up onto the tilted hull. He levelled his nailbow down the hatch and emptied it at the crew as they tried to climb out.