Dragonfly Falling (10 page)

‘But the Ants won’t let
us fight—’

‘Totho, if enough of the
Wasps get over the wall, then our hosts’ preferences won’t come into it.’

Salma bolted up the
stairs as Totho turned back for his gear.

They had been billeted
in the rooms beneath Parops’s tower. Salma chose the first outside door, the
ground-level door, and stopped with it half open, frozen.

The space before the
gate was filled with ranks of Ant-kinden soldiers with crossbows and plenty of
quarrels. Above them the walls, their crenellations slightly scarred from the
previous day, were lined with more of them, and some of those had greater
weapons. There were nailbow-men there with their blocky, firepowder-charged
devices, and two-man teams with great winch-operated repeating crossbows
resting on the walls.

They were shooting. All
the men on the walls were shooting, either straight ahead or slightly upwards.
Salma heard the grinding thunder of mechanisms, and the arm of the trebuchet
atop Parops’s tower flung itself forward, slinging its load of man-sized stones
in a high arc. All along the slice of wall that Salma could see, other engines
were busy doing the same.

Then the Wasps were at
the wall itself, and what he had only been told about became real.

The first wave was a
great ragged sweep of spear-wielding savages who hurtled into a field of
crossbow bolts. There were already deep holes punched in their scattered mass.
Salma watched almost three in four get ripped from the sky in that first
instant, as soon as their silhouettes appeared in the sky above the walls. Some
were killed outright. Others screamed and plummeted from the air to be finished
on the ground with pragmatic brutality. The surviving attackers paid them no
heed. Some alighted on the walls. Others ploughed into the waiting men below or
scattered across the city. They were in a blood-rage, foaming at the mouth,
hurling their spears and blasting with their stings, drawing great slashing
swords from their belts to lay about them. One came down close to the tower’s
entrance, flinging his lance with such force that it punched right through an
Ant’s chainmail, knocking the man off his feet. Salma leapt out instantly,
taking to the air and dropping on the attacker with sword extended. Another Ant
was there already, and the Wasp savage took both sword-blows simultaneously. He
howled in something that was more rage than pain, swinging his own blade at
Salma and then at the Ant soldier, cutting a long dent in the latter’s shield
before falling.

There was a second wave
of them at the walls already, coming too swiftly for many of the soldiers to
have reloaded, although the repeating bows had taken a savage toll of the
incursors. There was now hand-to-hand fighting all along the wall, and
attackers kept dropping, or sometimes falling, down into the courtyard before
the gates.

Salma had never seen
Ants in combat before. There was no confusion here, no hesitation. The invaders
were set upon efficiently, without haste. All found that any Ant they attacked
was ready for them as those they tried to surprise turned to see them. The Ants
had a hundred pairs of eyes watching each one’s back. The Wasps took a toll
with their stings and their frenzied hacking, but how small that toll was! Most
of their second wave had been turned into corpses, all for the loss of no more
than two dozen defenders.

‘Get back inside, you!’
one of the Ants shouted over at him. ‘No place here for a civilian.’

‘I’m not a civilian!’
Salma called back. ‘Look, I have a sword!’

The man was about to
answer him when something pulled his attention upwards. They were all looking
up, and across all those raised faces one expression was asking: ‘What . . . ?’

And then they were
moving. Without a word, without panic or cries of alarm, they scattered as best
they could. Those at the edge of the square were backing quickly into the side
streets, others were pushing up against the wall itself. Some found the shelter
of doors or doorways. All this in the space of seconds. Salma would have
remained standing still if an Ant had not cannoned into him, pushing him back
into the tower door, where he collided with Totho so that all three of them
fell in a heap.

The first explosion came
across the other side, just left of the main gate. A crack of sound, a burst of
fire and stone and dust, flinging half a dozen soldiers up and away, shearing
through the next nearest squad with jagged metal and shards of stone. Up above,
the trebuchet was winching itself ponderously round, while other enemy missiles
were landing now, some right before the gates and others impacting on nearby
buildings in a sporadic and random rain of fire. Wherever they struck, they
split and burst, cracking stone and flinging pieces of their shells in scything
arcs. Soldiers everywhere were holding their shields up, falling back to what
cover they could find. Each second yet another fireball burst close about the
gates, and there had been so many soldiers gathered there a moment ago that
each missile claimed at least one victim. Salma, clinging to the doorframe, saw
shields punched inwards by the invisible fists of these explosions, a nearby
door smashed to kindling, men and women given a second’s notice before being
blown apart.

Yet there were no
screams, and it seemed horribly unreal with that essential element missing. The
Wasps that had come in first had screamed and shouted in fury and terror, but
the Ants even died in silence, save for whatever last words they conveyed
through that essential communion between them. In their last moments, he
wondered, was that link a blessing for the fallen, or a torture for those still
standing?

The artillery atop the
wall was still pounding away, and Salma could see the Ant-kinden weapons, the
ballistae, catapults and all the other murderous toys of the Apt, pivoting and
tilting to get the range of the enemy siege engines. Totho went struggling past
him, repeating crossbow cradled in his hands, even as another wave of Wasps
passed overhead. These were the ones that Salma was familiar with, more
disciplined and better armoured: the imperial light airborne. There were
crossbows enough to deal with them but they had seized their moment and swiftly
struck before the defenders had regrouped. Some circled overhead, spitting down
with their stings, while others bedevilled the wall or passed into the city.
There were strangers amongst them, Salma spotted: men of another kinden wearing
breastplates and leathers in the imperial colours. One of these passed low over
the crouching soldiers, and cast something behind him that erupted in a plume of
fire and shattered paving flags.

Salma felt his wings
flare into being before he had even decided what to do next, and an instant
later he was springing for the wall-top. He caught a descending Wasp as he did
so, the force of his flight driving his blade between the man’s armour plates
and doubling him up in agony. Salma let the sword go, pushing upwards the
height of the wall to leap up next to another Wasp soldier while the man was
grappling with one of the defenders. Salma twisted the blade from his hand and
stabbed him with it before even alighting on the stone walkway.

It was not chaos, but it
was not far off. Beyond the wall the plain was crawling with war machines. Many
of them were still flinging their explosive burdens inside the city despite the
presence there of their own men. The walkway of the wall had become a mass of
small skirmishes. The Ants were stronger and more unified, but the Wasps could
fly and they took full advantage of it, dragging men and women off the walls or
stinging their victims from on high and swooping down on them from all angles.

But the defenders below
were rallying. The crossbow-shot began to pick up, Wasp attackers plucked from
the air by the increasingly thick and accurate barrage. There would be no
chance for Salma to take wing now without the risk of being taken for an
invader. He looked about for a chance to intervene and then a Wasp leapt at him
from over the battlements, almost knocking him off the walkway altogether. He
grappled fiercely with the man, each keeping the other’s sword away. The Ants
were fighting all around him but each would be waiting for a mental cry from
him for help and Salma could not give it.

The Wasp was the
stronger and he began forcing Salma back so that he was pushed half out off the
wall, hanging over the battlefield beneath. The rough stone ground into Salma’s
ribs, but then he got a knee up into the man’s groin and twisted around, using
the soldier’s own force to pitch him headfirst into space.

The man’s wings rescued
him, but he took a crossbow bolt even as they did, and fell. Salma dropped to
one knee behind the shelter of the crenellations and tried to take stock of
what was going on. Most of the flying attackers had been dealt with but their
artillery was still moving. Salma risked a quick look over the wall.

Some of the enemy
engines had been destroyed, but others were still active and an explosive
missile struck Parops’s tower even as he watched. The Ant artillery seemed to
be concentrating on the engines that were still advancing. He could see two of
those in particular that seemed mostly armoured metal plates, like great
woodlice, grinding forwards with their own mechanical power. One rocked under
the impact of a scattering of great stones that put huge dents in its armour.

There were more fliers
streaking overhead. One of the firepots landed on the walkway close by,
throwing him from his feet and casting three Ant-kinden off the wall entirely,
down onto their brethren below. As the next flier streaked close over the
wall-top, he jumped up and rammed his sword home. The impetus of the man’s
flight nearly dragged Salma from the wall, but he succeeded in wrestling his
opponent onto the walkway.

Something beyond the
walls exploded thunderously, with enough force to shake every stone beneath his
feet. He dropped onto the man he had just stabbed, his head ringing with the
din, and then dragged himself upright to look.

The armoured engine was
gone. Instead there was a crater ten yards across, and splintered metal thrown
ten times that distance.

Its brother engine was
unfound by the artillery so far, and now it began to attack. A fat nozzle in
its front opened and spat a great stream of black liquid out onto the wall,
coating and clinging to the stones. The Ants were shooting down on it but it
was inside the arc of their artillery fire and crossbow bolts simply shivered
to pieces or bounced from its plating. Salma watched in horror as the black
stain spread across the face of the wall, before the flood slowed to a trickle
and stopped.

The engine began to
retrace its steps towards the Wasp camp, crawling backwards without even
turning round, and the artillery did not assail it. Instead, the Ants were
waiting to see what happened.

Nothing happened. The
black liquid simply hugged the wall. Whatever terrible effect the Wasps had
anticipated did not materialize.

Salma dropped back down
and rested his back to the stone crenellations. He saw beside him the body of
the last man he had killed. It was one of the others, not a Wasp but a stocky, dark-skinned
man in partial armour, with flat, closed features. He still lived, just, his
eyes moving to seek out Salma’s own. Then he died.

What
city? What kinden?
Where had the Wasps taken this luckless man from, to
force him to fight enemies not his own, to have him die in panic and pain far
from his home?

On the face of the wall,
the black liquid had evaporated, leaving only a great blotchy stain to
disfigure the walls of Tark.

The plated engine’s
retreat was the signal, and the Wasp assault slowed, the commands moving around
as fast as they could be shouted. One more wave of soldiers, too enthusiastic
for their own lives, flew out unsupported into the Tarkesh crossbow-shot, while
the wall artillery made the imperial engines’ return a hazard, sending rocks
and ballista bolts hurtling at them to the very far extent of their range. The
imperial soldiers who regained their camp were the whole ones, or those with
only light wounds. All others had been left to the sharp-edged mercies of the
Ant-kinden. If they could not fly, they died.

General Alder watched
the survivors, so few of them now, struggle back into camp. The two waves of
Hornets had been wiped out to a man, and only a third of the light airborne had
made it back, with half of the Bee-kinden engineers he had risked. By
traditional military standards the assault had been a disaster. Generals had
been executed for such performances, he thought bleakly.
This
had better not be the battle they remember me for.
Morale would be low
in the camp tonight, and would only get lower. His soldiers would still fight,
but they would lack fire, for the discipline of the Ants would destroy them.
The Wasps would inevitably batter themselves to death against the defenders’
steel resolve.
Of all things I hate fighting Ant-kinden.
Every step forward’s nothing but bloody butchery.

He cursed wearily. Those
wounded fortunate enough to have returned would be under the care of the field
surgeons now, or else the healing skills of the Daughters. Later he would walk
amongst them, as was his tradition, and it was more than just show put on for
the men. The general felt the responsibilities of his position keenly.

For now, though, there
was one meeting that he was anxious to get over with, and the spark of
anticipation he now felt was that it might just give him an excuse to have the
maverick artificer killed.

‘Get me the
Colonel-Auxillian,’ he snapped at his attendant staff, and one of them flew off
to locate the man.

Colonel Edric was at
that moment coming over to make his report, in all his barbaric splendour.
Alder found himself vaguely surprised that the man was still alive, but then
recalled:
Third wave is his tradition. Lucky for him we
pulled out when we did.