Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

Now Drephos proffered the weapon and he took it, feeling how light it was, a sleek and deadly-feeling creation, like a predatory animal that found its prey by sight from on high. The curved butt fitted to his shoulder and armpit to steady it, and he was able to look down the slender length of the barrel, using a groove in the folded crank of the air battery itself to correct his aim.

‘Any complaints, Totho?’ Drephos asked him.

‘It’s beautiful, Master,’ Totho said, wonderingly.

‘You have the best of them, as is only fitting,’ Drephos said. At his gesture the big Mole Cricket-kinden began handing out the others, until all the artificers had a newly finished snapbow in their hands.

‘We are almost at the end of our stretch of road with this device,’ Drephos told them all. ‘Next will be the training sergeants. General Malkan is preparing to march, but he is leaving me two thousand men here and every factory in Helleron if I need it. When we walk out from here, if we are satisfied, this entire city will be devoted to your invention. It’s a rare privilege.’

‘I understand, Master.’ There was something he was missing, he knew, some underlying tension he could not account for. He glanced at Kaszaat and saw that she alone of them was not smiling. ‘We’re here for the final tests?’ he asked.

‘We are,’ Drephos said, and signalled to the soldiers. One of them went to the far end of the range and pulled a door open.

There were two dozen people behind the door, and they were pushed out onto the range quite quickly by Wasp soldiers, who closed the doors and stood nearby, hands open and ready. Totho frowned. Afterwards it would appal him that it took him so long to work out what was going on.

They were Beetle-kinden, mostly, with a few halfbreeds or Flies, and they looked as though they were going to a costume party all dressed like warriors. Some wore leather cuirasses or long coats, others had banded mail, or breastplates, or chain hauberks in the Ant style. There was even Spider-made silk armour and a suit of full sentinel plate that the wearer could hardly move in. None of them was armed.

‘What. what’s going on?’ Totho asked.

‘We are going to test your invention,’ Drephos explained, ‘and you should have the honour of going first.’

He knew even then, but he said, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You have made a machine for killing people, Totho,’ Drephos said gently. ‘How else can it be tested?’

It was a long time with him staring at those confused men and women before he said, ‘But I can’t just. shoot at them. They’re. ’

‘Troublemakers,’ Drephos said crisply. ‘The lazy, the malcontents, the unskilled, the grumblers — all those picked for me by my foremen, though fewer than I had hoped. Still, it will have to be a sufficient sample for this test, because we have little time.’

‘But they’re people! ’ Totho said.

‘Are they any more people than the soldiers your weapons will be used against? Did you think you could bring such a weapon into the world and keep your hands clean?’ Drephos asked him. ‘I hate hypocrisy, Totho, and I will not tolerate it. Too many of our trade are ashamed of what they do, and try to distance themselves. You must be proud of what you are. War and death are the gearwheels of artifice, remember? This is meat, useless and replaceable meat, no more.’ His gauntleted hand fell on Totho’s shoulder paternally. ‘You have made this beautiful device. You must be the first to give it purpose. Now load it.’

His hands trembling, Totho thumbed back the slot at the breech of the weapon and slipped a finger-length bolt into place, the missile’s presence closing the slot automatically. He remembered a sleepless night designing that very mechanism, with Kaszaat breathing gently beside him. He was thinking, I will not do it. I will not do it , but his fingers completed the now-familiar task with a minimum of fuss.

‘Charge it,’ Drephos said quietly. Totho’s hand was already on the crank, and five quick ratchets of it pressurized the air in the battery.

‘Ready your bow,’ Drephos said, and slowly he raised the snapbow, feeling its snug and comfortable fit against his shoulder. I will not do it , his mind sang again.

‘Shoot,’ Drephos said, and Totho was frozen, his fingers on the release lever. ‘Shoot!’ the master artificer said again, but he could not. He was shaking, his aim veering. The range of targets at the far end of the hall had not yet realized what was going on.

‘This is a test, Totho, a test to see whether what I purchased was worth the price. Remember our bargain. Your friend is alive and free, and in return you are mine .’ And on that word his metal hand clenched on Totho’s shoulder like tongs, and Totho pressed the trigger.

The explosive snap of the release of air echoed down the length of the hall. He had been aiming, perhaps unconsciously, at the most heavily armoured target, the man (or was it a woman?) in the heavy sentinel plate. Now he saw the clumsy figure fall backwards. He could hope that just the impact against the metal might have knocked it over, but there was no movement, and he thought he saw a clean hole had been thrust through the steel.

‘Loose at will,’ Drephos decided, quite satisfied, and all around them the artificers loaded and shouldered their weapons.

Totho lay sleepless in the dark and he shook. His mind’s eye was glutted with the work of those few seconds, the ears still ringing with the discrete ‘snap-snap-snap’ as his inventions — the work of his own mind and hands — had gone about their purpose.

Drephos had been ecstatic, declaring the test a complete success. Even at the range they were firing, the bolts had not scrupled to pierce plate armour or punch through rings of chainmail. Only the Spider-kinden silk armour had at all slowed them down, the fine cloth twisting about the spinning missiles and preventing them penetrating. They spun, of course, because of the spiral grooving Totho had instituted on the inside of the snapbow barrels, giving the weapons greater range and accuracy. It had been an innovation that Scuto had made to Balkus’s nailbow, he recalled.

A skilled archer, Drephos estimated, could make five or even six accurate shots within a minute, a novice perhaps two or three. Their use was easy to learn, and in Helleron they were even easy to make. There were factories working day and night now to produce the quantity Drephos wanted. As soon as they were manufactured and tested they were handed to the waiting soldiers that Malkan had detailed to Drephos’ project. It took barely a day of constant practice for them to be smoothly loading and shooting as though they were born to it. The snapbow was a weapon for the common man, just as the crossbow had been, which had thrown off the shackles of old mystery centuries before.

But all Totho could think about now was that armoured figure falling, some innocent Beetle man or woman who had caught the foreman’s ire. And then they had all been dropping, and the spears of the soldiers had stopped them fleeing, and in the end the last few had tried to rush towards the waiting line of artificers, giving Drephos his chance to see the damage of a point-blank shot.

I did this. He, Totho, had brought this thing into the world. I have found my place here now. I have earned it.

He clutched at his head. He felt as though that part of him he had always thought of as himself was dropping further and further away, slipping down some well or shaft, never to be seen again.

He must flee. He must escape from Helleron.

And do what? His own mocking voice in his head. And go where?

I will find Che.