Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

‘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.