Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

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.

‘When they come through,’ he bellowed at them, ‘they will loose their crossbows first, to try and clear the way. I want shieldmen at the front, everyone with a decent-sized shield. Behind them, crossbowmen, Master Maker here will take his shot when he sees the best time, and you all shoot when you see him do it. There will be a lot of rubble. They will have to move forward over it. You will just have to stand still, so make that count for you.’

He stared at them, seeing city militia, artisans, shopkeepers, factors and merchants, dockworkers, porters, immigrant labourers, street-brawlers, black-marketeers and a handful of professional mercenaries.

You’ll just have to do , he thought, and then, If I had a command of Kessen marines we’d sort these bastards out.

And he turned, and the wall came down.

It was so close on evening, the sky darkening almost visibly. The Vekken had left it to the last minute, but their artillery had finally done its job. The widescale weakening created by the petard engines and the incessant pounding of the trebuchets and leadshotters had first knocked holes in the wall and now it was tumbling, great clots and sheets of stone peeling away until the wall before and to the left of him was dissolving into an utter chaos of tumbling masonry.

‘Go!’ he shouted at his men and, when they did not move, he went himself, trusting to their shame to carry them with him.

The rubble had barely finished shifting when he began to climb it, and for a terrible second he thought he was the only one there. Then there were shields to the left and the right of him, a motley collection of a dozen different styles, and now he was at the top of the breach, seeing Vekken soldiers hauling themselves up towards him.

‘Brace!’ he shouted, and ducked behind his own shield. Most of the men around him did the same, but there were always a few who were slow or who thought they knew better, and this time it proved fatal. Crossbow bolts slammed into his shield, three or four actually punching their square-sectioned heads through to gleam like diamonds in the backing.

Then Stenwold was at his shoulder, raising his crossbow so that it almost rested on Kymon’s shield and then pressing the trigger, and a score of crossbows fired with him, and two score more a heartbeat afterwards. The Vekken were climbing the rubble with their shields held high, but a dozen fell anyway, the close-ranged bolts sticking in their armour, and more fell amongst their crossbowmen following immediately behind.

Then the Vekken were making a final push up the shifting stones, and Kymon braced himself again, feeling his heart hammering out to him its message that he was too old for a battlefield by ten years at least.

He rammed his shield forwards into the first man that came his way, impacting so hard on the man’s own that the Vekken was sent tumbling back down. Another man took his place, though, one of a stream of Vekken soldiers that was pushing forwards up into the breach, and the serious business of killing at the blade’s point then began.

The harsh hammering of a nailbow sounded nearby as Stenwold’s bodyguard elbowed his way into the second rank and began to shoot the enemy indiscriminately in the face. Kymon was absorbed in his own trade, though. He was a trainer of men, a College Master, but most of all he was a swordsman. These Ants coming against him were soldiers, but he had always been something more than that, and he showed them. He taught them a dozen fatal lessons of the shortsword, his blade striking like a scorpion’s sting, forward, left and right, so that the soldiers advancing near him began to pay him more heed than his fellows, thus becoming easier prey for the men either side of him.

All down the line, though, the battle was shifting. The defenders of Collegium were laying down their lives. They were selling them dearly, giving no ground, and making the Vekken pay for each inch they climbed, but the Ants fought as an impeccable unit, while the defenders fought like a ragged line of individuals. Kymon could feel the tide turning, no matter how many he killed or how skilled his blade.

‘Hold!’ he bellowed. ‘Hold for Collegium!’ He was aware, when he could pause to think, that the defenders were still faring far better than they should, and that the Vekken were not fighting with that sharp edge that Ant-kinden usually possessed. There was something in their faces, something haggard and bruised, that was blunting them.

For a second the line swayed forwards again, whether from his words of encouragement or from the defenders’ own desperation. Ant soldiers went backwards, lost their footing, and it seemed that the advance might be halted, but then they gathered themselves, as Ants always did, and surged back up.

‘Hold!’ Kymon shouted once again and, miraculously, something went out of the Vekken advance. Abruptly the men attacking the breach were no longer backed by hundreds of others. The Ant attention had been somehow split.

He felt something strike him in the chest, clipping the rim of his shield. At the base of his vision he could see the quilled end of a crossbow bolt that had driven through his mail. It seemed to hurt far less than it should.

His line was failing, even though all the Ants beyond the foot of this hill of rubble were turning north, trying to move out of the way but constricted by their neighbours, their minds all obviously sharing the same focus.

Something struck him in the head, ringing from his helm, and he found himself falling back. no, Stenwold had him. Stenwold and his Sarnesh bodyguard, carrying him back.

‘The line. ’ he managed to gasp.

‘Hold still,’ Stenwold told him. There was more said but, although the Beetle’s lips moved, Kymon could hear none of it.

He drew his breath to demand that Stenwold speak up, but there was no breath to draw, and he understood that the bolt had pierced his mail, had pierced his lungs, perhaps. The sky above them was growing dark far faster than the oncoming night alone could have managed.