Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

‘Nine armourclads, plus one really big one,’ someone reported from the back. ‘And two dozen wooden-hulled warships. Plus four dozen small vessels and half a dozen very large barges that they’re holding back. Supply ships, I suppose.’

‘They will attack the harbour soon,’ Kymon cautioned. ‘I myself have been given the west wall to command. Who has the south?’

‘I do,’ Stenwold confirmed. He could feel the tension in the room slowly screwing tight, the image in everyone’s heads of Ant-kinden in perfect step making their encampments around their city of scholars. ‘I’m open to any suggestions.’

‘What about the supply situation on our side?’ Way-bright asked. ‘We’ve had people leaving in droves these last few days, and yet there have never been so many within our walls. All the satellite villages west of here have emptied, some of the people have come here with nothing but the clothes on their backs.’

‘We have always husbanded our harvests well,’ Thadspar said. ‘We will ration what we have, and we need hold only until the Sarnesh arrive to relieve us.’

‘Masters,’ Stenwold said, ‘I will now say something we have all thought, to ourselves. The Vekken were defeated last time because the Sarnesh relieved us, although we held them for tendays before that happened. The Vekken know this. Even they are not so blinded by pride and greed that they will have forgotten.’ He looked around at them, face by face, and so few of them would meet his gaze.

Kymon did. ‘You’re saying that the Vekken believe Sarn will not aid us. Or that even Sarn’s aid cannot tip the balance.’

‘A secret weapon?’ someone suggested.

‘All speculation,’ Thadspar insisted. ‘Why should Sarn not aid us?’

‘We have no idea of the situation,’ Stenwold insisted. ‘It is simply this. The Vekken are here. They do not relish defeat, and so they must believe they can win.’

‘Perhaps they seek to capture the walls before Sarn can even get its army here,’ Waybright said. ‘If they already had the city, Sarn might turn back.’

‘All I am saying is that we cannot fight this war on the assumption that the Sarnesh will rescue us sooner or later,’ Stenwold said. ‘If we fight, we must fight to drive them away with whatever strength we have ourselves.’

They did not like that. He could see that none of them wanted to accept it. A holding action, they thought, just until. Kymon met his eyes and nodded.

A messenger burst in, a young Beetle girl quite out of breath. ‘Their artillery is shooting at us!’ she said. ‘What do we do now?’

Kymon stood. ‘All officers to your posts!’ he snapped. ‘Stenwold?’

‘Here.’

‘If the harbour falls, the city falls, and they’ll attack it, tomorrow or the next day at the latest. Everybody listen: if you have someone coming to you with means to defend the harbour, send them to Stenwold. Everything will count.’

The Vekken were very efficient in their mustering. When Thalric and Daklan had put the Empire’s invitation to them an army had been raised in mere days. The Vekken, like all Ants, were soldier-born. The soundless call had gone out into the city, and without a spoken word it had been answered by the thousands of the war host of Vek. There had then been the matter of material, machines, supplies. It was a matter long settled, though, for Vek had been looking for this war for decades, awaiting the moment when Sarn’s protective hand was lifted from the reviled city of scholars. The supplies were already laid in, the machines in readiness, the crossbow bolts and engine ammunition neatly stockpiled. Each year the tacticians of Vek had convened and added what further elements they could to the plan, while their artificers continued their patient progress.

So, when they had arrived and surrounded the city, it had been a wonder of discipline. There was not a man but who knew to the inch where his place was. The engineers had begun instantly bringing forward their machines: lead-shotters, catapults and scorpions, trebuchets and ballistae, a great host of destruction of every kind that the artificers of Vek could conceive of. The smaller machines were unloaded from carts, or had progressed under their own mechanical power. The larger were constructed on the spot even as the artificers made their calculations, their crews untiring and careful to a fault. To the watchers on the walls of Collegium it seemed that the Vekken battle plan unfolded as smoothly as a parchment, spreading out and around their beloved city.

Akalia did not watch her men prepare. She had no need. They were already in her head, each section and squad informing her of its readiness. They gave her a perfect map of the field in her mind’s eye, the composite of all that each soldier saw. Sitting in her tent she was also everywhere her forces were.

There is no time like now , she instructed her people, and called for her tacticians. They responded almost as one, alert for the order. At the same time her engineers were tensioning and charging their siege weapons, all of them, all at once.

Test your ranges , she told them mentally, and one from each battery loosed, sending rocks or shot spinning high towards the pale walls of Collegium. Attend me , she told her officers, and stepped out into the afternoon light to see the first plumes of stone dust that her ranging shots had raised from the walls, or the dust from the earth where they had fallen short.

Correct your ranges , she instructed, feeling the artificers all around making their measurements, their practical mathematics of elevation and angle.

Loose one round , she decided and, even as she sent the order out she felt the ground quiver beneath her feet as all her engines rocked back simultaneously with the force of their discharge. A fair proportion of the machines still lacked the range, but this time more missiles found the walls than failed. The city of Collegium was briefly swathed in puffs of stone dust, as though it were letting off fireworks.

What damage? she asked. Forward of their artillery positions were officers equipped with telescopes, raking the walls for any weaknesses, and their reports were rapidly passed back: None, sir. No damage sighted, sir. Some slight scarring, sir.

She had expected nothing less, because Beetles, for all their inferior characteristics, knew how to lay stone on stone. The tacticians of Vek had counted on that when they designed this expedition. They were still assembling much of the artillery: great trebuchets, leadshotters and rock-throwers to attack the walls; grapeshot ballistae to rake the battlements clean of soldiers at closer range; engine-powered rams and lifting towers for the troops to take the walls. There were even experimental grenade-throwers, delicate, spindly things designed to throw small, volatile missiles deep into the city beyond.

The fleet had blockaded the rivermouth and was now waiting for her signal to make its assault, but the walls would come first. She was a traditional soldier, and she preferred traditional methods to the unknown concerns of a sea landing.

Let it all come down , she sent out the order. Pound the walls until sunset. Let the dawn tell us the result.

‘Soldiers off the walls!’ Kymon bellowed, though he was ignoring his own advice by striding along the east wall as the missiles came in. Many landed short, throwing up plumes of earth from the fields or impacting amongst the straggle of buildings out there: Wayhouses, storehouses, farmers’ huts, all abandoned now. Some struck the wall itself, and he felt the impact shudder through his sandals. A few even flew over to smash stonework in the city below. He stopped and backed up a few steps, waiting, and a lead ball clipped the very battlements ten feet ahead. He had found a disaffected Kessen youth amongst the volunteers and put him to good use. Now Kymon could walk blithely amongst his troops and inspire them with his disregard for the enemy, whilst all the time the boy was watching the incoming assault and giving him warning.