Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

The walls of Collegium had their own artillery, but the Vekken army had brought up a whole host of it, more than even he had thought they possessed. The defenders’ engines were outnumbered four to one along the west wall, where the brunt of the attack was concentrated. Soon, he well knew, the barrage would begin to creep towards the wall-mounted weapons so as to clear the way for the Vekken infantry.

But where Vek had strength, Collegium had intelligence. Here before him was a team of artificers working at one such weapon. As he watched the great catapult began to revolve, descending foot by foot into the stonework of its tower with a groaning of gears and a hiss of steam. Further along the wall they were winching great iron shields into position about a repeating ballista.

Kymon dropped to one knee and peered over the city side of the wall. There was a detachment of some three hundred city militia below and he shouted at them, ‘Clear the way!’ He gestured furiously. ‘Left and right from me! Clear the way!’

Most of them got the idea and just ran for it, dodging to either side. A moment later a great rock whistled over Kymon’s head to spin past them and smash into the wall of the building beyond, pelting them all with a shrapnel of fist-sized stones. He saw a few fall to it, but most were clear. It was far more frustrating than he had thought, to command soldiers he could not commune with mind to mind.

And they were such a rabble too. They brought determination and enthusiasm, but little discipline. Some were the city militia, decently enough armoured but more used to quelling taverna brawls and catching thieves than to fighting wars. The bulk of Collegium’s armed force was simply those citizens bold enough to put themselves forward for it. Some brought their own weapons, others had been armed from the College stores. Anyone with any training as an artificer had been given something from the workshops: repeaters, piercers, nailbows and wasters, or whatever ’prentice pieces were lying around. Some attempt had been made to sort them into squads similarly armed, but the mess of men and women beneath Kymon bristled with a ragged assortment of spears, swords, crossbows, clubs and agricultural implements.

He stood again, waiting for despair to wash over him, but instead found a strange kind of pride. If these defenders had been Ant-kinden of his own city it would have been shameful, but they were not. They were Beetles, mostly, but there were others, too: Flies, rogue Ants, Spiders, halfbreeds, even some Mantids and Moths. They were truly the host of Collegium, the city which had opened its gates to the world.

He came to the catapult emplacement to find the weapon more than half hidden now, steadily grinding itself down below the level of the wall. There was a man, a College artificer, crouching by the battlements with a telescope and some kind of sextant, making quick calculations.

‘Is this going to work?’ Kymon had forgotten the man’s name, but when the goggled face turned up to him he recalled him as Master Graden, who taught applied fluid mechanics.

‘I am assured it will. Not my department, obviously, but the mathematics are simple enough,’ Graden explained. ‘Incidentally, Master Kymon, my invention — have you had a chance to consider it? The sand is to hand, and my apprentices have it ready to place on the walls.’

It seemed that almost every artificer in Collegium believed that they had an invention that could help the war effort. Kymon was no artificer, but the mention of sand jogged his memory further.

‘Have it ready,’ he said, more as a sop to the man’s pride than anything. ‘Every little thing may help.’

He passed on towards the next emplacement. Behind him another lead shot struck the wall, making it shiver beneath his feet like a living thing.

‘It doesn’t look like they’re coming,’ one of his soldiers said to him. Stenwold shook his head.

‘They’re coming, but not just yet. I need the chain ready in time. It must be our first line of defence.’

‘But the mechanism hasn’t been used in-’ The soldier waved a hand vaguely. ‘I don’t know if it’s ever been used, Master Stenwold.’

‘Oil it, fix it — replace the cursed thing if you have to. Don’t be the man whose failures make the city fall.’

It was unfair, but the man fell back, face twisting in shame, and ran off to do his job. Stenwold turned briefly to the men who had answered his call, but his attention was drawn back to the sea. This had been the harbourmaster’s office, and the view from it would have been beautiful if not marred by the ugly blots of the Vekken fleet. The armourclads, iron-plated or iron-hulled ships with monstrously powerful engines, formed the vanguard, waiting out in anchored formation with smoke idling from their funnels.

‘How are we going to stop them?’ Stenwold asked, for Collegium had no navy. The few ships in harbour were only those which had not seized the chance to flee before the harbour was blockaded, and they were definitely not fighting ships.

‘The harbour has its artillery defences, as well as the chain, Master,’ reminded Cabre, a Fly who was an artificer from the College. ‘They were designed with wooden ships in mind, though, and they’ve not been updated in thirty years. You know how it is. When Vek came last it was overland, and nobody thought. ’

‘And we’ll now pay for that lack of imagination,’ Stenwold grumbled.

‘We don’t know if they could even dent the armourclads out there,’ Cabre admitted, scratching the back of her head.

‘What else have we got?’ Stenwold asked.

‘Master Maker?’ It was a Beetle-kinden man who must be at least ten years Stenwold’s junior. For a Beetle he looked lean and combative.

‘Yes, Master.?’

‘Greatly, Master Maker. Joyless Greatly. I have a cadre of men, Master Maker. Some twenty in all. I have recently been working on an invention for the Sarnesh, but I cannot think that they would object to our using it in our own defence.’

And he does not add, ‘until they get here’ , Stenwold noted. Joyless seemed to him a name of ill omen. It tended to denote children named by their fathers after their mothers had not survived the infant’s birth. ‘Go on, Master Greatly.’

Joyless Greatly stared challengingly about the room, at a dozen or so artificers who had been sent to Stenwold’s care. ‘I have developed a one-man orthopter, Master Maker. I have one score and ten of these ready to fly, though only my twenty men are trained to fly them.’

It seemed impossible. ‘Thirty orthopters? But where.?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘They are not what you think, Master Maker. These are worn on the back, as you will see. When the fleet approaches, or when the army comes to our walls, I will take my men out. We will drop grenades and incendiaries on them. Their ships may be hulled with iron, but they will not have armoured decks. We can drop explosives into their funnels, or on their weapons.’

‘They will shoot you down,’ Cabre warned him, but there was a fire in Greatly’s expression, of either patriotism or madness.

‘Let them try, for I will outrace their bolts and quarrels. Master Maker, we may be your second line of defence, but we shall attack.’

‘There are other flying machines as well,’ ventured an elderly Beetle woman Stenwold could not recall, save that she had something to do with the airfield. ‘Some two dozen of various designs that have been brought within the city. With the assistance of Master Greatly’s force we might at least harry them during their advance.’

‘And meanwhile I can train new pilots for the other machines,’ added Joyless Greatly.

‘Do so,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘More, please. Anyone?’