He was dimly aware that Balkus was now beside him, the only other man in the front rank without a shield. Balkus, with a shortsword in each hand, battering down Vekken shields with brute force, always keeping an eye out for Stenwold, as if some mindlink had joined them in their extremity, so that he could anticipate each blow even as Stenwold registered it, putting a sword in the way to deflect it.
They were losing ground, but not as swiftly as they should. The sheer savagery of the Collegiate charge had shaken the attackers, put them back on the shifting stones. Ant faces were impassive at best, but Stenwold thought he could see something like bafflement within their eyes. They were soldiers, superior in every way to this mixed-race rabble that confronted them, so how could they be held up for even a single minute? They locked shields and pressed, but they were confronted with men and women who were totally cornered now, nothing to lose and nowhere to go. They died, of course, those defenders of Collegium. Tradesmen were run through, merchants wearing ill-fitting armour were hacked down, labourers and militamen fell with crossbow bolts buried deep. There was not one of them who went easily, though, and even as they fell they dragged at their enemies, pulled their swords down, hooked shields with their fingers. A thousand acts of final bravery and defiance, shaking the Vekken advance, if only for a moment.
And seeing this hesitation, Stenwold’s heart soared with pride in his city, and a lunging Ant laid his arm open and he fell back, sword falling from his grasp. Balkus killed the man who had wounded him that same instant, and already a shield was raised to take his place, but Stenwold was reeling, being passed back through the crowd until he was standing clear, with Arianna descending on him and swiftly tearing a strip off her robe to bandage him.
‘I can fight!’ he insisted, but she dug her fingers into the wound until he stood still enough for her to finish. ‘I can fight!’ he said again, looking round for a sword.
‘War Master!’ someone was shouting and, feeling dizzy, he turned to look. A man he felt he should recognize was running towards him, waving his arms. ‘War Master!’
‘I’m here! What news?’ He could barely hear himself over the fighting behind him.
He knew this man — one of his own soldiers from the harbour guard-
His heart sank and he could have virtually mouthed the words along with the man: ‘War Master! The harbour! They’re coming in at the harbour!’
Stenwold turned, torn by doubt, seeing the line surge back and forward, the final throes of Collegium’s defence. He was responsible for the harbour, though, and there were people needed there.
He hoped that Balkus would be enough for them. The big Ant was still standing, splashed with blood, working himself into a frenzy.
‘Take me there!’ he commanded, and the harbour man ran off, leaving him to lurch in his wake, with Arianna holding his good arm to help him along.
The sight that met him at the harbour was worse than he had feared, though, and worse than he had dreamed possible. There were already two tugs dragging the drowned armourclad out of the way, and beyond it the sea was full of ships, painted across with dozens of sails.
Thirty-Eight
The bulk of the Wasps could retreat far faster than the Ants could follow, and they took flight down the rail track towards their camp, their rail automotives and their massed artillery. The sentinels and many of the armoured shield-men, however, could not simply fly away. Faced with no choice, and with a fierce desperation that left a lasting impression on their enemies, they stood their ground, holding up the Ant advance still further so that their comrades could escape. In a tight square of armoured men, surrounded on all sides by the implacable Sarnesh soldiers, they fought on with bitter determination until every last man of them was dead.
The Ants re-formed their lines, their shield-lined formations, with some of them that had sustained heavy casualties breaking up to form new groups. Others near the back began to move the wounded out. Two automotives had been smashed before the leadshotters had been silenced, and a third had ground to a halt with artificers hurriedly prying armour off to get at its engine. The Sarnesh went about reassembling their battle order with the minimum of fuss, with calm deliberation. The Wasps were allowed to fall back, to exhaust themselves in the panic of flight. The Ants would follow at their own inexorable pace.
The warriors of the Ancient League were another matter. They had not stopped when the Sarnesh had redrawn their lines. They harried the Wasp-kinden mercilessly, chasing them in the air, raking them with arrow-shot. It seemed at first that they might continue their hunt all the way to Helleron. Che, trying to focus her telescope on the nimble figures in green and grey, abruptly overshot them. There was nothing but black and gold now in her field of view. She took the glass away, trying to see what was going on.
The Mantids and their allies were now falling back, surging to meet up with the plodding Sarnesh lines. Beyond them the Wasps were making a new stand, rallying into another wall of shields and ready airborne. Behind them.
She felt just then that things had started to tip, although she could not have said why. She was no tactician, but something spoke inside her.
A rail automotive had pulled in to the broken end of the rails in a great plume of steam. More Wasp soldiers were rushing out of it, hurrying forwards to join the battle. Reinforcements from Helleron, she saw, but something new had communicated itself to her. She could not be sure what.
There were Ants all around. One word to them would be a word to the whole army. She had no words, though. She had nothing she could warn them of.
Still. ‘You should take care,’ she said to the nearest Ant surgeon, ‘your people at the front.’
He was washing blood from his hands and he stared at her as if she were mad. Out on the field, transport automotives were removing the bulk of the wounded. The worst would be treated here, the rest removed to Sarn. The surgeons were hard pressed to keep the pace.
‘The Queen is consulting with her tacticians,’ the surgeon said suddenly, and Che realized that she had been heard after all. The man’s eyes unfocused for a moment, and then he said. ‘We will press ahead. We must destroy them, drive them until they can fly no more, and then wipe them out. We must break their siege engines in order to protect our walls.’ He nodded. ‘It will be a long, hard fight.’ She realized the last words were his, and the rest had been the Queen’s.
During the first clash of the battle the Wasps had been able to bring forward more of their siege train, another batch of leadshotters and a few of the smaller catapults that could be wheeled out intact rather than needing assembly on the spot. The Sarnesh automotives would have a harder time of it from now on. Even as Che watched, the first artillery engines began to discharge, their shot mostly flying wide or short, and the Sarnesh advance continued with the same patient progress, the wide sweeping wings of scattered Mantids and Moths surging a little ahead of it.
The next batch of the wounded had now arrived, and she gave up her watching, went to do what good she could with bandages and needle. It unnerved her, tending these wounded Ants. They did not curse or scream, because each was taking strength from all the others, from their suffusing solidarity. Somehow a show of pain would have been more reassuring to her. All around her the Ant surgeons worked in skilled communion, linked with each other and with their patients. It made Che feel clumsy and awkward. They even gave her the least of the wounded to tend.
There was a moment — she remembered it well later — when all the soldiers around them stopped, just for half a second, all at once, and she knew that out on the battlefield something new had happened. She tied off the wrapping on the man she had been working with, and took up her glass again.