‘I am Master Maker of the Great College. What is your business here? We are not at our best to receive visitors,’ Stenwold said, thinking, If this goes badly, then I take the brunt. At least Arianna has a chance to get clear of it.
The Tarkesh officer smiled grimly. ‘I am Mercenary-Commander Parops, formerly of Tark. I hear you have a little Vekken infestation.’
One of Stenwold’s men exclaimed and pointed, and then they were all rushing to the broken edge of the wharves to stare out to sea. The Ants shifted, but only to give them a clearer view. Something was burning out on the water, sheets of flame shooting forty feet in the air, and Stenwold saw that it was one of the Vekken supply barges. There were little copper-hulled ships out there, darting through the waters with steaming funnels, gallantly doing battle with the remaining Vekken armourclads and blazing away with flame cannon at the other barges, which were already starting to smoke. Stenwold saw one of the little ships blown apart as a leadshot from an armourclad struck its steam engine, but the others were nipping nimbly through the hail of shot and loosing their own weapons.
Larger, flat-hulled boats were meanwhile driving through the waves to make a landing west of the city, packed with soldiers, and beyond them all another half-dozen of the elegant Spiderlands galleons were tacking wide of the fighting, whilst smaller sailing ships with high forecastles made passes against the armourclads, showering the Vekken sailors with arrows. It was only for a moment that Stenwold watched that slow melee, the sails of the Spiderlands frigates a nimble elegance against the lumbering ironclads. He saw one of the Vekken ships listing, Spider-kinden marines fighting on its decks with grim desperation. The wooden ships were fleet, but when the Vekken caught them they were matchwood in short order. Still, the sea was full of sails. It was an entire fleet that the Spiderlands had sent them. The Vekken navy, already diminished by its assaults on the harbour, was falling to their numbers and to their grace.
‘Stenwold,’ Arianna hissed to him. ‘The wall!’
‘Commander,’ Stenwold said, bringing his mind back to his responsibilities. ‘The Vekken are in at the west wall.’
‘Take us there,’ Parops instructed him. ‘And we shall turn them out again.’
The Vekken rushed into the city, desperate to flood their soldiers past the breach, to set foot at last on the conquered enemy ground. When they were past the wall there was a moment of confusion. Akalia’s plan had gone so far and no further. The wall was down, the city was therefore taken.
But the people of Collegium did not see it that way. There was no surrender. Even as the Vekken formed up in the wall’s curving shadow, the arrows and the sling stones fell on them, rattling from their shields, bouncing from their mail. There were men, women and children at the windows of every house, throwing rocks, loosing crossbows. Impromptu lines of citizens formed before the orderly Vekken advance, armed with clubs, with spears. Every house became an archer’s platform, every street a choke-point. The Vekken advance was never halted, but it was slow, so slow. Two streets from the wall and a house they were passing suddenly erupted in fire and stone, razored shards scything through the tight-packed Vekken ranks, killing scores of them. As the invaders recoiled and recovered, the people of Collegium were in the next houses, shooting down at them. Girls of twelve, old women of seventy, Fly-kinden publicans and fat Beetle shopkeepers, grocers and clerks and cooks swarmed from doorways and alleyways, holding their knives and chair-legs, their scavenged waster bows and stolen Vekken shields. In the fore, always in the fore, was a giant Sarnesh Ant-kinden with a nailbow and paired shortswords. He became the man the Vekken hated most, the man they needed to kill. A crossbow bolt found his shoulder. A sword-stroke had riven the armour over his hip. He refused to fall. To the Vekken it seemed that he even refused to bleed.
Another house detonated to the Vekken rear, and every building of Collegium had become their enemy. The call was going out for artificers, but the streets were so full of Vekken soldiers, their advance backing up all the way to the wall, that no engineers could have got through.
A grey-haired Fly-kinden woman almost fell on Stenwold and his new allies in her eagerness to intercept him. With commendable precision she got out her report on what the people of Collegium were sacrificing for their city. The persistence of his own people astonished Stenwold, and even more so because by now there was no command, nothing from the Assembly that could order the defence. The street-by-street stalling, the sabotage of their own homes, this all represented the men and women of Collegium taking their fate into their own hands.
Parops digested the situation quickly. ‘Have people lead my men to each major thoroughfare before their advance,’ he said. ‘People who can explain that we’re on your side. We will hold the Vekken as long as we need, and holding them is all that needs doing.’
Stenwold recalled the landing craft he had seen. ‘There are a great deal of Vekken out there, Commander,’ he warned.
Parops’s face lacked something human in it. ‘That’s my employers’ problem, Master Maker, but they have brought a great many troops.’
‘But why?’ Stenwold demanded.
‘Does it matter? Now let us do our work,’ Parops cut him off.
Arianna clung to Stenwold’s good arm, practically dancing with glee, watching the Tarkesh rush into their time-honoured calling of killing the Ants of other cities.
*
Tactician Akalia stared at the flames of her barges and could not understand what was happening to her war. An open call had gone out to every man and woman of her officers to explain it to her, and not one had the answer. A mass of ships had crept up on them at night from who-knew-where, and was going about the savage business of finishing her entire fleet. There were little sparks in her head that were the masters of her vessels, and they were flickering out, one by one, each giving his life and his ship for the greater glory of Vek, and leaving nothing but ripples in his wake.
Tactician! We must withdraw troops from the siege!
No! We are inside the wall, she threw back.
But, Tactician, they are coming for us! And she saw through the eyes of the officer the approaching ships already close to beaching on the shore. The soldiers left in the camp were already rushing to intercept them, but the vast majority of the Vekken force was up about the walls of Collegium.
Bring the force back from the north wall, she decided. Our men here will hold the enemy until then.
Even as she thought it, her men at the beach were dying. For a panicked moment nobody realized why, but then she saw that there were repeating ballistae mounted on the front corners of the flat-bottomed craft, and as the Vekken soldiers came to repel the beachhead they were being systematically shot down. Some managed a ragged shield-wall, and began to return shot with crossbows, but then the first of the craft had ground on the sand of the beach.
Men with skins like burnished copper were leaping out. They wore long hauberks of the same colour, mail with rings of incredible fineness, and long oval shields with a distinctive notch cut into them. Many of them were fitting repeating crossbows to those notches even now, advancing on the diminishing Vekken while they began to loose. Others were lifting the ballistae from the bows of their boats and running forward with them to where artificers were setting up three-legged mounts for them.
She instructed the men coming back from the north wall to pick up their pace.
Tactician, we are encountering heavy resistance within the city!