‘Signal me the officers of the airborne,’ Praeter ordered, and one of his bodyguard unfurled a red flag and began waving it in great sweeps. ‘And get me some of our own snapmen up here.’ That now proved to have been his first true tactical mistake. He had not sufficiently trusted the new weapon, and so the snapbowmen were bringing up the rear.
The leaders of the airborne were dropping down around him, and he twisted round in his saddle to regard them. He saw Wasp soldiers in armour light enough for flight, equipped with swords, spears and the fire that their Art gave them. These were the mainstay of the Wasp army, but they died, he knew. They died in their hundreds to give the infantry a chance to close. It was their purpose in his plan of attack, however, so he could spare them scant sympathy.
‘It’s time, men!’ he shouted to them. ‘I need the heavies into those trees and rooting out the enemy, but if our fight with the Sarnesh told us anything, it’s that snapbows can cut down an armoured line without pausing for breath. You know where that leaves you, so I want you to rush the woods, all the way along its extent, and get as many of you as possible into the trees where they won’t be able to get clear aim at you.’ Even as he spoke, there were more explosions down the hillside. His head jerked that way automatically, which was bad. He should be able to ignore it and thus show them his strength in doing so. ‘You understand your duty,’ he admonished the airborne. ‘Now go to it.’
He saw more than one hollow gaze amongst them as they cast their wings out again and launched up to rejoin their men. Praeter wheeled his steed and sent it scuttling back along the rear of the line, calling out, ‘The airborne is going to buy you the time to move! Don’t waste that time! As soon as they dive in, I want to see every man of you running!’
He looked into the sky, seeing the airborne mass there. As he had known they would, the enemy had predicted the move and, even before that great dive had started, dozens of Wasp soldiers were dropping, spinning helplessly out of the sky. Praeter watched them because it was his duty, in return, to observe the carnage that his orders had created.
Then they dived, a great cloud of them, hundreds of soldiers sweeping in for the trees, packing closer and closer as they came, until the snapbow shot of the defenders was mauling whole clumps of men out of the air at once. Praeter was only peripherally aware of the clatter as the heavy infantry began to rush forwards as best it could, spears held high to clear the brush.
‘General!’
He turned to see a messenger alighting beside him, so coated with dust it was impossible to make him out clearly.
‘What is going on down there?’
‘Fly-kinden, General,’ the messenger reported. ‘They’re passing over us, dropping bombs on us. They’re targeting the automotives.’
The only thing they could make out, in this dust. ‘Press forwards,’ Praeter instructed. ‘Press forwards with infantry and engage their fortified positions from ground and air. Have the airborne keep the skies clear. That’s the only way to counter grenadiers.’
‘Yes sir.’ The messenger leapt into the air again, but began falling instantly, twisting desperately with a bolt clear through him.
‘General!’
But Praeter was already turning to see where the missile had come from.
A hammerblow of shock hit him. There was a new airborne coming in now, but it was not imperial. Instead it was a ragged assortment of men and women: Flies, Moths, Mantids, even Beetles and halfbreeds. With the most immediate Wasp airborne of this flank already engaged in the trees, they had the sky to themselves for just enough time to drop onto the advancing heavy infantry and take them in the flank, scattering across them, shooting crossbows and shortbows or simply throwing things. This was no disciplined attack, nothing an imperial officer would suffer from his men, but there was nevertheless a core of unity there. This ragged pack of brigands had obviously trained together.
The infantry was responding with sting-shot, the air above them crackling with it, but the enemy fliers were already fleeing, leaving behind them a formation that was stationary and broken up.
Praeter grimaced. ‘Get me a unit of the heavies back here!’ he shouted at one of his men. ‘Make that two.’
‘General-?’
‘Do it!’
He turned his animal, because he had the plan now. At last, when it was almost too late, he had an understanding. Where would the earth now erupt with them? Why, from behind – or from the far slope of the hill he was watching from. The enemy had been given ample time to work the land, to sap and mine it with remarkable skill. The advance scouts had seen none of these flanking forces.
Those earthworks and palisades ahead would be deserted: he would stake his rank on it. But then he had known it was a trap from the start, and at last he had seen the way the jaws of it hinged.
The infantry was clattering back around him now, and he called for them to form ranks before him.
‘Sir, the airborne…’ one of their officers began.
Praeter spared one glance for the light airborne, who were still battling at the forest verge. He had thought that the enemy there might flee once their bait was taken, but that did not seem to be so. The enemy general was a cursed mix of evasion and bravado, which in a Wasp would have been admirable, but in an enemy was something to be crushed as quickly as possible.
Behind him, amidst the ranks of the infantry, the hill suddenly exploded. His beetle lurched forwards, then reared back on to four legs, antennae flicking madly. He clung to the tall saddle with his thighs, looking up for the grenadiers, but there were none.
He heard the hollow knock of a leadshotter, but not close. A spume of smoke rose from a neighbouring hilltop also swathed in greenery.
Artillery? His own leadshotters were tilting towards the smoke, his engineers frantically taking measurements, calculating angles.
It was then that the enemy appeared, swarming along the ridge of his own hill with a motley of fliers above them. Praeter found his throat instantly drier even than the dust could make it. They were coming at a run, all shapes and sizes of them: armoured Ant-kinden soldiers, Mantis archers and swordsmen, Spiders, Beetles, Scorpions, Mynan Soldier Beetles, lumbering Mole Crickets. These were the dredgings of the Lowlands and the Empire both, a great froth of angry men and women now rushing the Wasp position.
His eye counted, even while his mind reeled. Two thousand, perhaps three – and how many of them wearing pillaged Wasp armour or using imperial weapons? Have we come this far just to arm every ruffian in the Lowlands?
‘Set your spears!’ he shouted, leading his cavalry between the infantry blocks. ‘Someone call some airborne from the other flank. We need them here! This must be the main attack!’ Send word to Malkan. But he bit down on that last unspoken command. He would not do so, not for all the soldiers who might die here. He would not bend his pride so far as to ask for Malkan’s aid.
Taking his entire force into account, he outnumbered this enemy ten to one, but here, right here and now, he unfortunately did not.
She, the one who had been Grief in Chains and was now Prized of Dragons, watched as the flying soldiers of Salma’s army dived in again, plunging down into the dust. Her blank white eyes followed their course, and she wondered how many they would lose. She hated fighting. She hated all war.
She loved Salma, who had come after her, even into the teeth of the Wasp army. For that she called herself Prized of Dragons now, who had been Grief in Chains, and then briefly Aagen’s Joy. One of the things that she loved most about Salma was that he, too, had no love of war. Perhaps he did not hate it as she did, but he took no joy in it. He was doing this, mounting this savage assault on the Wasp advance, because in his heart was his love for her and a prince’s love of his subjects. He had thousands of people in Sarn who needed his protection, and this battle was the price – as would be all the battles still to come.