She could name all three of the casualties, two of whom were now beyond anything the surgeons could do for them. Yet in her mind was the thought, Is that it? and on her lips, ‘And loose!’ All the while, her eyes kept watching the bludgeoning that her little force — and all the other little bands of Merchant Company soldiers — were inflicting across the front lines of the enemy.
‘I reckon it’s one in three down, for them.’ Gerethwy didn’t trust his mechanized bow at this range, so instead he kept his glass on them, unflinching even when a passing bolt plucked at the sleeve of his buff coat.
‘And loose! What’s going on?’ Straessa lowered her own weapon, hands automatically palming a bolt from the box at her waist and slipping it into the breach; then cranking the air battery to charge it, the mechanism smooth and easy as if it was new oiled from the workshops. Even as she asked that question she understood. Wasp infantry was the army’s mailed fist, used for breaking the enemy lines by main force, and in close quarters. They were stacked shoulder to shoulder, in contrast to the looser spread of the Collegiates, so that the incoming shot could barely miss them. And the Collegiates had three snapbows per four men, while the Empire had just one.
Sod me, the Antspider thought, slightly awed, we’re winning.
Then someone shouted, ‘Fliers coming in,’ and she saw that the Wasp Light Airborne was back to support the infantry. There were a great many of them, a cloud of flying men arching overhead, but this tactic had not worked against the Ants at the Battle of the Rails, and the Collegiates were ready for it. Straessa directed her people to worry about the Imperial infantry, who were plainly realizing that their only hope was a solid charge to get into spear-range. The Collegiate squares behind the front line, mostly unbloodied so far, would be training their snapbows on the incoming Airborne and, though the fliers had the same weapons, shooting on the wing was a challenge for a Fly-kinden marksman, let alone a regular Wasp soldier. And snapbows were quite accurate enough to pick off fast-moving targets.
Straessa saw the Wasp infantry form up to advance — so few of them now compared to just moments ago — but the constant volleys of shot got the better of them, and soon they were pulling back and then disintegrating completely, individual soldiers making their getaway at the best sprint they could manage. For a moment she thought they had broken, but then she saw another unit of them marching in, the runners simply getting out of their way. No doubt these newcomers would have learned some hard lessons from the last minute of fighting, and it was plain that, if allowed to close, their tighter ranks and superior numbers would crush the Collegiate lines.
‘And loose!’ again and again. No need to tell her soldiers to aim for the invitingly large target that the new formation presented, so that the Wasps were bleeding from the moment they were within range. Despite the distance, they were already running, but still keeping almost shoulder to shoulder, shackled by their out-of-date training. It was a race, then, to see whether simple attrition would turn them aside and snap the spine of their charge before they could arrive. Seeing so many men coming on so fast, Straessa felt her mouth go dry. If they struck, her little band would become like leaves in a storm. The pikemen had their weapons levelled, some straight ahead, others tilted at angles upwards against the Airborne. Bolts were slanting down at them now from the skies above, the Airborne trying to break their firing pattern, but the attention of the squares behind was keeping the bulk of the enemy off the front line.
‘Sub! In from the side, Sub!’ someone called, and she looked about wildly, until she saw what was meant. From either side of the big Wasp formation, a stream of swifter figures was cascading, no battle order to them, just a swift, loose mob outstripping their allies in their haste to get at the Beetle lines.
‘Spider-kinden to our left,’ Gerethwy identified calmly. ‘And that’s, hm, Scorpions to the right.’
Straessa’s square was positioned dead centre of the maniples now facing the Wasp unit’s charge, so the newcomers were not her problem just yet. If they overwhelmed the Collegiates further down the line, she would know about it quickly enough, but she could do nothing to help or hinder, and she had to trust in her fellows. ‘Eyes front! And loose!’ Her voice was beginning to give out.
Thirty-Nine
Still the Great Ear had not sounded. In truth, the specifics of Corog’s instructions were a distant memory now. Taki guessed that the pitched fighting had taken only minutes so far, but if some scholar could measure sheer living, the fear and the fury of it, then lifetimes had been burned.
She dodged about in the air, ramming the stick rapidly through three positions to throw off an enemy, before backing her wings so that the Farsphex went slashing past her. A brief glance about her revealed the ongoing chaos that the battle had become. The Collegiate centre, the idea of holding the enemy to one place, had become impossible almost immediately once the rest of the enemy had come in from north and south. The defenders were abruptly so outnumbered that they surrendered any say over what the enemy might or might not do, or where they might go. Taki guessed that, had the Empire wished to bomb Collegium flat, then she and her fellows could do little even to slow them down.
The Empire didn’t want that. The Empire wanted her blood. That great wheeling host of the Imperial air force had new orders, and they were trying to wipe the skies clean of their opponents.
Taki had given up active attack once the new Wasp machines arrived. Since then she had been concentrating on staying alive, leading any number of enemy on a dance around the city’s rooftops, being passed from hand to hand as they tried to bring their linked minds to bear on her, never being where they calculated but taking shots at any target that presented itself and moving on. If she had committed herself to the fray, narrowed her possibilities down to those few with offensive potential, they would have second-guessed her and killed her in short order, but she was flying like a madwoman and they could not catch her.
They had not caught her yet, anyway. Her dead fellows back in Solarno would scoff if she had told them that this crazed evasion was her finest hour as a pilot, but she knew it to be true.
A brief breath of clear sky and she tried to take stock, half-expecting to find the sky possessed only by the enemy and herself. The sight brought her a swell of hopeless pride, though, for the Collegiate pilots and Mynan airmen were still fighting. Outnumbered and out-coordinated, they still remembered their training and their orders. Just as she was, they were refusing to engage, even the fighting-mad Mynans recognizing the suicidal odds. The Collegiate defence had no cohesion, no pattern or plan, nothing to it but smoke and the swift particles of the Stormreaders as they scattered across the sky. Oh, they were losing — had lost the battle even as it began — but the enemy did not want the sky, and it did not want the city either. It wanted them, and now they were running the Wasp pilots ragged in their attempted pursuit.
And it could not last. Even as she watched, she saw another Collegiate machine downed, caught by crossed piercer shot, crumpling and twisting in the air and then falling helplessly away. The Wasps were good, and all the Collegiate pilots were buying for themselves was some few more minutes of time.
And still the Ear — that signal to throw in the fight and down their orthopters — did not sound.
Abruptly a hail of shot strafed along the side of the Esca Magni, and Taki slung her craft sideways, cursing herself for the momentary distraction. The enemy kept on her tightly, odd bolts still impacting even as she threw her machine through a series of baffling manoeuvres; down and left, edge on to the roofs, then backing madly, then down a broad street almost at head height, then turning on a wingtip down a sidestreet, only hopping above the roofs to miss an archway that would have stripped her wings clean off.