It was practically over, and his heart lurched just to see it. There were only three Sentinels there, those great plated mechanical woodlice with their high single-eyed prows, but the wreckage of most of the Collegiate force was strewn around them. As he watched, he saw a Sarnesh machine plough in, smoke gouting as its weapons loosed, and one of the Sentinels rocked under the impact, but no more. A moment later the larger leadshotter within a Sentinel’s body spoke out, its eye flashing fire. The side of the Sarnesh machine was staved in, its headlong charge turned into a mad circling as one set of its tracks locked. Then another Sentinel rammed it, aiming for the crumpled side, and tipped the doomed machine over, smashing the Sarnesh automotive onto its side. Amnon saw the third machine lining up carefully to send a leadshot round into the stricken machine’s unarmoured undercarriage.
His driver began shouting that something was ahead, and he swung the loaded smallshotter around, hoping to see the great enemy artillery that was their target.
There were three more Sentinels in the way and, even as he watched, smoke exploded from one open eye, and an automotive on his left flank was abruptly flung in the air, fuel tank rupturing in a brief ball of fire.
The first bomb had landed close enough for the resounding roar of it to sing through every glass component of Banjacs’s machine.
The artificers ceased work a moment as the impact shook the chamber, but Banjacs’s own shouting whipped them back to it. The inventor might as well not even have noticed that the city was under attack.
‘If you have somewhere to go or people you would be with,’ Stenwold addressed the two students with him, ‘then go. Nothing’s keeping you here.’
Eujen Leadswell’s idealistic indignation had retreated into an iron core deep within him. ‘No, Master Maker, I’ll stay.’ And it was plain that the Wasp would stay there with him. Stenwold could not decide whether he would rather have Averic just get out of his sight, or whether remaining where an eye could be kept on him was the best thing.
‘Banjacs!’ he shouted, as another, more distant explosion ruptured somewhere out beyond the walls. ‘How long?’
The old man had been up a stepladder, refitting a rack of metal tubes that looked like miniature organ pipes, after two abortive attempts had so far failed to coax any life out of his machine at all. At Stenwold’s words, he jumped down, looking about him wildly.
‘Get off the machine, you fools!’ he shouted at the artificers, as though they had not been scurrying there to his explicit instructions a moment before. He gave them scant time to scramble clear before fitting the last components back into place and taking a large step back.
Still nothing happened, and Stenwold was about to curse the man furiously, when Eujen pointed upwards. The great glass tubes that formed the lightning engine’s main body were now glowing with a pale light, a mere reflection of the enormous storm imprisoned down in Banjacs’s cellar.
‘It’s ready! At last, it’s ready!’ the inventor whooped, a young man again for just a moment. ‘My machine is at your service, Maker.’ As he rounded on Stenwold, there was enough passion in those eyes to spark tears, but also a sanity as though the completion of his long-awaited project had given something back to him that he had been missing for many years.
‘Messenger!’ Stenwold called instantly, and a Fly-kinden who had been watching all this activity with utter vacant bafflement was instantly before him, glad to find himself of some use.
‘Go to the Great Ear and tell them to sound,’ the War Master ordered. ‘Now! Let’s get our pilots out of the air.’
The Fly-kinden was off in a moment, wings taking him straight up and through the gaping skylight that would serve as the aperture of Banjacs’s great weapon.
‘Let us only be in time,’ Stenwold added, so quietly that perhaps only the two students overheard him.
There was a shout from the doors, and a moment later they were kicked in. The body of a Company soldier fell through them and, the next second, a band of men came forcing their way in, snapbows and swords in hand, with a burn-scarred Beetle leading the charge.
Forty
There was fighting further down the line. Straessa could see that the troops to her far left were engaged in melee already, and that did not bode well at all. Her own maniple and its neighbours seemed to have fallen into an uneasy stand-off, the Imperial troops still reforming but refusing either to commit to the fray or just to go away. Straessa’s people were still shooting bolts at them, letting the Wasps know that they were still within range, but Gerethwy was reporting little harm done.
‘Well now,’ he said at Straessa’s shoulder, studying them again through his glass. ‘I think we’re about to get the hammer, frankly.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You can see how they’ve a mass of Airborne there — and their infantry has formed into smaller detachments, a bit like ours really only rather more of them.’ He sounded overly at ease, as if at pains to seem casual. Given his usual effortless calm, she read volumes of emotion into that. ‘They have a whole load of Spider-kinden skirmishers too, some sort of Ants and some Scorpions, but they’re getting them all in better order this time. I think…’ he coughed away a little dust, or that was the impression he tried hard to give, ‘I think they’re ready for us now.’
‘I don’t reckon we could do all that shifting and changing,’ Straessa remarked philosophically. It was dawning on everyone that everything up until now — the Wasp dead, the repulsed charges — had barely bloodied the Second Army: no more than a testing of the waters. Now the Imperial general had determined a suitable response to what was no doubt a slightly novel variation on some textbook tactical problem.
‘In fact,’ even Gerethwy’s careful voice had a quaver in it now, ‘I’d say that in three… two… ah, yes.’ And abruptly the milling crowd of Light Airborne redoubled in size, soldiers kicking themselves into the sky with their Art in a great unordered mass, whilst below them the ground forces began their advance, the loose screen of skirmishers rushing ahead of the slower blocks of Imperial infantry and shielding them from the snapbow shot that was sleeting down on them.
‘Pick your marks. Fire at will,’ Straessa ordered, because the oncoming Spiders and their allies were so spread that volley fire would be like punching at mist. The Empire had given up a fair extent of ground when its soldiers fell back, but the skirmish line was coming on fast, rushing to close with the Collegiates and silence their snapbows as swiftly as possible. Around Straessa, the pikemen stirred and braced themselves, watching that oncoming tide.
‘Rear ranks, shoot at the Airborne.’ And any moment there’ll be an order, and everything will change. Advance, probably, given the record so far. The Spider-kinden were nearer now and, to the right, a closer-knit band of copper-skinned Ants were loosing their own short-barrelled weapons as they approached, more to spoil their enemies’ aim than a serious attempt at killing. Any moment now.
She heard the whistles one after each other. Retreat! Stand and fire!
‘Oh, bollocks,’ she said softly, looking about her to see how the other maniples had taken it. As she might have expected, some were already pulling back, either into clear space or pressing against the troops behind them, Others were standing firm, often with both neighbours abruptly stripped from them, and Straessa saw her own leftmost neighbour stand, the wide eyes of its sub-officer show white as the man looked wildly around him. To her right the block was already pulling back.
‘Sub, getting real close,’ Gerethwy said. Around her, her soldiers were shooting and reloading, shooting and reloading, smooth as a drill because they trusted her ability to make decisions.
And if she stood and fought, she would be supporting her fellows. The pride of Collegium did not enter into it. There were other maniples now depending on her, as they had been relying on their fellows who were already falling back.