War Master's Gate (54 page)

Then they were recharging from their lightning engines, and that meant just dead time in which the Empire’s soldiers crept closer and closer. The earthworks were slowing them down, but not
as much as they should have done: most of the Imperial army could fly, after all, and even armoured men could manage a brief hop over obstructions. Straessa could see knots of soldiers struggling
with siege engines, though, carrying ramps to ease them up the jumbled path the Collegiates had dug for them. She remembered how much sweating, back-breaking work all that digging had entailed.
And now we see if it was worth the effort.

Judging that the Empire was still a way off from reaching snapbow range, she lifted the glass to view the aerial battle, steadying it as best she could to try and make out something of what was
going on.

By that time it was mostly over. The great Imperial airship hung there, listing slightly, its hull seemingly peppered with holes, but the skies around it were almost clear of orthopters, for
those winged forms madly circling the vessel didn’t look like . . . Straessa blinked, lowering the glass when at last she understood what she was looking at.
But that wouldn’t work,
surely?
But even now there were Stormreaders overhead, yet so very few of them, and many virtually limping through the air with wings battered and torn. And the Imperial Air Corps? The only
blessing was that it seemed to have gone to ground as well, and Straessa wondered just how discriminating those infuriated insects had been.

The flying elite that had dominated the battlefield up until now had been abruptly swept away. The war had been reclaimed for the ordinary soldiers, such as the thousands of Wasps presently
toiling towards them, heedless of the magnetic ballistae, and now getting within range of the other wall engines.

They’re certainly keeping up a pace
, Straessa thought, slightly nervously.

Someone dumped a crate full of what looked like random pieces of metal beside her, and she looked round, into the face of Gerethwy.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded.

‘It’s finished,’ he declared. His eyes were red-rimmed and wide, the look of a man with too many ideas and not enough sleep. ‘My rational snapbow, Antspider. I just need
space to set it up.’

‘What the pits are you doing?’ Madagnus demanded. He had been sighting up at the Wasp vanguard, calculating ranges, and nearly fell over Gerethwy’s apparatus on his way to the
nearest leadshotter crew. ‘Get that out of here.’

‘Chief, this is my new weapon,’ the Woodlouse student objected. ‘You won’t believe it, I’ve rigged a repeating snapbow to a ratiocinator and—’

‘Son, this is not the time for experiment,’ his chief officer interrupted him flatly. For once, Madagnus looked scowling sober. ‘Get that out of here, I said.’

Gerethwy frowned. ‘Chief, you don’t understand.’ It seemed as if he was about to deliver a lecture to enlighten the man.

‘I don’t have time for you,’ Madagnus told him. ‘Get this junk off the wall. Get yourself off it, too. You can’t even shoot straight. You’re no use to
me.’

The Woodlouse gaped at him, mouth forming unspoken words of protest.

Straessa took his arm. ‘Gereth, just go. Get yourself somewhere safe,’ she said softly.

He stared at her in a look of utter betrayal, his maimed hand twitching towards the crate, and then he was dragging it back down the steps.

A street further back from the wall, in the incongruous surroundings of a rooftop garden, Eujen Leadswell was trying to stay calm. He had a maniple of his Student Company
surrounding him, armed with pike and snapbow, while, to left and right, every rooftop that would take them had another. In the end the Assembly had not trusted his latecomer soldiers with manning
the wall or the gate, but this line of defence had been judged within their capability. Now he could see the new wall engines – the longrange ones – loosing at targets somewhere beyond
the wall, and the other engines were being readied and aimed.

‘Nobody here can fly?’ he demanded. Nobody could, as he had known already. The troops stationed on the wall – Coldstone Company and Outwright’s Pike and Shot – were
supposed to send messengers back to keep him informed, but that appeared to have been overlooked.
Let’s face it, they don’t think we’re up to much as soldiers. ‘Learn to
Live’ indeed, and starting with trying to learn our own battle plan.
He tried to spot Straessa but there were too many soldiers there, at this distance seemingly crammed elbow to elbow.
She would be just one more helm and backplate amongst many.

In the streets below was gathered the strength of Maker’s Own Company, maniples spread out in case of enemy artillery, but ready to hold the gate or sally forth as needed, with the heavy
armour of the Vekken to back them up. Kymene’s Mynans, a notably smaller contingent, had a mobile brief to reinforce the wall or the gate as required. Eujen could only take comfort in the
fact that Remas Boltwright’s Fealty Street Company was even further from the fighting, held in reserve to deal with possible incursions by the Airborne.
We rate higher than that,
anyway.

There was a twitch of alarm amongst his troops as Averic dropped down at the roof’s edge, fending off an over-eager pike-head.

‘Everyone’s in place, Chief,’ he told Eujen. ‘We’re on pretty much every roof within bowshot of the walls.’

Eujen nodded, on the point of saying,
Go and find Straessa
,
Make sure she’s all right
, even though the real fighting had not even started yet. But that would not be a
responsible course of action. He was going to live up to the rank the Assembly had bestowed on him. He was going to do the Right Thing.

There was a hollow boom, then he saw smoke rising from the wall. The tense glance he shared with Averic spoke volumes.
That was the first leadshotter. How fast are they coming? And what
happened to the Stormreaders?

‘Averic, go and poach a Fly-kinden from one of our maniples. No, make it two: I need messengers or I’ll never find out anything,’ he decided. The Wasp student’s hand
moved, a gesture hastily suppressed, and Eujen realized that his friend had been about to salute him.

‘And Averic?’ he added, as the Wasp’s wings flashed from his shoulders. ‘Go check on . . . Officer Straessa, if you get the chance.’

‘Will do.’ With a brief, wan smile, Averic stepped off the rooftop and swerved away over the city. Another half-dozen leadshotters spoke, then, a hollow percussion that rolled back
and forth along the wall.

Down at ground level, Stenwold heard out the hurried, somewhat garbled report of the air battle impatiently. Before the messenger had finished, he had already considered a
half-dozen plans and eventualities. He had seen the Wasp army in action many times before, but they did not stand still, and each engagement had brought some manner of new artifice to change the
nature of the battlefield.
So what comes now?
The remaining Imperial air power was an unknown question, but for the moment it seemed that the field had been abandoned to more traditional
tactics: the mass movement of fighting men.

‘Commander Termes, Chief Officer Padstock,’ he began formally, regarding his two subordinates. The Vekken Ant was expressionless as ever, but there was a hard anticipation on Elder
Padstock’s face. She wanted to kill Wasps in the name of her city, Stenwold knew. ‘I’m heading up the wall to get a first-hand view,’ he told them. ‘I’ll send
orders down, to brace the gate in the worst case, to sally out in the best. Until then, eyes on the sky. I’m expecting company soon.’

‘War Master,’ Padstock acknowledged. Termes just nodded wordlessly.

Stenwold climbed the steps at speed, because, if he slowed, then he might just grind to a halt altogether. The weight of his breastplate and helm combined with score of aches, pains and old
wounds to nag at him, and he consoled himself with thoughts of the magical time of
after this . . .

Chief Officer Outwright, of the Pike and Shot, was young enough to be Stenwold’s son, and looked young enough to be his grandson. His armour shone like the best silverware, but his face
was ashen and frightened when Stenwold reached him. His attention had been focused across the wall, of course, where the Wasps were navigating the complex earthworks with steady determination,
closing and closing even as more and more wall engines began bedevilling them. Stenwold saw that they had chosen a mixed marching order: there were solid blocks of their heavier infantry out there,
but they were surrounded by a looser-knit shifting mass of soldiers that must be the Light Airborne, and whose open order denied the Collegiate artillery good targets. There were plenty of small
siege engines amongst the Wasps, though, making heavier work of the terrain and attracting much shot from the walls. Even as Stenwold watched, a lucky leadshot impacted near one, the missile
exploding into shrapnel as its internal charge went off. The distance was too great to count casualties, but the Imperial engine – some sort of modified leadshotter – seemed to have
ended up on its side.

‘Be ready, Outwright,’ Stenwold told the young chief officer. ‘They’re taking a lot of damage from our engines. They’ll try to do something about that soon, when
they’re close enough to make a swift rush of it. Just remember your briefing.’

‘Yes, War Master,’ Outwright gasped. Thankfully his company had experienced officers who were already relaying the order:
Ready snapbows, ready pikes.
Stenwold clapped the
man on the shoulder, a public gesture to boost his morale and his soldiers’ confidence, and carried on along the wall, looking for Madagnus,

The Ant artillerist was sighting up one of the magnetic bows, and Stenwold could feel, as much as hear, the crackle from its charged lightning engine. A moment later the air relaxed as the
machine discharged, its explosive-tipped bolt vanished from its groove, and Madagnus was obviously cheered by the result, because he was cackling to himself even as he dragged at a lever to
recharge the device. Down the wall from him, a pneumatic repeating ballista was just starting to loose, its pistons banging out a solid rhythm as it began throwing bolts into the front line of the
enemy.

Stenwold looked out at the Second. They were just about close enough, he reckoned. A lot depended on the speed and stamina of their Airborne, but there seemed to be a distinct order now imposed
over the somewhat unruly ranks. He took out his glass and extended it, scanning the lines, seeing definite preparation, the magnification enough to see individual faces, to spot sergeants passing
amongst their men, mouths opening to shout silent orders. More than Airborne, too: as well as the Wasp heavies, he saw a good number of Spider troops, also in loose skirmish order, and starting to
move ahead of their Imperial colleagues.
But they don’t fly, and so they don’t bother me as much.

It was back to basics for the Wasp army, at least for now. The Light Airborne, their traditional strength, was about to test itself against Collegium marksmanship.

‘There!’ Madagnus barked out. ‘Let’s take a crack at that monster.’

He was indicating a Sentinel, the armoured, woodlouse-like form humping and scrabbling over the broken terrain without obvious difficulty. Stenwold had seen the automotives in action first-hand
at Myna and, once the wall had come down, they had been a terror in the street-to-street fighting, but he did not see them as a priority.
Because it won’t come to that. Because we will
hold the gate, and they do not have the means to break the wall.

The Sentinel was making quick work of the earthworks, its multiple legs scrabbling and pulling it over anything it encountered, and the magnetic ballistae had not been intended for such a mobile
target, but Madagnus apparently took this as some sort of a challenge. His lips moved, counting to himself, and he wound the engine degree after degree until he was leading the galloping Sentinel
by the required distance.

Then he loosed, soundlessly, only a shudder in the air to indicate it, and cried out with triumph as he scored a hit. Stenwold looked out at the stricken machine – close enough to need no
glass now – and saw it shake itself just like an animal, as though getting its armour plating to fall back into place again. A moment later it was moving on again, not even a serious dent to
show for the impact.

‘Right.’ The set of Madagnus’s jaw presaged dangerous risk-taking, and Stenwold grabbed his arm.

‘Go for the threats to our gate, Chief. Priorities, remember.’

The Ant stared at him blankly for a second, then nodded briefly. ‘Ramming engines,’ he confirmed.

There was a series of shouts and snapbow shot from down the wall, and for a moment Stenwold thought he had missed the Second’s attack, but it was one of the great hornets, far from the
Imperial airship and still mad for blood, that had come droning over the wall. The snapbowmen were far better suited to destroying such creatures than were the pilots who had shared the air with
them but there were still some scores of the beasts circling out there.

He had just turned again to look out at the enemy when the Wasps made their move, and the entire front seven ranks of the Second Army exploded, thousands of soldiers taking to the air in a vast
cloud, and he felt a ripple of shock pass through the entire Collegiate wall detachment. Then the Airborne were coming for them like a storm, and he heard the cries of officers on both sides:
‘Pikes out and hold! Snapbows ready!’

The Airborne had taken dozens of cities like this, making a mockery of traditional fortifications, but, back during their heyday, there had been nothing as accurate as a snapbow in their
enemies’ hands. Even the Sarnesh crossbowmen at the Battle of the Rails had inflicted savage casualties on them. Stenwold did not envy those attackers their duty, even as he prepared himself
to kill as many of them as he could. He had his little pocket snapbow already out, and two score bolts he did not intend to waste.

On the ground, the Imperial ramming engines were grinding on towards the gate, with the heavy infantry to back them up. The Airborne alone would not be able to engage the wall for long, and the
Empire would need to get its better-armoured troops inside the city soon. Without serious artillery to break down the walls, without the provisions for a long siege, that meant that they would have
to force the gate and hope to hold it somehow.