Dragonfly Falling Part 45

'Armoured heliopters,' Che corrected. 'A stupid idea, really.'

'Why?' Achaeos asked. 'Not that I don't think the same about all these machines.'

'We were all worried that the Ants wouldn't think like fliers, but it seems the Wasps have been guilty of the same thing. You can armour a heliopter all you like, but you can't armour the rotors, and that's what keep the machines in the air. The Sarnesh fixed-wings will be able to shoot them down and-'

Her words failed in her throat, because the Wasp army had just exploded. Its entire front ranks were now in the air, a great buzzing cloud that was sweeping forward on to the patiently advancing Ant line, filling the whole sky.

Sperra had a telescope but did not care to use it, handing it mutely to Che instead. Putting her eye to it, Che saw a slice of the world wheel crazily, tilted and blurry. Then she had the battlefront focused, a wall of flying Wasps surging forward like a breaking wave to smash against the front lines of the Sarnesh.

One instant it seemed that no force on earth could withstand that great rushing charge, a thousand men of the light airborne, hands extended to sting, wings sweeping them down the valley of the rail line. Then her point of view was filled with lancing rain, but rain lashing upwards upwards in near-solid sheets, and she heard Sperra gasp and Achaeos curse. Only then did she realize that it was the crossbow quarrels from the leading Ant-kinden, sleeting upwards at a range that the Wasps' Art weapons could not match. She wished, then, that she had seen it all, as the other two had, that sudden black flash of bolts, shooting in absolute unison, from the forward Ant formations. in near-solid sheets, and she heard Sperra gasp and Achaeos curse. Only then did she realize that it was the crossbow quarrels from the leading Ant-kinden, sleeting upwards at a range that the Wasps' Art weapons could not match. She wished, then, that she had seen it all, as the other two had, that sudden black flash of bolts, shooting in absolute unison, from the forward Ant formations.

And the Wasp charge was now in chaos. It was nothing she could follow with the gla.s.s and so she took it from her eye, trying to make sense of the mad buzzing clots of men that the charge had been broken up into. From her vantage point she could see the carpet of dead which that first round of quarrels had produced, still some distance ahead of the inexorable Ant advance, but the remainder of the Wasps were heading in all directions. Some were turning and fleeing back to their own lines, others over on the flanks were still attacking, trying to take the Ants in the side. But as they swung around they met the long arrows of the Mantis-kinden, and the Mantids themselves, wings flashing to life as they drove upwards with blades flashing into the suddenly scattering Wasps. Many of the Wasps just tried to push on through, streaking over the Ant formations with their stings flashing down as points of golden light, mostly to crackle uselessly over raised and overlapping shields. They were being slaughtered even as they flew, for the formations behind the leading edge of the advance had their crossbows too and even at this range Che could hear the bang-bang-bang of nailbows from infantry and from the automotives.

The Wasp heliopters were looming large, now, lumbering through the air to get above the Ant-kinden and bombard their tight formations, but the Ant fixed-wings flashed past them, nailbows blazing. One of the c.u.mbersome machines was clipped from the sky almost instantly, tumbling forards with enough time for half a revolution before its armoured lines split asunder against the ground. With shaking telescope Che saw the sparks of nailbow bolts striking against the armoured hulls of the others, while the heliopters' ballista and leadshotter fire kept trying to pin down the swifter Sarnesh fliers.

The Ant advance had not slowed, even now that the lead heliopters had begun to drop explosives on them. Flame and shrapnel flowed in broken chains across the Ant soldiers. The formations quickly broke up as the heliopter was directly over them, and then ma.s.sed back together once it had pa.s.sed, but there were undoubtedly gaps being blasted into their lines. There were too many soldiers in too close a s.p.a.ce to avoid it all. Che saw one of the heliopters falter in the air suddenly, struck by nailbow shot from the automotives, and then plummet down amongst the Ant soldiers without warning, smashing an entire unit apart with the impact.

Beyond it, a fixed-wing exploded in mid-air, showering burning metal. The Wasps had pivot-mounted leadshotters behind their lines and were starting to lob missiles at the flying machines, and also in long curving arcs over the heads of their own men and into the Sarnesh advance.

And yet the Ants did not falter, not even for a moment. Their formations flowed like water, breaking under attack, reforming a moment later. They were still moving at the steady, patient pace that they had started with, despite the casualties that were starting to mount.

The Wasps had drawn up a battle-line now, with five score of armoured sentinels in the centre, and shield-bearing infantry with spears on either side. More of the light airborne were flocking over to the flanks, and Che saw them swing wide of the Ant advance, coming to attack the rear. On one side the Mantis warriors were holding back deliberately, sending out their arrows but keeping their places. On the other the Ant liaisons had been killed, and about half of the Mantids suddenly dashed out on the ground or in the air and attacked the Wasp airborne as they pa.s.sed over, making an entirely separate swirling battle that quickly fled away from the main one.

The opposing lines were closing, the telescope told her. She felt Sperra and Achaeos take wing to drop down from the automotive, and realized that the first casualties were being carried in, but she could not stop watching. There was crossbow- and sting-shot being exchanged all the way down the line, with the Wasps taking the worst of it. Their shields were smaller, and they lacked the Ants' great advantage that every man was looking out for all the others as the enemy shot came in.

The Ants at the rear of the advance suddenly reversed face, raising their shields against incoming airborne that had swung round behind them, and the crossbow quarrels started sleeting up again. Then the Mantis-kinden who had been holding back were suddenly there, dashing across the ground more swiftly than Che could believe, or leaping into the air with a flare of wings, and the Wasp light airborne broke as the Mantids tore through it, and individual Wasps were darting away, trying to get back to their own side.

She dragged her attention to the lines, and caught them just as they clashed, the Sarnesh suddenly upping their pace to a thundering run, hundreds of armoured men throwing their weight behind their shields and crashing into the Wasp line. Some fell to the Wasps' levelled spears but their shields managed to turn most of the spearheads or even shattered the shafts, and then they were smashing into the Wasp line, swords stabbing frenziedly, and to either side the second-rank formations were deploying, turning the line of the Ant army into a pincering curve.

Another heliopter and she thought it might be the last trailed fire over the Ant ranks, and the Wasps were fighting furiously, their line buckling slowly but hundreds of their soldiers coursing back and forth over the heads of the enemy, lancing down with their stings at any visible weak point. The telescope was revealing too much to her now, all the b.l.o.o.d.y work that war was, dripping red swords and faces twisted in pain. More and more Wasps were rushing into the fray to sh.o.r.e their line up, until their full numbers had been committed and they could stop the Ants from encircling them. The warriors of the Ancient League were scattering all over the field in knots of ten or twenty, launching sudden attacks against the Wasp flanks and then falling back, or sending arrows high to kill unsuspecting soldiers in the centre of the Wasp lines. Che sensed that all that had gone before was but prologue to this moment, the soldiers of both sides now dying in their hundreds. In the air were the remaining flying machines, surrounded by the Wasp light airborne that latched onto them and cut at their cables and controls, and also by giant insects the Wasps' own namesakes that were urged on by unarmoured riders brandishing lances and crossbows.

She heard the roaring of the automotives even over all the clamour of battle, and then the Ant lines were splitting, as if by some pre-planned clockwork mechanism. A lead-shot strike caved in the front of one vehicle, which began to gout smoke. Another shot punched into the packed Ant lines, smashing through the centre of one formation, and then raking the side of the one immediately behind, leaving three dozen dead at a stroke. The Wasps surged forwards at some points, held back at others, and the automotives drove on like hammers, nailbows shooting until they jammed, and the Wasp line was broken like porcelain, all its unity lost.

In the centre the remaining sentinels had formed a fighting square and were contesting to the last with pike and shield, seeming nigh-invulnerable in their all-encasing armour, but there were Wasps fleeing backwards all along the line, getting in each other's way, even fighting with one another, and the Ant advance continued as steadily as before.

Thirty-Seven.

The city was running short of places to house the wounded, let alone the dead. Where the messenger took Stenwold was one of the College's workshops where apprentice artificers had toiled and studied in happier times. Into a small room beyond a long hall that was almost carpeted with the ice-packed dead they had brought the body, and laid it on an artificer's work table. This unknowingly appropriate gesture affected Stenwold more deeply than anything else.

They had not been able to get Scuto's body to lie flat, of course, what with the hunchback and the man's other deformities, and so it was resting on its side, looking as awkward in death as life, propped up on its own projections that had scratched long lines into the wood as they had worked him off the stretcher. Amidst all those spines and thorns and burned, blistered skin, they had not cared to remove the three quills of crossbow bolts that were sunk deep into Scuto's flesh. Stenwold was sure that they had been the final death of him, and not the grenade that had scorched across his nut-brown skin and smashed one of his hands. Scuto had always been a tough one.

His mockery of a face, that had resembled nothing more than a grotesque puppet carved idly from wood, was locked in a grimace that showed all his hooked teeth. Stenwold put a hand out to close his friend's eyes, but managed only to spike himself on one of the Thorn Bug's points.

Scuto had been pulled from the Sarnesh automotive that had blocked the breach, and Stenwold realized that if he had stayed a moment longer he would have witnessed it himself. Scuto had been dead before they had ever drawn him out, though. There would have been no last words, no farewells. Stenwold understood that only one of the Sarnesh Lorn detachment had survived, and she was not expected to live long despite all the doctors were doing for her.

'Why?' Stenwold asked. 'Why did he come?' He looked up at Balkus, and saw the man's normally solid features twisted in grief. Balkus, he recalled, had known Scuto a long time, at least as long as Stenwold himself.

'He always looked after his people,' the Ant said. 'He must have heard about the siege here. We were his people, Stenwold you and me. Waste and blast the b.l.o.o.d.y man. Did he think I couldn't take care of myself?' Balkus's fist slammed down on the table. 'You stupid, stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d! What did you think you were doing?' There were no tears on the big man's face, but his voice, the utter loss in his voice, more than made up for it. Ants grieved privately and mind to mind, Stenwold knew, but Balkus had been away from his own kind for many years, had forgotten the touch of their company, and his pain came out in words just like any other kinden's.

Stenwold tried to picture those last terrible moments in the automotive, the desperate fighting hand to hand, the grenade's explosion, the driver trying to keep control of the racing vehicle, trying to get it within the walls of Collegium, past the Vekken soldiers and their crossbows.

It came to him that for once he had done the right thing in sending all the others off: Che and Achaeos, Tisamon and Tynisa. For once, at least, where Stenwold now was had become the place not not to be. to be.

I am running out of friends. Scuto was the oldest and the closest of the dead, but he had Kymon on his conscience too, and poor Doctor Nicrephos, and so many of the faces that he had been introduced to so recently, only to have them snuffed out in the fighting people like Joyless Greatly, like Cabre who had manned the harbour defences, or Tseitus in his submersible. Scuto was the oldest and the closest of the dead, but he had Kymon on his conscience too, and poor Doctor Nicrephos, and so many of the faces that he had been introduced to so recently, only to have them snuffed out in the fighting people like Joyless Greatly, like Cabre who had manned the harbour defences, or Tseitus in his submersible.

'What time is it?' he called out. 'Anyone know?'

'I think I heard the third clock not long ago,' Arianna said. She had been keeping prudently out of the way, by the door.

'Until dawn, then?'

'Two hours and half an hour more, Stenwold. No more.'

'We should try for at least some sleep,' he said tiredly.

'The Vekken will be back with the dawn, and they have made a breach now. I do not know how we can keep them out of it.'

'I'm not going to sleep, not tonight,' Balkus said flatly. 'I'm going to go to that breach, and when they come I'm going to kill every b.l.o.o.d.y Vekken I see. And when I run out of ammunition I'll use my sword, and when that breaks I'll use my fists.' He was a stranger then, broad-shouldered and threatening, an Ant setting about doing what Ants were best at, which was killing their own kind.

Stenwold had thought that the Vekken would have to come over the crashed automotive to take control of the breach, and he had his soldiers lined up with crossbows ready to shoot them as they crested the top, but his lookout had just called from the broken wall and told him that they were bringing up a ram. A ramming engine, if they could coax it up the mound of debris, would punch the automotive aside in just a few blows, leaving the breach wide open for the Vekken infantry to rush in. Taking over Kymon's command, Stenwold had gathered every man and woman who could hold the line and placed them here, but the Vekken soldiers were better at close work by far. This would be the last stand, he knew, the last moment before the Vekken surged into the city and overran it.

The Great College, he thought, the a.s.sembly, the Sarnesh alliance the a.s.sembly, the Sarnesh alliance. All the centuries of innovation, philosophy, art and diplomacy that had been hatched within these walls, and now the ignorant hands of the Vekken would carry it away and dismantle it.

'Artillery's ready, War Master,' one of his artificers reported. The wall had been judged too unsteady to mount more engines on it, but they had found from somewhere a pair of ballistae, and he had them flanking his forces on either side now. One was a light repeater, the other a ma.s.sive and ancient Ant-made piece they must have dredged from a museum. It would probably do no more than loose a single bolt.

'Angle so that you can hit the ram, when it starts to push the automotive out of the way,' he told them, knowing that by then it would already be too late, that the breach would be well opened.

On the walls, in place of the artillery, he had posted everyone else: old men and women, the injured, the young and a plethora of Fly-kinden who would only get trampled underfoot in a ground-level melee, all up there with whatever they could get their hands on. Some had crossbows, but others had hunting bows, stonebows, even slings and rocks for throwing. Some industrious citizens had even carried a few dozen of the fallen stones from the wall up to its top, to pitch over onto the Vekken.

Even as he looked up at them the shooting started, men and women of Collegium putting their heads over the battlements to let slip a bolt or arrow or stone and then ducking down fast. The clatter of answering quarrels came fast after, and Stenwold saw several, the slow or the unlucky, hurled back from the wall within the first few seconds.

'Stand ready!' he called to his forces. He wanted to deliver an encouraging speech, such as the one Kymon had given, but he, whose life had been measured in words often enough, found himself without them.

He had already found a greying militia officer to be his second in the all too likely event that something happened to him. Third in command was Balkus because, if it came to that, they would need the man's fighting spirit more than any gifts of leadership.

'Heads up,' the Ant muttered to him, and he scanned the wall, looking for some new threat. Balkus was glancing backwards, though, and he turned to see Arianna running to join him.

'No!' he shouted at her. 'Wait for me back at the house, please!'

'What kind of fool do you think I am?' she asked him. She had found a leather cuira.s.s from somewhere, and there was a strung shortbow over her shoulder. 'If you fail here, do you think they won't kill me anyway?'

'But . . . I want . . .' I want you to be safe. I want you to be safe. He stared at her helplessly, and with pointed determination she took her bow and nocked an arrow to it. He stared at her helplessly, and with pointed determination she took her bow and nocked an arrow to it.

'Let her fight,' Balkus said. 'We need her. You've seen all who's left here. We need everyone.'

'The ram's coming in!' the lookout shouted. A glance at the archers on the walls showed that they were shooting almost straight down now, and that others were heaving great stones up to the lip of the battlements.

'Artillery ready!' Stenwold shouted, and drew his sword. Between the Vekken and Arianna, he did not see the strength his followers derived from that simple, calm motion.

There was a hollow boom, and the automotive jumped a foot forwards, and then slid another foot down the loose stones, and Stenwold could hear the ram's engines straining, imagined its toothed wheels clawing for traction.

'And loose!' shouted the artillerist artificer, and the repeating crossbow began its work, sending bolt after bolt, as fast as Stenwold's heart was beating, into the gap the ram had created between the automotive and the wall. The big old ballista had misfired, and six men were frantically rewinding it, cranking the string back while the bolt was replaced.

'Shields ready!' Stenwold called out, and his rabble of citizens and militia formed up into a mockery of a military formation. Every single man or woman with any kind of shield stood in the front rank, some with no more than a few nailed-together planks on a leather strap as a handle. At each end stood the archers, crossbows levelled shakily, or arrows ready at the string. Arianna had run to join them. The look of desperate bravery on her face made his heart ache, and all the more so because it was mirrored on every face around her.

With a tremendous crack the ancient ballista hurled its eight-foot bolt forwards, the wooden arms shattering into pieces with the force, but the missile drove straight through the ram's hull, and Stenwold saw a sudden venting of smoke and heard the engine squeal in protest and then die.

There was a great cheer from the defenders, for the ram had gained a gap of no more than four feet either side of the automotive for the Vekken to press through, but then the Vekken were coming regardless, surging through the gaps in tight order with their shields raised. The repeating ballista slammed its bolts into them, knocking them back two or three at a time, and stones were pushed off the battlements above to crash down into the packed intruders, battering their shields aside. Arianna and the other archers needed no further orders now. They were shooting into the Vekken as they came, arrows and bolts and slingstones bouncing from shields or whipping past them. For a moment, one mad moment, it seemed that the Vekken did not have the force to seize the gaps, that they would be driven back so that the defenders could retake those narrow breaks and hold them against all comers.

They were Ant-kinden, though, and in the simple business they were engaged in there were no finer soldiers anywhere, and once that moment of hope had gone, they pushed through, despite the bolts and the stones, and over the heaped bodies of their kin, and onto Collegium ground.

As soon as he saw that the archers could not hold them, Stenwold drew a great breath and cried out, 'Forwards!' and, because there was no time to wait, he was first in, trusting to them to follow where he took them.

He met the Ants with their shield-line, and without expectations, but he was an old fighter. No Ant soldier, but he had held a blade for longer than these Vekken men and women had been alive. In those first seconds he surprised himself by killing two of the enemy, lunging past their shields as they skidded on the last loose stones. On either side the mismatched shields of Collegium pressed, and there was still a fair barrage falling on the enemy from above.

And there was no more to think about, no regrets, no worries, just the savage, simple business of putting his blade into as many Vekken as he could reach. It was turned by shields, turned by armour or by other blades, but he did not let up, stabbing and cutting with a fury, because this was his his city and these were city and these were his his people and if Collegium fell, then the whole world fell with it into a dark age that would make the Age of Lore seem like enlightenment. people and if Collegium fell, then the whole world fell with it into a dark age that would make the Age of Lore seem like enlightenment.

He was dimly aware that Balkus was now beside him, the only other man in the front rank without a shield. Balkus, with a shortsword in each hand, battering down Vekken shields with brute force, always keeping an eye out for Stenwold, as if some mindlink had joined them in their extremity, so that he could antic.i.p.ate each blow even as Stenwold registered it, putting a sword in the way to deflect it.

They were losing ground, but not as swiftly as they should. The sheer savagery of the Collegiate charge had shaken the attackers, put them back on the shifting stones. Ant faces were impa.s.sive at best, but Stenwold thought he could see something like bafflement within their eyes. They were soldiers, superior in every way to this mixed-race rabble that confronted them, so how could they be held up for even a single minute? They locked shields and pressed, but they were confronted with men and women who were totally cornered now, nothing to lose and nowhere to go. They died, of course, those defenders of Collegium. Tradesmen were run through, merchants wearing ill-fitting armour were hacked down, labourers and militamen fell with crossbow bolts buried deep. There was not one of them who went easily, though, and even as they fell they dragged at their enemies, pulled their swords down, hooked shields with their fingers. A thousand acts of final bravery and defiance, shaking the Vekken advance, if only for a moment.

And seeing this hesitation, Stenwold's heart soared with pride in his city, and a lunging Ant laid his arm open and he fell back, sword falling from his grasp. Balkus killed the man who had wounded him that same instant, and already a shield was raised to take his place, but Stenwold was reeling, being pa.s.sed back through the crowd until he was standing clear, with Arianna descending on him and swiftly tearing a strip off her robe to bandage him.

'I can fight!' he insisted, but she dug her fingers into the wound until he stood still enough for her to finish. 'I can fight!' he said again, looking round for a sword.

'War Master!' someone was shouting and, feeling dizzy, he turned to look. A man he felt he should recognize was running towards him, waving his arms. 'War Master!'

'I'm here! What news?' He could barely hear himself over the fighting behind him.

He knew this man one of his own soldiers from the harbour guard- His heart sank and he could have virtually mouthed the words along with the man: 'War Master! The harbour! They're coming in at the harbour!'

Stenwold turned, torn by doubt, seeing the line surge back and forward, the final throes of Collegium's defence. He was responsible for the harbour, though, and there were people needed there.

He hoped that Balkus would be enough for them. The big Ant was still standing, splashed with blood, working himself into a frenzy.

'Take me there!' he commanded, and the harbour man ran off, leaving him to lurch in his wake, with Arianna holding his good arm to help him along.

The sight that met him at the harbour was worse than he had feared, though, and worse than he had dreamed possible. There were already two tugs dragging the drowned armourclad out of the way, and beyond it the sea was full of ships, painted across with dozens of sails.

Thirty-Eight.

The bulk of the Wasps could retreat far faster than the Ants could follow, and they took flight down the rail track towards their camp, their rail automotives and their ma.s.sed artillery. The sentinels and many of the armoured shield-men, however, could not simply fly away. Faced with no choice, and with a fierce desperation that left a lasting impression on their enemies, they stood their ground, holding up the Ant advance still further so that their comrades could escape. In a tight square of armoured men, surrounded on all sides by the implacable Sarnesh soldiers, they fought on with bitter determination until every last man of them was dead.

The Ants re-formed their lines, their shield-lined formations, with some of them that had sustained heavy casualties breaking up to form new groups. Others near the back began to move the wounded out. Two automotives had been smashed before the leadshotters had been silenced, and a third had ground to a halt with artificers hurriedly prying armour off to get at its engine. The Sarnesh went about rea.s.sembling their battle order with the minimum of fuss, with calm deliberation. The Wasps were allowed to fall back, to exhaust themselves in the panic of flight. The Ants would follow at their own inexorable pace.

The warriors of the Ancient League were another matter. They had not stopped when the Sarnesh had redrawn their lines. They harried the Wasp-kinden mercilessly, chasing them in the air, raking them with arrow-shot. It seemed at first that they might continue their hunt all the way to h.e.l.leron. Che, trying to focus her telescope on the nimble figures in green and grey, abruptly overshot them. There was nothing but black and gold now in her field of view. She took the gla.s.s away, trying to see what was going on.

The Mantids and their allies were now falling back, surging to meet up with the plodding Sarnesh lines. Beyond them the Wasps were making a new stand, rallying into another wall of shields and ready airborne. Behind them . . .

She felt just then that things had started to tip, although she could not have said why. She was no tactician, but something spoke inside her.

A rail automotive had pulled in to the broken end of the rails in a great plume of steam. More Wasp soldiers were rushing out of it, hurrying forwards to join the battle. Reinforcements from h.e.l.leron, she saw, but something new had communicated itself to her. She could not be sure what.

There were Ants all around. One word to them would be a word to the whole army. She had no words, though. She had nothing she could warn them of.

Still. 'You should take care,' she said to the nearest Ant surgeon, 'your people at the front.' 'You should take care,' she said to the nearest Ant surgeon, 'your people at the front.'

He was washing blood from his hands and he stared at her as if she were mad. Out on the field, transport automotives were removing the bulk of the wounded. The worst would be treated here, the rest removed to Sarn. The surgeons were hard pressed to keep the pace.

'The Queen is consulting with her tacticians,' the surgeon said suddenly, and Che realized that she had been heard after all. The man's eyes unfocused for a moment, and then he said. 'We will press ahead. We must destroy them, drive them until they can fly no more, and then wipe them out. We must break their siege engines in order to protect our walls.' He nodded. 'It will be a long, hard fight.' She realized the last words were his, and the rest had been the Queen's.

During the first clash of the battle the Wasps had been able to bring forward more of their siege train, another batch of leadshotters and a few of the smaller catapults that could be wheeled out intact rather than needing a.s.sembly on the spot. The Sarnesh automotives would have a harder time of it from now on. Even as Che watched, the first artillery engines began to discharge, their shot mostly flying wide or short, and the Sarnesh advance continued with the same patient progress, the wide sweeping wings of scattered Mantids and Moths surging a little ahead of it.

The next batch of the wounded had now arrived, and she gave up her watching, went to do what good she could with bandages and needle. It unnerved her, tending these wounded Ants. They did not curse or scream, because each was taking strength from all the others, from their suffusing solidarity. Somehow a show of pain would have been more rea.s.suring to her. All around her the Ant surgeons worked in skilled communion, linked with each other and with their patients. It made Che feel clumsy and awkward. They even gave her the least of the wounded to tend.

There was a moment she remembered it well later when all the soldiers around them stopped, just for half a second, all at once, and she knew that out on the battlefield something new had happened. She tied off the wrapping on the man she had been working with, and took up her gla.s.s again.

The Ant advance had stopped as they tried to work out what had happened. The fresh Wasp troops from the rail automotive had formed a double line ahead of them, but at a range that a heavy crossbow would find stretching. They had loosed some manner of weapon, though. The rattle of missiles had struck all the way along the Ant line, short darts like nailbow bolts that had bounced from shields or got stuck in armour, although a few unlucky soldiers had been injured in the face. Beside them, a few of the lightly-armoured Mantids had fallen.

The Sarnesh started their march again, the automotives grinding solidly along beside them. Wasp artillery-shot was falling sporadically about them, and another of the armoured vehicles was brought to a halt when a stone shattered its left track. The advance was undaunted, though between the officers at the leading edge of the Sarnesh army a quick a.n.a.lysis was taking place of what new weapons the Wasps possessed and how they might work.

The twin archer lines of the Wasps suddenly sprang forward in a flurry of wings, covering ten yards in a great flying leap. It was a chaotic display, obviously unpractised. For a moment they were everywhere, in utter confusion, and then they were struggling to get themselves in place as the other troops, who had so recently fled, moved forwards again to back them up.

As one the Ant soldiers picked up their pace. The leading officers could see more of the weapons now, and they seemed to be firepowder bows of some sort, like nailbows, but there had been no smoke and no sound other than a distant crackle when they had loosed.

Drephos had driven him hard in order to be here now. It was only because the foundries of h.e.l.leron were so well supplied, so easily turned to any mechanical endeavour, that it had worked at all. Totho had been working day and night, and forcing his workforce through the same punishing schedule. Towards the end he had allowed them three or four hours of sleep at most. How they had hated him, the halfbreed that fate had set over them, and now Dre-phos's right-hand man.

The factories were still working now, of course, but Totho had left them to the care of other hands. Drephos had come to him one day, after his life had become just a murderous round of unceasing manufacture, and told him, 'It's time.'

'Time for what?' Totho had asked dully.

'Time for the real test, Totho.' The master artificer had earlier been radiant with enthusiasm, eagerly rubbing his disparate hands together. 'The soldiers have practised. They are pa.s.sable, and the efficiency of your invention easily makes up for the deficiency in their training. We are ready to take your gifts to General Malkan.'

'You want me to go with you?'