Part 33 (1/2)

Out there, the cargo heliopter he had seen earlier was veering over the armourclads, and he saw it rock under the impact of artillery fire, half falling from the sky and then clawing its way back up. The h.e.l.leron orthopter was turning on its wingtip, and a man at its hatch was simply tipping a crateful of grenades out to scatter over s.h.i.+ps and sea alike, exploding in bright flashes wherever they struck wood or metal. A moment later one of the flier's flapping wings was on fire, the orthopter's turn pitching into a dive. Stenwold looked away.

'Master Maker!' Stenwold turned at his name to see Joyless Greatly and a group of other Beetle-kinden lumbering towards him. They lumbered because they were wearing some sort of ugly-looking armour, great bronze blocks bolted to their chests, and man-length s.h.i.+elds on their backs.

'Ready for action, Master Maker.' Greatly was grinning madly.

'You said you had orthopters!' Stenwold shouted at him. 'Where are they?'

'We're wearing them, Master Maker.' Joyless Greatly turned briefly, and Stenwold saw now that his back resembled a beetle's, with curved and rigid wingcases, elytra that almost brushed the stone of the quay.

The block weighting his chest was an engine, Stenwold realized, and it must have been a real triumph of artifice to make it that small. There were explosives hanging from it, too, on quick-release catches. The expression on Greatly's face was quite insane.

'Good luck,' Stenwold wished him these being insane times.

Greatly gripped a ring on his engine and yanked at it, twice and then three times, and suddenly it shouted into life. Stenwold fell back as the wingcases on his back opened up, revealing translucent wings beneath, and then both wings and cases were powering up, first slowly but gradually thres.h.i.+ng themselves into a blur.

And Joyless Greatly was airborne, his feet leaving the quay and, beyond him, the score of his cadre were up as well.

Beetles flew like stones, so the saying went, but Greatly had overcome both nature and Art. His wings sang through the air and sent him hurtling out across the water, utterly fearless and weaving for height, until he became just a dangling dot heading towards the oncoming bulks of the armourclads, which had reached the chain.

The sky above them was busy now, as the airfield sent out its fliers one after another to attack the encroaching fleet. Airs.h.i.+ps wobbled slowly overhead and dropped explosives and grenades or simply stones and crates, while orthopters swooped with ponderous dignity. There were fixed-wings making their rapid pa.s.ses over the oblivious s.h.i.+ps and loosing their ballistae, or with their pilots simply leaning out with crossbows. Stenwold felt his stomach lurch at the thought, but there were men and women out there, Fly-kinden mostly, but a Moth here, a Mantis there, even a clumsy Beetle-kinden, all darting with Art-given wings, shooting at the Ant sailors and soldiers and being shot at in turn. The air that Joyless Greatly and his men were entering was a frenzy of crossbow bolts and artillery, of sudden fiery explosions and scattershot.

The lead armourclad now struck the capsized wooden s.h.i.+p and crushed it against the chain, forcing it half-over and then shearing through the planks until it itself met the grinding teeth of the chain. They sc.r.a.ped and screamed as they hit the metal, scratching at it but unable to bite. For a second Stenwold thought the s.h.i.+p would be lifted up by it, but its draft was too deep, and its engines kept urging it forwards. Explosive bolts from the tower artillery burst about its hull in brief flares, and then one of the towers was enveloped in a firestorm as the flags.h.i.+p found its range. The tower was still shooting, even though some of its slit windows leaked flame.

And the armourclad strained, and for a second its stern was coming around as the chain stretched taut, but then a link parted somewhere and the chain flew apart in a shrapnel of broken metal and the armourclad's bow leapt forwards, making the entire s.h.i.+p shudder.

There was now nothing between it and the harbour. Stenwold knew he should move, but he could not. He just stared at the black metal s.h.i.+p as its unstoppable engines thrust it forwards. The repeating ballista mounted at its bows was swivelling to launch blazing bolts at the buildings nearest. Meanwhile another missile struck the east tower and caved a section of it in.

Impossibly small over its mighty decks, the miniature orthopters of Joyless Greatly swung hither and thither like a cloud of gnats. They had the swift power of a flying machine but the nimble size of a flying man, and Stenwold saw them dart and spin about the deck of the armourclad with their artificial wings blurring, releasing explosives one by one from their engine harnesses.

The cargo heliopter shuddered past, trailing smoke now, a trail of incendiaries falling behind it that were mostly swallowed by the sea. Stenwold longed for the telescope he had at Myna, but he had not even thought to bring one. He strained his eyes to see one of Greatly's men dodge and tilt over the armourclad's deck, leaving a trail of fire behind him.

'Will you look at that!' shouted Balkus, pointing. Stenwold followed the direction of his finger to see something glint beneath the surface of the harbour.

'Tseitus's submersible s.h.i.+p!' he exclaimed. He had expected something like a fish, but jetting out from beneath the quay came a silvery, flattened oval as long as three men laid end to end, with six great powering paddles that forced it through the water in uneven jerks. It was fast, though, for with half a dozen of those laborious strokes it was most of the way to the armourclads. He lost sight of the submersible as it pa.s.sed beneath the lead s.h.i.+p.

'Everything we have,' he heard himself say. 'It must surely be enough.'

There was a spectacular explosion of fire and stone, and the east tower simply flew apart, some strike of the flags.h.i.+p having found its ammunition store. The flying debris battered the nearest armourclad, rolling it violently so that its starboard rail was almost under water. With a dozen great dents in its side, it began to drift towards the shattered tower, its engine still running but its rudder ruined.

Cabre had been in that tower, Stenwold recalled. He suddenly felt ill.

The lead armourclad was still forging forwards but it was on fire in a dozen places from Greatly's ministrations. Even as he watched, Stenwold saw one of the diminutive fliers hover neatly by its main funnel. It was too far to see the descent of the bombs, but a moment later there was a cavernous bang from within the vessel, and the funnel's smoke doubled, and redoubled. The flier was already skimming away, and the others were leaving too, making all ways from the stricken s.h.i.+p. Stenwold saw at least one of them falter and fall to the Vekken crossbowmen, spiralling over and over, out of control, until the water received him.

Balkus grabbed Stenwold and threw him to the quayside, more roughly than necessary, and then the stones beneath him jumped hard enough to throw him upwards an inch and smack the breath from him when he came down.

A single piece of jagged metal was thrown far enough to clatter onto the docks, but the centre of the lead armourclad had exploded into a twisted sculpture of ruined metal and burning wood that clogged the mouth of the harbour. Beyond it, through a curtain of smoke, Stenwold could dimly see other s.h.i.+ps of the fleet making ponderous turns, still under attack from the air. One of them was listing already, its wooden hull holed beneath the waterline in what must have been Tseitus's blow for Collegium.

The fliers began to return home, and there seemed so very few.

The powerfully-built Fly-kinden stepped from the dockside house, watching the s.h.i.+ps retreat, his vantage a slice of sea and sky viewed down a narrow back alley. 'I want my money back,' said the treasure-hunter Kori to the women behind him.

'Go to the wastes!' the Madam spat at him. 'You filthy little monster!'

He leered at her, lounging in the doorway, oblivious to the smoke on the air. 'Come, now, the world's about to end isn't it?' he demanded. 'The city's about to fall. Your ladies should be giving it out free, just for the joy of their profession. I'd thought I'd find some proper dedication to your trade here, in this city of learning.'

The old Beetle woman regarded him venomously but said nothing. Kori laughed at her. 'Instead, what is there? The moment a little disturbance happens, and four streets away mind, all your girls lose their nerve and start crying and whimpering and begging for their lives. I mean, it's not that I don't enjoy that sort of thing but, still, if they won't perform perform, what is there? The trade's fallen into a sad state. It's no wonder they call this a house of ill repute.'

'You brute!' the old woman said. 'This is our home, our city! We can't all just fly away through the air when the walls come down.'

'Well, exactly,' the Fly agreed. 'But will you make the best of it? No, you will not. You could have had a few coins from me, woman, and they might have stood you in good stead. I'm sure there's a Vekken Ant with a venal soul somewhere out there. My ardour has cooled though, so my purse remains shut. I leave you only with my own disappointment.'

He walked away from them, whistling jauntily against the misery of the city around him. He felt it inc.u.mbent upon him to at least keep his own spirits up. So Collegium was on the rocks these days. That was no business of his. Let the Ants and the Beetles sort their own lives out, so long as he got what he came for.

The other hunters were still outside the city, waiting for his return and report. He had decided that he was the most experienced man amongst them, and therefore that he should be their leader. So far, at least, they had followed his suggestions. He knew a few of them by reputation, had met with Gaved the Wasp once before in a bitter dispute over an escaped slave. There were no hard feelings, though. They were both professionals.

He holed up in a taverna until dusk, enjoying being the only unconcerned man in a panicking city. The prices were cheap but the service was poor, because the innkeeper's son and daughter had both run off to join the army. That thought made Kori smile at the foolishness of the world. It was not that he feared risk, since risk was his business, but he always made sure that he was suitably reimbursed for any risks he took, and made sure he could always fly away if things got messy. In a world turned so badly on its head, there was no better life than that of a mercenary agent.

As dusk fell he made his silent exit, flying fast and high above the Vekken encampment, beyond any Ant-kinden's view or crossbow's reach, out into the hills beyond until he had tracked down his fellows' camp.

'You're late,' Scylis informed him, when he landed.

'I set the clock, so I'm never late,' Kori said. 'I've been biding my time, is all.'

'Well?' asked Gaved.

'Well I visited Collegium once before,' Kori said, 'but I don't recall it as being quite so crawling with Ants.'

The four hunters looked over the camps of dark tents that had spread like a stain around the city. From their hilltop retreat they had heard the loudest sounds of conflict, the roars of the leadshotters and other firepowder weaponry.

Gaved had spent the day spying out the walls with his telescope. 'Well, they warned us to expect trouble.'

'This is more than just trouble,' the Fly considered. 'This complicates things. We should be asking for more money.'

'That's your answer to everything, isn't it, Kori?' observed Phin the Moth, looking amused.

'Never found a problem it couldn't solve yet,' he agreed. 'You reckon this is the Empire, then?'

'Vekkens,' Phin corrected him.

'Yeah, but that maggot patron of ours in h.e.l.leron knew there'd be trouble. So I reckon the Empire's been stirring, eh?'

'Of course it's the Empire,' Scylis, Scyla, told them. Her companions talked too much, and she was fed up with all of them. She always worked best alone. Phin and Gaved had even slept with each other a couple of times, which she viewed as unprofessional. There was no real affection there, she knew, just physical need, but it still irked her. Perhaps it was the price of her wearing a man's face most of the time.

'I reckon the Empire wants all of this,' Gaved said distantly. 'They're starting fires like this all over, so they can just come over and stamp them out. Going to be a bleak enough place when the black-and-gold gets here.'

'You? What will you have to worry about?' Scyla asked him. 'They're your your cursed people.' cursed people.'

That made him frown at her, and sharply too. 'If you had any idea how hard I've fought to be free of their b.l.o.o.d.y ranks and rules, you wouldn't say that.'

'Still living off their table sc.r.a.ps, though, just like the rest of us,' she jibed.