‘They’re coming!’ Plius bellowed, drawing his blade for the first time. The Wasp left wing, heedless of what was happening at their centre, was rushing them, both on the ground and in the air. Balkus watched his own people reloading all around him, and knew they would be in time for one more round.
‘And loose!’ and they did, raking through the spread formation of light airborne and infantry. The Tseni soldiers braced themselves, with shields overlapping, and the Wasps struck them head on. Between Balkus and the Tseni, Parops’ men were ready waiting, cutting into place like the blades of shears to trap the Wasps between their shields and those of Plius’ contingent. To Parops’ left, there were only the Collegium irregulars to hold the line.
‘Nailbows!’ Balkus roared, and took his own up from its strap, emptying it rapidly into the charging Wasps. The roar of the weapons from all around him told him that his order had been heard, and for a moment the Wasp charge was down to nothing, as though a great fist had struck them still. Then they were coming on again, and Balkus had his sword drawn whilst his band of militia were taking up their shields and maces, axes and spears, with the pikes thrusting in from the second and third ranks. The Tseni line buckled abruptly, no longer enough of them left to hold. The shock of impact recoiled into Parops’ shield-wall, as the Wasps drove a wedge between him and Balkus’ men. Plius died without ever striking a blow.
From behind the Wasps, from within their camp, came a sudden, soundless explosion.
It was light only, with no force: a monstrous wash of white light. Balkus reeled back, covering his eyes, hearing a few sounds of metal on metal, the scream of a man wounded. The Wasps had meanwhile faltered, scattering within feet of their targets, pulling back. Balkus, still blinking, saw them looking around, their officers trying to find out what had just happened.
Something was burning within the Wasp camp – no, not burning, something was alight. Hanging in the air was a human shape, but one so bright that it hurt the eyes. The Wasps closer to it had all turned towards it, but were now pushing away. The light was so bright that Balkus could see every detail beneath it. This was not bright like day. No day had ever been so harshly radiant.
There was a figure directly before that light, and Balkus swore in awe and fear because the man standing there was burning, flaming incandescent. His very armour was glowing white-hot with the focus of that terrible light. This was Art, Balkus realized, but Art that he had never seen before, and never wanted to see again. The man was staggering, flailing, and yet he still faced the searing, glowing creature before him, the light so excruciating that he could not draw himself away from it, even as his armour melted on his boiling skin.
And there was a flare, another tidal wave of light ripping through the Wasp army, so that those closest to the fire, those that had turned to see what it was, screamed and clutched at their eyes and fell to the ground.
And it was gone, and the torches and lanterns of the Wasp camp barely touched the utter dark, but the Sarnesh were in one another’s minds and they rammed home their attack into the suddenly disarrayed Wasps. Then Balkus gave the order to shoot at an enemy he knew was there, only yards before him, unseen and unseeing, and the snapbows of Collegium shattered the Wasp left and broke them apart.
Twenty-Six
The rebellion in Myna had broken out all at once and yet without any unification. The news of General Reiner’s death was the spark that had sent every cell of resistance fighters into the streets, but it spread faster than Kymene could control it. Whilst many bands heeded her order to wait and attack in unison, others had simply struck at whatever local target the Imperials might provide.
The imperial garrison already had its men out in force in the city. The first reaction to the deaths of both Reiner and Latvoc, neither of whom had been men to willingly share their plans with subordinates, was to round up known troublemakers and attempt to continue Reiner’s iron-fisted bludgeoning of the populace. In many cases the soldiers thus despatched ran straight into the local resistance as it, too, sallied forth. There was a score of separate skirmishes within the first hour of the rebellion, and, in most of the fights, sheer numbers overwhelmed the small punitive forces the Empire had sent out. Where they had expected to find at worst a rabble of malcontents armed with stones, knives and clubs, the imperial soldiers ran headlong into Myna’s military heritage.
The Mynans were close to Beetles, cousins perhaps, but a halfbreed strain that had taken in fresh blood and stabilized into a new kinden entirely. What was not Beetle in them was a core of Ant fighting spirit that had made the taking of this city such an undertaking in the first place. Eighteen years had gone by, and the people of Myna had kept their blades sharp, their crossbows well oiled. The resistance fighters currently on the streets were a patchwork re-creation of the generation before, with their black and red breastplates and helms, their short swords and long shields and heavy crossbows. As the first unwary men of the Empire broke against them, they were overwhelmed or shot out of the sky.
The news soon snapped the officers of the garrison into line. The Empire’s response was swift and proportionate, calculated to ensure that, in order to stop the rot, the rogue elements at large in the city would be destroyed to the last man as quickly as possible. Without exception, those bands of resistance fighters already mobilized were either routed or surrounded and slaughtered. At the same time that the imperial response was being deployed, however, Kymene’s own people, and those that heeded her – over two-thirds of the resistance total – made their own move. They struck at key buildings and positions across the city, encountering surprisingly little resistance because the forces that would normally have rushed forth in defence were already engaged elsewhere. Several imperial detachments even returned to find their own barracks overrun and in enemy hands. Others found themselves holed up and under siege in the very buildings they had just stormed. One detachment, finding itself under threat of being trapped and smashed against the city walls, retreated through the main gates of the city in the general direction of Maynes.
By the end of a single day of savage fighting, without quarter on either side, Kymene found herself in control of over half of Myna, with the Empire still holding out in three improvised positions across the city. The balance was composed of the surviving resistance groups who had not heeded her, or areas that were so devastated or heavily contested that nobody could truthfully claim to have any grasp of them. Had it not been for one factor, her victory would have seemed inevitable.
Her men had put up barricades of furniture, overturned carts and torn down buildings across two of the three routes leading towards her problem, and she stood at one such barricade now, considering the building that had loomed so large in her own life.
The palace was the late Colonel Ulther’s miniature replica of the Emperor’s own in Capitas, a stepped ziggurat with, as she knew, just as much space below ground as above. The majority of the surviving Myna garrison was dug in within the edifice: doorways, balconies and windows bristled with soldiers ready to shoot or sting anything that came within their range. There was also a small catapult that the Wasp artificers had assembled, but Kymene had the luxury of assaulting the grand building from any side she pleased, whenever she chose, and to move the cumbersome weapon around the engineers would be forced to dismantle it each time.