By this time, the pilots had reported seeing a large Imperial column heading towards the Mynan enclave, travelling with automotive-hauled siege engines. Nobody liked the sound of that.
‘Pick up the pace,’ came the order, directed at soldiers already making the best time they could, and then the first barricades were sighted – mounded banks of rubble hastily shovelled into place by the Wasps to keep the Mynan relief from crossing their own city.
Stenwold and Kymene had gone forwards to see what the Empire had achieved in the time they had grudgingly allowed it.
Not so much, was the opinion, but it was plain that the Empire had made a serious stand there. He saw the spears of heavy infantry, a handful of repeating ballistae and leadshotters.
‘Worth going round?’ he asked Kymene.
‘If it was, would they have devoted so much to this?’ A rhetorical question. ‘The street to their left, you see it? That curves back round behind them, though. Scouts say it’s all bombed to pieces – craters, rubble, hard going – but we’ll take it at a run, fast as we can. There’ll be snipers there, most likely, but let’s hope not many. Meanwhile . . .’
‘We’ll hold their attention,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘You think Rosander’s up for it?’
This last was for Paladrya’s benefit, in her notional position as Sea-kinden liaison. In truth, Rosander was plainly like the sea itself, a force not to be commanded or channelled.
‘He’s not turned away from a fight yet,’ she confirmed. It was an unavoidable truth that the plight of Myna had not affected the Nauarch of the Thousand Spines, nor was he remotely interested in the political differences between the Empire and its enemies. He was concerned instead with stamping his mark on the land, in being the first and only man of his people to defeat the land-kinden at their own game. He was enjoying himself and, every time his hugely armoured Onychoi lumbered into battle, Stenwold was grateful once more that they were on his side. It could have been so different.
‘You stay back,’ he cautioned Paladrya.
‘And you? Will you stay back with me?’
He grimaced. ‘The Maker’s Own need me to direct them. They’ll be marching right there in Rosander’s wake, to hold whatever ground he takes.’ For the Onychoi simply did not understand about securing their conquests – they just went forwards – and if the Wasps flew back down behind them, they would never know.
‘Well, then I come with you,’ Paladrya told him.
‘You don’t even have armour—’
‘And you’ve been to such pains to tell me how these snapbows wouldn’t care if I did,’ she pointed out.
To Stenwold’s annoyance, Kymene smirked at that. ‘She has you there. And, besides, with the way they’re deploying their Airborne, being at the rear’s no guarantee of remaining safe.’
‘Well, then.’ Stenwold threw up his hands. ‘Let’s be at it. Stay safe, Kymene.’
‘Tell that to the Wasps.’ She was off then, shouting to her followers, the black and red armour of the Mynans feinting a rush towards the Imperial position – drawing their siege engines out of line – before flooding off to one side, keeping up the pace even when they hit the broken, bomb-scarred wasteland beyond.
‘Rosander, they’re all yours!’ Stenwold yelled. Then: ‘Maker’s Own! Form on me, maniples ready to advance!’
He saw several flights of Airborne lift up from beyond the barricade, obviously about to go after Kymene, but then the Sea-kinden were in motion, a great armoured wedge of them advancing like the tide towards the Imperial lines. The Airborne were abruptly in confusion – Stenwold had the sense of conflicting orders, a difference of opinion on where to commit their forces. If he had been in charge, then he would have sent the Airborne off anyway – only a fool let himself be flanked – but the onrush of Rosander’s warriors was a fearsome and alien sight. The Airborne scattered, swirled, and dropped back down at last. By then the artillery was loosing – a leadshotter smashing one Onychoi into bloody fragments, ballistae bolts bursting and flaring as they exploded, with mixed results. Stenwold saw at least one man get knocked flat by the impact, but simply lever himself up again, heavy mail crazed with lines but obviously holding together.
Then Stenwold’s feet took him forwards, snapbow in his hands and Paladrya at his back, and with the soldiers of the Maker’s Own on both sides. There was almost none left now of those who had earned their battle cry and motto by going with him to meet Tynan’s Second Army that first time. He bellowed it out anyway, ‘Through the Gate!’ and heard it taken up all along the line, a ferocious, bloodthirsty roar such as nobody had heard from the Beetle-kinden since their revolution.
The Onychoi charge did not slow. Some of them died – struck through the eyeslits or throats by snapbow bolts, their strong armour punched in by the fists of leadshotters or torn open by the explosive spears of ballistae – but their thunderous approach ignored it. Perhaps they were moving with such momentum that they could not have stopped if they had wanted to.
The Wasp infantry met them at the crest of the barricade, levering at them with spears, turning them back and prising them over, the shifting, sliding slope of loose stone denying them footing. The Onychoi fell back, scraping down on their backs, lurching sideways off balance. The Wasps were not even trying to pierce that indomitable mail, but only to keep them back, to buy time. The expressions on the defenders’ faces spoke eloquently that they understood they could not win, only lose over a longer period of time.
The Sea-kinden’s own bolts were tearing into the defenders, and Stenwold’s people were shooting now – picking them off because they had to hold the top of the barricade to keep the Onychoi at bay.
‘They’re fighting behind!’ Paladrya yelled in Stenwold’s ear, and he saw that it was true. The Airborne were shooting at a new enemy – Kymene had made the distance even faster than he had expected.
He saw the first flash of black and red as the Mynans surged into view, and then the defence of the barricade collapsed. The Airborne took to the skies, fleeing to some other bottleneck. The infantry tried to run, but by that time Kymene’s force was behind them, and the Mynans were not inclined to take prisoners or show mercy.
The Onychoi finally gained the top and went skidding and scrabbling down the far side, and Stenwold could only imagine what the Wasps could think in their last moments, faced with these warriors from beyond any civilized nation they could imagine, strong and resilient beyond belief. He found himself rushing at their very heels, not a foe left there for him to fight, then he broke off to find Kymene again.
‘They’ll throw something else in our way,’ she told him, ‘but we have a clean run to their column, the scouts say. If we move fast, they won’t have the time to set another blockade like this one.’ Her troops were marching off, double time, already scanning the skies for the next band of Airborne.
‘Come on, Maker!’ Rosander’s voice boomed nearby. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Nothing. I’ve waited long enough for this.’ Stenwold saw Kymene’s odd look and knew that she would not understand. Yes, this was her city, but he had seen it fall twenty years before, and he had not been present the last time the Mynans had fought free of their conquerors. This time it would be real for him. This time he would personally see Myna free, and perhaps lay to rest those decades-old memories.
He was not young, and he had plenty of old injuries to drag him back, but somehow he kept up the pace, though Paladrya had to steady him whenever he lost his footing on the rubble. On all sides the broken facades of Myna gazed at him hollowly, spurring him on with their mute reminders. Occasionally the snapbow bolts sang out – he saw men and women go down and get dragged into cover by their comrades, but they fell singly, and the Wasps could not slow the rest enough. He had the sense of the Empire’s brutal hold on this city disintegrating.