At one point he found himself struggling over another barricade, his feet slipping on the broken pieces of Mynan homes, but it was built lower than the last and the Empire had not stayed to defend it. The liberators were driving the enemy ahead of them like leaves before a storm.
‘Maker!’ Kymene was shouting, and he looked up and saw movement ahead – not an organized force placed there to delay them, but the main Imperial column, a great mass of men and machines seen in slices between the half-fallen buildings. They were reforming, and he saw Airborne all over the sky searching for roosts from which to shoot, whilst others were milling in the streets. He saw the articulated bulk of a Sentinel clatter into view before it made a scraping turn to face the oncoming enemy.
Rosander was already in motion, tireless, inhuman. The warriors of the Thousand Spines pushed themselves to the front and strode forwards into what must surely be the final battle for Myna. Stenwold saw a ripple of shock course through the Imperial lines at the first sight of them.
Kymene kept advancing, sending her soldiers into the buildings on either side to break up the Wasp shooting positions, and Stenwold pushed forwards to keep up with her, the Maker’s Own spreading out to his right, shooting at any Wasp target that presented itself. The sky was still busy, but the Airborne were being thinned out rapidly, those who could not find cover being picked off by the Collegiate snapbowmen. When did we become veterans? Stenwold wondered. But, of course, his own city had been through a lot in the last few years. The Empire had forged the merchants and tradesmen of Collegium into soldiers, and now the Beetles had come to show them their error in that.
Beyond the diminishing Airborne, the remaining flying machines duelled and danced – not a Spearflight to be seen now, just Stormreaders and Farsphex, and it looked to Stenwold as though his own pilots – veterans too – were carrying the day.
A crash sounded from ahead, and he saw a Sentinel plough into the Sea-kinden at full speed, scattering them, crushing a handful beneath it. Its single eye spat fire, the leadshotter ball carving a bloody trough through the Collegiate lines. Then the Onychoi had converged on it, prising and levering at its armour as it tried to shake them off. The cover over its main barrel gaped again, and a Fly-kinden in Maker’s Own colours darted past its face, shoving a grenade into the opening. The flash of the explosive gutted the machine itself but was so well contained by its armour that the surrounding Sea-kinden were barely shaken by it.
He heard Kymene’s clear voice yelling: ‘For Myna! We will rise again!’ and he was just about to throw in his own, ‘Through the Gate!’ when she cried out in pain.
He saw her fall, leg pierced by a snapbow bolt, and a handful of her men cut down with her, Wasp snipers above suddenly making their presence known.
‘Kymene!’ He was immediately labouring over the uneven ground towards her, knowing that he would be too late. ‘Paladrya, stay back!’
He had no idea whether she would or not, but he was closing on the Mynan leader, seeing her clutch at her holed leg while trying to inch herself into cover. A bolt skipped off the stone by his foot, and another cut past his shoulder.
‘Back, Maker!’ Kymene yelled at him, her face pale with pain. A squad of Mynans was pushing into the building to dislodge the snipers, and others were rushing to protect their commander, but they were still too far off. Stenwold had almost reached her, one hand stretched out, waiting for the moment when the next bolt would find her, to snuff her out even as her city was being won.
Something struck him a hammer blow to the skull, and his world flew apart.
The Red Watch man seemed to be on the point of apoplexy when he heard the news. ‘How can they have reached us so fast? How much further to the Mynans?’
Too far, Gannic thought. Lugging the artillery had done it. The Lowlanders – or whatever those things were, because they didn’t look like any Lowlanders he had ever seen – had lacked anything resembling a siege train. If the Imperials had just holed up in the garrison, then they could have held out for tendays against a rabble of infantry, but Red Watch’s tactical genius – or his skewed priorities, rather – had brought them all out into the open like this.
‘Hold them off! Throw them back! Keep up the advance! The Empress wills it!’ Red Watch insisted, and Gannic saw his own despair mirrored in the faces of the other officers nearby. There is no way, he thought. You can’t have it all.
Some of the mid-ranking garrison officers, a couple of majors and some captains, were organizing what defence they could, and were plainly ignoring the voice of the Empress for the foreseeable future. They were sending their best snipers forwards to give the enemy’s sides and rear something to think about, and were trying to throng the buildings on either side with Light Airborne so that the advancing force would get caught in a crossfire. Too little, too late. Too many of those buildings were ruinous shells that gave precious little cover, and besides there were Mynans already rushing inside them, braving the shot to fight over the best vantages. And then they’ll be shooting down on us.
It’s time to leave, I think. But before he could put that thought into practice, Red Watch had hold of his shoulder. ‘Into the orthopter!’ the man was shouting, and Gannic just stared at him blankly.
‘What, sir?’
‘The orthopter, the Farsphex!’ And, yes, in the direction of Red Watch’s shaking finger, there was a Farsphex, summoned here by who knew what signal. ‘Get in. You can drop the Bee-killer directly on them from the air.’
Gannic stared at him in utter astonishment. ‘Sir, I’m not a pilot.’
‘It’s got a pilot. You can be the . . . what, the bombardier! Do it!’ Red Watch cuffed him across the head with a gauntleted hand. ‘Do it!’
‘Sir, have you seen the size of the gas canisters? The Farsphex aren’t kitted out to drop anything that big.’
‘Then you’ll set the thing off and just roll it out of the side hatch!’ Red Watch roared into his face. ‘Go! The Empress commands!’
‘Sir . . .’
Another blow fell. ‘Do it, you traitor!’
‘No, sir, the Mynan—!’
‘We will hold the Mynans!’
Gannic held up his hands, desperately trying to fend off the man’s fists. ‘The other Mynans, sir! They’re here!’
At last the Red Watch man stopped and looked round. They had been advancing along one of the main thoroughfares of the city, offering a good straight run up the tiers of steps leading all the way to where they had the Mynan population bottled up. Except the bottle had broken. The locals had realized that help was on the way, and they had not been content to sit around waiting for it. A veritable avalanche of angry Mynan soldiers and citizens was flooding down from the heights with vengeance in mind.
‘Trigger them now!’ Red Watch spat out. ‘The canisters . . . set them off now. Here and now, all of them.’
‘In the middle of our own soldiers?’ Gannic shrieked at him. ‘Are you insane?’