But, Tactician, from another officer, what’s happened to us? Our bows . . .?
Metaphysics can wait, Milus replied sternly. Shields up and hold, and let them shed blood for us.
Tynan did not want to hear casualty reports just then. He reckoned that perhaps a third of his ground-bound troops were still out there fighting to get clear of this new foe. He had lost dozens of wall engines . . . but what matter when his own artillerists seemed unable to use them any more? The sky, by now, was completely swept clean of orthopters from both sides.
It’s the end of the world. In his head, a mad little voice was saying that this was something out of the old Inapt legends, back from the myth days of monsters and magicians. Impossible things were happening and, worst of all, they were happening to his city.
The Light Airborne had fared best – already in the air and mobile enough to get wherever they wanted. Their officers had made the right call and pulled them back from their attack on the Lowlanders to throng the breach with bodies, on the ground itself and all up the jagged edges of wall on both sides. Beyond them, the infantry and support of the Second and Third armies was in headlong rout, fleeing for the compromised safety of the city.
And the enemy . . . the enemy? Tynan had thought these must be some new Lowlander ally at first, but the foe that he had been expecting to fight was not taking advantage of the sudden disintegration of the Wasp position, and instead looked to be keeping well clear of whatever was happening here. The earth-kinden – whatever they were – just kept erupting out of the ground, a great boiling host of them like maggots pouring from a wound.
Like worms, said an old, old part of his mind steeped in the stories they used to frighten children with.
They threw themselves at the retreating Wasps with a shocking speed and savagery, and no sense of self-preservation at all. Their beasts, that scrabbling tide of centipedes, were underfoot everywhere, the smaller lunging upwards to sink venomous fangs into legs, the greater ones rearing up to coil about their victims, rending armour, driving down at men’s faces with claws agape.
By now enough officers had contacted him that Tynan could start giving some kind of orders but his mind was still scrabbling for what orders he could possibly give. His mouth was getting the words out, though, as decades of military experience took over, shunting his stunned surprise to one side.
‘Get me a perimeter across the wall!’ he snapped. ‘Use all the infantry you can, spears and heavy armour.’ Why did we let them take away our Sentinels? Not those useless machines but the elite heavy troops who would have stood off this tide until dusk, if they’d had to. ‘Airborne, get yourselves over them – I don’t see them flying, and I don’t see them with bows. I want a storm of stingshot into their heads as they come in, and I want strong stingers flanking the breach and backing up the infantry. Consortium!’
‘Sir!’ Some clerk or other, but coming at his order.
‘Get into the city. Get every man of our kinden . . . get every adult of our kinden, men and women, everyone who can sting. Everyone comes to defend Capitas. Go get your people to spread the word.’
The clerk stared at him, wide-eyed, but was off into the city the next moment.
The breach was meanwhile filling up with heavier troops, freeing up the Airborne who had seized it first. Tynan saw a great solid block of Vesserett Bee-kinden – solid armour, axe and interlocking hexagonal shields – take up their positions and brace, with Wasps stationed ready to sting over their heads. Ernain’s lot, he thought suddenly. Stab me, but I’m glad we’ve got them.
‘They’re still coming, sir!’ Major Oski dropped down beside him. ‘The ground keeps just pissing them out and pissing them out. There’s no end to them.’
Thank you for your contribution, Tynan thought, but before he could actually say anything, one of the Airborne dropped down beside him.
‘General, they’re climbing the walls. We’ve got stingers up top, but not enough.’
Tynan nodded, looking back into the city. Sure enough, here came the first wave of stunned-looking Wasp-kinden – artificers, Consortium book-keepers, intelligencers, factory overseers, wives, mothers, surgeons, whores – all the little cogs that made empires and armies run.
Well, today they’re all soldiers. ‘Go, get any Wasp not in uniform up on the walls and sending stingshot downwards. Men, women, slave, free – I don’t care.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sir?’ It was Oski again, and when Tynan rounded on him he shrugged helplessly. ‘Sir, I don’t seem to be able to do my job, with the . . . with the . . .’ He waved his arms towards the surviving wall artillery that was sitting idle and devoid of meaning. ‘You need a messenger or something?’
‘Good man, Major.’
The surging tide of earth-kinden and their sinuous beasts went crashing against the breach, barely held in check by the Wasps and Bees stationed there. The air above them crackled and sang with a storm of stingshot.
And Oski was right: they were still coming.
‘Sod me, just look at them,’ Straessa breathed, horrified. To say that she had never seen anything like it would be sheer understatement. The sight of the soldiers of the Worm venting up from the earth, clambering over one another, a great coiling mass of human bodies driven by one hungry purpose – it was not something that anyone should have to see.
‘Tactician says to hold,’ the Sarnesh man told her.
‘Oh, no fear,’ she assured him. ‘I don’t see me wanting to go any closer to that, thanks.’
‘Antspider.’ The voice was Gorenn’s, though it took Straessa a moment to recognize it. Something completely unfamiliar seemed to have gripped the Dragonfly woman.
‘I know,’ Straessa assured her.
‘No, you do not. This is wrong,’ Castre Gorenn insisted.
‘You don’t need to tell me. I never saw anything more wrong in my life,’ Straessa agreed, increasingly aware that she and the Dragonfly were speaking at cross-purposes.
‘What is going on?’ A new voice – that of Balkus forcing his way through the Collegiate troops to get to her. ‘What are those things?’
‘Why would anyone expect me to know?’ Straessa demanded of the world in general.
‘Listen, Antspider.’ Balkus looked frightened – in a way that even the wrath of his fellow Sarnesh hadn’t made him look. His nailbow hung on its strap, a useless deadweight. ‘Most of my lot are saying that we either run away or we charge.’
‘What?’
‘My Inapt, which is most of us Princep lot – Roaches, Moths, Spiders, all that – they’re going crazy. They want out, or if there’s no out, they want to get stuck in.’
‘Orders are to hold,’ came the emotionless tones of Milus’s mouthpiece.
‘Sounds good to me,’ Balkus admitted, ‘but I’m not joking when I say that my lot won’t just sit still for long.’
‘Orders are—’ the Sarnesh started again, but Gorenn cut across him.
‘Straessa, we have to fight them.’
‘Are you insane?’ the Antspider demanded.
‘You don’t understand what you’re looking at,’ Gorenn insisted.
‘No, I don’t, which is why . . .’ Straessa tailed off, looking past Gorenn at one of the Mantids, one of those whipcord-lean old women who seemed to make most of their decisions. ‘What does she want?’