Already there was fighting close by, so he led his people to cover, having them spread out as a rabble of mercenaries was pushed back on his left flank. He saw the Dirovashni snapbowmen advancing in professional order; the Bee city had always been a third player around the Exalsee, never quite matching the inventiveness of Solarno or Chasme, but they were solid warriors, that was plain.
Let’s make some holes in them, see how solid they really are. Totho braced his snapbow against his shoulder, because these models tended to jolt a little. He had a magazine in place, and spread a dozen bolts across the face of the Bee-kinden advance with a single touch of the trigger. His own mail might have turned the shot, but the steel of Dirovashni was not equal to the task; a handful of the Bees dropped before they even realized what was happening. Then Totho’s people were following suit with their repeating weapons, each of them worth a squad of regular soldiers at twice the range, and Totho watched the Bee advance shudder and disintegrate as the attackers rushed for cover.
He let off another spray of shot, hitting little but keeping the enemy at bay, hoping that there were other eyes watching the flanks, because an encirclement was all the Bees could really try at this stage.
The Wasp Airborne tried attacking them shortly after, but Totho and his people were dug in, and their snapbows were more than equal to the task of picking off soldiers in flight. Again the enemy fell back, and those Bees who had tried to take advantage of the distraction were made to regret it in short order. Totho had not lost a soldier of his command.
He recalled leading the defence in Khanaphes, matching modern snapbows against the ignorant ferocity of the Many of Nem. Now his enemies came against him with snapbows, and he was teaching them the same artificer’s lesson.
An automotive would be problematic at this point. It was a detached thought, as though this was some classroom problem of military theory. But, of course, the enemy had not brought automotives.
Is this it, then? Can we hold them here until they run out of will, or bodies?
Then a Fly-kinden was scuttling up to him from behind, one arm bloody.
‘The complex is under attack! You have to pull back!’
Totho stared at her. But we’re winning . . . ‘Attack from who?’
‘Wasp Airborne, and there are Dragonflies as well,’ she got out. ‘And more on the way. The city’s wide open on your right – they’ve all run away there, the lot of them.’
Mercenaries, of course. And if he had two hundred of these repeaters rather than twenty, then he could have held off the entire Exalsee, but . . .
‘Get everyone to fall back to the complex, double time,’ he agreed. ‘We’re still in the fight.’
The gates of the complex were open only long enough for Totho and his followers to get through them, but the skies overhead were already busy. Squads of the Airborne were dropping down wherever there was space, while overhead swooped great dragon-flies, the battle-mounts of Princep Exilla, whose warriors would not be far behind.
The Iron Glove forces pulled back in good order, their superior weapons accounting for any attempt the enemy made to engage them in close fighting. The compound itself was indefensible, though – too many buildings, too scattered. Totho spent precious minutes seeking word of Drephos before the order came: Fall back to the main workshops.
That was the centre of their power, where they lived and slept and worked. Neither he nor Drephos had intended to make a stand there, but the walls were strong enough to contain explosions, the windows few and much of the Glove’s artillery was mounted there.
Even as he was giving his orders, those weapons spoke almost in unison, the shudder of their recoil resounding through the air and the ground simultaneously.
Beyond the walls of the compound, whole sections of Chasme erupted into incandescence, and Totho could only stare, even as his own people ran for the shelter of the workshops. Their own city. Drephos had unleashed their artillery on their own city.
But it isn’t our city now. Even so, he took to his heels to go and find the Colonel-Auxillian, to talk to him, to dissuade him, to . . . Totho did not know what he intended to do.
There were Wasps ahead of him as he came within sight of the main door, but snapbowmen stationed at each window and balcony were stripping them away even as Totho approached, running full-tilt in the perfectly balanced weight of his mail. He loosed a scattering of bolts with his own weapon, tearing down a pair of the Airborne as the men tried to lift off. Then he was inside with the door slamming shut behind him.
‘Drephos, where is he?’ And, of course, the master artificer was at the top level, directing the bombardment. Where else would he be?
Every step of the way up, Totho was rehearsing his arguments, thinking of the streets of Chasme in flames, the hundreds who eked out their existence there, the senseless waste of human life. Bursting in upon Drephos, half out of breath, finding the man giving his cool, clipped orders to the artillery crews via a speaking tube, Totho’s mind reeled and he realized he was wrong.
Drephos looked back at him, and Totho saw the other man waiting for his objections, but instead he just walked over to stand by the Colonel-Auxillian’s side.
‘This is the end, is it?’ he asked, as another salvo of incendiaries fell on Chasme, rooting out the invading soldiers that had tried to use their own streets as cover.
‘We have a few tricks left, you and I,’ Drephos replied. He was strung taut as a wire, but at least some of the energy now animating him was exhilaration. It had clearly been too long since he had been given free rein with his machines.
A word from him, and the sky around the workshops crackled with lightning, the generators below giving up their stored power like a sacrifice. Totho saw the briefly writhing forms of men and insects who had got too close, saw them char and fall. This weapon was the very latest addition to their arsenal, based on accounts of Collegiate air defence.
The attackers were within the compound in force now. Totho saw Imperials and Spiderlands troops and the motley rabble of the Exalsee, all jockeying to get to where the long-reaching artillery could only overshoot them.
All those people. But Totho reached into his heart and felt almost nothing, for Chasme was no town of innocents. There was nobody who chose that place as home who did not live off piracy or the arms trade, or some other manner of vice. It was a wonder the Solarnese had not destroyed the place earlier, before the Iron Glove had made the city too strong to be threatened by the little powers of the Exalsee.
It has taken the might of half the world to break down our doors. An exaggeration, but not much of one.
‘Shutter the windows now,’ Drephos commanded, and Totho rushed across to haul the lever that slammed the iron covers over each open portal, sealing them in.
‘Something new?’ he asked.
‘Nothing I’m proud of,’ Drephos replied. ‘Amateur’s work. I beg your forgiveness in advance. I’m pressurizing the fuel tanks.’
Totho’s mind spun its wheels, imagining the big vats spread around the compound. Yes, you could detonate them, and that would do some damage, but surely not much . . .
‘I understand. What’s your dispersal method?’