Padstock was calling for her soldiers to hold fast, encouraging them, almost threatening them, but they were giving ground on both sides now, and soon there would not be two sides at all, but just a great gaping wound in the city’s defences. Stenwold heard Balkus’s nailbow sound off again, another magazine emptied, and then, stripped of ammunition, the big Ant had his sword out.
Stenwold discharged the snapbow over the heads of his fellows, hitting nothing, and then he drew his sword.
‘Collegium!’ he cried. ‘Collegium and liberty!’
Soldiers were crowding past him, pushing in to hold the gap, their faces taut with desperation. The air was thick with snapbow bolts, like little hornets.
Stenwold stepped forwards, at that moment no more than an extra defender against the tide, and a bolt ripped into him, cutting through his armour and between his ribs and exiting almost in the same instant, puncturing a clean hole all the way through, marked with a spray of blood.
He sat down, more surprised than anything. There was pain, but it came only when he breathed in. When he let the breath go there was just coughing, and blood on his hand when he took it away from his mouth.
He found he could not stand up. The strength that had carried him this far in his fight against the Empire had abruptly deserted him.
Someone was shaking him, which wasn’t helping. He saw Elder Padstock loom over him, her face aghast as it had never been during the fighting. Stenwold tried to reach up to comfort her, but his arm seemed far, far away.
‘Get him out of here!’ she was saying. ‘Get him to the surgeons!’
They must be talking about me, he realized. He tried to tell her that she had more important things to do, but he could only cough.
Beyond her, the Wasps were breaking through, He could only watch, see the last moments of the battle for the gateway, the bloody-minded determination on both sides, no quarter given, not an inch of ground won save in blood and bodies.
Then he was being lifted, a heavy old Beetle man cradled in the arms of a broad-shouldered Ant. Balkus.
Padstock turned back for the fight, chambering another bolt in her snapbow, and Stenwold saw her stagger, struck in the gut by one shot that punched its way out through her backplate. The next bolt snapped her head back, as though she was suddenly looking for the enemy amid the stones of the gateway above her. He saw her fall.
Then Balkus was lurching away, and Stenwold was denied the last moments of the city’s defence, the unspoken heroism of the end, such as never finds its way into the histories.
He felt Balkus stumble to one knee with a gasp, but then the man was up again, shambling and staggering, but putting distance between them and the gate.
A moment later there was a man buzzing about them, a high-pitched voice demanding to know what had happened: Laszlo.
‘Where’s the nearest surgeon?’ Balkus demanded, his voice strained, and then, ‘Piss on your cursed boat, we can’t make it all the way to the docks! Where’s a surgeon, please!’
‘I’ll get one, I’ll get one!’ Laszlo promised, and he was off, with Balkus yelling, ‘And a stretcher!’ after him,
They were three streets away from the gate now, and Stenwold found himself being lowered into a sitting position, his back against the wall of someone’s house. There were soldiers running past them, in both directions. Nobody seemed to be in charge but at least none of them was a Wasp, not yet.
Balkus sat down beside him. ‘Maker. .’
Stenwold managed to turn his head. There was a terrible pallor to the Ant’s skin, and where he had slid down the wall Stenwold could see a red smear. He tried to speak, but the words collapsed into little more than a grunt.
Balkus took a deep breath. ‘If you make it. When this is over. If you win.’ He grimaced. ‘Don’t let Sarn have Princep. You owe me that, now. Do something. Don’t let them ruin everything.’
A long pause.
‘And look after Sperra.’ The Ant gave long sigh. ‘This is a pisspoor way to go. I don’t like it.’
‘Not gone yet,’ it was just a whisper that Stenwold managed, but Balkus seemed to hear it. He did not answer, though.
Then people were crowding him, and he recognized the purple sashes of the Student Company. ‘It’s the War Master!’ And someone saying to get him to the College, where a lot of the healers and stitchers had been stationed.
‘Take him,’ he hacked out the words, jabbing a weak finger at Balkus, not knowing if the Ant lived or not.
The Light Airborne were persistent, but Straessa’s remaining command were allowing them nothing. Atop the wall, they had formed a tight cluster bristling with pikes, and with enough snap-bows to make the Wasps hurt every time they came close. One flank had already gone — she saw Wasps all over the wall there — but Kymene’s Mynans were holding firm on the far side, not so many of them as before, but they were solid, not giving an inch. And it seemed to the Antspider that the Airborne’s fervour was now slackening off. Are we beating them back? Surely we are.
Beside her, Castre Gorenn loosed her last shaft, slung her bow carefully on her shoulder, and then took up a pike that a fallen soldier had dropped, Straessa speculated grimly how many snapbow bolts her followers had left between them. She wondered how the rest of the Companies were faring, and what Eujen was doing. In that fraught time, as she loosed shot after shot, dragging her increasingly heavy sword free whenever the enemy got too close, she had time to wonder about a lot of things.
Then she heard her name called, and a moment later Averic almost bounced off the wall. He was looking pale, and with one sleeve slashed open and bloody. Someone hauled him upright and he clutched at Straessa, gasping ‘Get off the wall!’
‘We can’t. The defence-’ she started.
‘The gate’s lost!’ Averic managed to say. ‘Get down now or they’ll be coming up the stairs for you.’
‘Averic, seriously, we can’t just-’
‘Outwright’s is already going, those of his that can. The Spider-kinden are at them already. You’ve got to move,’ he insisted. He put a hand absently to his slashed sleeve and seemed surprised to see the blood there.
Straessa cursed and peered beyond the Mynans, to where Outwright’s Pike and Shot should be holding their space of wall. To her lurching horror she saw that, yes, they were fighting fiercely, sword to sword, but getting off the wall as well in a desperate rearguard action that looked just one death from a rout.
She had a moment to think about the right thing to do, but she had already made that decision when the Companies had marched against the Second in the field, the last time they came. She had chosen to save the lives of her people then, and she would do so now.
‘Gorenn, get over to Kymene and tell her what Av’s just told us.’
The Dragonfly nodded and launched herself along the wall, her wings a skittering blur, dodging aside from one of the Airborne who tried to sting her.
‘Down the steps! Back into the city!’ Straessa cried out. ‘Keep it ordered, keep the pikes up, and shoot any bastard who tries it on with us! Come on, we’re moving!’