‘Ready!’ called out a young officer nearby — that Antspider woman, Stenwold recognized; Eujen Leadswell’s friend. ‘And loose!’
The stuttering racket of hundreds of snapbows exploded from around him, rippling along the wall as the other maniples took their cue. Stenwold saw soldiers falling from the sky, here and there, but the great mass of oncoming enemy seemed undiminished. All around him the Company soldiers were recharging and reloading their bows and, although they had trained and trained again, and although many of them had actively fought before, now their hands shook and he saw plenty of faces taut with fear. Because this is our home and they’ve come this far.
‘And loose! Pikes brace!’ the Antspider shouted. When she had discharged her own snapbow she slung it over her shoulder and drew a rapier from her belt. Beside her, Madagnus focused on targeting another ramming engine, muttering calculations to himself with utter absorption, as though nothing else in the world mattered.
Then the Airborne were on them. All along the wall, the Inapt soldiers of the Companies had levelled their pikes so as to make a mass onslaught by air as costly as possible, and nobody had actually imagined that the Empire’s soldiers would just blunder right in, but that was exactly what happened. Whether it was bravery or stupidity or merely momentum, Stenwold never knew, but he had a chance to get off one shot with his little snapbow — too close to miss, right into a man’s face — and then he was almost thrown off the wall altogether, with a Wasp solder scrabbling on top of him, his sting-warm hand finding Stenwold’s face. A moment later a Company soldier had put a bolt into the assailant, the impact sending the Wasp convulsing off Stenwold, and down, down towards the streets of Collegium. Stenwold sat up and dragged his sword from its sheath.
All around him was a bitter, frantic melee. The men of the Airborne were trying to get to the wall engines, and in that same moment Stenwold saw the fighting wash over a leadshotter along the line, the artillerists cut down by sting even as they were sighting up, and then a handful of Wasps trying to lever the weight of the machine off the wall entirely, before the Company soldiers could get to them. Interspersed with the human soldiers had come a handful of their insects, not acting to any battle plan but just mad for killing, their sheer carapaced bulk slamming into the Collegiate soldiers, stings and jaws jerking convulsively even as they died. Most of the pikes had been abandoned by now — many with luckless Wasps still impaled on them — and the Company soldiers were switching from sword to snapbow as chance allowed them. Stenwold saw the Antspider, standing practically back to back with Madagnus, as she lunged forwards an impossible distance to pierce a Wasp’s throat, then drew back to parry a sword blow aimed at her chief — whilst a pair of Fly snapbowmen crouched in her shadow and shot at whatever presented itself.
Overhead, the air was full of shot. More and more airborne were arriving every moment, but the Student Company archers positioned a street back — unengaged so far — were sniping at every safe target, meaning every Wasp still in the air. The Imperial death toll was horrific in those first moments, and there was a terrible expression to be seen on the faces of the Wasps. These were the men who had marched here under constant attack from the Stormreaders, and had then faced the last of the Felyen. They had already paid in friends and blood to get this far, and, if they failed now, it would all have been for nothing.
Straessa took down another soldier as he landed — ramming in between his ribs even before he had a chance to see her. Everywhere there were knots of fighting Wasps — her own maniple had been broken apart as the Imperials simply dropped in amongst them, stinging and stabbing indiscriminately. Her only point of stability was Madagnus and his magnetic ballista — and the sound of her own voice, constantly rallying anyone nearby to stand firm with her.
Another soldier stooped on her, but he was dead even as he dropped, taken by one of Eujen’s sharpshooters, and the next flier wore Collegium colours and she still came within an inch of skewering him.
Averic wore a buff coat and a Collegiate lobster-tail helm, and that was just enough to overcome the reality of his kinden.
‘What the pissing pits are you doing here?’ she demanded, jabbing her blade straight over his shoulder at another of the Airborne as the man landed, but this time beyond even her longest reach. ‘And don’t say Eujen was worried about me, or I really will kill you.’
His conflicted expression confirmed the truth of that, or maybe the world didn’t just revolve around her and it was the mass death of his own kin that was torturing him. Even so, when another wave of Airborne was abruptly on them, she saw his hands flashing with his own sting, standing shoulder to shoulder with her.
She saw an opening, and fumbled for her snapbow, the sword tucked awkwardly under one arm. Behind her, Madagnus gave out another shout of joy as he crippled one of the ramming engines.
She had her snapbow to her shoulder, trying to sight along it, when a newly arrived Wasp came up from below the level of the wall and rammed himself into her, the two of them going down in a tangle of limbs. Averic was beside her instantly, hauling the man off. Straessa saw the Airborne instinctively reach out with an open hand, and she yanked at the man’s arm even as Averic’s own sting hammered into the soldier’s chest, melting the armour there but not piercing through. Then the soldier had backhanded the Wasp student, kicking to his feet with a flare of wings, and Straessa stabbed him clumsily through the unprotected leg.
He fell away, and she lost track of him a moment later, because she saw Madagnus get shot. A snapbow bolt came skimming along the line of the crenellations and struck him under the arm even as he aimed, and he pitched sideways with an outraged expression.
‘Chief!’ But by the time she got to him, he was almost all gone. He had a moment to clutch at her arm, no recognition in his eyes, and his last words became just a spray of bloody mist.
She saw Stenwold Maker himself close by, discharging a Wasp snapbow at one of the Airborne, and then lurching over to the wall to measure the rate of Imperial progress down on the ground. She shouted to him that her superior was down, but he heard none of it.
Then he was shouting back at her and pointing down, but she could not make it out, not a word, and then he was drawing back from the wall, still shouting, bellowing even — something about an attack? But surely that was old news: the Wasps were already here. .
They were not alone. She saw the first arm hook over the top of the wall, and Stenwold lunged forwards to hack at it — no finesse, but then none was needed. A moment later the Spider-kinden appeared all along the wall top, because there were other ways to deal with fortifications than with wings.
Straessa cursed, darting forwards to run her sword through a lithe, lightly armoured figure even as the man dragged himself up over the wall. ‘Averic, get reinforcements up here! Get the Mynans, or Eujen, or someone!’
And he was gone, wings a-blur, and she turned to see the Spider-kinden already making a stand atop the wall. Just a score of them so far, but more were on their way, hundreds more.
There was a ferocious hammering, louder than all the other sounds of war except the leadshotters, and one face of the mustering Spider front caved in. She saw a big Sarnesh Ant in a mail hauberk shouldering forwards with a nailbow, knocking Sten Maker aside whilst fitting another magazine to it. Straessa darted in on Maker’s other side, crossing blades briefly with a Spider soldier, letting him get the measure of her before rolling her shoulder forwards to jab at him, even as he tried to pull back out of her reach. Then the Collegiate lines went shuddering back, another flood of Spider-kinden cresting the wall even as the Airborne renewed their attack, and she saw ahead of her, clambering over, a man she recognized from the night fight.