‘Making inroads, sir. They’re a mongrel lot but they’re all armed. Our troops there are trying to hold them, but we’re taking losses from their artillery and their wheels.’
‘Where are the Sentinels?’ Tynan growled.
Amnon’s automotive bounced and rattled over the scrubby ground in the vanguard of a great straggling wedge of machines that had coursed its way almost unopposed down one side of the Second Army. The enemy had not known what to do with them — and they were gone before any orders could be given. A steady drizzle of opportunistic snapbow bolts and arrows had banged and rattled off the automotives’ sides, and at least one machine had slewed to an halt, its driver hit, but Amnon’s wing of the mechanized assault was almost untouched so far.
They were turning now, beginning to drive in towards the marching formations, and at the same time the Imperial soldiers were mustering their response. He saw units turning to face the Collegiate machines, kneeling or standing with massed snap-bows levelled, but beyond he could see Light Airborne gathering above.
He heard three whistle blasts, keening over the roar of the engines, two short and one long, meaning Charge. Beside him, the artificer manning the smallshotter swung the weapon ahead, squinting through the slot in the metal plate someone had bolted onto the engine to cover her. Amnon took up his own snapbow, though his hands itched for his sword hilt.
‘Down!’ advised the driver, and at the same time they scavenged a burst of speed from somewhere, wheels leaping over the uneven land as they rushed the enemy line. Thus, on both sides, an uneven arrowhead of ramshackle machines were turned into a hammer to crack open then Second Army’s flank.
Amnon had been knocked back by the sudden acceleration, and so he was already out of the way when the snapbow lines loosed. In his mind, the sound was like a sudden squall of rain against the metal plates shielding the vehicle. He saw the low-set automotive to his left suddenly swing towards him, its driver dead at the stick, and a moment later it had flipped over entirely, bouncing and jumping enough to fling out the bodies of its crew.
‘Watch the skies!’ he roared, as loud as he could, but the chances were that nobody heard him over the roar of the machines and the incoming hail of a second snapbow volley. A moment later the Imperial line broke, the soldiers trying to get out of the way of the metal tide. Most had left it too late. They were armoured too heavily to fly, so it became a matter of sheer chance whether they were struck or passed by, buffeted to the ground.
Amnon stood up again, unwisely, but he needed to see what was going on. Over there were the transporters, but they were too far, too deeply buried within the enemy, and the Airborne were coming down. He shot upwards, killing his target neatly, but knowing that he had no time to reload. A moment later his sword was clear of its scabbard, and the Wasp stooping down on him, blade drawn back and off-hand blazing, was cut from the air as soon as he came within reach. All about Amnon, the Airborne were trying desperately to drop onto the automotives, and some even managed it while others missed, either left behind or — for the luckless — caught in front of the rushing machines.
Nevertheless, they were taking their toll. Taking stock for just a moment, Amnon saw at least four machines had gone off course or halted, falling instant prey to the Wasp landbound infantry.
He hacked at another man that came for him, but the Airborne soldier veered out of reach, only to take a snapbow bolt in the back and tumble away — Amnon never knew whether the shot had come from his own people or the Empire. Nobody was doing well out of a skirmish fought at this speed. Then there was a hollow boom audible well over the engines, and one of the Collegiate machines went from full charge to full stop within a moment, its front staved in by the fist of a leadshotter ball, its stern lifting high with frustrated momentum, until it had turned over completely.
The whistle signal went up again, just two short blasts: Fall back and regroup. Amnon ground his teeth as his automotive wheeled around — smallshotter still barking out its answer to the Imperial artillery — and rattled back the way it had come, along with its fellows.
‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded. ‘We were reaching them!’ That was a lie and he knew it, but the enemy transporters — with their part-assembled greatshotters — had been within sight at least, and to turn away now was maddening.
‘Their automotives are coming back, Master,’ the driver replied, and a new stillness came over Amnon as he scanned the dust-covered, soldier-cluttered landscape for the Sentinels.
The block of Imperial infantry looming ahead seemed absurdly vast compared to their own modest squares. It came stomping across the plain torwards them in perfect time, the sun glinting on the spearheads and making the gold of their armour flare. In the old days such a unit would have relied entirely on spear and sting, with support from some Auxillian crossbowmen, but some attempt had been made to modernize, and Gerethwy, peering through his glass, now reported that the second rank was armed with snapbows.
‘I make out four ranks,’ Straessa noted. ‘Only the second has ’em, you say?’
‘Is what I see,’ the tall Woodlouse-kinden confirmed.
A whistle blast was sounded, long then short: Halt and loose. Straessa passed it on, hoping very dearly that all these orders were originating from someone who knew what they were doing. She called out, ‘Ready!’ needlessly, for her soldiers knew the signal and their weapons were charged, each bringing snapbow to shoulder, even as they slowed. And then, ‘Loose!’
The maniples to left and right managed to shoot at approximately the same time, catching the Imperial infantry as they were still advancing, and she saw the ranks of the big unit — four hundred soldiers or more in all — rupture and ripple under the impact. They slowed then, and she distantly caught the sound of their officers’ voices, eclipsed almost immediately by her own shout of, ‘And loose!’ She was trusting to her people to have reloaded by now.
They had, their volley ripping into the tight-packed enemy even as they formed up. Straessa was surprised to see just how much damage they had done, the number of sprawled bodies and crawling wounded. And now they shoot back, she thought, and her mouth bellowed, ‘And loose!’ leaving her faintly amazed that her shopkeeper soldiers had got off three complete volleys before the Wasps had managed a reply.
The concerted sound of the Wasp second rank discharging their bows sounded like a great clap of hands, and bolts went whistling past her even as she heard it. The man next to her took one in the eye, a woman in the third rank took one straight through the chest, past breastplate and coat without slowing much. A Mantis-kinden pikeman cursed and dropped with red spreading across his thigh. The call went out for stretchers before Straessa even needed to order it.
She could name all three of the casualties, two of whom were now beyond anything the surgeons could do for them. Yet in her mind was the thought, Is that it? and on her lips, ‘And loose!’ All the while, her eyes kept watching the bludgeoning that her little force — and all the other little bands of Merchant Company soldiers — were inflicting across the front lines of the enemy.
‘I reckon it’s one in three down, for them.’ Gerethwy didn’t trust his mechanized bow at this range, so instead he kept his glass on them, unflinching even when a passing bolt plucked at the sleeve of his buff coat.
‘And loose! What’s going on?’ Straessa lowered her own weapon, hands automatically palming a bolt from the box at her waist and slipping it into the breach; then cranking the air battery to charge it, the mechanism smooth and easy as if it was new oiled from the workshops. Even as she asked that question she understood. Wasp infantry was the army’s mailed fist, used for breaking the enemy lines by main force, and in close quarters. They were stacked shoulder to shoulder, in contrast to the looser spread of the Collegiates, so that the incoming shot could barely miss them. And the Collegiates had three snapbows per four men, while the Empire had just one.
Sod me, the Antspider thought, slightly awed, we’re winning.
Then someone shouted, ‘Fliers coming in,’ and she saw that the Wasp Light Airborne was back to support the infantry. There were a great many of them, a cloud of flying men arching overhead, but this tactic had not worked against the Ants at the Battle of the Rails, and the Collegiates were ready for it. Straessa directed her people to worry about the Imperial infantry, who were plainly realizing that their only hope was a solid charge to get into spear-range. The Collegiate squares behind the front line, mostly unbloodied so far, would be training their snapbows on the incoming Airborne and, though the fliers had the same weapons, shooting on the wing was a challenge for a Fly-kinden marksman, let alone a regular Wasp soldier. And snapbows were quite accurate enough to pick off fast-moving targets.
Straessa saw the Wasp infantry form up to advance — so few of them now compared to just moments ago — but the constant volleys of shot got the better of them, and soon they were pulling back and then disintegrating completely, individual soldiers making their getaway at the best sprint they could manage. For a moment she
