They were shooting. All the men on the walls were shooting, either straight ahead or slightly upwards. Salma heard the grinding thunder of mechanisms, and the arm of the trebuchet atop Parops’s tower flung itself forward, slinging its load of man-sized stones in a high arc. All along the slice of wall that Salma could see, other engines were busy doing the same.
Then the Wasps were at the wall itself, and what he had only been told about became real.
The first wave was a great ragged sweep of spear-wielding savages who hurtled into a field of crossbow bolts. There were already deep holes punched in their scattered mass. Salma watched almost three in four get ripped from the sky in that first instant, as soon as their silhouettes appeared in the sky above the walls. Some were killed outright. Others screamed and plummeted from the air to be finished on the ground with pragmatic brutality. The surviving attackers paid them no heed. Some alighted on the walls. Others ploughed into the waiting men below or scattered across the city. They were in a blood-rage, foaming at the mouth, hurling their spears and blasting with their stings, drawing great slashing swords from their belts to lay about them. One came down close to the tower’s entrance, flinging his lance with such force that it punched right through an Ant’s chainmail, knocking the man off his feet. Salma leapt out instantly, taking to the air and dropping on the attacker with sword extended. Another Ant was there already, and the Wasp savage took both sword-blows simultaneously. He howled in something that was more rage than pain, swinging his own blade at Salma and then at the Ant soldier, cutting a long dent in the latter’s shield before falling.
There was a second wave of them at the walls already, coming too swiftly for many of the soldiers to have reloaded, although the repeating bows had taken a savage toll of the incursors. There was now hand-to-hand fighting all along the wall, and attackers kept dropping, or sometimes falling, down into the courtyard before the gates.
Salma had never seen Ants in combat before. There was no confusion here, no hesitation. The invaders were set upon efficiently, without haste. All found that any Ant they attacked was ready for them as those they tried to surprise turned to see them. The Ants had a hundred pairs of eyes watching each one’s back. The Wasps took a toll with their stings and their frenzied hacking, but how small that toll was! Most of their second wave had been turned into corpses, all for the loss of no more than two dozen defenders.
‘Get back inside, you!’ one of the Ants shouted over at him. ‘No place here for a civilian.’
‘I’m not a civilian!’ Salma called back. ‘Look, I have a sword!’
The man was about to answer him when something pulled his attention upwards. They were all looking up, and across all those raised faces one expression was asking: ‘What.?’
And then they were moving. Without a word, without panic or cries of alarm, they scattered as best they could. Those at the edge of the square were backing quickly into the side streets, others were pushing up against the wall itself. Some found the shelter of doors or doorways. All this in the space of seconds. Salma would have remained standing still if an Ant had not cannoned into him, pushing him back into the tower door, where he collided with Totho so that all three of them fell in a heap.
The first explosion came across the other side, just left of the main gate. A crack of sound, a burst of fire and stone and dust, flinging half a dozen soldiers up and away, shearing through the next nearest squad with jagged metal and shards of stone. Up above, the trebuchet was winching itself ponderously round, while other enemy missiles were landing now, some right before the gates and others impacting on nearby buildings in a sporadic and random rain of fire. Wherever they struck, they split and burst, cracking stone and flinging pieces of their shells in scything arcs. Soldiers everywhere were holding their shields up, falling back to what cover they could find. Each second yet another fireball burst close about the gates, and there had been so many soldiers gathered there a moment ago that each missile claimed at least one victim. Salma, clinging to the doorframe, saw shields punched inwards by the invisible fists of these explosions, a nearby door smashed to kindling, men and women given a second’s notice before being blown apart.
Yet there were no screams, and it seemed horribly unreal with that essential element missing. The Wasps that had come in first had screamed and shouted in fury and terror, but the Ants even died in silence, save for whatever last words they conveyed through that essential communion between them. In their last moments, he wondered, was that link a blessing for the fallen, or a torture for those still standing?
The artillery atop the wall was still pounding away, and Salma could see the Ant-kinden weapons, the ballistae, catapults and all the other murderous toys of the Apt, pivoting and tilting to get the range of the enemy siege engines. Totho went struggling past him, repeating crossbow cradled in his hands, even as another wave of Wasps passed overhead. These were the ones that Salma was familiar with, more disciplined and better armoured: the imperial light airborne. There were crossbows enough to deal with them but they had seized their moment and swiftly struck before the defenders had regrouped. Some circled overhead, spitting down with their stings, while others bedevilled the wall or passed into the city. There were strangers amongst them, Salma spotted: men of another kinden wearing breastplates and leathers in the imperial colours. One of these passed low over the crouching soldiers, and cast something behind him that erupted in a plume of fire and shattered paving flags.
Salma felt his wings flare into being before he had even decided what to do next, and an instant later he was springing for the wall-top. He caught a descending Wasp as he did so, the force of his flight driving his blade between the man’s armour plates and doubling him up in agony. Salma let the sword go, pushing upwards the height of the wall to leap up next to another Wasp soldier while the man was grappling with one of the defenders. Salma twisted the blade from his hand and stabbed him with it before even alighting on the stone walkway.
It was not chaos, but it was not far off. Beyond the wall the plain was crawling with war machines. Many of them were still flinging their explosive burdens inside the city despite the presence there of their own men. The walkway of the wall had become a mass of small skirmishes. The Ants were stronger and more unified, but the Wasps could fly and they took full advantage of it, dragging men and women off the walls or stinging their victims from on high and swooping down on them from all angles.
But the defenders below were rallying. The crossbow-shot began to pick up, Wasp attackers plucked from the air by the increasingly thick and accurate barrage. There would be no chance for Salma to take wing now without the risk of being taken for an invader. He looked about for a chance to intervene and then a Wasp leapt at him from over the battlements, almost knocking him off the walkway altogether. He grappled fiercely with the man, each keeping the other’s sword away. The Ants were fighting all around him but each would be waiting for a mental cry from him for help and Salma could not give it.
The Wasp was the stronger and he began forcing Salma back so that he was pushed half out off the wall, hanging over the battlefield beneath. The rough stone ground into Salma’s ribs, but then he got a knee up into the man’s groin and twisted around, using the soldier’s own force to pitch him headfirst into space.
The man’s wings rescued him, but he took a crossbow bolt even as they did, and fell. Salma dropped to one knee behind the shelter of the crenellations and tried to take stock of what was going on. Most of the flying attackers had been dealt with but their artillery was still moving. Salma risked a quick look over the wall.
Some of the enemy engines had been destroyed, but others were still active and an explosive missile struck Parops’s tower even as he watched. The Ant artillery seemed to be concentrating on the engines that were still advancing. He could see two of those in particular that seemed mostly armoured metal plates, like great woodlice, grinding forwards with their own mechanical power. One rocked under the impact of a scattering of great stones that put huge dents in its armour.
There were more fliers streaking overhead. One of the firepots landed on the walkway close by, throwing him from his feet and casting three Ant-kinden off the wall entirely, down onto their brethren below. As the next flier streaked close over the wall-top, he jumped up and rammed his sword home. The impetus of the man’s flight nearly dragged Salma from the wall, but he succeeded in wrestling his opponent onto the walkway.
Something beyond the walls exploded thunderously, with enough force to shake every stone beneath his feet. He dropped onto the man he had just stabbed, his head ringing with the din, and then dragged himself upright to look.
The armoured engine was gone. Instead there was a crater ten yards across, and splintered metal thrown ten times that distance.
Its brother engine was unfound by the artillery so far, and now it began to attack. A fat nozzle in its front opened and spat a great stream of black liquid out onto the wall, coating and clinging to the stones. The Ants were shooting down on it but it was inside the arc of their artillery fire and crossbow bolts simply shivered to pieces or bounced from its plating. Salma watched in horror as the black stain spread across the face of the wall, before the flood slowed to a trickle and stopped.
