Dragonfly Falling

‘Troublemakers,’ Drephos said crisply. ‘The lazy, the malcontents, the unskilled, the grumblers — all those picked for me by my foremen, though fewer than I had hoped. Still, it will have to be a sufficient sample for this test, because we have little time.’

‘But they’re people!’ Totho said.

‘Are they any more people than the soldiers your weapons will be used against? Did you think you could bring such a weapon into the world and keep your hands clean?’ Drephos asked him. ‘I hate hypocrisy, Totho, and I will not tolerate it. Too many of our trade are ashamed of what they do, and try to distance themselves. You must be proud of what you are. War and death are the gearwheels of artifice, remember? This is meat, useless and replaceable meat, no more.’ His gauntleted hand fell on Totho’s shoulder paternally. ‘You have made this beautiful device. You must be the first to give it purpose. Now load it.’

His hands trembling, Totho thumbed back the slot at the breech of the weapon and slipped a finger-length bolt into place, the missile’s presence closing the slot automatically. He remembered a sleepless night designing that very mechanism, with Kaszaat breathing gently beside him. He was thinking, I will not do it. I will not do it, but his fingers completed the now-familiar task with a minimum of fuss.

‘Charge it,’ Drephos said quietly. Totho’s hand was already on the crank, and five quick ratchets of it pressurized the air in the battery.

‘Ready your bow,’ Drephos said, and slowly he raised the snapbow, feeling its snug and comfortable fit against his shoulder. I will not do it, his mind sang again.

‘Shoot,’ Drephos said, and Totho was frozen, his fingers on the release lever. ‘Shoot!’ the master artificer said again, but he could not. He was shaking, his aim veering. The range of targets at the far end of the hall had not yet realized what was going on.

‘This is a test, Totho, a test to see whether what I purchased was worth the price. Remember our bargain. Your friend is alive and free, and in return you are mine.’ And on that word his metal hand clenched on Totho’s shoulder like tongs, and Totho pressed the trigger.

The explosive snap of the release of air echoed down the length of the hall. He had been aiming, perhaps unconsciously, at the most heavily armoured target, the man (or was it a woman?) in the heavy sentinel plate. Now he saw the clumsy figure fall backwards. He could hope that just the impact against the metal might have knocked it over, but there was no movement, and he thought he saw a clean hole had been thrust through the steel.

‘Loose at will,’ Drephos decided, quite satisfied, and all around them the artificers loaded and shouldered their weapons.

Totho lay sleepless in the dark and he shook. His mind’s eye was glutted with the work of those few seconds, the ears still ringing with the discrete ‘snap-snap-snap’ as his inventions — the work of his own mind and hands — had gone about their purpose.

Drephos had been ecstatic, declaring the test a complete success. Even at the range they were firing, the bolts had not scrupled to pierce plate armour or punch through rings of chainmail. Only the Spider-kinden silk armour had at all slowed them down, the fine cloth twisting about the spinning missiles and preventing them penetrating. They spun, of course, because of the spiral grooving Totho had instituted on the inside of the snapbow barrels, giving the weapons greater range and accuracy. It had been an innovation that Scuto had made to Balkus’s nailbow, he recalled.

A skilled archer, Drephos estimated, could make five or even six accurate shots within a minute, a novice perhaps two or three. Their use was easy to learn, and in Helleron they were even easy to make. There were factories working day and night now to produce the quantity Drephos wanted. As soon as they were manufactured and tested they were handed to the waiting soldiers that Malkan had detailed to Drephos’ project. It took barely a day of constant practice for them to be smoothly loading and shooting as though they were born to it. The snapbow was a weapon for the common man, just as the crossbow had been, which had thrown off the shackles of old mystery centuries before.

But all Totho could think about now was that armoured figure falling, some innocent Beetle man or woman who had caught the foreman’s ire. And then they had all been dropping, and the spears of the soldiers had stopped them fleeing, and in the end the last few had tried to rush towards the waiting line of artificers, giving Drephos his chance to see the damage of a point-blank shot.

I did this. He, Totho, had brought this thing into the world. I have found my place here now. I have earned it.

He clutched at his head. He felt as though that part of him he had always thought of as himself was dropping further and further away, slipping down some well or shaft, never to be seen again.

He must flee. He must escape from Helleron.

And do what? His own mocking voice in his head. And go where?

I will find Che.

Who is in the arms of her savage lover even now, and does not think of you.

I don’t care. I love her.

Fine way to show it, joining her enemies and sleeping with a Bee girl.

His fingers knotted in his hair, unable to blot the thoughts out. I love Che! I always have!

You cast-off. You sorry failure. All your life you have been nothing, despised and ignored. Now you have been offered something real: a place, a reason to live. Drephos understands you.

He cannot. He doesn’t even know what love is.

Of course he does. He loves with a passion you have never known. He loves his work. He loves progress. All the things you once professed.

I am not like him.

You are his heir in all things.

He threshed on his bed, kicking at the blanket. The voice in his head was like a person there in the same room, calmly and patiently dismantling everything he had ever thought. It was all the worse because the thoughts came from nowhere save within him. This cold world that had opened up to him in Tark, when he had seen what war and artifice could really do, had become the world he must live in.

I cannot go on, he insisted. The guilt will destroy me.

Guilt? hissed the voice in his head. Do you not realize that you can let go of guilt now, and shame, and love? You have been clawing at them all this while, when there was a chance you would return to what you were, but you have taken the final step now. You can never be the man you used to be. Your hands have become true artificer’s hands, to build or destroy without conscience or remorse. You can let go of guilt, now, and relax. You are across the barrier of mere humanity and over the other side. It’s all meat now, expendable and replaceable meat.

And Totho writhed and twisted, but had no answer to that.

Thirty-One

Master Graden had taken his own life.

Stenwold sat in the War Council’s chamber with his head cradled in his hands and thought about that.

They had put the sandbow, Graden’s much vaunted invention, up on the wall. The enemy crossbows had raked the battlements even then, and shafts had stuck into shields and sprung from stone, or punched screaming men and women off the edge of the wall. Kymon had been shouting for them to ready themselves for the strike. The tower engine had almost reached the height of the walls, with sixty Ant-kinden warriors waiting on its platform and more ascending from below. Another two towers were close by, the Ants hoping to swamp and then hold this section of the wall. Ant artillery was pounding at the wall emplacements which were returning shot, or scattering loads of scrap and broken stone into the Ant soldiers below.

Graden had been so enthusiastic, running his apprentices ragged to get the sandbow into position, the great tube and its fan engine. Then he had told them to turn it on.