Tactician, word arrived from her engineers.

Report, demanded Akalia. In her mind’s eye she saw the west wall of Collegium as her scouts could now see it through their glasses. The patient voice of one of her artificers guided her through the stress fractures, cracks and damage that her engines had done to it over the last few days.

The wall is holding out better than we had anticipated, the artificer explained. The Beetle-kinden mortar remains semi-solid indefinitely, and so there is a great deal of flexibility in the wall. However, damage to the stones themselves is now quite widespread. There is considerable cracking and, even with the artillery left to us, we have been able to accurately expand the stress areas that you see here.

Just tell me when, Akalia snapped at him.

There was a moment’s pause in which the artificer conferred with his colleagues.

We think today – late today or early tomorrow. We were considering holding until tomorrow in any event, to give us more time for the assault, and-

No! she ordered. Today! If we can possibly be within Collegium’s walls today, then we must make all efforts. The artificers of Vek have so far proved themselves inferior to these Beetle peasants on every level. You know what you must do to change that.

The artificer capitulated hurriedly. She had the sense of him hurrying off to order an increased barrage from the siege engines.

This had gone on too long already. The greater Wasp city-state must have already done its job, because her scouts would have spotted Sarn’s approach by now, but she still felt that the scholars and merchants of Collegium were laughing at her behind their walls.

Not for long, though. The King of Vek had given her free rein on how to punish the resistance of the city, after she had taken it, and that thought was her only consolation as she waited for the walls to fall.

‘Master Kymon!’ the man was shouting. ‘They’re coming!’

He panted to a halt and Kymon just had to stare at him and wait for his wind to return. If this had been an Ant-kinden defence he would know already what it was the man had seen, not only in words but by the very image. His halfbreed Kessen watcher was dead, though, and he had to rely on word of mouth. This was unbearably frustrating.

At last he snapped, ‘What did you see? Troops? Engines?’ Above them the Ant artillery was still pelting away at the wall. Each shot made the stones shift and shudder so that Kymon had pulled his cowering soldiers back from them in case they suddenly fell, even though Collegium’s architects had assured him that they were far from cracking.

‘Engines, Master Kymon, with soldiers behind. Ramming engines, I think.’

Under cover of the bombardment, Kymon knew. The Vekken had already tried rams against all the gates on and off, and the metal-sheathed shutters had dented but never given in. They would be disappointed again.

He was suspicious, though, for even the Vekken had some sense of strategy. ‘What about towers?’ he demanded.

‘Back with the men,’ his lookout reported. ‘The rams are in front.’

‘And these rams? Like the ones we’ve seen before?’

‘I’m not an artificer, but-’

‘Just tell me!’ Kymon barked. He would never have had to shout at Ant-kinden either, but sometimes, with these slow city people, it seemed the only way.

‘Not quite, Master Kymon. Bigger, with a different end to it.’

Kymon cursed the man silently for not being able to just show him. Even so, his military instincts were telling him bad things.

‘Pull back from the wall!’ he shouted.

‘We’re already-’

‘Further, you cretins! Or I will personally flog every last one of you!’

His men began to shamble away, talking amongst themselves and lagging. Kymon bared his teeth and fought down his temper.

‘What’s going on?’

He rounded on the speaker and almost shouted down his throat before he saw it was Stenwold.

‘The Vekken are trying something new,’ he explained shortly. ‘How long before they reach the wall, boy?’

The lookout spread his hands helplessly.

‘Well, how fast were they moving?’ Kymon asked him, thinking that-

He picked himself off the hard flags of the street, head ringing, and saw all around him that his men, even Stenwold, were strewn about, similarly jolted off their feet.

‘Get up!’ he bellowed at them, hearing his own voice as strangely distant. They looked dazed, stunned. Stenwold’s eyes were wide.

‘They sent a petard against the wall!’ Kymon informed him, knowing that he was speaking too loud. Even as he said it, another explosion rocked them from a hundred yards south, and a third followed on its heels. The Vekken were using engine-mounted explosives driven directly into the stones so as to crack the city open. He turned fearfully, looking for the wall.

The Beetles of Collegium had done well, for it still stood, but it was obvious that it would not stand for very much longer. He watched how the latest explosion rippled the stones like canvas in a breeze.

The Vekken artillery kept on launching, and he saw great chunks of stones still bound with mortar falling out to crash onto the streets right in front of his men.

‘On your feet, all of you!’ he screamed at them, and there was something in his voice at last that reached them. They were clustered together too close, they were shaken, terrified, even. As more stones fell from the wall he strode out before them, shield on one arm, drawn sword in his right hand.

‘Listen to me!’ he shouted at them. ‘The wall will fall and it was always going to. You, boy!’ He pointed at the ashen lookout. ‘Go to the other walls, get men with the right materials to repair a breach. Go now!’ As the lad ran off Kymon glared at the rest of them. ‘You, though, you’re staying here with me, and those Vekken bastards are going to be inside your city in minutes, you understand? They’re going to punch a breach in that wall with their engines and then come flooding through, soldiers in better armour than yours, with better training than yours, and you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to hold them at the wall. You’re bloody well going to stop them getting into your city. You understand me? Not my city. I’m a Kessen and I wouldn’t have a city like this to defend for all the wasting world, but your city, and the only people in this whole city who can keep it yours are you! You men and women standing before me now!’ He was conscious of a greater shattering behind him which was echoed in the stir of the soldiers before him – and that Stenwold Maker now had a repeating crossbow in his hands and had cranked back the string.

‘When they come through,’ he bellowed at them, ‘they will loose their crossbows first, to try and clear the way. I want shieldmen at the front, everyone with a decent-sized shield. Behind them, crossbowmen, Master Maker here will take his shot when he sees the best time, and you all shoot when you see him do it. There will be a lot of rubble. They will have to move forward over it. You will just have to stand still, so make that count for you.’

He stared at them, seeing city militia, artisans, shopkeepers, factors and merchants, dockworkers, porters, immigrant labourers, street-brawlers, black-marketeers and a handful of professional mercenaries.

You’ll just have to do, he thought, and then, If I had a command of Kessen marines we’d sort these bastards out.

And he turned, and the wall came down.

It was so close on evening, the sky darkening almost visibly. The Vekken had left it to the last minute, but their artillery had finally done its job. The widescale weakening created by the petard engines and the incessant pounding of the trebuchets and leadshotters had first knocked holes in the wall and now it was tumbling, great clots and sheets of stone peeling away until the wall before and to the left of him was dissolving into an utter chaos of tumbling masonry.