‘Armoured heliopters,’ Che corrected. ‘A stupid idea, really.’
‘Why?’ Achaeos asked. ‘Not that I don’t think the same about all these machines.’
‘We were all worried that the Ants wouldn’t think like fliers, but it seems the Wasps have been guilty of the same thing. You can armour a heliopter all you like, but you can’t armour the rotors, and that’s what keep the machines in the air. The Sarnesh fixed-wings will be able to shoot them down and-’
Her words failed in her throat, because the Wasp army had just exploded. Its entire front ranks were now in the air, a great buzzing cloud that was sweeping forward on to the patiently advancing Ant line, filling the whole sky.
*
Sperra had a telescope but did not care to use it, handing it mutely to Che instead. Putting her eye to it, Che saw a slice of the world wheel crazily, tilted and blurry. Then she had the battlefront focused, a wall of flying Wasps surging forward like a breaking wave to smash against the front lines of the Sarnesh.
One instant it seemed that no force on earth could withstand that great rushing charge, a thousand men of the light airborne, hands extended to sting, wings sweeping them down the valley of the rail line. Then her point of view was filled with lancing rain, but rain lashing upwards in near-solid sheets, and she heard Sperra gasp and Achaeos curse. Only then did she realize that it was the crossbow quarrels from the leading Ant-kinden, sleeting upwards at a range that the Wasps’ Art weapons could not match. She wished, then, that she had seen it all, as the other two had, that sudden black flash of bolts, shooting in absolute unison, from the forward Ant formations.
And the Wasp charge was now in chaos. It was nothing she could follow with the glass and so she took it from her eye, trying to make sense of the mad buzzing clots of men that the charge had been broken up into. From her vantage point she could see the carpet of dead which that first round of quarrels had produced, still some distance ahead of the inexorable Ant advance, but the remainder of the Wasps were heading in all directions. Some were turning and fleeing back to their own lines, others over on the flanks were still attacking, trying to take the Ants in the side. But as they swung around they met the long arrows of the Mantis-kinden, and the Mantids themselves, wings flashing to life as they drove upwards with blades flashing into the suddenly scattering Wasps. Many of the Wasps just tried to push on through, streaking over the Ant formations with their stings flashing down as points of golden light, mostly to crackle uselessly over raised and overlapping shields. They were being slaughtered even as they flew, for the formations behind the leading edge of the advance had their crossbows too and even at this range Che could hear the bang-bang-bang of nailbows from infantry and from the automotives.
The Wasp heliopters were looming large, now, lumbering through the air to get above the Ant-kinden and bombard their tight formations, but the Ant fixed-wings flashed past them, nailbows blazing. One of the cumbersome machines was clipped from the sky almost instantly, tumbling forards with enough time for half a revolution before its armoured lines split asunder against the ground. With shaking telescope Che saw the sparks of nailbow bolts striking against the armoured hulls of the others, while the heliopters’ ballista and leadshotter fire kept trying to pin down the swifter Sarnesh fliers.
The Ant advance had not slowed, even now that the lead heliopters had begun to drop explosives on them. Flame and shrapnel flowed in broken chains across the Ant soldiers. The formations quickly broke up as the heliopter was directly over them, and then massed back together once it had passed, but there were undoubtedly gaps being blasted into their lines. There were too many soldiers in too close a space to avoid it all. Che saw one of the heliopters falter in the air suddenly, struck by nailbow shot from the automotives, and then plummet down amongst the Ant soldiers without warning, smashing an entire unit apart with the impact.
Beyond it, a fixed-wing exploded in mid-air, showering burning metal. The Wasps had pivot-mounted leadshotters behind their lines and were starting to lob missiles at the flying machines, and also in long curving arcs over the heads of their own men and into the Sarnesh advance.
And yet the Ants did not falter, not even for a moment. Their formations flowed like water, breaking under attack, reforming a moment later. They were still moving at the steady, patient pace that they had started with, despite the casualties that were starting to mount.
The Wasps had drawn up a battle-line now, with five score of armoured sentinels in the centre, and shield-bearing infantry with spears on either side. More of the light airborne were flocking over to the flanks, and Che saw them swing wide of the Ant advance, coming to attack the rear. On one side the Mantis warriors were holding back deliberately, sending out their arrows but keeping their places. On the other the Ant liaisons had been killed, and about half of the Mantids suddenly dashed out – on the ground or in the air – and attacked the Wasp airborne as they passed over, making an entirely separate swirling battle that quickly fled away from the main one.
The opposing lines were closing, the telescope told her. She felt Sperra and Achaeos take wing to drop down from the automotive, and realized that the first casualties were being carried in, but she could not stop watching. There was crossbow- and sting-shot being exchanged all the way down the line, with the Wasps taking the worst of it. Their shields were smaller, and they lacked the Ants’ great advantage that every man was looking out for all the others as the enemy shot came in.
The Ants at the rear of the advance suddenly reversed face, raising their shields against incoming airborne that had swung round behind them, and the crossbow quarrels started sleeting up again. Then the Mantis-kinden who had been holding back were suddenly there, dashing across the ground more swiftly than Che could believe, or leaping into the air with a flare of wings, and the Wasp light airborne broke as the Mantids tore through it, and individual Wasps were darting away, trying to get back to their own side.
She dragged her attention to the lines, and caught them just as they clashed, the Sarnesh suddenly upping their pace to a thundering run, hundreds of armoured men throwing their weight behind their shields and crashing into the Wasp line. Some fell to the Wasps’ levelled spears but their shields managed to turn most of the spearheads or even shattered the shafts, and then they were smashing into the Wasp line, swords stabbing frenziedly, and to either side the second-rank formations were deploying, turning the line of the Ant army into a pincering curve.
Another heliopter – and she thought it might be the last – trailed fire over the Ant ranks, and the Wasps were fighting furiously, their line buckling slowly but hundreds of their soldiers coursing back and forth over the heads of the enemy, lancing down with their stings at any visible weak point. The telescope was revealing too much to her now, all the bloody work that war was, dripping red swords and faces twisted in pain. More and more Wasps were rushing into the fray to shore their line up, until their full numbers had been committed and they could stop the Ants from encircling them. The warriors of the Ancient League were scattering all over the field in knots of ten or twenty, launching sudden attacks against the Wasp flanks and then falling back, or sending arrows high to kill unsuspecting soldiers in the centre of the Wasp lines. Che sensed that all that had gone before was but prologue to this moment, the soldiers of both sides now dying in their hundreds. In the air were the remaining flying machines, surrounded by the Wasp light airborne that latched onto them and cut at their cables and controls, and also by giant insects – the Wasps’ own namesakes – that were urged on by unarmoured riders brandishing lances and crossbows.