Totho stared. He felt nothing except cold, as if someone had stabbed him somewhere vital, and he was simply waiting to die. He felt nothing, and he realized that meant not even guilt or remorse.

At the Great College they had told him that he would never amount to anything.

‘Loose!’ the master artificer called once again.

At close range, the twin ranks of the snapbowmen stopped the advance in its tracks. So many men and women fell in that one instant that those behind were caught, trapped now with a tangle of dead comrades before them who a moment ago had all been living and breathing, had been kindred minds within theirs.

‘Down bows and back!’ Drephos told his protA©gA©s. ‘General Malkan’s move, I think.’

‘Why stop now?’ Totho asked hopelessly.

Drephos smiled at him. ‘Ammunition, Totho. Have you any idea how many bolts we’ve loosed in the last few seconds? Let Malkan spend his men instead, since they are more easily replaced.’

Already the Wasp soldiers of Malkan’s army were rushing past on either side of the firing line, both on the ground and in the air, descending on the battered Ant-kinden with sword and sting.

Before setting out, General Malkan had left Drephos two thousand soldiers in Helleron, but in the end the foundries, though working day and night, had produced only twelve hundred snapbows, and so Drephos had done the best he could with what he had.

Back among the surgeons, Che was tying another bandage when the invisible wave of news washed over them. In an instant all the Ants were up, and beginning to move the wounded onto the transport automotives. They worked as carefully as they could, but there was an edge of haste to them that she had never seen in Ants before.

‘What is it?’ she asked them. ‘What’s happening?’ but they had no answers, just grimly took up each wounded soldier who still had a chance of survival and stretchered him or her away.

Sperra took her telescope back from Che and leapt into the air, putting it to her eye and holding place with her wings.

‘They’re retreating!’ she called, her voice shaken. ‘The Sarnesh are falling back!’

‘What?’ Che asked. It made no sense. They had been advancing steadily. ‘What’s going on? Tell us, Sperra.’ Beside her, Achaeos patiently strung his bow.

‘The men at the front are standing their ground, but the Wasps are all over them, and the rest are… they’re running. They’re actually running. They’re keeping their shields over their heads, but they’re coming back fast.’

All the remaining automotives were pulling up, and there were men throwing open the doors of the train. Che stared at it all in disbelief. ‘This can’t be happening!’

‘The Mantis-kinden on the right edge are still fighting,’ Sperra was saying, her voice sounding less and less steady. ‘They’re fighting like madmen, I’ve never seen the like, never – but they’re all fighting alone. They’re killing them, killing the Wasps, but there are so many coming at them now – they’re falling! All of them, they’re falling!’

‘What about the left flank?’ Achaeos called up to her.

‘They’ve drawn back with the Ants. The Sarnesh who stayed to hold the line, they… they’re being overrun! What can they do? They can’t get all the way back here before the Wasps catch them!’

The last Ant adjutant assigned to the Mantis left-side company saluted Scelae. He was shaking slightly, but nothing else in pose or voice told anything more of the horror that was in his mind.

‘They suggest you pull back,’ he told her. ‘Two companies are going to stand here and hold them off, to allow our people to reach the automotives and the rail line.’

‘Will that be enough?’ Scelae asked.

‘They say it will have to be. We must fall back towards the city.’

Scelae cast around. She had lost no more than a quarter of her force because, spread out as they had been, the new Wasp weapon had whipped mostly into empty air around them. ‘You!’ she called, pointing to one of her Moth-kinden, a girl and one of their youngest. Scelae had no time to assess her fitness for the task, time only to give the order.

‘Get on to that moving rail-machine,’ she said. ‘Then fly on to Dorax when it stops. Fly, and keep flying until you’re there. They must know of this. Go now.’

With a look that was close to tears, the Moth darted off.

‘I need help,’ Scelae said to the other Moths, a mere dozen gathered close to her. ‘I need what help you can give me. I know I cannot command it, but you see what must be done here.’

‘We see what a Mantis must do here,’ said their eldest, an old man of more than sixty years. ‘We shall give you what we can.’

‘What can we do?’ one of the others demanded. ‘The sun is out! What can we achieve, in broad daylight?’

‘You forget yourself,’ said the eldest. ‘Magic is fear, uncertainty, doubt. Where better to find these things than on a battlefield? Now join with me.’

Scelae turned from them, trusting them to do what they could. To the expectant Ant adjutant she said, ‘When your companies make their stand we shall stand with them. Tell your masters that.’

‘That is now,’ the Ant said, and indeed the Wasps were approaching, on the ground and in the air, a wave of the Wasp soldiers who so recently had been fleeing, but were now howling for revenge.

The nearest Ant companies had formed a long shieldwall two men deep, with crossbows levelled at the rear. The soldiers braced for the impact of the Wasps, knowing that in their sacrifice, their inevitable deaths, they would buy their kin time to run for home.

When that was all they had to give, they gave it gladly.

‘Ready!’ Scelae called. Already there were Wasp airborne streaking overhead, diving on the running troops, their stings crackling, or racing onwards towards the auto-motives.

She had lived a long enough life, she decided. Spying for the Arcanum in Sarn, she had not thought to be given this honour at last: to die as a Mantis ought.

‘Hunt out your deaths!’ she cried out to her warriors, and they raised their weapons and rushed forwards.

‘I cannot see-’ Sperra gasped. ‘No! I see some soldiers staying behind to hold them back. The Mantis… The Mantis-kinden are fighting on the left. They have charged the Wasps-’ She choked on the words for it had been like watching sand disappear before a wave. They were in there, though, spinning and slashing, inside the Wasp formation, cutting and killing, and dying. ‘They are holding them!’ she cried out. ‘I think… I think some of the Wasps are fighting with each other! They are falling on each other, butchering each other in mid-air.’

The first of the running soldiers were past them now, heading for the train. The wounded were still only half loaded on board.

‘I think-’ Sperra continued, telescope still to her eye, and just then the first of the Wasp airborne struck her, sending her tumbling from the sky. He had been lunging blade-first, but in his haste only his shoulder had struck; he swung round for another pass and an arrow sprouted beneath his armpit, and he spiralled away with a yell.

Achaeos nocked another to his bow. The Ants doubled their pace with the wounded soldiers, knowing that some would die from the exertion, but more would if they did not.

‘Ach!’ Sperra was now holding her ribs, cursing but desperately trying to find her telescope. Che lifted her bodily onto the nearest automotive, despite her protests.

‘Go!’ the Beetle told her, and then the machine was moving, grinding off, as soldiers flooded along beside it, filling the train neatly from the front carriages back, orderly even in defeat.

Achaeos loosed his second arrow, and then a brief moment of desolation and despair swept over him. Out on the field, the madly fighting ball of Wasps had swept over the little group of Moth-kinden, silencing what magic they had raised against the minds of their enemies.