Kaszaat was grinning, and most of the others smiled at least a little, their newest colleague still learning how things were done.

‘One project at a time is the rule,’ Kaszaat explained. ‘When we really get to work, when the war effort calls, all resources are devoted to one project. This time you’re the lucky one. It’s your project. Three factories, hundreds of workers, all of us, all concentrated on your devices.’

The thought made his head swim. It was all happening far too fast for him.

‘I had better start my testing,’ he said. The other artificers were already fanning out across the factory, each heading to his or her own task. Kaszaat was about to go as well, when Totho caught her arm.

‘Tonight I… Could I talk… come to talk to you, tonight? I need… I just need…’

‘You just need someone,’ her smile was ambiguous, ‘and I can be that someone. Perhaps I need a someone also, sometimes.’

A

Twenty-Six

‘The gates are sealed,’ said Lineo Thadspar. He looked older than ever.

‘Did the last train get away?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘No, they were too long in loading it.’ The Speaker of the Assembly sat down at a War Council that was greatly different in constitution to the first one. As the Vekken army had neared there had been many who had decided that war was, after all, not for them, and others had surfaced in whom an undreamt-of martial fervour had been kindled. The stone seats were lined with College Masters, artificers and city magnates who had found in themselves the means to greet the hour. And that hour had now come.

‘They were still leaving by the western gate until an hour gone, but the Vekken are just outside artillery range of the walls on all sides now, and anyone leaving would fall straight into their hands,’ reported Waybright, one of the survivors of the original council. ‘They have not totally encircled us, but they have set up regularly spaced camps.’

‘They’ll want you to try to attack them at the gaps, to see them as divided,’ Balkus said seriously. Nobody had exactly invited him here, but he went where Stenwold went, and unlike most there he had experience of Ant war firsthand. ‘But we – the Ant-kinden – we’re never divided. You should remember that.’

‘We’re in no position to attack them, in any event,’ Lineo Thadspar said.

‘Precisely how strong are these gates?’ Kymon asked. He had a rough map of the city before him and he traced its boundaries with a stylus. ‘This is a weak city against force of arms. The walls are pierced all over. You have a river, the rail line, the harbour. The gates themselves, how strong are they?’

‘We learned a few tricks after our last clash with the Vekken,’ Thadspar said.

‘Likewise the Vekken,’ Stenwold cautioned.

‘That’s true, but I hope we’ve learned faster than they. It is, after all, what we are supposed to be good at, here at the College.’ Thadspar leant over Kymon’s map. ‘Our gates have secondary shutters that slide down from within the wall. My own father’s design, as it happens. They are of dense wood plated with bronze, and they should withstand a hefty strike from any ram or engine you care to name. There is a grille that has been lowered where the river meets the city and, while they may eventually break through it, they will at least not surprise us by assaulting that way. We have gates across the rail arch, too, and I have engineers buttressing them even now. The harbour… has certain defences. What is their naval strength, anyone?’

‘Nine armourclads, plus one really big one,’ someone reported from the back. ‘And two dozen wooden-hulled warships. Plus four dozen small vessels and half a dozen very large barges that they’re holding back. Supply ships, I suppose.’

‘They will attack the harbour soon,’ Kymon cautioned. ‘I myself have been given the west wall to command. Who has the south?’

‘I do,’ Stenwold confirmed. He could feel the tension in the room slowly screwing tight, the image in everyone’s heads of Ant-kinden in perfect step making their encampments around their city of scholars. ‘I’m open to any suggestions.’

‘What about the supply situation on our side?’ Way-bright asked. ‘We’ve had people leaving in droves these last few days, and yet there have never been so many within our walls. All the satellite villages west of here have emptied, some of the people have come here with nothing but the clothes on their backs.’

‘We have always husbanded our harvests well,’ Thadspar said. ‘We will ration what we have, and we need hold only until the Sarnesh arrive to relieve us.’

‘Masters,’ Stenwold said, ‘I will now say something we have all thought, to ourselves. The Vekken were defeated last time because the Sarnesh relieved us, although we held them for tendays before that happened. The Vekken know this. Even they are not so blinded by pride and greed that they will have forgotten.’ He looked around at them, face by face, and so few of them would meet his gaze.

Kymon did. ‘You’re saying that the Vekken believe Sarn will not aid us. Or that even Sarn’s aid cannot tip the balance.’

‘A secret weapon?’ someone suggested.

‘All speculation,’ Thadspar insisted. ‘Why should Sarn not aid us?’

‘We have no idea of the situation,’ Stenwold insisted. ‘It is simply this. The Vekken are here. They do not relish defeat, and so they must believe they can win.’

‘Perhaps they seek to capture the walls before Sarn can even get its army here,’ Waybright said. ‘If they already had the city, Sarn might turn back.’

‘All I am saying is that we cannot fight this war on the assumption that the Sarnesh will rescue us sooner or later,’ Stenwold said. ‘If we fight, we must fight to drive them away with whatever strength we have ourselves.’

They did not like that. He could see that none of them wanted to accept it. A holding action, they thought, just until… Kymon met his eyes and nodded.

A messenger burst in, a young Beetle girl quite out of breath. ‘Their artillery is shooting at us!’ she said. ‘What do we do now?’

Kymon stood. ‘All officers to your posts!’ he snapped. ‘Stenwold?’

‘Here.’

‘If the harbour falls, the city falls, and they’ll attack it, tomorrow or the next day at the latest. Everybody listen: if you have someone coming to you with means to defend the harbour, send them to Stenwold. Everything will count.’

The Vekken were very efficient in their mustering. When Thalric and Daklan had put the Empire’s invitation to them an army had been raised in mere days. The Vekken, like all Ants, were soldier-born. The soundless call had gone out into the city, and without a spoken word it had been answered by the thousands of the war host of Vek. There had then been the matter of material, machines, supplies. It was a matter long settled, though, for Vek had been looking for this war for decades, awaiting the moment when Sarn’s protective hand was lifted from the reviled city of scholars. The supplies were already laid in, the machines in readiness, the crossbow bolts and engine ammunition neatly stockpiled. Each year the tacticians of Vek had convened and added what further elements they could to the plan, while their artificers continued their patient progress.

So, when they had arrived and surrounded the city, it had been a wonder of discipline. There was not a man but who knew to the inch where his place was. The engineers had begun instantly bringing forward their machines: lead-shotters, catapults and scorpions, trebuchets and ballistae, a great host of destruction of every kind that the artificers of Vek could conceive of. The smaller machines were unloaded from carts, or had progressed under their own mechanical power. The larger were constructed on the spot even as the artificers made their calculations, their crews untiring and careful to a fault. To the watchers on the walls of Collegium it seemed that the Vekken battle plan unfolded as smoothly as a parchment, spreading out and around their beloved city.