‘We’re not slavers,’ the bandit leader replied. ‘Too many of us have been on the wrong end of that market to risk trying to sell there.’ He smiled, teeth flashing in his dark face. ‘Commonwealer, aren’t you? I’ve known enough of your kind in my time.’ He swung off his horse, and Salma heard the clatter of a scale-mail cuirass beneath Cosgren’s coat. Without needing orders, two of his fellows got down off the horse they shared, and the three of them walked past Salma to peer into the wagon.

‘You’re slaves yourselves?’ Salma asked. As his fellows prodded through the grass in the bed of the wagon, the leader turned back to say, ‘Some of us.’

Salma had spotted the colours of that scale-mail, then, and the design of the sword the man bore. ‘You’re an Auxillian,’ he said.

For a long moment the bandit leader regarded him fixedly, until at last he said, ‘So?’

‘There are no friends to the Empire here,’ Salma explained. ‘I was a prisoner in Myna myself, once.’

‘There’s nothing but the wagon,’ one of the bandits said. ‘And even that’s nothing you could borrow money on.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the Roach Sfayot. ‘But we have nothing, no goods. No food, even, until we stop for the evening and forage.’

‘You have women,’ the bandit leader noted. ‘Roach-kinden, isn’t it?’

Sfayot regarded him narrowly, waiting.

‘You sing, dance? Anything? Only I remember your lot as being musical.’

Sfayot nodded slowly.

‘Well then we’ll deal,’ the bandit leader decided. ‘We have a commodity for trade: safe passage on this road. In return, you’ll trade us some entertainment. And we’ll break our bread together, or whatever you can find. And then we’ll decide what we’re going to do with you.’

A

Twenty-Eight

The morning began bright and cloudless, and Stenwold had the dubious pleasure of being able to see it. Balkus had kicked at his door an hour before dawn, and then carried on kicking until Stenwold had arisen.

Now he was in his temporary base in the harbourmaster’s office, the harbourmaster himself having taken ship at the first word of the Vekken advance. Around him were his artificers, his messengers, and a fair quantity of others whose purpose and disposition he had no ideas about. Balkus stood at his shoulder like some personification of war, his nailbow in plain view, and Stenwold tried to imagine what would happen when the naval attack actually took place.

The harbour at Collegium had been designed to be defended. There was a stubby sea-wall sheltering it, and the two towers flanking the harbour entrance held some serviceable artillery, if not particularly up to date. There was a chain slung between these towers, currently hanging well below any ship’s draft, that would serve when raised to prevent a vessel crossing that gateway, or that was the theory. Defence had been a priority in the minds of the architects, certainly, but they had lived two centuries ago, and had never heard of armourclads, or even of ships that moved by the power of engines rather than under sail or with banks of oars. Since then, defence had been a long way from anyone’s mind right up until the Vekken had turned up with a fleet.

Out-thought by Ant-kinden, he cursed to himself, trying to find some gem of an idea that might save the day. If the Vekken could land their troops, those superbly efficient paragons of Ant-kinden training, then the docks would be lost in half an hour, and the city in just a day.

‘They’re moving!’

The shout roused Stenwold from his ruminations. He rushed over to the expansive window of the harbourmaster’s office and saw that the funnels of the armourclads had now started to fume in earnest. Four smaller vessels were beginning to make headway towards the harbour, whilst the huge flagship had begun to come around with ponderous but irresistible motion. The small ships of the fleet began to tack around it, some by engine power and a few by sail.

‘Is the artillery ready?’ Stenwold demanded. ‘Where’s Cabre?’

‘Gone to get the artillery ready,’ said one of the soldiers with him. ‘It’s in hand, Master Maker. All you need to do is sit here and watch.’

‘No,’ muttered Stenwold, because he had to do something, and yet what was there to do? ‘Master Greatly, is he…?’

‘He said that he was ready, although I don’t believe a word of it,’ said one of his artificers, the man with the underwater explosives. ‘He did say you could go and watch the launch if you wanted.’

‘Yes, I do want,’ Stenwold decided. He looked around for Balkus. ‘Where’s…?’

There was a dull thump from quite close by, and he felt the floorboards shudder. For a mad second he was two decades younger and in the city of Myna, with the Wasps’ ramming engine at the gates.

‘What was that?’ he demanded, but nobody knew, so he rushed to the window and saw three buildings away a warehouse burning merrily, its front staved in.

‘Sabotage!’ someone shouted and, even in the moment that Stenwold was wondering coolly who would sabotage a warehouse, a second missile was lobbed from the great Vekken flagship. It flew in a shallow, burning arc, and it seemed impossible that it would not just drop into the water, but their range was accurate, and in the next moment another of the dockside buildings had exploded.

Most of the Collegium dockside was wood, Stenwold realized dully, and then, They must be sighting for our artillery. There was only a brief stretch of sea-wall at Collegium, but the two stubby towers that projected were already launching flaming ballista bolts and catapult stones towards the approaching armourclads, sizing up the distance. The siege engines on the Vekken flagship must be enormous, though, the entire vessel a floating siege platform. Collegium’s harbour defences could not hope to match the range.

Something flashed overhead, and Stenwold saw a heliopter cornering madly through the smoke. It was a civilian machine, some merchant’s prized cargo carrier, but its pilot was putting it through manoeuvres its designer had never anticipated. Behind it barrelled a sleek fixed-wing flier, propellers buzzing, and then a heavy Helleron-made orthopter painted clumsily with a golden scarab device. The airfield had begun to launch its defences. He should go and see how Master Greatly was doing.

And someone called, ‘Look out!’

He turned, idiotically, towards the window, just in time to see the whole wall in front of him explode. The incendiary blast hurled him away in a raking of splinters, knocking everyone else off their feet. He hit his own map-table, smashed it with his weight, and a wall of heat passed over him. He could hear himself shouting out some order, but he had no idea what.

Then he was being helped to his feet, and for a moment he could not see, and his face and shoulder were one mass of pain.

‘What’s…? Who’s…?’

‘Steady there.’ The voice was Balkus’s but there was a lot of other noise, too – the crackling of flames, the cries of the wounded. He let Balkus guide him blindly away and prop him against a wall.

‘Now hold still,’ the Ant said. People kept running past, jostling him, and he felt stabs of pain as Balkus plucked the worst of the splinters from him. He wiped his face, feeling blood slick on his hand. The injured were still being hauled from the harbourmaster’s office, even as the room burned.

‘Is everyone…?’ he started, and then realized: ‘The fleet! Is the chain up?’

‘No idea,’ Balkus said, and Stenwold staggered away, thumping down the stairs with blood seeping into his eyes again, and Balkus trying to keep up. From somewhere there was another explosion, another flaming missile from the Vekken flagship.

He staggered out into the clearer air, that was nevertheless blotched and stinking with smoke, onto the flat open quayside. Ahead of him was the calm stretch of the harbour, and the two stubby walls with their artillery towers, with the great open space of water between them.