Her fists were clenched, and he saw the small claws there slide in and out of her knuckles. There was more in her eyes than mere pleading, and he felt her Art stir there, the force of it touch his mind, trying to turn him, to make him like her and pity her. That Art was weak, though, sapped by her own despair, and he shrugged it off almost effortlessly.
‘You know… I could have easily killed you,’ she got out.
‘I’d guessed it. You cannot spin that into an obligation.’
‘No.’
‘Do you regret not doing it?’
She stared at him. She was obviously at the very end of her leash, stripped of her strategies and schemes, more and more transparent in her desperation. ‘No,’ she said, and he wished that he could believe her.
He felt a sickening lurch inside him at the thought of what he was going to do, all the perils and unspeakable foolishness of it. Tisamon, for one, would never speak to him again.
‘You’re being held here to my order, and therefore I’m going to set you free,’ he said, speaking fast so that he could get the words out before he changed his mind.
She was silence itself, awaiting his next words.
‘What more do you want me to say?’ he asked her. ‘You’re going free. No conditions. You’ve already been questioned, and I have no more questions for you. I’m not even going to ask you to go back to the Rekef and work against them on my behalf, even if you could. I cannot know the truth of it now; I would not know the truth of it then. I… just… You can walk out of here as soon as I tell the warden, and I’ll tell him as soon as I leave.’ He got to his feet, feeling ill and sad. ‘Which is now.’
‘Wait,’ she said. There were tears in her eyes and he wondered dully if they were genuine.
‘I’m waiting.’
He could feel her Art touching him again, feeling at the edges of his mind and trying to find a way in. It must have been just instinct for her, her last defence, still trying to sway him because she did not really believe what he said. She thought this was a trap. Her lips moved but she said nothing.
‘No words,’ he said tiredly. ‘No thanks, even. I’m sorry but I don’t even know if I could believe that.’
He turned and walked out, and then told the warden that she could go. As he reached the door he looked back and saw her emerging cautiously from the cell, testing the first steps of her freedom.
He left then, set off for his house at last. He had probably made a mistake, and he hoped he would be the only one to suffer for it. It had been lies and pretence, and he had been a fool, as he still was, but for the few days that she had been with him she had made him feel young, and made him happy.
Nothing he had done in the defence of his city had sat well with him, the horrors of the naval assault recurring over and over, but he found that, when he remembered that he had freed her, the pawn of his enemies, he slept easily.
The next day the Vekken came against the wall in force. During the night they had brought up their remaining artillery, and the dawn saw great blocks of their infantry assembled behind their siege engines. There were massive armoured ramming engines aimed, three each, at the north and west gates, and both those walls already had a full dozen automotive towers ready to bring the Ant soldiers to the very brink of the walls.
The harbour mouth was still blocked by the pair of ruined armourclads, and the buildings nearest the wharves had been abandoned after the incendiary shelling from the Vekken flagship. Stenwold had Fly messengers on the lookout who would fetch him if the ships started moving again, but he could not meanwhile just sit idle. Against Balkus’s protests he made his way over to Kymon on the west wall.
There had been some fighting here the previous day. The Ants had made assaults at the gate, and one of the siege towers stood at half-extension, a burned-out shell only ten yards from the wall itself. The wall artillery had obviously been busy, and would be still busier today.
Stenwold made his hurried way along the line of the defenders. Most of them now had shields, he saw, which he knew was a reaction to the crossbow casualties of the previous day. The Ants had advanced far enough on one earlier assault that some of those shields were the rectangular Vekken type the attackers used.
‘War Master,’ some of them acknowledged him, to his discomfort. Others saluted, the fist-to-chest greeting of the city militia. They all seemed to know him.
Out beyond the wall, without any signal that could be perceived, every Ant-kinden soldier suddenly started to march. The engines of the rams and towers growled across towards the defenders through the still air.
‘They’re coming in faster this time,’ Kymon said, striding up to him, and it did seem to Stenwold that the engines were making an almost risky pace of it, bouncing over the uneven ground. Close behind them the Ant soldiers were jogging solidly in their blocks.
‘Ready artillery!’ Kymon called, and the same call was taken up along the wall. ‘They’re going to rush us!’
‘Master Maker!’ someone was calling in a thin voice, and Stenwold turned to see a man he vaguely recognized from the College mechanics department.
‘Master Graden,’ he now recalled.
‘Master Maker, I must be allowed to mount my invention on the walls!’
‘This isn’t my area, Master Graden.’ But curiosity pressed him to add, ‘What invention?’
‘I call it my sand-bow,’ said Graden proudly. ‘It was made to clear debris from excavations, but I have redesigned it as a siege weapon.’
‘I’m not an artificer. Do you know what he’s talking about?’ Kymon growled.
‘Not so much,’ Stenwold admitted.
Then the Ant artillery started shooting, and abruptly there were rocks and lead shot and ballista bolts falling towards the wall, and especially towards Collegium’s own emplacements. Stenwold, Kymon and Graden crouched under the battlements, feeling more than hearing as their wall engines returned the favour. Stenwold risked a look at the advancing forces and saw, almost in awe, that Kymon had been right. Behind the speeding engines, the Ant soldiers were no longer in solid blocks that would make such tempting targets for the artillery. Instead they were a vast mob, a loose-knit mob thousands strong, surging forwards behind their great machines.
And they would be able to form up on command, he knew, each mind instantly finding its place amongst the others.
‘Can it hurt? His device?’ he shouted at Kymon over the noise.
Kymon gave an angry shrug and then ran off down the line of his men, bellowing for them to stand ready, to raise their shields.
‘Get the cursed thing up here!’ Stenwold ordered Graden, and the artificer started gesturing down to where his apprentices were still waiting with his invention. It looked like nothing so much as a great snaking tube thrust through some kind of pumping engine.
‘What will it do?’ Stenwold asked. Another glance over the wall saw the Ants’ tower engines ratcheting up, unfolding and unfolding again in measured stages, with Ant soldiers thronging their platforms and more climbing after them. Crossbow quarrels started to rake the wall, springing back from shields and stone, or punching men and women from their feet and over the edge, down onto the roofs of the town.
‘It will blow sand in their faces!’ Graden said enthusiastically. ‘They won’t be able to see what they’re doing!’
True enough, Stenwold saw that one end of the tube had a vast pile of sand by it. The other was being hauled onto the wall, with the great engine, the fan he supposed, hoisted precariously onto the walkway.
The nearest tower was almost at the level of the wall-top as Graden’s apprentices wrestled the sandbow into place, and then the artificer called out for it to start. All around them the defenders of Collegium, militia, tradesmen, students and scholars, braced themselves for the coming assault.