The Scarab Path (69 page)

The
barricade was still there, incredibly. The stones of the centre had been shoved
back six feet so that the entire construction was a funnel now, and the upper
stones had been toppled from the lower, stripping two feet off the centre’s
height. At least ten of Amnon’s spearmen were dead, torn apart by the blast.
Three times as many Scorpions must have stayed in the fight and been ripped into
pieces. For those who had remembered to fall back, there was now a great hole
yawning in the centre of the Khanaphir defence.

He could
not hear them charge but he felt it, even as he frantically charged his
snapbow, hoping its mechanism had survived the fall. Amnon lurched to his feet,
too far and too late now to hold the breach. Totho saw the Scorpion vanguard
surge forward, the surviving Royal Guard trying to form up against them.

His
sight of them was suddenly half blocked by a wall of black metal. Something
impossibly huge surged forth to meet the Scorpions, armoured head to foot in
black, with a shield the size of a door, and propelled by an irresistible
momentum. Meyr was entering the battle, wielding in one hand a spiked bludgeon
that had been made for a strong man to hold in both. Totho actually saw one
Scorpion warrior switch abruptly from slavering charge to a frantic halt, as
the colossal metal warrior rose in front of him and the weighted mace came
sweeping down.

The
Empire had long known that Mole Cricket-kinden were superb labourers,
craftsmen, miners and porters, but also that they were poor warriors. Their
huge strength was a slow strength. An insect of their size could have moved
like water and lightning in the fray, but they themselves were weighted with
clumsy flesh and bone. Their first strike would shatter armour and bodies, but
skilled soldiers would slip within their reach and be bathing in their blood
before they could strike again.

The Iron
Glove had cured that deficiency. The Scorpions struck at Meyr with their
greatswords and their axes. They were strong, fierce warriors but Meyr was
armoured in aviation-grade steel layered three times over. As the Khanaphir
spears jabbed past him from either side, the Mole Cricket simply stood in the
front line and smashed every Scorpion he could reach – and his reach was long.
They were still coming from behind their fellows, crushing together, so he
could not miss. The warriors in the fore were soon fighting against their
comrades, trying to get out of his way. After Meyr smashed his mace apart he
snatched a Scorpion halberd, and then one of their five-foot swords, striking
so hard with it that he bent the blade.

They
surged and pushed at him, trying with sheer numbers to drag him down. Something
was dancing about his shoulders now, and Totho experienced a moment of
confusion before he could work out what it was.

It was
Teuthete the Mantis. As though she weighed nothing, she was crouching on the
shifting pauldrons of Meyr’s armour, shooting down into the Scorpion throng.
She danced in time with him, used him as her personal platform, swaying
contemptuously aside from the crossbow bolts that sought her.

Amnon
was beside them next, hacking with his sword at any Scorpion who managed to
escape Meyr’s onslaught. Totho knew that he should join them up there and put
his snapbow to use, but he just watched and watched in awe as that impossible
trio and the Khanaphir soldiers turned back the tide, killing with skill and
fervour and monstrous brute strength, until even the Scorpions lost their taste
for bloodshed and fell back under the constant rain of arrows.

Totho
felt exhausted, beaten black and blue, and he had not so much as struck anyone
with his fist. Another squad of the diminishing Royal Guard had come forward to
seize the breach. Meyr, when he turned round, was painted red, coated with what
he had made of the Many of Nem. The giant sat down on a fallen stone, knees up
at chest level. He pushed back his helm and inhaled breath in vast lungfuls.

‘Well done,’Totho
commended him.

‘We’re …
not done yet,’ Meyr panted, between breaths. ‘Have you seen how
many
of them there are?’

‘I
know.’ Totho laid a hand on his shoulder, such a tiny gesture in comparison.
Some of the Khanaphir had come forward with water, and they began to clean the
Mole Cricket’s armour as though it was a sacred honour for them.

It was
noon, or so the sun said. They had held the Scorpions at bay for half a day.

‘Tirado!’
he shouted out, realizing that he had not seen the Fly-kinden for much of the
fight. His call was immediately followed by the small figure landing beside
him. ‘Where in the wastes have you been?’ he snapped.

‘Keeping
myself out of trouble, chief,’ the Fly said. ‘You wanted?’

‘Go to
the Scriptora. Find … find Maker, the Collegiate ambassador, and tell her …
Tell her I want to see her. Ask nicely—’ He stopped, on seeing figures
approaching from the east shore. ‘Never mind. Wait on.’

They
were Khanaphir civilians, carrying baskets of food for the soldiers, but among
them strode a tall woman with a full head of hair. Even as Totho recognized
her, Amnon strode past him with arms outstretched. It was Rakespear, the
Collegiate scholar, who threw herself against his breastplate, and then stepped
back to stare.

‘My
life, look at you,’ she said. ‘You look like a sentinel.’

‘If you
say so.’ Amnon managed a tired grin. ‘Thank Totho for it. It’s saved my life
already.’

‘Then I
do thank him.’ Praeda Rakespear nodded to Totho briefly. ‘How is the defence?’

‘Too
early to say. They’ll come back,’ said Amnon. The food was being distributed
among the defenders, and Totho found a cloth-wrapped parcel pushed into his
hands. Being used to Solarnese cuisine, which was spicy and hot, he had found
Khanaphir food too bland or subtle for his taste. Just then he was hungry
enough to eat anything.

‘Mistress
Rakespear,’ he said, ‘is Che … is Mistress Maker …? I was wondering if she
would come here, to speak with me.’

‘Che?’
Praeda frowned at him. ‘Do you know where she is?’

Totho
stared. ‘Is she not with you? With you and the old man?’

‘Nobody
seems to have seen her since yesterday,’ Praeda told him. ‘I’ve asked the
Ministers, but they don’t seem to understand. She’s gone missing before. She …
she’s not been acting rationally.’

‘Tirado,’Totho
ordered. ‘Go and find her.’

‘Right
you are.’ The Fly bolted whatever he was eating, and lifted off into the sky,
wings glittering, heading across the river towards the east. Totho grimaced.
That bloody woman can’t keep out of trouble to save her life
,
and then,
But am I really in a position to judge her?

He found
a flat space of stone away from the locals and set to eating as quickly and
efficiently as possible, so as not to be interrupted.

Someone
sat down beside him. He started in surprise and looked up to see one of Amnon’s
Guard, a woman ten years his senior, her scaled armour streaked with blood. A
younger man sat on the far side of her, his helm removed, his bald head
gleaming. Totho regarded them both cautiously.

‘I am
Dariset,’ the woman announced, before biting into the hunk of bread they had
given her.

‘Ptasmon,’
said the man.

‘Halmir,
me,’ said another man appearing on the far side of him. There were soon quite a
few gathered, sitting on stones or the ground, in a loose circle that now
included him.

‘Totho,’
he said awkwardly, ‘of Collegium.’

‘You
have done much for us, Totho,’ Dariset said. ‘Much that you did not need to.’

And to please a woman who won’t even turn up and witness it
,
he thought, but he just nodded noncommittally.

‘We are
honoured that you and your giant and your people fight alongside us, Totho,’
said one of the others, and something clicked inside Totho, as he thought,
This is the first time that any of them, save Amnon, has called
me something other than ‘Foreigner’
. He looked into their faces, the
faces of simple, hardworking people who were prepared to die for their city.
This is something that Drephos never did. He never knew the names
of his soldiers. He would never have cared
.

It was a
terrible trap, though. They would die, he knew. Perhaps even today. Perhaps in
an hour’s time or less, Ptasmon would be writhing in agony with his gut ripped
open by a Scorpion halberd, or Dariset would lie still with a crossbow bolt
through her eye. In knowing their names, in making them real people and not components
of a machine, he was baring his flesh for the lash.
They
are meat for the war machine
, he tried to remind himself but, sitting
there with them, it came hard.

He was
going to say something dismissive, cast them off, become the Foreigner again in
their eyes. They were now going about their midday meal industriously, talking
amongst themselves, in between mouthfuls.
But these people
are so solemn and silent, almost like Ant-kinden
, he thought, but the
notion was easily corrected:
They are like that only in
front of strangers. Like Ant-kinden, amongst their own they behave like all
people
.

He said
nothing further, just let them talk. He learned about the widow that Halmir was
hoping to woo, and that Ptasmon did not yet know whether his family had got safely
over the river. He learned that the scarred man called Kham was Amnon’s cousin,
yet was openly critical of much that the First Soldier did. He learned that
Dariset had once gone on an expedition to scout the ruins in the heart of the
Nem, but they had turned back on seeing the shapes that moved there, and the
signs that those shapes left behind: crucified Scorpions poisoned and
desiccating in the sun and sand, and yet some of them still alive.

I should not have shared in this
. He felt their lives loading
him with emotional baggage that Drephos would have scoffed at. He remembered
when he had let so much similar baggage slough off him, during the siege of
Tark. He had been granted a kind of icy rationality at that point, a clarity of
vision he would be loath to lose. But, he now considered, had he ever truly
been free of sentiment?

Remind me again why I am still here, and not gone from this
doomed city?
Che’s face, in his mind, never failed to twist something
inside him, some organ that seemed designed purely to wreck his life and ruin
his every dream.
Cursed woman! Wretched wasting woman! Can
you not let me be, after all this time?
He had tried – oh how he had
tried – to excise the callow, clumsy youth who had been so besotted with her,
but no matter how deep his reason cut, up to its elbows in blood and tissue,
his younger self always grew back.

And so we are brought to this pass. I will fight to defend a city
I should care nothing about, and then I will most likely die, and so will those
who follow me. Drephos would laugh himself to death if he knew. Or would he
weep for me? If Drephos could weep for anything, it would be at such a futile
waste
.

He
looked over to Meyr, saw the huge man still sitting, Teuthete standing by him,
their heads almost on the same level. The Mantis was speaking, but Totho could
not hear her quiet words. The Mole Cricket shook his head slowly, and she put a
hand to his chest, her arm-spines flexing.

A shout
went up from nearby and suddenly they were all in motion again, rushing for the
barricades, cramming a last mouthful before taking up weapons. Meyr pulled his
helm forward over his face. Totho saw Amnon embrace Praeda one more time and
then take up his shield.

The next
wave of the Many were coming.

Corcoran felt the engines of the
Fourth Iteration
turn over, first slowly and then with a building urgency. The crew were casting
off, letting the rudders and the current of the river pull them away from the
quays.

There
was already a movement among the Scorpion-kinden in anticipation. A great mass
of them was gathering by the west pillar of the Estuarine Gate, anticipating
that the ship would have to come close enough for them to rake it with crossbow
shot before it quit the city.
And we should, we really should
,
Corcoran thought.
What we should be doing right now is
leaving. Khanaphes was never going to be a market for us, and soon it won’t
even be a city any more
.

He did
not understand his leader: Totho seemed to have gone mad, caught some local
fever. Gone native, perhaps. Where was the profit in this, to defend one pack
of primitives against another? What could they possibly gain? Especially as the
beast they had backed was going to lose. It didn’t take any tactical mind to
see that.

Corcoran
was not a soldier, despite the armour. He was a merchant, from a family of
small traders. When the Iron Glove had hoisted its banner over Chasme he had
seen the opportunity. He had been in near the start, and done well out of it.
It had been worth exchanging the cluttered security of Solarno to make that bid
for profit. He was a merchant and profit was his business. That was what he
understood. Profit allowed him to live well and be a pleasant and amiable
person, because to be pleasant and amiable in this world you needed a buffer
between you and its woes.

The
world’s woes were coming right back at him today.
Sure and
I’m very sorry for them all
, he thought, but it wasn’t as if they were
family. The Khanaphir were having their last days on the map before the
Scorpions consigned them to the past they had dwelled in for so long.

But the
halfbreed had decided that the Iron Glove should be making some kind of idiot
stand
now. It was beyond comprehension. Corcoran wanted so
very badly to sail the
Iteration
towards the river
mouth and demand that they raise the gate. Surely he would then be doing what
was best for the consortium. Totho had plainly gone mad.