The Scarab Path (79 page)

‘I saw
something, sir,’ one of his men whispered, pulling closer. At his feet Osgan
was whimpering with each new breath he took. The sound gave Sulvec courage.

‘That
will be Marger, no doubt,’ he said, forcing the quaver out of his voice.
It had better be Marger
. The three Wasps had now drawn
together. Their lamps guttered unnaturally low.

Sulvec
crouched low over Osgan’s body, noticing their lanterns dip, one by one, and
fail. Something was moving in the darkness but he looked away from it, looked
to the floor. He dearly did not want to see what it might be.

Thalric’s sudden dash had caught up with them just as Accius had hauled
his prey into the room of tombs, lit up by the braziers that cast the Vekken’s
skin in cobalt.

Thalric
dropped down just six feet from the Ant, sword in hand and left palm extended.
Che stared at him, her own hands still uselessly clutching at the Vekken’s arm.
She noticed a glitter in the corner of her eye and realized that Accius had
drawn his own blade.

‘What
…?’ Thalric’s eyes narrowed as he tried to understand. ‘What do you want with
her? Where did you even come from?’

‘Vek,’
Accius said, his arm tightening so that Che almost choked. She stamped hard on
his foot, but his boots were steel-toed and it got her nowhere. ‘Vek requires
answers.’

‘Then
seek them from me—’ Thalric started, but just then the Ant hurled Che aside,
hard enough to bounce her off the wall. A stingshot danced through the air
where Thalric had been.

Thalric
had ended up on the floor, reacting to some instinct he could not name. He
turned on his back, hands out. One of the Wasps went straight overhead, the
other dropped straight on him.

Marger?
He was fighting Marger. The man tried to pin him
down with one hand and a knee, his sword drawn back. Thalric was stronger,
though, and better at this kind of back-alley fighting. He twisted round, put
an elbow into the side of Marger’s head, and threw him off. They both loosed
stingshots at the same time, and both missed.

‘Run,
Che!’ Thalric snapped. He saw the Beetle girl rise shakily. The other Wasp was
coming back fast. Accius was loading his crossbow unhurriedly, with a soldier’s
calm professionalism.

‘Run!’
Thalric shouted again, and jumped on Marger, feeling the heat-flash of the
man’s sting warm his own side. He put a fist into the man’s face, feeling
Marger’s nose shift, and then he had his own sword drawn back. Marger snarled
in desperation and slung both of them aside, colliding with Accius as he loosed
his crossbow. The bolt vanished into the darkness and the second Wasp had now
landed, arm outstretched for a target as Marger and Thalric wrestled.

Accius
hit Thalric. He had probably not been aiming at either Wasp in particular, but
Thalric had the bad luck to get in the way and the Ant’s fist hit him in the
stomach like a battering ram. Through three layers of silk, he felt every link
of his copperweave armour dent into his skin, and he sat down heavily.

Marger
turned his hand on to the Ant, but Accius grabbed his belt and one arm and
threw him a full ten feet with a bone-jarring crash. Art-given strength was
virtually boiling in waves off the Ant-kinden.

The
Vekken turned to find the other Wasp with his hand outstretched, but out of
reach. That was when Che appeared out of the dark behind the threatening
figure, armed with Accius’s own discarded sword, and stabbed him in the back.

The
stingbolt was loosed, but flew far over Accius’s head. As the Wasp dropped Che
stabbed him again for good measure, leaving the sword buried between his
shoulders. Thalric saw that her hands were shaking.

He
backed off from the Ant, ducking to collect his own sword again, prying it from
the oozing ground. ‘Che, come here,’ he ordered quietly, then looked around for
Marger, saw him upright. The Wasp cast a half-glance behind him, and his
expression of betrayal revealed, more than any words could, the fact that he
had thought there were reinforcements behind him.

‘Thalric,’
he said wearily. ‘Thalric, you’ve got to die. Let the Beetle go, let the Ant
go, I don’t care. But they’ll just keep coming for you. At any cost. You’ve got
to die.’

‘I
disagree,’ Thalric told him. ‘To the pits with Imperial politics.’

‘Thalric,
this isn’t
politics
,’ Marger stressed. ‘I saw the
orders, they were sealed by General Brugan himself. Thalric, if you don’t die,
none of us goes home alive.’ He took a deep breath, steadying himself against
one of the tombs.

‘Brugan?’
Thalric felt a strange chill. He remembered his own briefing with the general,
that had sent him here. ‘Why?’

‘Brugan’s
currently having this whole
city
destroyed just to
cover your death,’ Marger snapped. He bared his teeth in utter frustration,
crooking his fingers into claws. ‘What did you
do?
What did you
do
to piss him off that much? Why won’t
you just
die?
’

Che
glanced sideways, and saw that Accius had retrieved his crossbow, and had
recocked it even as the Wasp spoke. He was aiming it at no one, not yet. His
eyes flicked between the two Wasps, his face expressionless.

Marger
was now approaching, step by dragging step, limping slightly from whatever
hurts he had taken when Accius had thrown him. Thalric hefted his sword,
levelled his hand. ‘Marger …’

‘Then
do it!
’ the other Wasp shouted. ‘Because they’re going to
kill me anyway, if I fail, and probably even if I succeed. Why did you have to
go and mess with the General of the Rekef?
’

It was
obvious, in retrospect, that he had been going to charge just then, whatever
the consequences, but instead he stopped, jaw dropping, staring past Thalric
and the others. A small, strangled noise emerged from him.

Accius
followed his glance, and Thalric heard the Ant hiss, turning and raising his
crossbow. With that Thalric could do nothing but glance behind him, despite all
his training. Once he had glimpsed what was there, he had to turn to face it
too. Although it brought him closer to Marger, he started backing away. They
were all of them backing away, the four intruders seeking what dubious retreat
they could in the face of what they saw.

‘Oh,’
Che breathed, watching the apparition walk ponderously into view. It was a
woman ten feet tall, and massively proportioned, her frame a cascade of curves
running down shoulders, breasts, stomach and hips, voluptuous with fat and yet
unencumbered by it. She walked with the assurance of kings, and her hair was
long and black, lustrous with the gleaming slime that coated her. She wore only
a few folds of cloth about her loins, but she would have been fit for the court
of the Empress. Her face – with a majesty no Beetle or Ant or Wasp could ever
muster – was that of the effigies on the tombs, the dancers atop the pyramid,
the forbidding giants of the Estuarine Gate.

It
occurred to Che now that probably more than one tomb was missing its effigy,
but she felt with certainty that she could put a name to the imperious woman
that stood before her. The words welled up in her mind, and she mouthed them:
‘Elysiath Neptellian, Lady of the Bright Water, She whose Word Breaks all
Bonds, Princess of the Thousand.’

Accius
made an animal sound in his throat and raised his crossbow. The woman extended
a commanding hand, with a faint smile on her lips.

The
world flew apart.

The Scorpions had been massing since before dawn, forming up into great
clattering, complaining companies along the western bank. The eastern sky
barely showed the first grey signs of light as they made their first sortie. It
was a rabble. Totho had already seen enough to know that there was a hierarchy
of usefulness within the enemy ranks. These were the losers, first to be cast
away and first to die. They came in a great screaming horde, and if they
possessed any appreciation of their place in the world, Totho could not
perceive it.

If we could bottle that mad fervour
, he thought,
then we could sell it for a fortune to any general or tyrant
you’d care to name
.

The
archers took their places and drew back their bowstrings. The poor light would
work against their aim, and the Scorpion charge was uneven, the faster
outstripping the slower and leaving gaps for arrows to fall into. Sometimes
poor discipline offered its own tactical value.

Four
dozen strings sang almost as one. The militia, denied any use for its spear
detachments, had packed the barricade with bowmen, shoulder to shoulder. So far
they had been the blade that had killed score upon score of the invaders,
whilst the Royal Guard, with their armour and spears, had been the shield to
fend off the enemy strike. The Guard had died steadily throughout yesterday’s
fight, their numbers already savagely depleted from the disastrous field
battle. From the way they stood firm, Totho guessed they would do so until the
last of them fell.

He
spared his snapbow for now, letting the Khanaphir archers do their work. A
solid volley hammered into the howling advance just before it engaged, and what
reached the Royal Guard was pitiful, thrown back into the arrowstorm without a
single loss to the defenders. The very sight of Amnon seemed to turn the
Scorpions away.

‘More coming!’
Tirado shouted down. ‘Shields!’

The
archers had become old hands at arcing their shots over the curve of the bridge
to fall blindly amongst the packed enemy advance. This time there were fewer
cries of pain, more sounds of arrows thudding in wood. The Many of Nem were
being taught battle tactics the painful way, but they were learning.

The
advance was slower now, warriors not used to bearing shields were getting in
each other’s way. The arrows still found the odd mark, and an injured or dying
man with a three-foot shield became a hazard to all around him. Teuthete and
her people began loosing their own shafts, the bone and stone heads cracking
stolen shields wherever they landed, or clipping the rims to punch home into
faces or legs behind them. Totho sighed and worked the snapbow handle, charging
pressure. He loosed all five shots at once in a narrow arc, forming a fist that
smashed the shield-wall in as his bolts holed shields and flesh and barely
slowed. He ducked to recharge, the archers all around letting fly so that each
shield soon grew heavy and unwieldy with arrows. Men were running from the
construction works on the east bank with fresh quivers. Khanaphes seemed to
have an endless supply of arrows.

If we had a snapbow that could fire a bolt every few seconds, and
it had a magazine of hundreds
, Totho thought,
I
could hold this bridge alone … or with one man to feed in the bolts. I should
mention it to Drephos
.

‘Crossbows!’
Tirado called out, his high-pitched voice clear over the sounds of battle. The
Scorpions in the second rank had brought up bows and levelled them over the
shoulders of their comrades. The men behind them had shields up over their
heads to protect them, a crude imitation of Ant-kinden tactics. ‘Crossbows!’
Tirado yelled again.

The
Royal Guard had braced themselves behind their shields, but the heavy crossbows
the Scorpions had been given were powerful enough to penetrate straight through
half the time. They could not give up the breach. Tirado could shout at them
all he liked.

Totho
remained down until he heard the massed clack of two score crossbows. He saw
men and women hurled back from the breach, shot through. Others stumbled, taken
through the leg, or simply because of the massive impact on their shields.
Amnon was crying for them to hold, and the archers kept aiming down for that
elusive gap between shield-lines that the crossbowmen were shooting through.

Totho
popped up and struck down another handful of shieldmen, giving the archers a
clear shot at the men behind. The Scorpions were already surging forward,
armoured warriors pressing from behind, the crossbowmen separating to let them
through. Amnon cried to hold again, and then the lines clashed together.
Greatsword and halberd battered against Khanaphir shields, as the Scorpion
finest strove to smash their way through the weakened line with main force.
Amnon himself was unmovable. Their strokes slid off his sculpted armour,
deflected from his shield. He fought with his spear until the shaft splintered,
and then he hacked at them with his sword.

To the
right of him the line wavered. A huge Scorpion had leapt up to the barricade,
hurling back two of the Guard, laying about him with a double-handed axe.
Teuthete put an arrow between his neck and shoulder, shooting almost vertically
down into him, but there were another three Scorpions taking his place, eager
to force that one breach that would undo the defenders.

They met
a wall of aviation-grade steel as Meyr rammed them with his shield. With all
the thunderous momentum he could muster, he flung all three Scorpions back onto
the blades of their fellows. The force of his charge took him beyond the
barricade, momentarily in the midst of his enemies. He swung at them with a
great bronze-reinforced club that had been a scaffolding bar only two hours
before. As the enemy hacked at his mail, he hurled them left and right with
monstrous blows, making even the burly Scorpions look like children. Amnon was
shouting for him to get back in line and the Scorpions were all about him,
halberd-blades seeking his throat, his armpits, any gap in his mail. Meyr
finally stepped back, finding the barricade’s edge by concentration and memory,
and then retreating behind the reformed line of Royal Guard.

There
was no shortage of the Scorpions, however. They were still packed solid all the
way to the western shore, with no sign that they would ever break off.