The Scarab Path

Sulvec wanted badly to agree with him, but he had been given his orders most specifically. 'He's survived a lot,' he got out. 'We have to see the body. Absolutely sure.' Two of his men had a prisoner, he noticed. The wretched Osgan was hanging limply in their grip. The man looked half dead.

'What now, sir?' Marger asked him, a man with the luxury of not having to make decisions. At that point, Corolly Vastern caught them up, looking like a local with his shaved head.

'Why did you come down, sir?' he asked. He had obviously seen something of what went on. Sulvec opened his mouth, reaching for answers. I can't just say 'because I feared.' His mind progressed to: So that cannot be the reason, but I must have had a reason. I do nothing without a logical reason.

'Sir, Guards coming,' said one of his men, and his mind leapt. There was a squad of Khanaphir soldiers arriving at the far side of the square, no doubt drawn by all the noise. I must have known that, Sulvec told himself. I heard them coming. I knew that they would catch us, if we were still up there.

'Marger, keep a watch on this place. If Thalric comes out again, I want to know about it,' he snapped out. 'The rest of you, fall back with me. We'll return tonight if they leave it unguarded, or we'll be back tomorrow night, whatever. We have a job to do here. Come on.'

He could not entirely keep the trembling from his voice, still feeling that dread gnawing at his innards. A perfectly rational feeling: fear of discovery. Good trade-craft. A Rekef agent's instincts. The words rattled about inside his skull looking for acceptance.

Thirty-Five

Dawn stole in from the east to find the city of Khanaphes at war with itself, split by the no-man's-land of the river Jamail.

On the eastern bank was arrayed the remainder of the Khanaphir army, ready to repel all comers. Some Scorpions had spent the night desultorily nailing together pieces of wood to make rafts — ugly, awkward things worked from first principles. In the harsh dawn they quietly abandoned their labours, for there were archers out there, whole detachments of them, both city folk and Marsh folk. Anyone paddling a raft towards them would be riddled with quills as soon as they came in range. The Scorpions lacked the craft to make vessels of any greater complexity. Unless they could somehow lure boats from the far shore, then a crossing would prove fatal.

They had kept some prisoners over, following their triumphant surge into the city. Jakal now ordered each one brought forth before the eyes of the defenders. The Scorpions were inventive and gleeful in their treatment of such prisoners, and they spared nothing, hoping to provoke some futile attempt at rescue. They spent two hours of the first day in burnings and cuttings and rape.

The Khanaphir would not be drawn, however. They watched, each one of them, from their Ministers down to the lowest peasant militiaman, and they saved their resentment for when they could pay it back twice over. They were too disciplined to take the bait.

Which leaves the bridge, Hrathen decided. It was a painful conclusion, if only because the enemy had reached it too. They had fortified the bridge even while they were evacuating their people from the west city. Past the crest of the span they had put up a great barricade, of stone and of wood, while beyond the raised sides of the bridge his glass could make out constant movement there. He saw spear-tips waving, indicating a small, compact force ready to repel the invaders. They would not need many to hold there, at that choke point.

'They are fools,' Jakal said. 'They should have brought their stones to the bridge's top. They waste their archers.' They had found a vantage on one of the roofs, the better to spy out the enemy.

'If only they had.' Hrathen let out a long breath. 'Angved, explain.'

The old engineer glanced nervously at Jakal. 'Well,' he said, 'if they'd built on the actual zenith of the bridge, we'd be able to shoot them off cleanly with our leadshotters. Simple as that: they'd give us a direct line of sight on them, and we'd knock them straight into the river. Which shows they're finally thinking like a proper army. They're using the arch of the bridge itself as cover.'

'So your weapons are useless now,' Jakal said.

'Oh, I could take them down, sure,' Angved told her calmly. 'Problem is, that bridge is built like their city walls, same stone, same style, save that the bridge isn't even meant to stand off an attack. I hit that bridge with a few shots and, odds on, I might just knock a great big hole in it, and then how do we get across? In fact, if they've any explosives to hand, we'd better be careful of them doing the same.'

'Where would the Khanaphir get explosives?' Jakal demanded, but Hrathen made an unhappy noise in response.

'They're no longer fighting this alone,' he told her. His spyglass raked across the barricade, seeing blocks of stone built to four feet high, wooden boards added above. It looked solid but not indestructible. 'I've noticed people in dark armour out there. Not locals, for sure. Not many of them, but it looks like they're giving the orders. I think it's our friends from the Iron Glove wanting a little blood.'

'So where does that leave us? I shall ready men for the assault,' Jakal decided.

'Send in some dross first, a couple of waves of chaff you won't mind losing,' Hrathen advised. 'After that we'll try for a surprise. Angved, get me a petard readied.'

'They're massing!' Tirado's high-pitched voice came clearly to them from his hovering point twenty feet up. Totho felt the stir amongst the Khanaphir, the gathering of nerves and determination. The archers were stringing their bows with the ease of long practice, bending the simple slats against their calves to hook the string over. Some were already positioned aloft, standing on the stone barrier with four foot of wooden barricade to cover them. They had been complaining, Amnon said, that they would not get a good enough shot at the Scorpions once they charged, but they had no idea what he had saved them from by having the barrier put up this far back from the apex.

Caltrops were another invention that had never reached Khanaphes. Totho's people had not been allowed the chance to make many, but the ground before the barriers was liberally strewn with the jagged little four-spined iron things, looking like spiders in the dawn light.

The danger he had foreseen was that the Scorpions would come around the sides, clambering and grappling about the edges of the barricade and using the walls of the bridge itself as purchase. They had built the sides out as far as he dared without creating a safe target for the leadshotters, but he had indulged in a little psychology as well. He had sacrificed some of the centre, made a low point where the spearmen would be standing, to give the Scorpions a target. It would seem easier to them to force their way through that choke-point. It would be the task of Amnon and his people to stop them.

Time. Totho had no idea how long they could hold, but the first few waves of attack would provide useful data. How long until the Scorpion host breaks up, hungry and frustrated? How long before masses of them start raiding further upriver?

There are so many of them. He was beginning to see the enemy as the locals did. Compared with the size of the Imperial armies he had travelled with, both sides here were betting with pocket change only. Here and now, though, there really were a lot of Scorpions ranged on the other side of the river.

If they just come at us, if they just charge and charge and charge, climbing over their own dead like mad things, we'll be swept off here within hours.

He shifted his shoulders, letting the plates of his pauldrons settle. This new armour had seen no battles yet. This one would be its first. The hush falling on the Khanaphir, as the three of them had arrived, had been shocking. Totho, big Amnon, giant Meyr: three war-automata, things of faceless black metal, lords of war. We are making legends here, he thought, and then: but only if we win.

He had hoped Che would be here. She wasn't, and there was no help for that, but he had hoped she might hear of what he was doing, and come to see him off.

He saw the Mantis woman, Teuthete, leap up on to the barricades, with her recurved bow in one hand. There was a scattering of her people here, all archers. It really has been a long time since I fought alongside the Mantis-kinden. That felt like another world, another epoch, a story of once upon a time.