The Scarab Path

Above their conversation, the whining buzz stopped, at long last. Genraki could almost feel the whole camp relax with it. Angved's expression was complex: one he could not entirely read but dominated mainly by greed.

There were swift footsteps on the stairs and one of the other Wasps came up, half running, half flying. 'Captain wants you, Lieutenant,' he told Angved. 'Khanaphir have been busy overnight. Time for us to match them.'

Angved did not rush to attend on Hrathen. As soon as he presented himself, the tide of mundane war would descend on him, and he would have his hands full with jobs more befitting an apprentice than an experienced battle-artificer. Can't we just let the Scorpions get on with it?We've given them half the city, so surely they can take it from here. But Hrathen was in charge, and it was clear which of his bloodlines the halfbreed had chosen to support. I hear he's sleeping with that hideous Jakal creature. Angved shuddered. He himself had never been one to take advantage of the women of lesser peoples. Even if he had, he wouldn't have started with Scorpion-kinden. Only among Thorn-bugs are there any uglier people in the world, he decided, or more dangerous to sleep with. And the Captain definitely gets his looks from the wrong side of the family. Better, maybe, that the man forced himself on the fanged horrors here rather than good Wasp women back home.

Am I fooling myself about this rock-oil? The Nem was largely unexplored, unexploited. The Empire's internal squabbles had set back its timetable for subjugating the world, or there would have been black and gold all the way to Khanaphes by now, and Jakal's people would have become either Auxillians or history. And maybe I should be grateful that, with all the fuss back home, I'm the first serious artificer to come here and make this discovery. He was a man growing old for the army, yet still only a lieutenant. If he kept this all to himself, and if it was what he believed it to be, then 'Major Angved' had a nice ring to it. A comfortable retirement position running some research workshop in Sonn, perhaps? He could afford to be pushy, provided his new currency was as pure as he thought.

He had only told one of his crew about his discovery, and already he was considering whether he might have to kill him. Here, among the Scorpions, it would be easy to hide such an act. This is much bigger than I had thought. An idle curiosity was giving way to a real fire of ambition.

He found Hrathen at last. 'Reporting for duty,' he said, banishing such thoughts for the moment. The Scorpion woman was nearby, watching them with arms folded. Her expression was sceptical and Angved guessed that she had been expecting more progress. Half the city in just two days, and still she's hungry.

The halfbreed nodded to him. 'We take the bridge today,' he stated. 'I've decided. Enough of this attrition.'

Angved waited. Empty posing, he thought, to impress his woman. Well, let him.

'I want you to get a leadshotter on to the roof of one of these three-storeys,' Hrathen told him, straight- faced.

Angved raised an eyebrow. 'I'm not even sure that's possible.'

'Make it possible. Have some locals haul it up the stairs. Build a hoist, anything. When you've got the right elevation, start making calculations to hit the barricade without damaging the bridge.'

'That will call for a great deal of accuracy,' Angved said.

'Then that's what you'll give me,' Hrathen snapped.

Angved kept his expression carefully neutral, wondering whether it was yesterday's or last night's performance that had shown the man up in front of Jakal.

'We could try using the scrap-shot,' the artificer suggested, 'if we can get the range. That way, no danger of weakening the bridge.'

'Whatever you have to do,' Hrathen replied. 'Have the rest of your artificers make grenades. You know the type: clay pots, wax stoppers, fuses. Fill them with oil, or with firepowder and nails.'

'I'm not sure our troops here will be able to use them effectively. Not on the enemy at least.'

'They're not for Scorpions. I'm committing the Slave Corps soldiers as grenadiers. Any fool can drop a pot.'

And usually when you least want them to. 'I'll put my people on it,' Angved agreed. 'We should have a decent stock by mid-morning, after you've warmed people up.'

'Between that and the crossbows, we'll be on the far side before dusk,' Hrathen declared. He was saying it to Jakal, and Agved saw the Scorpion Warlord shrug and turn away. Hrathen's expression, momentarily exposed, was comical. She has him on a leash, Angved realized. This is why you can never really trust halfbreeds. He supposed he felt sorry for the man, torn between Imperial orders and trying to be a Scorpion savage at the same time. What will they do with him when we're done here?Will he want to stay on and live with the barbarians? Will the Rekef get rid of him? Will the Scorpions, for that matter?

Not my problem, the artificer reminded himself. I just need to get out of Khanaphes with my hide intact, and then I can give the Empire a prize that will make all the loot of Khanaphes look like dross.

Forty

Sulvec's hand clenched on the knife hilt and the blade twitched in Osgan's shoulder, making his victim shriek again. The sound echoed cavernously in the underground hall, turning into something truly nightmarish as it baffled its way about the distant vaulted walls.

'Come on, Thalric!' Sulvec shouted, his voice blurring amongst the returning echoes of the scream. 'You went to some lengths to keep this man alive. Don't waste all that effort now!' He was shouting just to keep himself steady: inflicting pain on another provided a reliable mantra for the avoidance of doubt and fear. There were plenty in the Rekef who did not get their own hands dirty, who always had others to do the cutting and slicing for them. Sulvec was made of sterner stuff, or at least that was his self-assessment. All around him, his men were gathered, Marger and the survivors of the Rekef force that had come into Khanaphes with him, seven agents whose pale faces and strained expressions belied their Rekef training.

Weaklings. Sulvec sneered inwardly, although he could feel what they could feel. It had begun with that wave of fear atop the pyramid, and the hooks of it had never left them. These slimy, hollow halls beneath the earth were no place for honest Wasp-kinden. They were built too huge, vacant yet full of a devouring dark that waited just beyond the reach of the guttering lanterns. When the final cackling echo of Osgan's cry came back, Sulvec could not definitively label it as such. It could just as easily be something vast and mad gibbering to itself somewhere far off within these endless chambers.

And so he inflicted pain, because it made him feel better. I hold the knife, therefore I am in control. It was not a deep cut he inflicted, but he was an old hand at this. The knife's tip was carefully inserted between the bones of Osgan's shoulder joint, so that the slightest tremor would be unendurable agony. Osgan was sobbing, shuddering, fighting to keep desperately still. If he tried to bolt for freedom the pain would have shocked him out of consciousness.

'Thalric! I know you're out there!' Sulvec bellowed. Marger and the others were waiting in a circle round him, with lanterns some distance beyond them both ways. They had turned the wicks up high, so that for Thalric to get within sting range, he would be in their light. Still, he could come from anywhere, at any time. Sulvec was putting on the pressure but Thalric was no fool. If he wanted to make a fight of it, then he would undoubtedly take a few of them with him. Which is why I'm here in the middle, Sulvec decided.

He opened his mouth to shout again, but the echoes were getting to him. They made something unpleasant of his voice, as though someone were lampooning him from the darkness. I'm glad the Khanaphir are going to get theirs. Nobody who builds a monstrosity like this deserves to live. Yet at the back of his mind hovered a persistent worry telling him that this did not look much like the rest of Khanaphes above. There was no guarantee precisely what hands had created this lightless abyss. That started the