The Scarab Path

leader, but Thalric's palm was now right in line with Sulvec's forehead. They froze, waiting for orders, while Sulvec locked eyes with Thalric. He had one hand on Osgan's collar. The other held the sword directed at his prisoner's neck.

'Let him go.'

'Give it up, Thalric,' Sulvec said. 'Marger, take his sword.'

'Not a move,' Thalric warned, and Marger stopped, his own hands ready to sting.

Sulvec smiled.

Che had stared at them for far too long before going for her own sword. Even as her fingers touched it a boot kicked it down the hall. She found herself looking up into the face of Accius the Vekken.

'What …?' she said, utterly thrown. There was nothing readable in his expression. With a deft motion he scooped up the quisitor's lamp and flicked it shut.

He grabbed her, finding her in the darkness by simple memory. Even as she recoiled instinctively, he had grasped her sleeve and yanked her towards him, off balance. His arm was about her throat, tight enough to hurt. She pried at it, but it was like iron. Ant-kinden strength. Even putting all of her weight on it there was not an inch of give.

'Thalric!' she got out, a strangled squeak. 'Help!'

But as the cry rang out, it was Osgan that moved. He abruptly lunged upwards, his head striking directly under Sulvec's chin. For a moment he was free. A stingbolt lanced over his shoulder, and Thalric returned the favour with both hands, making the Wasp soldiers scatter and scorching Marger's arm.

Sulvec snarled furiously. His shot at Thalric was close enough to singe his hair. His other hand drove towards his prisoner.

The blade sank into Osgan's gut, all the way to the hilt.

Thalric felt it as though it was plunged in him too, the sudden severing of his hopes. Not after all this! Not after the swamps, after dragging him across the city, all that thought in a fractured second. Osgan gasped, eyes wide, dropping to his knees with blood welling about the sword-hilt. Thalric had seen wounds like that, had inflicted a few. They were agony, and they meant death in almost every case, and never a quick one.

He bared his teeth, torn. He heard Che cry out again, more distant now. Don't make me choose- The stingshots began to burst around him. He made an abortive move towards Osgan, felt one shot sear a line of fire across his leg. His own hands were blazing, aimed he did not care where.

Che.

He let his wings spring to life and hurl him backwards into the dark, after her. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. He was Thalric, loyal to those who served him and obeyed his orders. He did not abandon them. But Che, I can't leave Che.

Into the utter dark he went, and heard Sulvec bellow for his men to give chase. The crackle of stingshot was all around him. He risked a look back and saw two men coming for him. To hell with the darkness. He gave his wings their rein, keeping to where he imagined the centre of the hall was, hands outstretched for the walls. The blue fires are ahead, yet not so far ahead, and Che will see me coming. She will see me and warn me.

Marger had darted off after Thalric, as had one of the others. The second soldier crouched by the writhing Osgan, ludicrously looking as though he was checking that the man was all right.

'What are you doing?' Sulvec spat at him, already at the lamplight's edge to follow Marger.

'Putting him out of his misery, sir,' the soldier said.

'Don't,' Sulvec hissed. 'Get after them.' There was sudden movement from behind and he whirled round. It was only one of the soldiers who had followed Thalric, after the man's first lunatic swoop across their torchlit space. He had an arm about his ribs and was grimacing in pain.

Something moved, everywhere around them. They all felt it save for Osgan, whose world had now contracted to the gash opening his stomach.

Sulvec froze. It was hard to say what had just happened. It was impossible, in fact. He did not have the words or the concepts. There had been a shudder, through the stone and in the air and in his mind, like an earthquake that had not moved a physical thing, but had shaken a sense of threat into their very bones.

'Go …' Sulvec started, and then he watched blue flames suddenly flash into existence down the hall, way beyond their own lamps. They illuminated no lamp-lighter. He turned round, seeing that the same ghostly braziers had sprung up the other way down the hall, too, leaving only a span of darkness immediately around the Wasps. 'Stay …' he got out. 'Marger will do it.' His throat was so dry that his voice was just a croak.

'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