The Scarab Path

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.

Forty-One

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