The Scarab Path

had one hand free: Wasps never lacked for weapons. In their centre was the halfbreed, that bastard mix of Scorpion and Empire, who now gazed up at Meyr and put a smile onto his malformed jaw.

The forces were not so very uneven, after all. The Wasps had the advantage of numbers, whereas the Iron Glove equipped its adherents with more care. Scorpions all around them had stopped to watch, eager to see some blood shed before nightfall.

The Wasps were professional soldiers, veterans of battles and skirmishes and brawls. The Iron Glove handful was a mix of mercenaries and merchants, trained but not nearly so well blooded.

Meyr took a deep breath. 'Ready bows,' he instructed.

'Behind and above!' Faighl cried out, and even as she got the words out, Meyr felt something punch into the small of his back.

He felt a brief moment of warmth as the Wasp sting boiled away off the ridges of his armour. 'Eyes front!' he bellowed, for the fight was upon them.

Two of his people went down instantly, distracted by the Wasp stings from behind and then shot from the front. There were at least three Wasps on the ground in return, lanced through with snapbow bolts that cared nothing for armour. The halfbreed leader shouted out a command and then they were moving in close with their swords.

Faighl placed her back to Meyr's, sniping up at one of the airborne Wasps and bringing him down with a single shot, trusting to the giant to guard her from the main assault. The Mole Cricket leant out over the heads of his followers, snapping his great axe forward with all the length and strength of his arm. The heavy head of it caught a Wasp slaver in the chest before the man even realized he was within Meyr's reach. Ribs snapped like sticks and his suddenly limp body was swept sideways into the next man, living and dead tumbling over in a tangle of limbs.

A couple of the Iron Glove had got their shields in place before the Wasps hit them. One was a Solarnese artificer, a hammer in his other hand making a slaver's helm ring before a sword jabbed up over the shield's rim and caught the artificer in the throat. The other shieldman was a renegade Maynesh Ant, who held firm. His shortsword never ventured forth but he danced left and right with his shield, successfully holding off three Wasps as they tried to overrun him. When they pushed him back, Meyr's thundering axe hacked into them, lopping the head clean off one man and forcing the other two to stumble back.

This will not last another minute: the unhappy knowledge came to Meyr with certainty. He had lost near half his people already. The Wasps were spreading out around them, while more were taking to the air. Flexibility and mobility had always been the Imperial way, in battle and in skirmish.

He felt Faighl die, the woman slamming against him, head rebounding from the small of his back. A moment was all he could spare to mourn her. He felt he had barely known her, although they had worked together for months. A sword-blow was turned by his legplates, a sting coursed across his shield.

The Ant-kinden before him reeled away. The halfbreed Imperial had hold of him, one clawed arm hooked over his shield. The other hand, empty, rose as if to stab down at the man's exposed face, but then fire bloomed from it, snapping the Ant's head back. Meyr roared and hacked at the enemy with his axe, but the halfbreed dived and rolled out of the way, and abruptly it was all over. They had now pulled away to form a circle out of his reach, and at his feet, Meyr saw his fellows.

The Wasps had killed them all in less than a minute. Faighl and the others, loyal servants of the Iron Glove, they had not stood a chance. Meyr glowered now at the Wasps, at their halfbreed leader. He saw more than that. He looked beyond them at the Scorpions, all lovingly fingering their spears and knives. The blood and the violence had been like food and drink to them.

With the bodies of his followers strewn at his feet, he met the gaze of the halfbreed. The man was smiling slightly, and Meyr tensed for a gesture, the smallest sign that would signal the attack.

Instead, the man grinned openly as he stepped back three paces, letting a Scorpion pass him to his left, and another to his right. All his men kept widening their half-circle, until it was the Many of Nem that Meyr faced, and not the Empire. The Scorpions all wore the same hateful smile as their half-caste cousin. Step by step they closed in on the giant, pausing just out of the reach of his axe.

So, we are weak, in their eyes. Meyr found, belatedly, that he despised them. They had signed themselves over to the Empire, and they did not even know it.

One of them hurled a spear, almost without warning. Meyr got his shield up, felt the strength of the missile rattle against the aviation steel. Something else, perhaps a hand-axe, rebounded from his pauldron, striking from behind.

They came for him then. Without a war cry, with nothing but a glitter of raised weapons, they descended like ravenous beasts.

'I spit on you all,' Meyr roared at them, and then let himself fall into the earth.

That night, around the fires, Jakal came to find Hrathen. She crouched beside him, one sharp elbow knocking aWasp slaver away and clearing a space. She did not spare the unseated man a glance.

'You are very clever, Of-the-Empire,' she began.

'Am I?' he said, carefully neutral. Her presence, suddenly so close, had fired his pulse a little. Is it that I genuinely admire her, or simply because I cannot have her? he asked himself.

'Walk with me, great conqueror,' she said, standing again. 'We will talk of your deeds.'

It is because she challenges me, he thought. She cares nothing for rank, nothing for the Empire. She is the pure savage, and she would cut my throat in a moment — will do so, when I am no longer of use.

And the thought came back, And she would do the same with any other here, and so I am one of them. It was bittersweet, that thought. The Rekef in him jeered at it, but that part of him whose actions had seen him brought in for treason, that man understood. He launched himself to his feet and followed her off into the dark.

'What would you hear of my deeds, O Warlord?' he asked her, trying to match her tone. Away from the fires, he could not see her face clearly but he knew she was smiling.

'I shall tell you of them. You are a cunning creature, Of-the-Empire. You knew that the giant would escape my people.'

He shrugged. 'I was a slaver for the Empire. You learn about the Art of the lesser races. I knew that some of his kinden could walk within the earth.'

'How do you ever keep them enslaved?' she asked.

'Many don't have the Art. Most have kin that don't. For every runaway, every act of rebellion, we punish those we still have.' He spread his clawed hands. 'That man bought his freedom with the blood of his people. He's unusual. They're clannish, the Mole Crickets, and most of them just offer their backs to the lash and get on with their work.'

She gave a brief laugh. 'So your generosity gave the giant to my people.'

'And if they had killed him, they'd have thanked me,' Hrathen said. 'And if we'd gone for him and he'd escaped, we'd look weak. Do you disapprove?'

'No. I love cleverness. There are chieftains stronger than I, more skilled, more savage, but none is more clever, Of-the-Empire, remember that.'

'Must you call me that?' He surprised himself with the complaint. It was a weakness, to seek to avoid the name, but it jabbed him like a stone in his boot every time she used it. Perhaps it had surprised her, too, for she paused, appearing nothing but a darkness within the night. He sensed her staring back at him.

'What else am I to call you? That is all you are, to me: you are the Empire's halfbreed hand.' She sat down, looking back at the fires, at the hasty tents of her people. 'So tell me, Of-the-Empire, tell me of yourself — if there is more than that.'

He joined her carefully, within arm's reach of her. Now that his eyes were growing used to the dark, he saw how the distant wash of the oil flames gave her pale skin the faintest touch of blue fire.

'I was a slaver for a long time, working the Silk Road mostly,' he said. 'Then I was a Rekef man, keeping an eye on the slavers. It looked like that was all I'd ever be, travelling up and down the Dryclaw with the Scorpion- kinden-'

'I know of them,' she interrupted dismissively. 'The tame ones, we call them.'

He digested that, nodding. 'Then the war came,' he continued. 'War with the Lowlands. First strike was