The Scarab Path

'What about Berjek and Praeda?'

'Berjek is being patient, but I get the impression he's about ready to pack his bags as well. As for Bella Rakespear …' Trallo grimaced. 'Well, that there's gotten complicated.'

They were at the door of the embassy, as Che gave Trallo a sidelong look. 'Meaning him? '

'He does appear to have got to her somehow,' Trallo murmured. 'It was all that dancing he did, I reckon.'

Che tried to envisage them: cool, detached Praeda Rakespear with the giant, vital Amnon. They seemed utterly opposite. Then again, at least they're of the same kinden. I'm no one to judge.

'So what does she want to do?' she asked the Fly.

'Bella Che, I don't think she knows herself. We were all hoping you could talk her into making a decision.'

The city of Khanaphes resounded to the tread of marching feet.

From atop the wall it was a spectacle, but Totho found that he could no longer appreciate mere spectacle. The regiments of Khanaphir soldiers were still leaving the city, each parading in mighty armed pomp through the streets before assembling in front of the west gates. Totho was no novice when it came to armies, and his mind afforded plenty of comparisons. In fact I am probably the best-qualified person in the city to say to Amnon what must be said. Except for some of the fugitive Imperials, perhaps, and they were unlikely to be handing out strategic advice.

It was not a Lowlander army, that much was clear. Correction: it is not a Lowlander army such as has been seen these last three centuries. The troops were still arriving by barge from the tributary towns further upriver, but the city itself had mustered a surprising number of soldiers. They were not Ant-kinden here, where every citizen would take up a sword at a moment's unspoken notice, but the Ministers had been able to mobilize a lot of the city's population in the short time they had been given. That would be Amnon's first boast: We are used to fighting off these savages.

The sands have finally begun to move in the glass, though, Totho thought. What you are used to, friend Amnon, is what was, not what is. Time, that long-denied guest, was finally marching on Khanaphes.

Amnon leant on the parapet, looking down with a broad smile as his soldiers assembled. He was dressed in his full armour, the scaled hauberk and the crested helm. He would be better served by what we tried to give him, Totho knew, but the Ministers had forbidden it, of course. Totho watched another unit of neighbourhood militia leave the gates. The Khanaphir army looked a strange amalgam to his eyes, unwieldy and awkward and lacking in vital parts. The core was Amnon's Royal Guard and some other heavy infantry: scale- armoured shield-and-spearmen backed by armoured archers. They were greatly outnumbered by the light militia, vast expanses of men and women without armour, with only shields and spears or leaf-bladed swords, or archers who could back up their bows with nothing but a dagger. Although they could stand in neat enough rows, Totho doubted they had seen much of a battle before. It is not an army, rather it is a levy. A levy of citizens that the Khanaphir can ill afford to lose.

There was cavalry on either side of the main force, and Totho was unused to seeing that. The swift, long- legged sand-beetles were ranged in their skittish, twitching ranks, each bearing a lancer and an archer. Smaller beasts were yoked to little two-wheeled carts which carried a pair of archers apiece to keep the driver company. Totho had never seen the like of them.

'The Marsh people have answered our call at last,' Amnon rumbled, pointing them out. A straggling column was heading upriver from the delta, and Totho turned a glass on them to see them better. They were the silvery- skinned Mantis-kinden from the swamps, perhaps a couple of hundred men and women wearing no armour, but armed with spears and recurved bows and the Art-given barbs of their arms. Mantis-kinden, still, thought Totho, but he had seen how the Mantids fell at the Battle of the Rails, and he knew he would be seeing it again, if he was fool enough to march alongside Amnon.

And if the Emperor had not died, then this would be a full Imperial army coming. He had not considered that before, but the timing felt right. The expansion of the Empire would have reached this far south by now, had it not been for all the internal squabbling. Perhaps the Khanaphir stood a chance against their age-old Scorpion-kinden enemies, even re-equipped and retrained as they now were, but if it had been the Imperial Eighth Army …? Twenty or thirty thousand Wasp-kinden and Auxillian soldiers descending on this lumbering mass of Beetle-kinden and their allies? Even if the Khanaphir and the Many of Nem could have put their differences aside, the Empire would still sweep across them and leave not a man. There would be no room for a battle in amongst all the slaughter.

He looked upon the army of Khanaphes and his artificer's mind cried: Where is their air-power? Where is their mechanized support? Where the engines of war? Where the crossbows and nailbows and snapbows and all the other accoutrements of modern battle? Drephos's heart would break if he saw this. Even the new toys of the Scorpions were merely old war-surplus, by Meyr's reckoning, outdated and obsolete weapons and engines that the Empire was well rid of. It seemed the unmaking of all of the great artificer's work in advancing the science of war. Small consolation that all this, this very way of life, now stood to be unmade in turn.

'Amnon,' he said.

'Speak, at last,' the big man turned to him. 'I have sensed your words unsaid all this time.'

'You have heard the reports of my people,' Totho said.

'The Ministers have heard them,' Amnon replied vaguely.

'I don't care about the Ministers,' Totho snapped, grabbing for the man's attention. 'You yourself have heard. You, the First Soldier of Khanaphes. The man who will lead.'

Amnon regarded him silently.

'You are now going to go and have the same fight you always have with the Scorpions,' Totho continued. 'Or that is what you think. That is what the Ministers have told you. You are going to go and put your shields up, and expect them to charge, and charge again. You see, I've done my research. I'm not just an ignorant foreigner. That's how it's done, yes? The wild Scorpion-kinden descend on you with axes and beasts, and you shoot them with arrows and brace your shields, and eventually they run out of manpower or will-power, and then they go away. They're just the mad desert savages, while you're the solid soldiers of Khanaphes. That's what you're all thinking?'

Still Amnon said nothing. His expression discouraged further pressing, but Totho looked up into his dark gaze without a flinch.

'You haven't understood a word that any of us have said. My people have spent time with the Many, long enough to see that the wind's changed. The Empire has been busy sharpening the sword, and the Scorpions, at least, aren't so attached to their cursed past that they're too proud to change. They have crossbowmen now, Amnon. Hundreds of crossbowmen. At medium range, a heavy crossbow bolt will go through a wooden shield without slowing much, and those Scorpions have the muscle to recock a heavy crossbow without breaking sweat. And you know what I see out there? Half your militia are carrying shields of shell or wicker.'

'I listened to you,' Amnon said, turning back to view the assembling army. 'I heard.'

'Then what?' Totho demanded. Why am I even getting involved? It was not just that he liked Amnon, although he found that was true, but this situation was an offence to his profession, and a criminal waste of raw material.

'The Masters have spoken,' Amnon said patiently. 'We will meet the Scorpions and defeat them, as we have always done. What can I say against that?'

'But-'

'No!' Amnon clenched his fists, knuckles swollen by his Art until his hands were like maces. 'Do not think I did not listen, when you spoke. Do not think I have not heard all this before, from one dearer to me than you are. She told me … She said such things … But she did not understand. I am commanded. The will of the Masters has been made clear to me, Totho. Therefore we will fight them as we have always fought them.' His breathing sounded ragged with repressed emotion. 'I have given some orders, that go beyond my own. I have ordered … a rearguard, if need be. In case we need to find our walls in haste. That is all. Even in that, I betray the Masters with my lack of faith.'