They had gone very still. She could feel them taking up the lifeless stones of her memory with their cool, slimy fingers, turning them over and over. Thalric put his arms around her, hugged her to his chest. She wondered if it was a gesture for her reassurance or his own.
‘The world has moved on,’ she said. ‘Everywhere but here.’
‘The Moths have fallen,’ observed Lirielle. ‘What is this?’ Despite it all, there was such mourning in her voice that Che felt sorry for them.
‘But the rabble of the Nem …’ the man began, and trailed off, any confidence ebbing from his voice.
‘They will not stand still for ever,’ Che said. ‘Clinging to whatever life the desert could give, fighting each other for a few scraps, they have been slow to change, but all it took was a prod from the Empire, and they are now inside your city.’
For a long moment the Masters stared at one another, trying to cling on ponderously to what they had believed, in the face of all they had now seen. They don’t know what to do, Che realized. They slept too long.
‘You will help, surely,’ she pressed them.
Elysiath turned a haughty look on her. ‘So much is lost, it hardly seems worthwhile to salvage what is left.’
‘But they’re your people,’ Che insisted.
‘They have bitterly disappointed us,’ the man stated. ‘They have squandered all we left them.’
‘They have forgotten all I taught them of war,’ rumbled dark Garmoth Atennar from behind them.
‘But they’re now calling out for you!’ Che told them. ‘They pray to you. They invoke your aid.’
‘Do they?’ Elysiath actually cocked her head to one side, listening in some way that Che could not imagine. She smiled faintly. ‘Ah, yes, they do. How faint they sound. Ah, well.’
‘“Ah, well”?’ Che protested. ‘Don’t you see what that means? It means that they believe in you still. To them, after all these centuries, you are still the Masters of Khanaphes. You are what they have lived for, and now you are the reason why they are all going to die. You still have a responsibility to them. They are your servants.’
‘Responsibility? To the slaves?’ Elysiath echoed, as though the concept was remarkable.
‘You said they’d failed you,’ Che told her. ‘They haven’t. They’re fighting for you even now, as we speak. They’re bleeding and dying for you, for your city. The first city, remember? The city you built so long ago. They’re giving their lives to preserve it from the Scorpions, who will soon turn it into one more desert ruin, and put an end even to the memory of you. And perhaps they’ll come down here. If there are enough of them, or if the Empire tightens its hold, then maybe even you won’t remain safe. Your tests and traps cannot hide you for ever.’
The man was frowning, as though he had eaten something distasteful. Lirielle toyed with her comb. ‘But what can we do?’ she said.
‘It would be such a waste of our power to intervene,’ the man mused. ‘The cost would be terrible. It would set us back so much.’
‘What were you saving it for?’ Che asked him.
‘The revivification of the land, of course,’ he replied. ‘The reversal of the change that the great cataclysm brought about. To bring green back to the desert, that is our great purpose.’
Che blinked at that, at the sheer hubris of it, for she could not imagine that even the Masters could even start to accomplish such a thing. Are they just living empty dreams then, despite all their power? ‘And who will then profit from this,’ she pressed them, even so, ‘if your own people are gone?’
The man gave a petulant frown. ‘It will demand a great effort, hardly worth it, surely, to preserve so little.’
‘So much effort,’ Lirielle agreed, as though just combing her hair for so long had exhausted her.
‘They’re dying,’ Che said, reaching the end of her ability to explain herself to them. ‘As we speak, they’re dying.’ Totho is dying. Oh, I am so sorry, Totho.
‘I would rather have slept,’ said Elysiath, surly. ‘Jeherian, will you lead us?’
The man beside her nodded wearily. ‘So much lost,’ he said sadly. ‘Ah, well.’
Che started, as someone moved past her. Without a sound, another of the Masters stepped forward to join Elysiath and the others, a great bulky man whose lustrous hair fell down past his shoulders. Looks were exchanged between them all. Even as Che noted him, she saw another woman come padding from the darkness beyond them, as tall and voluptuous as the rest, the necklace about her throat bearing a kingdom’s ransom in precious stones. Next, another two came, hand in hand, to stand nearby. Then, at last, Che saw what she had long imagined. On the nearest sarcophagus, the crowning statue stirred, stretching languorously, without visible transition from cold stone to live flesh. Thus do the Masters of Khanaphes sleep out the centuries.
There were almost a score of them soon, male and female, looming from the dark to join their kin, their grave and beautiful faces all marked with expressions of concern. Che expected chanting. She was waiting for them to enact some ritual, as Achaeos had said the Moths did. It took her a long moment of frustrated silence until she realized that they were already at work.
Each of them was looking up, towards the vaulted ceiling, up towards the embattled city of Khanaphes and the sky beyond. Each and every one of them was sharing in the same act of concentration, staring at some great focal point she could not imagine. She knew she should hate them for their callous detachment, but there was such grief and loss evident on those noble faces that it nearly broke her heart.
What have I driven them to? she wondered. What is this, that they sacrifice here?
Pictures blurred and stretched in her mind again, taking her back to the city above.
‘Would you look at what they’ve done,’ Hrathen said. ‘How much effort went into that?’
‘So they’ve brought some more stone to fill the breach,’ Jakal replied dismissively. ‘It will not stop us. An act of desperation.’ She jabbed a thumb-claw towards a nearby Scorpion. ‘Call my guard together.’
‘We knew they were working on something, and now it looks like they’ve built the world’s biggest single-use nutcracker.’ They were standing on a rooftop overlooking the bridge and the river, Hrathen with his telescope to his eye. ‘The archers, all the rest, are running for the second barricade.’
‘Bring it down,’ Jakal told him. ‘Use one of your petards. Or move one of the engines up on to the bridge.’
‘No need for the sweat,’ Hrathen said. ‘All that effort, and we’ll still crack it in less than a minute.’ He signalled to one of his own, one of the few Slave Corps soldiers left. Of late, the Khanaphir archers had become very good at shooting them down. ‘Fly to Lieutenant Angved,’ he instructed. ‘Tell him to sight on that blockage and bring it down.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The man kicked off and made a short dart over the rooftops to where Angved and his leadshotter were waiting.
Jakal regarded Hrathen with a slight smile. It was not a fond look, for Scorpion faces did not lend themselves to fondness. There was fire in it, though: anticipation of victory had set light to her.
‘You’ll go in yourself now?’ Hrathen asked her.
‘Their archers have fled. I shall destroy what warriors they have left. You should bring your engines up to the bridge’s crest, so that we can destroy their second wall.’ Her understanding of artillery and its uses was increasing by leaps and bounds. ‘My warriors must see me fight. They must remember why I am Warlord.’
‘Then they will see me fight alongside you,’ Hrathen said. ‘The engineers can manage without me.’
She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘Your Empire breeds fools,’ she said. ‘If my warriors obeyed my words as swiftly as yours obey you, I would not need to shed my blood for them. Still, you shall have the chance to prove yourself, if you so wish.’
‘Why do you go, then?’ he asked her. ‘It’s not as though your host is short one more warri
or.’
Her smile was scornful. ‘I am Warlord because I am the best. I slew many to take the crown, and there are many who would slay me for it in turn. If I did not fight they would all take up arms against me. I too must shed the blood of the Khanaphir, but I shall choose when I shed it. I am not destined to become mere prey for arrows. My people shall see me take the bridge itself, and they shall remember.’
‘They shall see us take the bridge.’
‘Are you strong enough?’ she asked him. ‘Does your blood run so pure? You may just as well remain behind. My people would not care.’
It stung like a slaver’s lash. ‘I have the strength of my father’s kinden and the guile of my mother’s,’ he told her, ‘as you will soon see. Perhaps it will be I who will challenge you.’
That made her smile. ‘I would welcome it.’ Below, in the ravaged street, a company of Scorpions had assembled, huge men and women loaded with scavenged armour. A dozen of them stamped and rattled, waiting impatiently. Jakal had chosen them carefully, Hrathen knew, from among the most vicious and bloodthirsty of all her people, thus keeping her potential enemies close to her.
She descended to join them and they greeted her with a roar of approval. Today was their day. The day their Warlord had delivered their ancient enemy to them. Hrathen followed as they struck out for the bridge, after sending back an order to have one of the leadshotters brought up after them.
Not a great day for the Empire, he thought. Probably not even a footnote in the Imperial histories, but I shall know. I shall know that I was true to my father’s bloody-handed kinden, at the end. The desolation of Khanaphes shall be my legacy to my people.
The archers, and a scattering of Royal Guard, were still in sight, fleeing towards the end barricade. Amnon faced the new-formed wall of loose stones and squared his shoulders. Meyr crouched close to him, a hulking, brooding shadow, and in his hands he had a rough-ended beam from the construction works, ten feet long. Totho checked that his snapbow was charged. I had feared I might run out of ammunition today, he considered. That seems unlikely now.
Another thought struck him, that Drephos would be proud now: not of Totho but of the armour. Field-testing complete: the aviation plate can be considered worth its considerable cost. We three are the proof of that. He was amazed how quickly Amnon had adapted to it, but then the man was a warrior born, and Beetles took easily to wearing a second shell.
If we had come with twenty men in full mail, we would have held against anything the Scorpions or the Empire could throw at us, he thought. We could have held off the world.
‘They’ll bring a petard up to blow the barricade down,’ he warned the others. ‘We won’t have long before we must fight again.’
‘We won’t need long,’ Amnon told him. ‘Just enough time so they can complete the works, close up the breach at the far end. That is all the time we need to buy them.’ Totho wondered what Praeda Rakespear was doing right now, whether she had realized that Amnon was not coming back to her. He wondered whether Amnon had left people ready to restrain her, to stop her running up here. Probably he had: it was the sort of thing the big man thought of.
He spotted the plume of grey smoke, and knew immediately what it meant. Leadshotter on a rooftop. There were words in his mind to warn the others, but he had no time to give actual voice to them before the missile struck the barricade.
The noise passed by him, the physical force overriding it. A piece of broken rock hit his chest like a sledgehammer, his feet skating from under him, so that he slammed down on his back. The air was all dust, with stone fragments pattering all about them. Gasping for breath, he could not get to his feet yet, but he tried to peer through the drifting white veil, to see what had been done.
The new stones had fallen, forming a broken pavement between him and the barricade, and the Scorpions were coming through the breach. He realized even then that their artillerists would have preferred a second shot, to widen the gap, but the warriors already on the bridge had been so long denied this chance that nothing could have held them back. They surged in along with the stone-dust, as Meyr and Amnon met them at full charge.
It would have been suicide but for the mail. It could have been suicide anyway. There were enough weak points – throat, armpit, groin – that one spear or blade could have ended either of them. They thrust themselves into the thick of the Scorpion weapons, and Totho saw Amnon take a dozen blows, and Meyr twice that number. Each rebounded from the dented plate, frustrated by its fluted curves that turned the strongest blow aside. Amnon’s sword descended repeatedly, chopping indiscriminately at the enemy. Meyr laid about himself like a mad thing, crushing the Scorpions, flinging them from the bridge with great swipes of his club. They tried to drag him down, to get under his reach, but Amnon killed them as they came, shield high and sword never still.
Totho struggled to his feet, feeling sharp pains from his ribs. His breastplate had a prodigious dent to one side, where the stone had struck him. He staggered a little, and then ran up to stand to Amnon’s left. With a desperate concentration, he resumed the business of running out of ammunition, emptying each magazine in turn into the host of Scorpions, punching holes in their mail and through their mail, even through one man and into the next. Beyond those that Meyr crushed and Amnon slew, the bridge was heaving with them. He could see bigger, better-armoured warriors forcing their way through the breach, eager to get to the fight. There was no subtlety now, no pretence at tactics. Only three men stood on the bridge between the Scorpions and their prey. Faced with that, it was down to blade and claw. Crossbows, leadshotters, all were forgotten, as the Many of Nem returned to what they knew best.
Amnon was down on one knee, his pauldron bent almost in two by a halberd blow. Totho shot the wielder through the head as he raised the weapon for a second strike.
Meyr’s breastplate was buckled, the catches at his side split apart by the stroke of a greatsword. It was impossible to tell how much of the blood on him was his own. There was a broken spear jutting from beside his neck that must surely have pierced his mail. The Scorpions were leaping on him, climbing up him, trying to unshell him with daggers and their clawed hands.
Totho loosed and loosed, reloaded and recharged and loosed again, picking them off every time Meyr remained still enough to shoot at. The giant grabbed them and tore them away from him, roaring in rage. If he got both hands on the same man, he ripped the wretch apart. Totho wondered whether anyone had ever seen an enraged Mole Cricket before.
Abruptly the Scorpions facing them were more heavily armoured, larger. They thundered into the shields of the two defenders hard enough to drive them back a step, hacking with sword and axe. Meyr backhanded one into the river. Another slammed an axe at his throat which was deflected by the plates of his shoulders. The strap on Amnon’s shield broke under a sword blow and he discarded it, taking his sword in both hands.
Totho slung his snapbow and rushed in beside him, with his own shield on his arm. He received three strikes immediately, two on the shield’s curved face and one to his helm that made his head swim. He tried to lunge back with his sword, but it was all he could do to just stand upright, shield held up and being struck at repeatedly by the Scorpions – all he could do not to fall back immediately and yield the breach to them. I am not a warrior. All he had was his armour, the one thing standing between life and death for him.
Another blow struck his shield so hard that he was knocked into Amnon. The Khanaphir did not even pause in his sword work, merely pushing Totho back with his free hand.
A stingshot struck Amnon clean in the chest, flaring gold, and he staggered. The Scorpions surged forward, but Totho was there to meet them. He raised his shield and sword against the blows, putting his shoulder to the enemy as though he was trying to hold a door closed. Meyr was being swarmed, Scorpions hacking at his legs, leaping up to drive their claws at his throat, hanging off his armour. Totho felt four solid blows land on his shield, numbing his arm. His sword was batt
ered out of his hand.
A Scorpion woman was abruptly in front of Meyr, stepping aside from his descending fist with a deft grace and then driving her spear up with all her might past the edge of his breastplate, under his arm. Totho saw the shaft sink deep through the sundered mail with an explosion of blood. Meyr struck at her furiously with both hands but she ducked inside his reach and ripped at his throat with her claws. Another man, a Scorpion halfbreed, was beside her, one hand outstretched. Totho saw the bolt of golden light strike Meyr’s helm around the eye-slit and the huge man staggered back, rearing to his full height.
The Scorpion woman tore her spear free, turning as she did so and coming back to hurl it into Meyr’s throat, where it stuck, shaft quivering. Totho could hear himself shouting something wordless.
Amnon was there. Amnon was there now, but it was too late. Meyr collapsed on to one knee, a hand on the spear-shaft that was running with his blood. Amnon lunged forward at the woman, for a moment not caring if the Scorpions were through the breach or not. The halfbreed got in the way, fending the sword off and reaching out with the open palm of his off-hand. The stingshot struck Amnon’s damaged pauldron hard enough to rip it off, then the halfbreed’s sword jammed into the Beetle’s side, scraping against mail and severing straps.
Amnon rammed his own blade into the man’s chest, driving it in two-handed up to the hilt. He was ducking immediately to scoop up a new sword, a sharp, slender piece originating from the Iron Glove factories. My sword, Totho recognized it. My sword.
The Scorpions had paused a moment with the halfbreed’s death, and Totho realized it was to give the woman room. She grinned fangs at Amnon and took hold of her spear with one hand, wrenching it from Meyr’s neck. The giant gave out a sound, a monstrous sigh, and toppled backwards.
Totho knew he should find another sword or unsling his snapbow, but he found he could only watch Amnon and the Scorpion woman. Amnon stood unevenly, his weight on one leg. His once-pristine armour was a maze of dents and scratches, missing plates and broken buckles. He had been fighting for too long. It was not the mail that weighed on him, but a deadly weariness. The Scorpion woman looked fresh, fleet, long-limbed and strong. Worse, she looked skilled.
The Scarab Path Page 63
