'What you would do — what this foreigner would do — would destroy us as surely as the Scorpions would,' Ethmet snapped back. 'When he had finished, with his ideas and his machines, what would be left here would not be Khanaphes. He would take the city away from those who have cared for and ruled it all these years!'
'From you!' Amnon shouted down at him. 'From you, you mean! You and the other Ministers, who tell us every word you spout is repeating the voice of the Masters!' His hands were clenched, as if itching to pick the Minister up and rattle him. 'I will fight to save this city. I will die fighting to save this city. But not for you. Not for the Masters. For my people. For the memory of those I have already led to their deaths, on your command. I will do this, and I will do it with Totho's advice, because I can hear his voice and it speaks sense to me.'
'The Masters will not brook such disobedience!' Ethmet almost wailed.
'There are no Masters!' Amnon bellowed at him, a full furious roar of rage. 'There are no Masters! It's you! It's you who would sacrifice this city rather than loosen your cursed grip on it an inch!'
After he had said it, he looked shocked, horrified by his own daring. Totho lifted the helm, the last piece of his mail, and held it out. Mutely, Amnon accepted it.
'You will be exiled,' Ethmet said, aghast. 'You will be stripped of your rank.'
'If the Scorpions leave enough of me to suffer your punishments, then exile me to the ends of the world. I care not,' Amnon growled. 'Now leave. Leave and do not show yourself to me again, you or any of your siblings, or I swear by all that I have sworn to protect that I shall march into the Scriptora and kill every last one of you.'
Whether by a renewed concentration of effort amongst the Scorpion artillery crews or some weakness within the Khanaphir stonework, the walls of Khanaphes were breached at three hours past noon that day, and the Scorpion war-horde rushed for the yawning gap. Beetle-kinden archers hurried to either side of the tumbled stones to rain arrows on them, even as the leadshotters picked a new space of wall near the breach, and began to pound it.
Atop the tumbled rubble and stones, two companies of the Khanaphir neighbourhood militia took station, directing their spears down at the onrushing Scorpions. They had been picked by Amnon and tasked specially for this last service to their city. They were men and women whose homes stood at their backs, who knew that their families were even now being rushed towards the river.
Roaring, raging, surging up the rubble, the first Scorpion charge broke against their shields, axemen and halberdiers of the Nem impaled on the spears, run through and wrenching the weapons from their wielders' hands even as they died. The leaf-bladed Khanaphir swords came out. The militia held fast, and the Scorpions fell back amid a hail of arrow-shot. The archers leant out further to loose at them, feeling the walls rock and totter with each leadshot that struck home. The impacts were coming fast now: the crews had got into their stride.
The Scorpion host struck out again, their long legs taking them up the rubble swiftly and sure-footedly. Axe heads split shields, javelins sank into them and dragged them from their owner's grip. The brutal halberds descended over them, hacking down men in the first and second rank.
More defenders pushed in from behind to stand over the fallen, using the slope to deny the Scorpions any progress. The bitter struggle swayed back and forth, but the Beetle-kinden dug in for all they were worth, with the legendary endurance of their kind, and they held firm. Amnon had chosen them well. They held.
After they had repulsed four charges, with grievous losses on both sides, Hrathen sent the crossbows in. They loosed volley after volley, the bolts powerful enough to punch through shields.
The Beetles held their ground. The archers above killed enough of the Scorpion crossbowmen that they fell back, aware of their value, their place as a military aristocracy that did not have to suffer casualties. The Beetles held, standing bloodied and ragged behind a barricade of the dead.
Hrathen found Angved and gave his orders. They had no time to play this out for honour's sake, and the Scorpions cared nothing for it in any case.
The first three thunderous shots were delivered to establish the range, impacting on either side of the breach and showering the militia with shards of stone and dust. The fourth shot was on the mark, right in the centre of their close-packed bravado.
Even then they tried to hold. Even then they brought up what few reserves they had left to fill the gap. They had a courage drawn from ignorance. The enemy have done their worst, they assumed, and we stand. They stood between the lips of broken stone and braced their shields, spears held high in challenge.
The next two leadshotters spoke in unison and wiped them out. Angved had made calculations for the lighter load and used scrap-shot, a bag of nails and stones and jagged metal that burst halfway from the engines' mouths. No shield could protect them, nor their desperate bravery. The leadshotters' load scythed them like corn, tearing men and women in half, ripping off limbs, breaking their bones like dry twigs.
Some few had survived, those standing closest to the shattered stone walls. A handful, only, they could not so much as slow the Scorpion advance as it howled its way into the breach, but they fought anyway. They had been stripped of choices.
Scorpions ravened up the walls and killed the defending archers. The bowmen fought to the last man, using fists and daggers against all the weapons of the enemy.
The war-host of the Many of Nem entered Khanaphes in a bloody-handed rush. Their army had instructions to run straight for the river, but the open city was too tempting. The Scorpions diluted themselves in looting and burning, even as the evacuation was drawing to a desperate close. Amnon's words to the boatmen had been clear: on no account, at any cost, must the Scorpions be allowed to take any vessel. Even as the Scorpions sacked the westerly neighbourhoods the boats were still taking on fraught and weeping passengers, just one more load, just one more handful of the dispossessed and homeless, even as the smoke began to rise and the victory cries of the Many drifted through the air.
When the vanguard of the Scorpions came to the river at last, it was near dusk, and still the boatmen's work was not done. At the sight of that rapacious horde, though, they cast off with their last cargoes. They wept, many of those oarsmen and sailors, on hearing the cries of those they had left behind. Hundreds, hundreds were still left on the west bank for the Scorpions to find. Hundreds, but not thousands. Not the tens of thousands who had made western Khanaphes their home.
At dusk, the Scorpion host was a dark mass along the riverbank staring across the water at their enemies. They bunched at the bridge's mighty foot, seeing the barricades above, guessing at the archers and soldiers beyond the peak of the arch, and they made their camp, and planned for the morrow.
Thirty-Four
It was hard work running Thalric's errands, but that was because the city was falling apart.
Even moving through the streets was getting difficult. The eastern city was packed out with refugees, and with soldiers trying to find a place for them all. In the last hour before dark it seemed to Che like the end of the world. The uprooted citizens of Khanaphes, clutching their children and their scant possessions, were herded sobbing and whimpering through the streets, to be bivouacked in markets, along pavements, in homes and storehouses, anywhere there was space. Che forged her way through it all with a foreigner's awkwardness. The distraught crowds were all part of the same world, despite their distress, while she was from elsewhere. There were currents and signs that allowed them to shoal like fish through even the narrowest parts of the city, where Che was left battered and bewildered. From all sides she heard them calling on their lost Masters, their city's ancient heritage. They were praying, beseeching invisible and absent entities for aid against the invader. She saw fervent belief on so many faces.
She had done her best to keep track of her remaining compatriots. Berjek and Praeda had been arguing earlier, now neither was speaking to the other. Berjek wanted to leave at once
, given that the Scorpions had reclaimed their leadshotters from river duty to make up for the engines the Khanaphir had destroyed. Praeda would not go.
Che could still not quite believe it. Praeda herself bore an expression of puzzlement, whenever caught unawares, at the colossal entity that had come thundering into her life. It was not that she had not been wooed before, Che knew, for plenty of scholars and magnates had set their sights at her, demonstrating their erudition, their wealth, their good taste and sensibilities. She had been pursued in all the civilized ways known to Collegium, and had stood them all off with her icy reserve. It had been claimed that her heart would not be won until some artificer devised a clockwork husband for her.
But, of course, Collegium did not hold wooers like Amnon. He was something from the violent, brutal past. He was fierce, burning with energy, strong and swift. He had never sat on a committee, drafted a paper, given a lecture or brokered a bulk purchase. He would not know what to make of any part of Praeda's world, and that, for her, was the attraction. More, he had an aura about him, of youth and strength and infinite capability and, despite his status and his allegiance, and the hundreds of Khanaphir women who surely coveted him, he had looked just once at Praeda Rakespear and thought, Yes.
Che had to admit, that would be a hard offer to resist. The simple, pure adoration of Amnon the First Soldier was nothing to be cast aside lightly. Perhaps Praeda had been waiting, all this long cold time, for the warmth of a man such as he.
And he will let her be what she wants to be, she thought, battling still through the packed streets. No scholar he, nor merchant, he will not compete with her, or try to be her better. In Collegium it was always maintained that men and women were equals. Artisans, militia, artificers, scholars, all could boast women within their ranks. Still, Che had seen the Assembly, and seen that at least three of every four were men, and the ratio was worse amongst the merchant magnates. Helleron's Council consisted of twelve men and one hard-nosed woman. We are not the Wasps, with their strict patriarchy, but we should take a long look at what we actually are.
She ducked in at a convenient corner to get her bearings. She had received plenty of news from the battle front, which was even now advancing on the river. None of it seemed good. She had seen Totho and Amnon in conference several times, and it seemed that the Iron Glove was taking some personal interest in the outcome. Despite her harsh words for the man, she could not help but think, I hope Totho knows what he's doing. Certainly a great deal of the city had been surrendered already. In the sky to the west, the sunset was darkened with smoke.
She had been keeping her eyes out for the Wasp-kinden. They were out there still, and it seemed clear that both she and Thalric were on the menu as far as the Rekef were concerned. They would be holed up somewhere here in the east city, but they would be working at a disadvantage, because Khanaphes was not the sort of city they were used to. The word had gone out now that they were enemies of the Ministers and Masters, so a Wasp-kinden face would find few friends here. They would be forced to seek their agents and spies amongst the lowest of the low: halfbreeds, criminals and those few foreigners who had not fled when word of the Scorpions came. Even there they risked exposure and betrayal to the city's authorities. They would have to tread carefully.
Of course, Thalric had the same problem himself, hence his need for Che. She had done her best to explain to the Ministers that Thalric himself was no part of the Empire's plan. They had nodded and smiled with their usual politic blankness, leaving her unsure whether they had believed her or not. She also half expected to get back to find that the drinking den's owner had sold him out.
She spotted a foreign face within the crowd, just for a moment. She had been looking backwards, along the way she had come. It was the brief discontinuity that had caught her, another person not quite in tune with the crowd. But it was not the pale flash of a Wasp face. It was a face darker than her own, than any local: coal-black Vekken features.
She cursed, moving out into the crowd again, knowing that the other one of them would be somewhere about. What do they want? But that was an old question. They wanted to kill her, of course, and she had to assume they were following some distant Vekken directive, because she had surely given them no recent cause. They must have received their instructions before any of them even set out from Collegium, and on that list, triggered by who knew what, was the directive: Kill the ambassador.
Uncle Sten and his stupid ideas. Peace with the Vekken, indeed! She had already gathered enough understanding of them to know that it was simply not an option. They hate us. They fear us. There is no common ground.
She picked up her pace, jostling and pushing, sensing in the back of her mind the two Ant-kinden trying to reach her through the crowd. One was likely ahead of her, trying to find an ambush point, silently guided by his comrade. She changed direction several times, trying to be unpredictable. She was meanwhile looking for any kind of public building.
She saw a large house that had obviously been opened up for refugees. As swiftly as she could, she ducked inside. The place was lined wall-to-wall with people: each had inherited a space of stone floor in place of the home they had abandoned across the river. She pushed through them, making for the stairs, ignoring their complaints. She imagined the doorway now darkening as the hooded Vekken came inside after her.
Upstairs, still stepping and stumbling over destitute Khanaphir, but she had seen a window large enough to admit her. She rushed for it, squeezed through it, let her wings catch her as she dropped. She was a clumsy and awkward flier, but it was an Art the Vekken could not attain. She let her wings carry her across a flight of buildings, across two alleys, dropping down into a roof garden and then making her way across to the street, past more surprised locals. Let that put them off the trail.
She was uncomfortably aware that they would not give up hunting her, though. They had a kind of blind, idiot patience in that regard, an Ant trait. She would have to confront them eventually.
Then let me choose the time and place, and let me choose my allies too. She had no doubt that Thalric would back her, should she ask him. The thought gave her an odd surge of confidence: to have a friend, no matter who, one who would not ask the wrong questions. Just to have a friend.
She was getting close to his retreat now. It had taken her long enough. His hideout was across an open-air market from her, although the stalls had now all been turned into surrogate housing. Rows and rows of Khanaphir were huddled together beneath the awnings, hundreds of them sitting there with bland acceptance, simply waiting to be told they could go home.
It was an instinct that came with flying, an instinct that precious few of the locals could possess. Entering the market, Che had glanced up at the rooftops.
They were there. She saw two of them clearly, one to her left, one to her right, crouching on high and watching: Wasp-kinden. They were cloaked, but their simple presence said it all.
They've tracked him down. For a moment she thought they might have killed him already, but then why would they still be watching? Surely not for her? It's still daylight, just, and they won't risk anything until after dark. She could not be sure of that, but it seemed to make sense. If she went into that drinking den now, she could be walking into a trap, but if she did not she could be leaving him to his fate.
Was this part of the bargain we made? But that was not a question worth asking. Her difficulty now would be getting in without being spotted by the Wasp sentries.
She put a shawl up over her hair, so that she now looked as much a Beetle-kinden as the locals. Once that tell-tale was covered, there was nothing in her appearance that should scream foreigner at them. Nothing except the way she moved.
The crowd was settling, the streets were emptying as dusk drew on. She must go now if she was to take cover amongst these, her distant kin.
But what a gulf separates us. We are of different worlds. The thought was irresistible, sweeping over her with the feverish insistence of a Fi
r dream. O Masters of Khanaphir, aid me, she mouthed. Hide me from the eyes of my enemies.
She stepped into the crowd and moved through it, and it opened up before her. It was not that people parted for her; that would hardly have served her purpose. Instead, they were always just out of her step, not in her way, not snagging her elbows or stepping on her feet. She coursed through the settling crowd like a true part of it. Her mind reeled at the continuing strangeness, waited each moment for everything to come crashing down, but somewhere deeper it felt natural to her, as though she had finally started to listen to a voice she had been trying to ignore.
She reached the den's entrance, knowing better than to glance back and thus show her face.
A thought struck her just before she entered the building, and she let her smooth course carry her past and then down a side alley, seeming nothing more than one Beetle amongst hundreds. She was keenly aware of time, the hour latening, the Wasps surely readying themselves to swoop. Still, she continued on to the riverside, towards the building's rear, the hatch that was Thalric's fall-back. With eyes that were not hindered by the gathering dusk, she managed several quick glances at the rooftops, seeing no one.
But why would the Wasps not be watching here? It felt wrong. They were Rekef, therefore neither fools nor amateurs. Still, aside from a few ambling Beetles going homeward, their eyes fixed on the far bank and its bristling newcomers, she saw nobody.
She walked right around the building and slipped back to the front, ducking inside. It was increasingly difficult to keep her pace nonchalant. She could almost hear the sands dwindling in the glass.
The place was nearly empty: the Ministers had yet to commandeer it to house fugitives and, with the city sundered in two, it was not a night for drinking. Khanaphes was frightened. Of the three people there, one was audibly murmuring some invocation to the Masters, and she wondered if this was something they had always done when faced with life's trials, or whether the emergency had brought them back to it.
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