The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The next wave of the Many were coming.

  Corcoran felt the engines of the Fourth Iteration turn over, first slowly and then with a building urgency. The crew were casting off, letting the rudders and the current of the river pull them away from the quays.

  There was already a movement among the Scorpion-kinden in anticipation. A great mass of them was gathering by the west pillar of the Estuarine Gate, anticipating that the ship would have to come close enough for them to rake it with crossbow shot before it quit the city. And we should, we really should, Corcoran thought. What we should be doing right now is leaving. Khanaphes was never going to be a market for us, and soon it won't even be a city any more.

  He did not understand his leader: Totho seemed to have gone mad, caught some local fever. Gone native, perhaps. Where was the profit in this, to defend one pack of primitives against another? What could they possibly gain? Especially as the beast they had backed was going to lose. It didn't take any tactical mind to see that.

  Corcoran was not a soldier, despite the armour. He was a merchant, from a family of small traders. When the Iron Glove had hoisted its banner over Chasme he had seen the opportunity. He had been in near the start, and done well out of it. It had been worth exchanging the cluttered security of Solarno to make that bid for profit. He was a merchant and profit was his business. That was what he understood. Profit allowed him to live well and be a pleasant and amiable person, because to be pleasant and amiable in this world you needed a buffer between you and its woes.

  The world's woes were coming right back at him today. Sure and I'm very sorry for them all, he thought, but it wasn't as if they were family. The Khanaphir were having their last days on the map before the Scorpions consigned them to the past they had dwelled in for so long.

  But the halfbreed had decided that the Iron Glove should be making some kind of idiot stand now. It was beyond comprehension. Corcoran wanted so very badly to sail the Iteration towards the river mouth and demand that they raise the gate. Surely he would then be doing what was best for the consortium. Totho had plainly gone mad.

  If it had been any other man, perhaps, but Totho was a favourite of the Grand Old Man himself. It was well known that he and the big chief had built the Iron Glove with their own hands. Whatever Totho did would be given the nod, no matter how insane. Which left Corcoran out on the river, turning the bows of the Fourth Iteration towards the bridge.

  They were fighting up there. Totho was fighting up there. And maybe there'll be some justice and he'll get killed before I do. There would be a signal, but the Iteration had to be in place by then.

  'Take us in closer!' Corcoran called, and the order was relayed down to the engine rooms. 'And get the smallshotters loaded and on the rail,' he added, trying to sound adequately military. His hands were clenched on that rail themselves because otherwise they would be shaking.

  The Iteration was a good ship, made to stand the perils of hostile seas and hostile seafarers. In the river current it handled choppily, the engines constantly adjusting to the water's flow. Corcoran had the bulk of the Iron Glove people aboard with him, both to handle the craft and to man its armaments. They were short-handed even so. They had left a fair slice of their crew on the Spider-kinden pirate that had tried to overhaul them on the way to Khanaphes.

  The Scorpions on the bank were watching, fascinated, as the ship completed its cumbersome turn and chugged towards the bridge. With its mast down and sails stowed the Iteration might just have scraped under its arches, in another breach of Khanaphir tradition. That lot can rot, Corcoran thought. If they'd had any sense they'd have bought a job lot of snapbows off us, and they'd already be chasing the Scorpions back into the desert about now.

  'Keep us steady!' he called, as they neared the bridge. 'Steady here.'

  'You want the anchor out?'

  'No, just keep us steady.' He was not a sailor, either. Let his crew wrestle with engines and rudders to fulfil his orders. If Totho didn't have to make sense, neither did he. He did not want to be anchored down, though, since the Scorpions were not exactly powerless to retaliate.

  They had not seen the ship as a threat, he realized. There were masses of them gathered, set on funnelling on to the bridge. The Iteration had turned to put its broadside towards them and the crew were clipping the smallshotters to the rail. Tiny compared to the Scorpions' own siege weapons, they could shoot balls three inches across that would make a mess of a wooden hull, but were even more useful against human targets.

  'Grapeshot,' Corcoran ordered. His people industriously dropped bulging little paper sacks into the weapons' muzzles, each one a careful measure of firepowder and shot.

  Might as well make the first one count, Corcoran thought. 'We'll give it them all together,' he shouted out. Then he started as a small figure dropped on to the deck beside him.

  'Himself says now would be a good time,' Tirado told him.

  Corcoran nodded. 'Let them have it on my mark!' he cried, and then, 'Three, two, one — loose!'

  The combined shock of a dozen smallshotters detonating at once rolled the Iteration back in the water amid a bellowing of smoke and fire. The fistfuls of lead shot tore through the massed Scorpion warriors, ripping dozens of them apart. Corcoran was glad enough he didn't have to witness it. The aftermath, as the ship righted itself, was bad enough.

  'Load and loose in your own time,' he instructed his crew, seeing the Scorpion host boiling and reeling from this new assault. That will have taken pressure off the barricades. 'You go back now and find out how long he wants us here,' he told the Fly, and Tirado kicked off from the deck, darting upwards towards the bridge itself.

  The smallshotters were discharging independently, each at the speed of its own crew, lashing at the Scorpions wherever they were thickest. There was some return of crossbow bolts, but the distance defeated them, only a few coasting far enough to bounce back from the ship's armoured hull.

  'They're bringing up the big engines!' someone called. Corcoran glanced up at the bridge. Surely they were done by now? Surely Totho didn't need them to stay out here. Perhaps Tirado had been killed or hurt, or simply forgotten to deliver the message.

  'Try to keep them busy,' he shouted. He located one of the big leadshotters, and saw that it was some way inland, taking advantage of its own better range. The Iteration was armoured, but it was designed to be proof against the sort of pieces that another ship would carry. No ship had ever put to sea with something as heavy as the Scorpion ordnance. A few hits near the waterline would soon take care of the Iteration.

  'It'll take them a while to find the range,' he said, hearing his own voice tremble. Over the sporadic boom of the smallshotters he could barely be heard anyway. The bulk of the Scorpion advance had scattered, seeking shelter from the Iteration's salvos. The fighting above must falter, surely, the grinding wheels of death no longer fed by a flow of fresh bodies. Corcoran gritted his teeth, watching the Scorpion crews load their massive weapons.

  They were quicker than he had assumed. He saw the gust of smoke from one leadshotter and instinctively dropped to his knees.

  A tremendous column of spray spouted from the river, a full twenty yards past them and astern. They hurried their aim, he thought, and it was oddly reassuring to know that he had done enough damage to secure the enemy's attention. A second leadshotter roared even as he thought this, and the water erupted a few yards off the bows, between the Iteration and the piles of the bridge. Corcoran clung to the rail as the swell rocked them. Meanwhile, some of the smallshotters were loosing solid shot, trying for enough range to trouble the Scorpion artillerists.

  Tirado dropped almost on to his shoulders, swerving in the air to make himself a harder target. 'Time to go,' he announced. 'Pull back to the docks, and be thankful this river's so wide.'

  'Stop shooting and let's get out of here!' Corcoran shouted to the crew at the top of his lungs. He had to repeat it twice, running down the length of the ship, before everyone had pulled the smal
lshotters back and the ship's engines started to turn them. Another plume of water exploded nearby, but they had become a moving target now, spoiling the enemy's calculations.

  But they'll be ready for us the next time, won't they just …

  Above, on the bridge, the latest Scorpion assault was falling back, unsupported, shot through with arrows. Yet the host of the Many of Nem seemed barely diminished.

  Thirty-Six

  She woke up because he had stepped on her arm. The sudden pain, and waking into utter dark, left her wholly bewildered. Che had no idea where she was. Someone was apologizing to her but all reference escaped her. For a brief moment she was nowhere, and had no idea even who she was.

  Then she remembered her Art: it was still not second nature to her. She let her eyes gradually find their way, and saw Thalric a few paces away, looking frustrated.

  'Clumsy bastard,' she told him, and enquired, 'I've been asleep?'

  'Unless you've been snoring just to annoy me.' He was not quite looking at her and it took a moment to realize that it was because he could not, of course, see her. Her voice, in the confined space, must be hard to pin down.

  'You swallowed some of that herbal muck you were giving to Osgan,' Thalric went on. His eyes were very wide, futilely trying to stare the darkness down. 'Because of your shoulder. Then, after a while, you were sleeping. It's been a long night.'

  'And then you trod on me,' she pointed out. 'How long has it been?'

  'I have no idea.' He was moving about the room again, feeling for the walls. 'I used to think I had a good sense of time, but there are no clues down here: no light, no sounds. It's been hours, anyway. It must be daylight outside.'

  'Thalric,' she said, 'what are you doing, exactly?'

  'Trying to get a proper idea of this place — which has turned out to be surprisingly difficult, and somewhat disgusting.'

  'Do you want me to help you?'

  'I'll be fine.'

  'Only, I can see in the dark.'

  He stopped abruptly, turning towards where she was. His expression was completely unguarded. 'Since when?'

  Since you locked me in your heliopter after Asta — but she wasn't going to say that. 'It's a Beetle Art, Thalric. Granted, it's not common, but it's there.'

  His lips moved, but whatever he was going to say died there. Abruptly he sat down and put his head in his hands. How long has he been feeling his way around this place? How many hours of going round and round? She was treated to a brief moment of Thalric in absolute despair. Then he lifted his head, and he was already adjusting. 'So tell me then,' he said, 'what do we have?'

  She clambered to her feet, feeling her shoulder twinge, peering about. Her Art-sight leached the colours, turning Thalric's skin pallid and his clothes drab. She suspected there were few enough colours in their surroundings to begin with.

  'It's a room maybe twelve paces to a side,' she decided. 'The ceiling's about the same extent high. A cube, then, but the walls slope slightly inwards as they go up. There's an archway in each wall. Trapezium-shaped.' She stopped.

  'And no doors,'Thalric finished for her.

  'And no doors,' she echoed. 'There are just … the archways just have stone behind them. And one … one of them's been blocked off by the trap.'

  'I felt carving on the walls,' he said weakly.

  'It's the usual old Khanaphir script,' she said. Even with her Art-enhanced eyes it was hard to discern it. She moved to one wall, using a sleeve to wipe at it. At the first touch she made a horrified noise and flinched back. 'There's something on the walls.'

  'Yes, there is,' said Thalric, with some satisfaction. 'Every cursed surface here is coated with it. It's made my explorations a real joy.'

  I can't see it, she realized, but then logic reasserted itself. There was a thin layer of transparent slime coating the walls, coating the floor too — at least from the state of her clothes and the sounds her sandals made. As there was no light to gleam off it, it was completely invisible, even to her. It showed only in a blurring of the carvings beneath.

  And why go to the trouble of writing all of this here, in this little room of death? Of course, the Khanaphir engraved these things everywhere, but she could tell just by looking that this script was the real old hieroglyphs, not the meaningless babble that was all the modern masons could manage. Someone had deliberately put a message here, for those with eyes to see and minds to understand it.

  'This wasn't really how I thought we'd end up,' said Thalric quietly.

  'We haven't ended up yet,' she told him.

  'Only a matter of time. The air can't last for ever.'

  'What happened to the old resourceful Thalric then?' she asked him, feeling suddenly annoyed that he was just sitting there. 'Don't the Rekef teach you to be ready for anything?'

  'The old resourceful Thalric is currently blind, slimy and trapped in a cell underground with no possible way out,' he said, 'and very, very tired. Some of us here haven't been getting our beauty sleep.'

  'Not that it would do much good, in your case.' She wiped away slime from more of the carvings, feeling the thick gunge caking her sleeves. It had a feel to it that was familiar, but unpleasantly so. She hunted the memory down, associating it with guilt, panic, danger … 'Hammer and tongs!' she spat. 'Thalric, this is Fir.'

  'What now?'

  'This slime, it's Fir. This is the forbidden elixir of Khanaphes, that the Ministers will kill you for sampling.' And that the Ministers themselves eat gallons of. 'This is their link with the Masters, they claim. There must be enough down here for everyone in the city to go out of their minds on.'

  'Are you suggesting we spend our last few hours drugged into a stupor?'Thalric asked her acidly.

  'No, but don't you see …' But he doesn't see. He doesn't understand what Fir is. So, do I? Fir, the drug that somehow opened one's mind to the past, that the Khanaphir underclasses swore let them look on the faces of the Masters, that the Ministers thought opened a direct link by which they could hear their Masters' voices. Did she still believe that there were Masters yet, or that there ever had been?Yet the Khanaphir believed. Ethmet believed. Was their entire culture built on hallucinations derived from this slime? No, there has to be something more to it than that.

  'I've been knocking on the walls,' he said. 'No echo anywhere. I've even tried my sting against them. That slimy stuff smells vile when you burn it. The stone underneath barely warmed.'

  'I think I need to read these inscriptions,' she decided. 'Give me your cloak.'

  He frowned at the dark, but shrugged the garment off without question, holding it out blindly until she took it from him. She began scrubbing at the walls, clearing away the Fir that had turned those crisp carvings into illegible smears.

  'Since when,' Thalric said after a moment, 'can you read that gibberish? Since when can it even be read?'

  'It's a long story.'

  'Well, I didn't have any other plans.'

  She stopped, gazing back at him. He was still sitting in the middle of the floor, head turned vaguely in her direction. Something of his normal expression was gone, that hard mockery that was usually there when he spoke to her. Hashe really given up hope? She realized it was far simpler than that. Just as her face was invisible to him in the dark, so he had not considered that his was not invisible to her. This was Thalric caught unawares, without his customary armour. She took the chance to study him: the years of hard deeds, of bitter loyalty, all the betrayals that could be traced on his face. Each had put its grip on him, twisting and turning to fit him to the mould, yet finally he had not fitted. At the end, after the scars and the fingerprints, there was still a core that was only Thalric. Only a man who truly knows himself could have come out of all that still recognizing himself in the mirror.

  'What?' he asked suspiciously, into the silence. She felt suddenly ashamed, as though she had been spying on the spymaster.

  'Just looking at the carvings,' she claimed, although her voice held no conviction. 'Look, if yo
u want a conversation, why don't you talk? I've had enough of you interrogating me.'

  He gave an amused snort and she was surprised at how familiar it sounded. How well do I know him? Sometimes it seems that I know him even better than my own family. My life has been riddled by the holes left by his passing, like some kind of grub.

  'You could tell me, for a start, why the Regent-general of the whole Empire is currently buried alive in a nowhere city out here on the Sunroad Sea,' she said. 'Because I myself don't understand it. Life just keeps giving you chances, and you waste every one of them. You were the big man of the Empire, after the war, so how did this happen?'

  For a long time he remained quiet, while she kept on industriously cleaning up the carvings. Fragments of their meaning drifted loose into her head, but nothing that she could string together.

  'The Empress,' he said at last, slowly. 'The Empress Seda the First. And if you ask me how that happened, well, I wasn't there at the time. An Empress? Nobody had ever heard of such a thing: a woman in charge of the Wasp Empire.'

  'Well, we know about your people's attitudes towards women,' Che said primly. 'Although you've had your share of women agents, haven't you? The Rekef, at least, isn't so blinkered.'

  'Mistakes, all of them,' he said darkly. 'Arianna tried to kill me, and I actually did kill Scyla, or at least I'm as sure of that as I can be. No, I've not been the luckiest man with women.'

  'You were married, though, weren't you? I thought you told me that once? What happened to her?'

  'She was only too glad to yield place to the Empress,' Thalric replied, with a brief laugh. 'Not that she'd have had much choice, but we hadn't seen each other in years. I had a son, too. I still have, I suppose. The union was all for the Empire, and part of my duty. I was never that interested. It was just something you're supposed to do before you go off and die in the wars. I'm sure the woman was compensated.'

  'I'll never understand your people — or like them, frankly,' Che remarked.

  'Well, maybe I'll join you in that, seeing as they seem to want me dead yet again. Maybe it's her. Maybe she's decided I'm now surplus to requirements.' Thalric grimaced sightlessly. 'While the provinces were in rebellion she needed a man as a figurehead that her people could be reassured by. That was me, at the time, but now the Empire's pretty much together again. Maybe it's as simple as that.' He paused in thought. 'But in that case she could simply have had me executed, or assassinated, when I was last in the capital. It wouldn't be hard for her to do away with me. There'd be no reason to go about it like this, snuffing me out in some distant corner of the world.'