The Scarab Path (31 page)

The lean
man hunched forward towards the two Beetle women. His eyes were cavernous,
hollowed. ‘I hear you seek something this place here cannot provide,’ he said.
Che had to strain to catch the words.

Petri
glanced nervously at Che and then nodded, her hands clutched each other
anxiously on the tabletop. ‘Something special,’ she explained. ‘I know …
someone I know said you could find it for us.’

There
was a bleak cynicism in the thin man’s eyes. ‘Be careful what you seek. The
Profanity is not for all palates. It is not for foreigners.’

‘Do not
presume to know who I am,’ Che interrupted. The words came from within her, yet
no conscious thought had formed them. As she snapped them out, she found
herself pincering the man’s bony wrist with her fingers. His recoiling twitch
whiplashed down his long arm, but her grip held tight.

‘What do
you want?’ He was afraid now, not of them but of something else, something she
could not see.

‘You
know
what I want.’ Che’s heart was racing. She felt as
though she was hurtling downhill, and sometimes she was in control and
sometimes she was just falling forwards. Something had come over her, some
sharp inspiration. Could that be Achaeos’s ghost, speaking through her?

The lean
man bit his lip, staring at her. ‘This other … no, but you …Who are you? Where
do you come from?’

‘I’ve
come a long way.’ Che finally released him, saw the shadow of her grasp on his
skin, that he rubbed at resentfully. He would no longer look at either of them.

‘If you
want, then you shall have. But do not complain, afterwards, that it was not
what you sought.’

‘Just
take me there,’ Che said. ‘Petri, you can go. You don’t have to come with me.’

‘But …
you can’t just go off alone with him,’ Petri protested. She dragged Che away
from the table, out of the man’s earshot. ‘He’ll kill you,’ she insisted.

‘He
might.’ Che’s hand moved to her sword, buckled on now that politeness was no
issue. ‘What else can I do?’

‘No,
Che!’ Petri hissed, casting the thin man a venomous look – as though she
herself had not been the one who had led Che here.

‘Will
you come with me, then?’

‘With
him? Into the Marsh Alcaia again?’ Petri bared her teeth in desperation. ‘Not
again … don’t make me …’

Someone
right beside them rapped on a table with something hard, a dagger hilt. Both of
them turned to see a Fly-kinden man, his face half hidden beneath a
broad-brimmed hat. The neat beard gave him away and Che felt her stomach lurch
at the thought of discovery.

‘Trallo,’
she gasped.

He
tilted up the brim of the hat and gave her a broad smile. ‘I reckoned you were
up to something foolish,’ he said. ‘Thankfully you have people interested in
keeping you safe, so I decided to keep an eye on you.’

‘Trallo,
this isn’t your business now.’

He took
a long breath, a tiny spot of calm in the rowdy open house. The lean man still
watched them, clutching at the edge of his table.

‘You’re
about to do something really unwise, I can tell that. You’re about to go
somewhere very dangerous.’

‘It’s my
decision.’

Trallo
glanced from Che to the shaking Petri, and back. ‘Fine, I’ll come with you.
That’s
my
decision.’

Che was
caught in mid-protest, suddenly thinking,
Was that not what
I wanted?
Trallo would surely be of more use than poor Petri, and Petri
just as surely would not come willingly. ‘Do you know … You know Khanaphes. You
should know what we’re about before you make such an offer.’

Trallo
shrugged. ‘Like I said, our friends have asked me to ensure you’re safe.
They’re worried about you.’

Che
thought of Berjek and the rest, and would not have believed that of them, but
here the Fly was, all the same.

She
leant close to him. ‘We are going to the Fir-eaters. You’ve heard of them?’

‘Heard
of, but never met.’ He made a face. ‘Tell your hungry friend there to pack his
bags, then. Bella Petri, you get yourself back to the embassy – and not a word
of this to anyone, you understand?’

Petri
nodded gratefully and, before anyone could retract the offer, she was hurrying
for the door.

‘I’m
grateful for this, Trallo,’ Che said.

The Fly
spread his hands. ‘What are friends for?’

And she
was happy enough with that answer not to notice the signal he gave, as they
left the open house.

There had been Scorpions keeping pace with them for at least three days,
and Hrathen guessed probably a while longer. Since that morning they had let
themselves be silhouetted against the barren skyline. On foot, or seated on
their beasts, with spears held high, they had stared at the odd caravan but
made no move against it.

Why would they
, Hrathen thought wryly,
when we are so obligingly going where they want us to go?
Imperial mapmakers had not made much inroad into the Nem. It was a wasteland of
stones and dust, of coarse ridges of bloody-minded grass that cut the skin like
knives, and of ruins. Here and there some fault in the rock beneath opened
narrow rootspace with access to underground water, nourishing stark,
barrel-trunked trees with fleshy leaves shaped like the sort of arrowheads the
Empire used to pierce strong mail. The going was uneven, the dusty terrain
rising and falling with the stony bones of the land beneath. Sometimes those
bones speared through into crags and juts of red-black rock that the coarse
wind had rounded and bowed.

The
Imperial scouts, mostly staying with the dubious safety of the Slave Corps, had
nevertheless ventured far enough to pinpoint a Scorpion-kinden camp, and it was
this tenuous landmark that Hrathen had set his compass by. Overall, it was
Brugan’s plan but Hrathen’s details. Hrathen found he liked this mission, as
Brugan had known he would, and in liking it, he would remain faithful to it.
Until it suits me otherwise
. Such was the constant clash
of his mixed blood: the Wasp crying,
Serve yourself by
serving the Empire
, while the Scorpion roared out,
Do
what you will
.

The
Scorpions of the Nem were not so dependent on outside trading to make their
living as the Dryclaw tribes Hrathen had known, but still, a caravan of this
size walking obediently towards one of their camps had attracted a lot of
interest: three heavily laden automotives grinding their monotonous way over
the desert ground, and each of them with two draught beetles plodding meekly in
traces before them, not labouring as yet but ready to haul the wagons if they
broke down or ran out of fuel. Hrathen had asked for a score of the Slave
Corps’s most intrepid, and Brugan had not stinted on obliging him. They were
like old friends, to him, for he knew them for men who adulterated Imperial
writ with their own self-interest, willing to go further and risk more for the
sake of their profits and their pleasures. Proceeding alongside them were a
dozen who wore the armour of the Light Airborne, but who mostly kept to
themselves with a quiet discipline. Hrathen had marked these as Rekef agents,
and guessed that they would be keeping a close eye on him.

Still, twelve of them? He flatters me
. Or perhaps Brugan
had some other mission in mind, and that was an unwelcome thought. If these men
had received orders to assassinate the Warlord of the Nemian Scorpions, then
this expedition would be everyone’s last service to the Empire.

After
the soldiers came the experts, who got to ride while the others walked. Chief
amongst them, and most vocal, was Dannec, the political officer of the Rekef and
its most overt representative. He was a thin-faced, ambitious man who did not
relish being sent off into the wilderness, not even by the Rekef’s supreme
commander himself. He wasted no chance to complain, and even now he was
suggesting that they drive the Scorpions off the ridge over to their left.
Hrathen had ignored him from the start, and by now everyone else did, too.
Aside from Dannec, there were eight men from the Engineering Corps, led by a
grey veteran named Angved. They formed a mysterious and silent cabal of their
own, and Hrathen was looking forward to putting them through their paces.

The sky
was darkening but the horizon ahead was heaping up with a range of stark
artificial shapes: one of the famous ruins of the Nem desert that the Scorpions
had made their own. There were flames to be seen there, burning bluish-white.
They were fuelled by a rock-oil, Hrathen understood, that the Scorpions, or
their slaves, extracted wherever it bubbled to the surface. Here in the desert
it was more readily available than wood, and continued burning for days.

The
Scorpions began to close in now, bringing their mounts nearer and nearer until
they had turned from scouts to an escort. They rode humpbacked black desert
beetles that skittered along on high, long legs, fast over the dusty ground.
They also rode low-slung scorpions, whose claws had been capped with sharp
iron, sitting on them in strangely made offset side-saddles to keep the riders
out of the path of the curved stingers. Others were on foot: tall and burly men
and women with waxy-pale skin and snaggletoothed underbites, wearing brief
garments the colour of dust. About half of these had armour too, some merely
with primitive carapace scale, but many with mail or plated leather. One even
wore an undersized banded cuirass that had once borne the Imperial colours.

‘Savages,’
Dannec muttered, but Hrathen smiled to see them. He stood up from his seat on
the lead wagon, letting all the Scorpions see him and know him as the leader.
Enough of them were now riding ahead towards the camp to ensure there would be
the right kind of welcoming committee. These were not the Aktaian Scorpions he
was familiar with, but there was enough traffic between their two peoples for
him to know he could expect similar customs.

Here is fringe desert, with sporadic contact with the Empire
,
he reminded himself.
The Warlord will not be so familiar or
predictable. I must not become complacent
.

Sure
enough, the whole camp had turned out to see them arrive. The ruins here were
no more than three or four stone buildings that looked as though some ancient
fire had started what wind and time had subsequently brought close to
finishing. The camp itself was no more than awnings propped on sticks, a
scattering of canvas all around. Scorpions were a hardy folk and not a private
one. Simply getting to sleep up against the stone walls here would be a
sufficient mark of rank and favour.

As the
caravan approached the camp a flurry of creatures rushed out to investigate.
These were more scorpions, three or four feet long not counting the
over-arching tail, and they scrabbled forth with their claws held high in
threat. Hrathen heard Dannec swear and saw him recoil in fear. He himself
jumped down from the wagon and dropped to his knees in the path of the leading
beast, summoning up his Art, which had slumbered for so long.

It was
an Art little known, these days, though all kinden possessed some facet of it,
and he guessed it had once meant sheer survival to people when the world was
young. Now few deliberately sought it, fewer still chanced upon it. Hrathen had
always been the exception.

He
extended his mind and felt the small, aggressive barb that was the beast’s.

Well, now
, he thought to it,
how is it
with you, little brother?

The
creature was slowing, but its claws were either side of his head when it
finally stopped. He could sense its confusion at the sound of the engines and
the smell of the machinery. Confusion made it angry and it wanted to sting
something.

Oh, I know how that feels
, he told it,
believe me
. It did not quite understand the words, but it
felt the sense of them, and calmed. When he went to walk beside the lead wagon,
it trotted at his heels, its claws now drawn in. The other animals were unsure
at first, thrusting spread pincers at the newcomers, darting towards Hrathen
and the slavers in mock charges. The lead beast had been the dominant one, and
by earning its trust he had thwarted them all.

He saw
the chieftain approach, a hefty Scorpion wearing overlapping metal plates
across his chest and shoulders. His hands were big and Hrathen could imagine
them clenched into fists so as to free those scythe-like claws for fighting.
The chief strolled up to the lead wagon as the artificers braked the engine,
putting one taloned hand on the machine’s flank.

‘We were
not expecting such wealthy visitors,’ Hrathen heard him say. ‘Perhaps we should
be wearing our fine clothes for you.’

Hrathen
faced him, making his stance a challenge. ‘My name is Hrathen, of the Empire.’

The
Scorpion turned to squint at him through small yellow eyes. ‘You do not look
“of-the-Empire” to me, but I have met with the slavers before, and I know they
are slack in what servants they take on.’

‘Is that
so?’ In fact it was indeed so. Some of the Slave Corps that Hrathen had once
led had not been good Wasps: there had been Spider-kinden amongst them, rogue
Ants and halfbreeds. Still, it did not do to let insults go unchallenged
amongst the Scorpions.

‘I am
Kovalin,’ the chieftain rumbled. ‘What is this you have brought me, Of-the-Empire?’

‘I bring
many gifts for the Warlord of the Nem,’ Hrathen said, loud enough for them all
to hear. ‘Will you show me to his camp?’

‘She
will be grateful. She loves gifts,’ said Kovalin, and Hrathen blinked at that
revelation.
Thinking like an Imperial, shame on you
.
Scorpion women fought just as fiercely as their menfolk, and indeed there was
little to tell them apart. A little slighter at the shoulder, a little fuller
at the chest, but otherwise as hairless, fanged and clawed as the males. They
were no other race’s ideal of beauty.