The Scarab Path (32 page)

‘However,’
Kovalin went on, revealing no more than Hrathen had expected, ‘she does not
love outlanders, not from your Empire, not from anywhere. It would serve better
for your gifts to be given to her by one she knows well and loves well, such as
I.’

‘No
doubt,’ Hrathen said, ‘but that is not my plan. I will give her these gifts
myself, with all my men present, and explain the workings of them.’ He saw that
his people, even Brugan’s shadowy lot, had done exactly as he had forewarned
them. They were arranged in a loose double line either side of the first wagon,
swords out and pointedly ready to fight. There were perhaps fifty fighting
Scorpions before them, once Hrathen discounted the rabble of attendant
children. The locals were not obviously about to attack, but there was not one
of them that did not have a spear or axe or halberd to hand.

‘And if
I just take these things?’ Kovalin asked. He was taller than Hrathen, his claws
far larger. Hrathen’s impure blood had given him a broad Art, but neither
parent’s inheritance showed as strongly as in a true-breed.

‘Why
need to take gifts that will be freely given?’ Hrathen said easily. He shrugged
his shoulders, loosening his joints for the coming fight.

‘I take
what I wish,’ Kovalin declared. ‘I give you the chance now: gather up your
people and return to your Empire. You are not wanted here.’

‘Do you
fear me so much?’ Hrathen asked.

Kovalin
went very still, and two different waves of tension passed through the camp.
The Wasps were ready for an explosion, and though he had ordered them not to
intervene unless the rest of the Scorpions made a move, it seemed to them now
that things were poised on the very cusp of violence. But Hrathen knew that the
Scorpions were excited, not angry. They were about to be entertained.

‘Come
on, then,’ he said. ‘Let us have this out. With nothing more than nature gave
us, yes?’

Kovalin
eyed his rival’s claws, eyes narrowing suspiciously. ‘You may know no better
than bare hands, Of-the-Empire, but I have this. He unslung a long-hafted axe
from his back. The head was solid, dark metal, shaped in a vicious, heavy
crescent.

‘Well,
then.’ Hrathen drew his Imperial-issue shortsword. Against the axe it was tiny,
and Kovalin roared with laughter.

‘A
knife!’ he cried. ‘Of-the-Empire has a knife!’ And then the axe was in motion,
a great sweeping slash that sent Hrathen diving aside, rolling in the dust. He
knew Kovalin would be coming straight for him then, the axe still in motion
from that first swing, so he kicked himself back on to his feet. He thrust his
free hand out and summoned his Art.

The
flash of fire struck Kovalin about the neck and shoulders but did not stop him.
Hrathen made a circular parry that took the axe-blow just past him, then loosed
his sting again and again. Kovalin was already reeling when the third bolt
caught him directly in the face. He fell to one knee, began struggling to rise,
whereupon Hrathen backed off and lashed out at him with his Art until at last
the Scorpion collapsed.

There
was a silence, and Hrathen received a keen sense from his own people that they
suspected this would mean foul play, that the Scorpions would descend on them.

They have no concept of foul play
, he thought.
No codes of honour, no complex laws – no noble savages here. All
they have is a fierce respect for strength in all its forms, and that includes
cleverness
.

‘I have
no wish to take his place,’ Hrathen announced loudly, ‘for who would want to
lead such wretches as these?’ Again the Wasps behind him braced for the fight,
but he was playing by Scorpion rules. He was proclaiming his strength. Flattery
was only for the weak.

A woman
approached him, her face claw-scarred. ‘He was food for the animals before you
came. His death is nothing to boast of,’ she said. ‘Stay here tonight and we
will send you on your way tomorrow. I think the Warlord will be curious to meet
you.’

She was tall, but not as massive as most Scorpions across the shoulders
and back. Her arms and legs were long, and she stood with a poise that few of
her kinden possessed. Just from her stance Hrathen could tell that this was an
exceptionally dangerous woman. He would not want to try the same tricks that
had killed Kovalin against her, and he was thankful that his plan did not call
for it. If the Rekef men here with him intended to kill her, then, looking at
her, he wished them luck.

She was
young, too, although Scorpions never got very old out here. Still he guessed
she was younger than thirty, and yet already Warlord of all the Many of Nem.
Her face was half-hidden behind a crested helm, eyes glittering from within it.
She had capped her tusks with gold, and her white skin, wherever exposed, was
decorated with twining patterns of black and red. They meant something, of
course, but Hrathen was beyond his range of knowledge now. He would have to
hope that these people had not diverged too far from the customs of their
Dryclaw brethren.

He saw
how she had made the best of the equipment her people scavenged. She wore a
mail hauberk of a fineness he had never seen before, the links silvery and
flowing like water. Panels of cruder mail riveted at the front and sides showed
where they had broadened it to fit her. She had steel greaves on her shins,
plated leather guards strapped to her thighs. One arm was completely covered by
interlocking metal plates, only the claws jutting forth from a ravaged
gauntlet. She held a spear, its slender head comprising almost a third of its
length.

They had
spent nine days in the desert, just to reach this place. Although Hrathen had made
sure they would have ample supplies, he had traded with the Scorpions along the
way. If he had not, they would have decided he had too much, and would have
made a move to take it from him. Dannec, of course, had been critical of such
expense, such waste. He had let the man simmer. They had attracted many
Scorpion-kinden from the desert, come to stare and to question their guides
about these intruding foreigners. Twice there had been attacks, but the Wasps’
stings, and the resistance put up by what had previously been Kovalin’s people,
had driven their attackers away easily.

A day
ago they had come within sight of these ruins, and had expected to reach them
sooner. The sheer scale defeated them: this was no fallen farmhouse or outpost.
Here was a city of the old days, the days before the Nem had become a desert.
Even Dannec’s endless carping had faltered to a halt as they approached, to
witness those great cracked walls, the massive plinths whose statues were
severed at the ankle or the knee. It seemed a city built by giants, but however
mighty the hands that had laid stone upon stone here, time and the desert had
finally undone them. As they passed in through a break in the wall, they bore
witness to a desolation that only the usurping Scorpions had brought to life
again: streets and squares of fallen stones; stretches of wall so shot through
with gaps that they looked like the teeth in a battered skull; pillars lying
like so many sticks cast at random; the cracked and collapsed eggshells of
fallen domes. The Scorpions had descended on this place with a scavenger’s eye.
They had dug out the ancient ruin’s old wells and found the waters still clear.
They had made fields out of the dust, now watered and tilled by their slaves.
They had dug through the ruins for metal they could melt and reforge. Whoever
had built here had been wealthy beyond measure, and what they had left behind,
for the Scorpions, seemed riches worth taking. Hrathen had never known
Scorpions to settle in one place. In the Dryclaw they moved constantly on and
on through their desert, preying on each other, trading with the slave markets,
raiding border farms and towns. Looking around the ruins, he could see that
they had been here for generations, and any building still owning to three
walls had become a permanent dwelling, now completed in cloth and wood. The
children were everywhere underfoot, chasing and fighting each other. It had
become a Scorpion city, as though the ghosts of its builders had stayed on to
teach the newcomers some shadow of their old way of life.

As with
the camp previously, a crowd of the locals was fast gathering, but here there
were hundreds of them, too numerous to count. Many scrambled atop walls and
buildings to overlook the wagons, clasping axes and spears ready to throw. A
few even held bows, but to make a good bow required suitable wood, and the
desert denied them that.

That’s good
, Hrathen decided.
That
fits with the plan
.

He
jumped down from the wagon again, observing the woman who was their leader. Her
complete mastery of them was evident in the way she stood, and in the way they
gathered around her. He had to remind himself:
This is not
just any chief, this is the Warlord of the whole Nem desert
. It would be
a hard title to win, a harder one to hold. Something about this woman had
brought them under her rule, and it must involve more than mere skill with a
spear. He would have to be careful with her.

‘I am
Hrathen of the Empire,’ he declared. The other Wasps had again taken up their
fighting stance, but if things went badly here it would not matter. ‘I seek the
Warlord of the Many.’

‘You
have found her,’ the woman replied. She approached, two or three steps at a
time, and then stopped again, regarding him. ‘I am Jakal of the Many, and my
people have brought me word of you. I hear Kovalin lies dead in the sand.’

‘Do you
mourn him?’ Hrathen asked.
Strength, always
. There
was no room for sentiment here.

‘You
have spared me the chore of killing him myself. It would have been dull work,’
she said. The words were for the crowd, and the crowd liked them. Behind that
helm, though, her eyes were careful, wary. ‘What brings you to the Nem, Hrathen
of the Empire? What brings you to my citadel of Gemrar?’

Hrathen
heard Dannec snort at the mention of ‘citadel’. The Rekef officer had a Wasp’s
eye for other nations, and he had decided from the first that the Scorpions
were barbarous savages, and Hrathen little better.

‘The
Empire brings you gifts,’ Hrathen announced. ‘There is nothing in these wagons
that you may not have.’

‘That would
be so, whether you willed it or not.’ Jakal had moved closer, yet had not so
much as glanced at the automotives. ‘However, it is always pleasing to hear
that we are known and feared by your Empire, who wish to bribe us so. You may
join me at my fire tonight, and we shall discuss what you have brought me.’ She
was standing right before him at last, a few inches taller than he was, so that
he had to look up to her. Hrathen was a man of instincts, and they were all
telling him now to make a distance between them, to take himself backwards out
of the reach of her claws. It was entirely possible she would kill him right
there, and he realized he could not discern, from her stance, whether she would
do it. She was impossible to decipher.

From the
shadow of her helm her eyes challenged his. ‘Good,’ she said eventually. He had
not moved or backed down. ‘You are welcome amongst my people, until I change my
mind. If any vex you, bring them to me and I shall remind them of their place –
and mine.’

‘I would
rather kill them myself,’ Hrathen replied, because that was expected of him. He
saw her fanged lower jaw curve in a smile.

‘Then
perhaps we shall have some sport, later,’ she said. ‘We are not all as weak as
Kovalin was.’

*

‘You
think I am ignorant,’ she said, when they had re-gathered after dark. ‘I know
of your Empire. My advisers have told me of it.’ The bluish light of the
burning oil made the Scorpions’ pale skin gleam and glow.

‘The
Empire’s fame deserves to travel,’ said Hrathen. He had called upon Dannec, of
all his people, to sit with him at the Warlord’s fire. The ragged circle was
made up otherwise of Jakal’s people, and he was surprised to see several there
who must have been aged forty, fifty even, wrinkled about the eyes, with tusks
missing or broken, skins spotted with time.
Her advisers,
then?
Age had always been a death sentence in the Dryclaw but, with
their more settled life, the Nemian Scorpions had clearly found some use for
wisdom. A clay jar of something was being passed around, but it avoided the
visitors scrupulously. Hrathen had meanwhile broken the neck on a bottle of
Imperial wine, and was taking careless swallows of it, to Dannec’s disapproval.

‘My
advisers tell me the Empire is a great beast lurking to the north, that is
always hungry. That each year it moults and splits its skin and grows larger by
eating another of its neighbours.’

Hrathen
laughed at that, but Dannec drew his breath in sharply.

‘The
Empire is not as you describe,’ the Wasp protested. ‘Those brought within our
borders only benefit from our rule. So, many of our neighbours beg to join us.’

‘Fascinating,’
Jakal said, dismissing with a word everything he had said. ‘Tell me’ – she
returned to Hrathen – ‘how long before we are your neighbours? We do not beg.’

Hrathen
glanced at Dannec, who replied, ‘There will be no need for bad blood between
us. After all, we are here now to strengthen bonds of friendship, are we not?
Why talk of war?’

‘One
cannot strengthen that which does not exist,’ Jakal retorted, amidst a mutter
of laughter from the other Scorpions.

‘But
alliances are always to be wished for, are they not? We have things you lack,’
Dannec pointed out. ‘I do not believe your advisers realize what the Empire has
to offer.’

‘Tell
me,’ Jakal said, pointedly to Hrathen, ‘is this your lord, that he talks so
much in your place, or is he perhaps your mate?’