The Scarab Path (64 page)

He heard
lightly running feet and did not need to glance up. The messenger was expected,
and the Fly-kinden, Tirado, burst in.

‘How are
they looking?’ Totho asked him.

‘They’re
all over the place,’ the Fly reported. ‘It’s going to take them three volleys
at least to all focus on the same mark. And they’re two engines down by my
count.’

‘That
tallies with what your Mantis said,’ Totho noted.

‘I am
glad her people died for something,’Amnon remarked. ‘She will join us on the
bridge.’

‘Will
she indeed?’ An odd shiver passed through Totho. ‘It’s been a while since I
fought alongside Mantis-kinden.’

‘Oh, and
I spotted the grand old man on his way here,’ Tirado added. ‘Meaning the top
Domino.’ It was a word the Solarnese had coined for the male Khanaphir leaders.
In Solarno the heads of the leading houses were Spider-kinden, therefore women,
and referred to as Domina. The new-minted slang had obviously failed to reach
Amnon, however. Totho tugged the pauldrons tight and explained, ‘He means First
Minister Ethmet.’

He felt
the stance of the man stiffen, a warrior readying for an attack.

‘I can
keep him out,’ Totho suggested. ‘Right now I don’t think they have the spare
men to make an issue of it.’

‘I will
see him,’ Amnon declared.

‘Your
choice.’ Totho nodded briefly to the Fly-kinden. ‘See he’s well received, then
bring him through.’ Once Tirado had gone, he put in, ‘We could keep him
waiting. Drinks, food. It doesn’t have to be now.’

‘I want
him to see this,’ the big Beetle said forcefully. Just then there was the sound
of hasty footsteps, the voices of Totho’s staff being cut off in mid-civility.
Ethmet burst into the room, mouth open to rebuke.

He
stopped dead, the abruptness and his expression both suggesting he had been
stabbed. His mouth opened and closed a few times as he watched Totho
industriously lacing Amnon into the black plate.

‘How
dare you?’ he managed at last, and it was almost a whisper. ‘This has been
forbidden. How do you dare this? Do you think the title of First Soldier puts
you above reproach? Do you put my authority aside so lightly?’

‘The
role of First Soldier,’ said Amnon, not even looking at the old man, ‘is heavy
enough on my shoulders that I require support.’

‘Amnon
…’ The First Minister was scandalized, barely able to get the words out. ‘You
know the Masters have spoken on this matter!’

‘Have
they?’ Amnon had abruptly moved a step away from Totho, and was now looming
over the old man. ‘They spoke to you, did they? And perhaps they also spoke to
you about the battle we fought, how it would go, and what I could have done to
save half our army from the sword? Because they didn’t say a thing to me.’ He
was shaking with rage, all that anger, so carefully husbanded, now out in the
world. ‘I have listened to you all my life. I have been your dutiful servant
and done whatever you said, whether it made sense to me or not. I have always
done the Masters’ bidding, imparted through you, and taken it for granted that
you heard that voice that I never could. But if the Masters are so wise, how
could they leave so many of my soldiers dead on the field? If the Masters are
so great, why are they intent on keeping from me every advantage that might
save our city?’

‘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.

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
.