The Scarab Path (73 page)

Osgan
felt a moment of freezing horror. ‘Back to the … to the …’

‘To the ziggurat.
We’ve had it watched all day, and nobody’s come out. That means Thalric’s still
in there, skulking somewhere about. Maybe he’s waiting for darkness too. If so,
we’ll be ready for him, because we’re going in and we’re taking you with us.’

‘No!’ Osgan
choked. ‘No, you mustn’t! You don’t understand what’s in there!’

‘So tell
me.’

‘It’s …
It’s
Him
.’

Marger
rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t make me slap you. Just tell me who’s
him
now?’

‘It’s …
I saw him … the man who … who killed the Emperor.’ There, it was said, but
Marger just shook his head.

‘How
long have they left that arm without tending it?’ He scowled. ‘You better not
get so feverish that you stop making sense. Give me a plain answer and I’ll get
you some more wine. You’d like that, right?’

‘I’m
serious …’ Osgan started, but saw the man’s face turn sour. ‘What do you want?
What do you want from me?’

‘Thalric,
ideally. Then we can all get out of this backwater. We’ll take you into the pit
because Sulvec reckons if we start cutting pieces off you then Thalric might –
might –
come running. No guarantees, though, because he
might not be such a sentimental bastard as all that. Unless you’ve got any
better ideas?’

‘Please,’
Osgan whispered. ‘Kill me here. Kill me now. Kill me slowly. Just don’t take me
back there. Not with
Him
.’

Marger
frowned at him, clearly a little shaken. ‘Nothing about this damn job makes
sense,’ he complained. ‘Nothing about this damn city makes any sense. And
that
place.’ He shuddered – not his customary shrug but a
shiver that Osgan could well relate to. ‘There’s something not right about all
of this, so give me answers. Right now, while it’s just you and me. Don’t make
me call the others in here to cut it out of your hide a strip at a time.’

‘What do
you want to know?’ Osgan asked him fearfully.

Marger
took a moment to formulate the question, with a glance at the door that
suggested he was not supposed to be conducting this solo interrogation. When he
spoke again it took them in a new direction.

‘What in
the wastes has Thalric done?’ he demanded.

‘When?
What?’ Osgan replied weakly. His head was beginning to ache, and the entire
room seemed to shift around him as the fever rolled back over him.

‘Tell me
what the pits is so important,’ Marger insisted, his voice now a hushed
whisper. He crouched beside Osgan’s chair like a conspirator. ‘Why do they want
him dead so badly?’

‘Ask
your big Rekef man out there,’ Osgan suggested. ‘Surely he’s told you.’

‘Oh,
they haven’t even told
him
,’ Marger said. ‘But
they’ve told him just how far they intend going just to have him dead. Do you
think the Empire really cares two spits about Khanaphes or those Scorpion
savages? Oh, maybe the Scorpions would make good Auxillians, but that’s not the
point
. They’re here just for Thalric, all of them.
All the thousands of them currently attacking the bridge out there – they’re
here because the Empire wants Thalric dead.’

‘I …
don’t understand,’ stammered Osgan.

‘No,
I
don’t understand,’ Marger told him, ‘because it makes no
cursed sense at all. Someone wants Major Thalric the Regent-General so very
dead that they’ve sent Skater assassins and a Rekef team and engineers and
leadshotters and a whole desert full of Scorpion-kinden, and they’ll see forty
thousand Beetles dead so long as his corpse lies somewhere amongst them. I
swear they’ll kill every living thing within miles of here just to make sure
he’s dead. That’s what it’s all for, because the Empire doesn’t care a toss
about this city. Someone very highly placed within the Empire wants Thalric
dead, as dead as he can possibly be and – and this is apparently the important
thing – every trace of
how
it happened buried under
the rubble of a dead city so that nobody can ever pick up the pieces of what
went on or work out who to blame. Now what in the wastes is going on?’

Osgan
goggled at him. ‘Why are you asking
me
?’ was all he
could say. ‘It’s nothing to do with
me
.’

‘Because
I hoped you would know,’ said Marger, abruptly exhausted by the whole business.
‘I really did. Because nobody is talking about it but we all know it’s mad.
Something’s gone wrong back home, to have all this happening out here in the
sticks. I mean, I don’t dislike Thalric as a man. I really don’t. But when
orders come down from the bloody
palace
to see him
dead by any means, including exterminating an entire people, then you jump to
obey.’

Someone
called out Marger’s name from the next room, and the man started guiltily,
putting some paces between himself and the prisoner. ‘In here,’ he said loudly.

One of
Sulvec’s men put his head around the door. ‘Word from the sentries,’ he
announced. ‘There’s been some movement at the pyramid. It’s dusk anyway, so
time to move.’

The Scorpions had not stopped hurling themselves continually at the
barricade until the sky began to darken in the east. In the thick of it,
loosing snapbow bolts as fast as he could charge the weapon, Totho had wondered
whether they might not eventually whittle the horde down to nothing, slaying so
many of them that their corpses mounded up against the barricade and fell off
the bridge into the river on either side.

There
were only five left now of the original thirty Royal Guard who had held the
breach, and many of their replacements had fallen also. The Khanaphir losses
were far less than the Many’s, but the Nem had far more warriors to lose. The
Scorpions did not even have to kill them, only to force their way through the
breach just the once. They had come close to it several times, but Meyr and
Amnon had held the line, in their mail that was proof against axe and crossbow
bolt, fighting like murderous automata until the force of the latest Scorpion
charge ebbed.

Halmir,
he who wooed the widow, had lost half his face to a Nemian halberd and Totho
did not know if he lived or not. Dariset had her shoulder laid open by a
greatsword, but her armour had saved her, leaving the wound messy but shallow.
She still fought on. Old Kham had broken two shields defending Amnon’s back at
the moment when the Scorpions were closest to breaking through, and he would
not let his cousin forget it. Totho had already shot several hundred bolts, and
sent to the
Iteration
for more.

He had
sent new orders for Corcoran too. Having looked out at the west bank and seen
the monstrous mass of fires out there, he had realized that, despite all its
losses, the war-host of the Nem had so far been spending only the small change
from its pockets. Tomorrow would be worse: Amnon could only trust the Royal
Guard to hold the breach, but so many of them had already perished out on the
field. Their numbers grew slender, and the archers had taken their losses too,
under crossbow bolts, axes, javelins. They could all be replaced, but only by
weakening the force that waited, up and down the shore, for any rafts or boats
the Scorpions could scrounge together.

There
were some fires burning now behind the barricades, a force of soldiers waiting
in case of an assault. Marsh folk were stationed on the wall itself, their eyes
better in the darkness. Any creeping force of Scorpions would be rudely
surprised by their arrows.

Totho
found Amnon fiddling with the straps of his armour, his gauntleted hands clumsy
with the buckles.

‘Hold
still,’Totho said. ‘I’ll take you out of it.’

‘Tighten
it,’ Amnon told him. ‘If they attack tonight, I will be needed.’

‘If they
attack tomorrow, you will be needed too, and then you will be in need of
sleep,’ Totho said. ‘Meyr and I will quarter the night between us.’

‘The
three of us will take a third each,’ Amnon argued stubbornly.

‘As you
will, but you sleep now. I’ll take first watch, Meyr will take the middle, you
the last. Meyr can see in the dark, anyway.’

Amnon
sighed. ‘Get me out of this, then, but I will sleep here alongside my people.’

Totho
stripped off his own gauntlets and stood close to him, finding the buckles from
long experience. ‘Tomorrow will be ugly. They have enough fresh troops to force
the breach,’ he observed, his tone neutral.

‘I
know.’

Totho
glanced up, but the firelight revealed no expression on Amnon’s face. ‘You have
a plan?’

‘I have
some thoughts for delay. It will be only delay. A second barricade at the
bridge’s foot, supported by every archer who can still draw a bow, deployed
from the bank and the rooftops.’

‘That
will last only until the Scorpions think of bringing a leadshotter to the
bridge’s peak,’ Totho said sadly. ‘Then … no more barricade. We are now at the
only point where we can hold without their shot smashing us to scrap as soon as
they find the range.’

‘I’m
glad I listened to you regarding that, at least,’ Amnon said. ‘One less failure
that could have been mine.’

‘You?
You’ve fought like a hero!’Totho assured him.

‘Yet
still I have failed my people. I am First Soldier. Who else should take the
blame?’ A tremor ran through him, and he tore himself from Totho’s
ministrations. ‘Except you, old man!’ he exclaimed.

Totho
looked up, taking a moment to see the robed figure of the First Minister. Faced
with the weary soldiers, the fires, the vast host of the enemy lit up red along
the western bank, Ethmet was looking twenty years older.

‘I came
to see …’ he began, and his voice trailed off.

‘Well,
you have seen,’ Amnon replied. ‘No doubt the Masters have already told you how
this will all end. In truth it needs no prophecy, but I would spare my soldiers
your words of doom. What do you want here?’

‘The
Masters … are considering,’ Ethmet almost mumbled. He looked confused, an old
man out too late, who has forgotten the way home. ‘They … I wait for them to
instruct me.’

‘Oh,
really?’ Amnon said, but there was a catch in his voice, and Totho thought,
Still he believes, despite all he says. If these Masters were to
rise up now and smite him for his failures, he would not care so long as they
saved the city
.

‘Amnon,’
Ethmet came close, ‘you must tell me.’

‘Tell
you what?’

‘Tell me
what will happen. The Masters … are silent.’

Totho
saw different expressions at war in Amnon’s face: compassion and anger in
bitter feud.

‘We
stand firm. We will stand until there is none left to stand, and only then we
will fall,’ he said. ‘I am no seer to tell the future. The Masters have never
spoken to
me
. All I can do is set an example for my
soldiers, as the first into the breach, the last to walk away. And these
foreigners are contributing as well, despite the welcome they have received
from you. We would be lost already had it not been forTotho and his followers.’

Ethmet
blinked rapidly, and Totho realized with horrible embarrassment that the old
man was crying, the tears running freely down his lined face. ‘I am sorry,’ he
said, and it was not clear whether he referred to his treatment of Totho or of
Amnon. ‘I am so sorry.’

There
was a whoop from the barricades and Totho heard the creak and twang of the
Mantis bows, the shouts of surprise from the Scorpions beyond. He was reaching
for his snapbow but, by the time he had a magazine in place, the attack was
over, the Scorpions startled into retreat.

Ethmet
had clenched his hands together over his chest. ‘What can I do?’ he whispered.
‘What can I do?’

‘If this
bridge falls then you must lead all you can out of the city,’ Amnon told him.
‘It does not matter where to. Have them sail out to the sea. Have them flee
towards the eastern plains. Anything but stay here within these walls.’

‘Leave …
Khanaphes?’ Ethmet gaped. ‘Leave our city?’

‘It will
not be our city at that point.’

‘But
this is the Masters’ city,’ Ethmet protested. ‘They would never let it fall.
They would never abandon their people …’

‘If they
ever lived at all then they have left us now,’ Amnon replied harshly, a man
trying to convince himself.

‘No, I
have heard them …’ And Ethmet’s tone was the same.

Amnon
shook his head tiredly. ‘Go home, First Minister. I have told you what you must
do, if the worst comes to the worst, but I cannot make you do it. Go home, and
we shall bleed here for as long as we can, and hope that the Scorpions run out
of food or bloodlust before we ourselves run out of blood.’

Ethmet
nodded, still trembling. He nodded and turned and tottered off down the bridge,
and even Totho felt a fragment of sympathy for him.

‘You go
home too,’ he told Amnon.

‘I’ll
sleep here—’ he began.

‘And
Praeda? Don’t you think she wants to see you tonight?’ Totho felt a catch in
his throat, but he forced the words out anyway. ‘If … if … if I could go to Che
tonight, and if she would have me, I would. I wouldn’t care what happened here.
I would go and … kiss her, and lie with her, if she’d let me.’ He was shaking,
without warning or precedent, as he unlatched the last of Amnon’s buckles. As
the greave fell free, he did not rise, but pressed his hands against the
stonework of the bridge for strength. ‘If … if I could, that is what I would
do.’
In that other dream world
where
things worked out for us, for me … where some cursed thing in this whole wasted
world actually went right for me
.

As he
stood up, Amnon clapped a hand to his armoured shoulder. The big warrior was
Ethmet’s reverse, looking suddenly as young as Totho, even younger.