Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

He found Amnon up on the walls, of course. The Scorpion leadshotters had been idly throwing shot at the stones, or over them and into the city. Totho took a moment, on gaining the battlement, to spy out a leadshotter crew with his glass and assess their technique. The Scorpions themselves were the very essence of brutality, but he could pick out Wasp-kinden overseeing them and the savages were swifter and more practised than he would have thought.

The First Soldier was leaning on the ramparts, staring out at the enemy that he could not defeat. He glanced at Totho, then looked back at the great ramshackle chaos of the Scorpion camp.

'Come to say your farewells?' he asked. 'I shall have the Estuarine Gate lowered for you.'

'Not just yet,' Totho told him.

'Oh?' Amnon turned, barely flinching as another solitary leadshotter spoke thunder, the shot whistling high over the city.

'I have an answer,' Totho said. 'The only answer that I can give you on how to defend your city from the Many of Nem. It's not an answer that the Ministers would approve of, and I doubt you'll like it much either, but it's an answer.'

'Speak,' Amnon said, bracing himself for it.

'The Scorpions out there are not an army; they are a huge mob of thugs. A proper army has supply lines, logistics. This lot are living directly off the land, and that cannot support them long. They need a quick victory, so it follows that if you delay them long enough, perhaps two tendays at the utmost, they will not be able to sustain their attack.'

'I had thought as much.'

'Exactly. You don't need to be a tactician to see it,' Totho agreed. 'But they'll burst through these walls tomorrow or the day after. No doubt of it. You've probably already noticed a few cracks, where they've struck home.' Totho could see the truth of that in Amnon's eyes. 'So the wall will not hold, and they can keep knocking holes in it. If you put men in the breach, they can knock holes in them too. And their infantry is well suited to taking advantage of a breach, I think: fast-moving, hard-hitting. They're not men for standing in line and taking a charge, but men for breaking through shield-walls and pushing forward. So, the wall ceases to be a defensive asset very quickly. In fact, once they've taken the wall, it becomes a disadvantage. Their crossbowmen will soon make full use of the elevation.'

Amnon nodded, taking it all in. 'So,' he asked, 'what is your answer? How do we save our city, even for a short while?'

'Abandon the western half of it,' Totho said, expecting a strong reaction. In truth, he half expected Amnon to throw him off the wall. Instead the big Beetle just twitched, as he had when the leadshotter had loosed a moment before.

'Have your soldiers go house to house, instructing everyone to evacuate the western city. Have them take every single boat to ferry people across the river, and then paddle back for more. Have them cross the bridge in their hundreds. Have them carry only what is easily to hand, and primarily whatever footstuffs they can cart. Everyone . Everyone moves east, across the river. Because the river becomes your defensive wall, Amnon, and the leadshotters cannot tear it down. There is only one bridge, and we take every single boat to the eastern bank. Barricade the bridge where I shall show you, and put your best men there to hold it, with archers on the east bank, ready to pick off any makeshift thing they do try and send over. That's the answer: let the river hold them off.'

'You know what you are asking me to do, how many people must be moved,' Amnon said. And then: 'The Masters would not approve.'

'I have no other answer for you,' Totho told him.

Amnon gazed out again at the sprawling host. 'I will give the orders,' he confirmed quietly.

Totho only realized then that he had not expected this man to take his suggestion. Am I become a tactician now? Am I a warleader? And in the shadow of those thoughts followed another one: Would that find favour with her?

'For the men holding the bridge, it will be hard,' Amnon said slowly.

'Put up as much of a barricade as you can. Funnel them in until a small number of your best men can stand them off,' Totho said. 'Those men will face repeated charges, crossbows, Wasp stings. They must be your best. If the Scorpions manage to force the bridge we will never hold them.'

Amnon nodded. 'I myself shall stand on the bridge,' he said simply. 'I shall ask for volunteers from my Guard to stand with me.'

Totho felt the ground lurch beneath him: no leadshot, not Amnon hurling him down, but the vertigo of his own next words getting to him. 'I shall stand beside you.'

Amnon clapped a hand to his shoulder, sending him staggering. Totho saw the degree of emotion in the man's eyes. Ah, but it is the right thing to do. She would say so, too, were she here .

'I shall give orders for the evacuation,' Amnon said. 'We shall start right away. By the morning we shall not be finished, but we shall at least have what time the walls shall buy us.'

'There are other ways of buying a little time,' Totho said. The thought was heavy on him, loaded as it was with memories of the last time, but he persevered. 'A night attack on the engines may disrupt them, buy us a few hours. If you have those available who can make the attempt.'

Amnon nodded fiercely and beckoned one of his men over.

'Get me Teuthete,' he ordered. 'Then bring me all my officers.'

Her name was Teuthete. The word she used to define herself was 'Chosen'. The title was woven through with history: the long and complex interactions and accords between her people and the Masters of Khanaphes.

She was slender, five feet and a half tall at most, far shorter than any of her distant western kin. Her skin was silvery grey, like light shining on silty water. She wore the armour of her people: a breastplate, shoulder and leg-guards of wicker and wood woven together tightly, interlaced with sinews and tightly plaited cords of hair: enough to turn a sword-stroke or snarl an arrow. Her own hair would have been white, except that she had ceremonially re-shaved her scalp before this mission. That was the mark of her servitude, her calling.

Being Chosen was not just about being in service to the city, for she was something more than the levies of their army or the followers of their hunts. She was hostage for the freedom of her people, for the continuance of their ancient ways. Her personal loyalty bound her people to the city, and protected them from the wrath of the Masters. Such wrath had not been felt since time out of mind, but it was remembered nevertheless. They had warred with the Khanaphir, in that very distant past. The Marsh people had fought with all their skill and stealth, and their diminishing numbers, until the Masters had offered them a truce. A truce of servitude but not slavery, for Mantis-kinden could never abide slavery. With their backs to the wall they found other names for it and called it loyalty.

And now Khanaphes itself looked to be facing its last days. Teuthete was no fool: she had read Amnon's face even as he delivered to her the word of the Masters, or what was left of that word once it had passed through him. Amnon did not seem frightened. She reckoned the man did not quite know what fear was. He had been severed from hope, though. This was not a man who looked forward to the next dawn.

It would be easy enough for the Marsh people to withdraw now, to step into the mists and shadows of their murky realm and wait until it was over. The Many of Nem were not equipped to hunt Mantids through the waterways, and if they tried it, they would regret it and then die of it, in short order. Teuthete's people were not directly threatened, and the descending rod would strike only the backs of their age-old taskmasters. The mission they had given her, given her people, was a death waiting to happen. It seemed to her that they would none of them see their villages again.