Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'How's it going?' Totho asked him.

'Well enough, but there is a great deal left to do. When they start attacking the walls, we will have to make a choice.'

'Priorities, you mean,' Totho appreciated. 'People or foodstuffs.'

'If we strip the western city of food, we could starve the enemy, as you say …'

'But you won't do that,' Totho finished for him.

'I have a duty to the people, first of all. I am their First Soldier,' Amnon said. 'I cannot leave them to the Many of Nem.'

'I understand,' said Totho, and Amnon could tell that it was that particular civilized brand of understanding that these foreigners seemed so adept at. Totho could understand Amnon's logic with his mind, but not feel it with his heart. If it had been Totho in command, then the choice would have been different.

And I am lucky to have a man on my side who can think like that , Amnon decided. Or we might have simply sat here behind our walls until they fell on us .

There was a distant concussion and he thought he felt the ground tremble slightly. Totho had lifted his head, like a hunter listening for his quarry, and said, 'That was all of them at once. It's started.'

'Then make me ready,' Amnon urged him.

'Come with me.' Totho led him into the factora, seeking out that same room he remembered. 'How is the work at the bridge?'

'Going well. We will be ready,' Amnon replied. It had been a nightmare, in truth. A true nightmare for masons and labourers to carry out such precarious work in the dark. They had set up a pair of hoists on the bridge, and thus lifted stone blocks up on to its arching span, and then wooden boards and planks had turned the stonework into battlements, narrowing the path across the bridge to only a few feet across. Now the leadshotters had begun, that narrow gap could be closed entirely, and the makeshift wall of stone and wood would block off the bridge. A handful of good men and a scatter of archers could hold it. They would have to, since it was the only chance of stalling the Scorpion advance.

How long? Amnon tried to picture himself standing atop that barricade, that had been put up so hastily. They will come in all the numbers the bridge will allow them. They will sink their claws into the wood and tear it away. They will swarm up the stone . In the back of his mind was the thought that, even if they stood off the Many for a tenday, it would not be enough. Two tendays or three, it was all delaying the inevitable.

Then we will delay them until we have no blood left to spill .

'Of course you can destroy the bridge,' Totho said, 'or try to. I'm not sure if we have enough explosives on the Iteration to manage it.'

Amnon did not need to think of the outrage such a suggestion would cause amongst the Ministers. He felt an echo of it himself, rising unbidden. 'The stones of that bridge are amongst the oldest of the city, Totho. The Masters themselves decreed its construction. It is like the Scriptora, the Place of Foreigners. It is the genuine old city that the new city has grown within. It would be … unthinkable to turn against it.'

'The Scorpions are going to tear down as much of your old city as they can get their hands on,' Totho pointed out harshly.

'That is why they are our enemies,' Amnon said flatly.

They had arrived at the arming room, where the black plates of aviation steel were laid out ready for him. He remembered how they had felt: smooth, weightless, a second skin of impenetrable steel.

'Put it on me,' Amnon directed.

Totho, with no further comment, set about the task like an artificer, taking up the pieces in their precise order, and remaking Amnon piece by piece. He buckled together the breastplate and backplate, drawing the straps tight, and feeling a strange sense of triumph. Logic and reason can grow even in this soil .

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.'