Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'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.