Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'Run!' she cried, then her wings hurled her at him fast, spoiling his aim as he tried to shoot back. The two Wasps were almost on her heels, charging forward to close with swords drawn.

She felt the stone around them shift, even as she collided with Thalric, striking him full in the chest, propelling him down the centre corridor. There was no mechanism, no click and grind of machinery. The stone moved as if it was alive.

She landed on Thalric hard enough to expel the breath from his lungs with a whoosh.

What landed on the two Wasps, only feet behind her, was the ceiling itself. A colossal block, the same height and width as the passage, thundered down on them. It cut off their scream, which was mercifully brief.

Thalric's eyes were wide, staring, unseeing in the pitch darkness.

She rolled off him with a groan, and lay flat on her back. Traps , she thought, traps for the intruder, the unwary . Traps laid by the Inapt, though. There had been no pressure point, no tripwire, that had brought that fatal load down. There had been a watching magic, and she had sensed it somehow, where Thalric and the dead Wasps had not.

She peered about herself at last, saw that the room was not large. There was Khanaphir picture-writing on the walls, but in bolder and larger characters than she had seen before.

There were no doors.

Sulvec perched on the lip of the pit, as the resounding crash died away below him. He had heard the momentary cries of the two men he had sent after Thalric.

'Gram!' he called down. 'Gram, report!'

Only silence replied.

Marger and the soldiers joined him there, crouching among the statues. They would have to go in, he realized. No matter what had happened to Gram, they would still have to go in. He opened his mouth to give the order.

At that moment he felt fear. It came steaming up like cold breath from the slime-edged mouth of the pit. It caught him in mid-word, freezing him, wrenching at his stomach. He felt himself gripped by an unreasoning terror.

We should not be here . The placid faces of the statues had become nightmarish without ever changing expression. They looked down upon the intruding Wasps with condemnation. Sulvec heard his own breath sounding ragged in his throat. We should not be here. This is a terrible place. Something terrible has happened to Gram . Those screams, so brutally stopped, had unnerved him, but now fear had taken hold and was shaking him in its jaws.

I am a Rekef officer! But in this faraway city the Rekef seemed just a pale dream. He looked over to Marger, saw the man's eyes wide, his hands shaking. The other soldiers were retreating down the pyramid, away from the statues and the dreadful pit.

'Back.' The word was dragged from him. 'Go back. We …' He could give no reason for it, could not justify the order. He only knew that to stay where they were, in this forbidden place, meant death.

None of them needed to be told again. They fled down the side of the pyramid gratefully, gathering near the archway to the Place of Foreigners.

'They must be dead,' Marger was saying. 'Thalric and the Beetle girl. Surely they must be dead, all of them.'

Sulvec wanted badly to agree with him, but he had been given his orders most specifically. 'He's survived a lot,' he got out. 'We have to see the body. Absolutely sure.' Two of his men had a prisoner, he noticed. The wretched Osgan was hanging limply in their grip. The man looked half dead.

'What now, sir?' Marger asked him, a man with the luxury of not having to make decisions. At that point, Corolly Vastern caught them up, looking like a local with his shaved head.

'Why did you come down, sir?' he asked. He had obviously seen something of what went on. Sulvec opened his mouth, reaching for answers. I can't just say 'because I feared.' His mind progressed to: So that cannot be the reason, but I must have had a reason. I do nothing without a logical reason .

'Sir, Guards coming,' said one of his men, and his mind leapt. There was a squad of Khanaphir soldiers arriving at the far side of the square, no doubt drawn by all the noise. I must have known that , Sulvec told himself. I heard them coming. I knew that they would catch us, if we were still up there .

'Marger, keep a watch on this place. If Thalric comes out again, I want to know about it,' he snapped out. 'The rest of you, fall back with me. We'll return tonight if they leave it unguarded, or we'll be back tomorrow night, whatever. We have a job to do here. Come on.'

He could not entirely keep the trembling from his voice, still feeling that dread gnawing at his innards. A perfectly rational feeling: fear of discovery. Good trade-craft. A Rekef agent's instincts . The words rattled about inside his skull looking for acceptance.

Dawn stole in from the east to find the city of Khanaphes at war with itself, split by the no-man's-land of the river Jamail.

On the eastern bank was arrayed the remainder of the Khanaphir army, ready to repel all comers. Some Scorpions had spent the night desultorily nailing together pieces of wood to make rafts — ugly, awkward things worked from first principles. In the harsh dawn they quietly abandoned their labours, for there were archers out there, whole detachments of them, both city folk and Marsh folk. Anyone paddling a raft towards them would be riddled with quills as soon as they came in range. The Scorpions lacked the craft to make vessels of any greater complexity. Unless they could somehow lure boats from the far shore, then a crossing would prove fatal.

They had kept some prisoners over, following their triumphant surge into the city. Jakal now ordered each one brought forth before the eyes of the defenders. The Scorpions were inventive and gleeful in their treatment of such prisoners, and they spared nothing, hoping to provoke some futile attempt at rescue. They spent two hours of the first day in burnings and cuttings and rape.

The Khanaphir would not be drawn, however. They watched, each one of them, from their Ministers down to the lowest peasant militiaman, and they saved their resentment for when they could pay it back twice over. They were too disciplined to take the bait.

Which leaves the bridge , Hrathen decided. It was a painful conclusion, if only because the enemy had reached it too. They had fortified the bridge even while they were evacuating their people from the west city. Past the crest of the span they had put up a great barricade, of stone and of wood, while beyond the raised sides of the bridge his glass could make out constant movement there. He saw spear-tips waving, indicating a small, compact force ready to repel the invaders. They would not need many to hold there, at that choke point.

'They are fools,' Jakal said. 'They should have brought their stones to the bridge's top. They waste their archers.' They had found a vantage on one of the roofs, the better to spy out the enemy.

'If only they had.' Hrathen let out a long breath. 'Angved, explain.'

The old engineer glanced nervously at Jakal. 'Well,' he said, 'if they'd built on the actual zenith of the bridge, we'd be able to shoot them off cleanly with our leadshotters. Simple as that: they'd give us a direct line of sight on them, and we'd knock them straight into the river. Which shows they're finally thinking like a proper army. They're using the arch of the bridge itself as cover.'

'So your weapons are useless now,' Jakal said.

'Oh, I could take them down, sure,' Angved told her calmly. 'Problem is, that bridge is built like their city walls, same stone, same style, save that the bridge isn't even meant to stand off an attack. I hit that bridge with a few shots and, odds on, I might just knock a great big hole in it, and then how do we get across? In fact, if they've any explosives to hand, we'd better be careful of them doing the same.'