Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'Where would the Khanaphir get explosives?' Jakal demanded, but Hrathen made an unhappy noise in response.

'They're no longer fighting this alone,' he told her. His spyglass raked across the barricade, seeing blocks of stone built to four feet high, wooden boards added above. It looked solid but not indestructible. 'I've noticed people in dark armour out there. Not locals, for sure. Not many of them, but it looks like they're giving the orders. I think it's our friends from the Iron Glove wanting a little blood.'

'So where does that leave us? I shall ready men for the assault,' Jakal decided.

'Send in some dross first, a couple of waves of chaff you won't mind losing,' Hrathen advised. 'After that we'll try for a surprise. Angved, get me a petard readied.'

'They're massing!' Tirado's high-pitched voice came clearly to them from his hovering point twenty feet up. Totho felt the stir amongst the Khanaphir, the gathering of nerves and determination. The archers were stringing their bows with the ease of long practice, bending the simple slats against their calves to hook the string over. Some were already positioned aloft, standing on the stone barrier with four foot of wooden barricade to cover them. They had been complaining, Amnon said, that they would not get a good enough shot at the Scorpions once they charged, but they had no idea what he had saved them from by having the barrier put up this far back from the apex.

Caltrops were another invention that had never reached Khanaphes. Totho's people had not been allowed the chance to make many, but the ground before the barriers was liberally strewn with the jagged little four-spined iron things, looking like spiders in the dawn light.

The danger he had foreseen was that the Scorpions would come around the sides, clambering and grappling about the edges of the barricade and using the walls of the bridge itself as purchase. They had built the sides out as far as he dared without creating a safe target for the leadshotters, but he had indulged in a little psychology as well. He had sacrificed some of the centre, made a low point where the spearmen would be standing, to give the Scorpions a target. It would seem easier to them to force their way through that choke-point. It would be the task of Amnon and his people to stop them.

Time . Totho had no idea how long they could hold, but the first few waves of attack would provide useful data. How long until the Scorpion host breaks up, hungry and frustrated? How long before masses of them start raiding further upriver?

There are so many of them . He was beginning to see the enemy as the locals did. Compared with the size of the Imperial armies he had travelled with, both sides here were betting with pocket change only. Here and now, though, there really were a lot of Scorpions ranged on the other side of the river.

If they just come at us, if they just charge and charge and charge, climbing over their own dead like mad things, we'll be swept off here within hours .

He shifted his shoulders, letting the plates of his pauldrons settle. This new armour had seen no battles yet. This one would be its first. The hush falling on the Khanaphir, as the three of them had arrived, had been shocking. Totho, big Amnon, giant Meyr: three war-automata, things of faceless black metal, lords of war. We are making legends here , he thought, and then: but only if we win .

He had hoped Che would be here. She wasn't, and there was no help for that, but he had hoped she might hear of what he was doing, and come to see him off.

He saw the Mantis woman, Teuthete, leap up on to the barricades, with her recurved bow in one hand. There was a scattering of her people here, all archers. It really has been a long time since I fought alongside the Mantis-kinden . That felt like another world, another epoch, a story of once upon a time.

Amnon vaulted up to take the centre, of course, his shield on his arm and his spear drawn back. To either side of him were the pick of his Royal Guard, men and women in scaled hauberks, with their elliptical shields and long spears. They were braced, and Totho could hear the thunder of the Scorpions, the roar of their battle cries, as they rushed up the facing slope of the bridge.

Rush on , he thought, and welcome to the modern age .

He did not even have to look. The first screams each denoted a caltrop for him, and he imagined the charge stumbling over itself, warriors trying desperately to stop, feet run through with agony, while being shoved from behind by their heedless fellows. The archers were busy, methodical and unchallenged, as they emptied their quivers into the enemy. There were always more arrows.

Totho clambered up, not too proud to take the offer of a helping hand. The Scorpions were already in retreat, leaving a great bank of their dead that was still yards short — spike-studded yards short — of the barricade. The archers continued to let fly, sending their arrows over the arch of the bridge on to the fleeing host, heedless of individual targets.

The second and third Scorpion advances were desultory. They came without enthusiasm, barely got within the sight of the archers before they were falling back in a scattered and dispirited rabble. The Khanaphir cheered as their opponents disappeared back beyond the curve of the bridge.

'We can't have broken them,' Amnon stated, stepping down from the breach. He had not yet bloodied his spear. 'They are stronger than that.'

'They're preparing something,' Totho said. He leant back against the stones, feeling their reassuring solidity against his backplate. 'They've got a plan. This is just to keep them busy while they work it up.' He glanced at Amnon, but the man's open, honest face was now a metal carapace, just a dark slot for the eyes.

We look evil in these helms . It was a child's gleeful thought. He imagined the Scorpions seeing Amnon the deathbringer, the black-armoured warlord at the centre of the line. It must give them pause, he thought. It must shake them. The sight was worth a fistful of caltrops, at the very least.

There was a call from the barricades and Amnon stepped back up. A moment later he shouted, 'This is it!'

Totho scrabbled at the stones hurriedly, using his Art to clamber up to the archery platform. What he saw from there wrenched his stomach.

Oh Che , he thought, with a fervent hope that she never learned about this small stratagem.

The Scorpions again crested the bridge's arc, and this time they had brought company. Ahead of their line, herded forward by spears and halberd-points, were perhaps two score Khanaphir, prisoners who had so far escaped torture or butchery. Some were children. Totho glanced at the archers around him, with their strings drawn back, and saw faces abruptly torn with shock.

Shoot them , Totho thought. Shoot them and save the caltrops for the enemy . He opened his mouth, looking to see if Amnon would give the command. Shoot them! Do not even think to break ranks and let them through . The lines of spears, Amnon and his Royal Guard, all held fast but no orders came.

Bowstrings twanged. It was the Mantis-kinden, drawing and loosing with casual speed, between the prisoners and over them. Totho did not know whether they were confident of their aim or heedless of the consequences. Still, the Scorpions were slowed by their own trick. Each arrow brought a death, winging from over the wooden parapet to plunge through Scorpion mail, through flesh. There were only a dozen Mantids at the wall, though, and the Khanaphir archers still held back, arms trembling and teeth bared.

'Loose!' bellowed Amnon, and Totho wondered whether he had simply not seen the problem, with his vision limited to that unfamiliar slot. Even with his orders, most of the archers did not shoot. Those that did pitched their arrows high, trying to curve down on the Scorpion rear ranks. The advance was now at the bank of bodies that the first wave of attack had left behind.