Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

Might as well make the first one count , Corcoran thought. 'We'll give it them all together,' he shouted out. Then he started as a small figure dropped on to the deck beside him.

'Himself says now would be a good time,' Tirado told him.

Corcoran nodded. 'Let them have it on my mark!' he cried, and then, 'Three, two, one — loose!'

The combined shock of a dozen smallshotters detonating at once rolled the Iteration back in the water amid a bellowing of smoke and fire. The fistfuls of lead shot tore through the massed Scorpion warriors, ripping dozens of them apart. Corcoran was glad enough he didn't have to witness it. The aftermath, as the ship righted itself, was bad enough.

'Load and loose in your own time,' he instructed his crew, seeing the Scorpion host boiling and reeling from this new assault. That will have taken pressure off the barricades . 'You go back now and find out how long he wants us here,' he told the Fly, and Tirado kicked off from the deck, darting upwards towards the bridge itself.

The smallshotters were discharging independently, each at the speed of its own crew, lashing at the Scorpions wherever they were thickest. There was some return of crossbow bolts, but the distance defeated them, only a few coasting far enough to bounce back from the ship's armoured hull.

'They're bringing up the big engines!' someone called. Corcoran glanced up at the bridge. Surely they were done by now? Surely Totho didn't need them to stay out here. Perhaps Tirado had been killed or hurt, or simply forgotten to deliver the message.

'Try to keep them busy,' he shouted. He located one of the big leadshotters, and saw that it was some way inland, taking advantage of its own better range. The Iteration was armoured, but it was designed to be proof against the sort of pieces that another ship would carry. No ship had ever put to sea with something as heavy as the Scorpion ordnance. A few hits near the waterline would soon take care of the Iteration .

'It'll take them a while to find the range,' he said, hearing his own voice tremble. Over the sporadic boom of the smallshotters he could barely be heard anyway. The bulk of the Scorpion advance had scattered, seeking shelter from the Iteration 's salvos. The fighting above must falter, surely, the grinding wheels of death no longer fed by a flow of fresh bodies. Corcoran gritted his teeth, watching the Scorpion crews load their massive weapons.

They were quicker than he had assumed. He saw the gust of smoke from one leadshotter and instinctively dropped to his knees.

A tremendous column of spray spouted from the river, a full twenty yards past them and astern. They hurried their aim , he thought, and it was oddly reassuring to know that he had done enough damage to secure the enemy's attention. A second leadshotter roared even as he thought this, and the water erupted a few yards off the bows, between the Iteration and the piles of the bridge. Corcoran clung to the rail as the swell rocked them. Meanwhile, some of the smallshotters were loosing solid shot, trying for enough range to trouble the Scorpion artillerists.

Tirado dropped almost on to his shoulders, swerving in the air to make himself a harder target. 'Time to go,' he announced. 'Pull back to the docks, and be thankful this river's so wide.'

'Stop shooting and let's get out of here!' Corcoran shouted to the crew at the top of his lungs. He had to repeat it twice, running down the length of the ship, before everyone had pulled the smallshotters back and the ship's engines started to turn them. Another plume of water exploded nearby, but they had become a moving target now, spoiling the enemy's calculations.

But they'll be ready for us the next time, won't they just …

Above, on the bridge, the latest Scorpion assault was falling back, unsupported, shot through with arrows. Yet the host of the Many of Nem seemed barely diminished.

She woke up because he had stepped on her arm. The sudden pain, and waking into utter dark, left her wholly bewildered. Che had no idea where she was. Someone was apologizing to her but all reference escaped her. For a brief moment she was nowhere, and had no idea even who she was.

Then she remembered her Art: it was still not second nature to her. She let her eyes gradually find their way, and saw Thalric a few paces away, looking frustrated.

'Clumsy bastard,' she told him, and enquired, 'I've been asleep?'

'Unless you've been snoring just to annoy me.' He was not quite looking at her and it took a moment to realize that it was because he could not, of course, see her. Her voice, in the confined space, must be hard to pin down.

'You swallowed some of that herbal muck you were giving to Osgan,' Thalric went on. His eyes were very wide, futilely trying to stare the darkness down. 'Because of your shoulder. Then, after a while, you were sleeping. It's been a long night.'

'And then you trod on me,' she pointed out. 'How long has it been?'

'I have no idea.' He was moving about the room again, feeling for the walls. 'I used to think I had a good sense of time, but there are no clues down here: no light, no sounds. It's been hours, anyway. It must be daylight outside.'

'Thalric,' she said, 'what are you doing, exactly?'

'Trying to get a proper idea of this place — which has turned out to be surprisingly difficult, and somewhat disgusting.'

'Do you want me to help you?'

'I'll be fine.'

'Only, I can see in the dark.'

He stopped abruptly, turning towards where she was. His expression was completely unguarded. 'Since when?'

Since you locked me in your heliopter after Asta — but she wasn't going to say that. 'It's a Beetle Art, Thalric. Granted, it's not common, but it's there.'

His lips moved, but whatever he was going to say died there. Abruptly he sat down and put his head in his hands. How long has he been feeling his way around this place? How many hours of going round and round? She was treated to a brief moment of Thalric in absolute despair. Then he lifted his head, and he was already adjusting. 'So tell me then,' he said, 'what do we have?'

She clambered to her feet, feeling her shoulder twinge, peering about. Her Art-sight leached the colours, turning Thalric's skin pallid and his clothes drab. She suspected there were few enough colours in their surroundings to begin with.

'It's a room maybe twelve paces to a side,' she decided. 'The ceiling's about the same extent high. A cube, then, but the walls slope slightly inwards as they go up. There's an archway in each wall. Trapezium-shaped.' She stopped.

'And no doors,'Thalric finished for her.

'And no doors,' she echoed. 'There are just … the archways just have stone behind them. And one … one of them's been blocked off by the trap.'

'I felt carving on the walls,' he said weakly.

'It's the usual old Khanaphir script,' she said. Even with her Art-enhanced eyes it was hard to discern it. She moved to one wall, using a sleeve to wipe at it. At the first touch she made a horrified noise and flinched back. 'There's something on the walls.'

'Yes, there is,' said Thalric, with some satisfaction. 'Every cursed surface here is coated with it. It's made my explorations a real joy.'

I can't see it , she realized, but then logic reasserted itself. There was a thin layer of transparent slime coating the walls, coating the floor too — at least from the state of her clothes and the sounds her sandals made. As there was no light to gleam off it, it was completely invisible, even to her. It showed only in a blurring of the carvings beneath.

And why go to the trouble of writing all of this here, in this little room of death? Of course, the Khanaphir engraved these things everywhere, but she could tell just by looking that this script was the real old hieroglyphs, not the meaningless babble that was all the modern masons could manage. Someone had deliberately put a message here, for those with eyes to see and minds to understand it.