Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'Tell me what the pits is so important,' Marger insisted, his voice now a hushed whisper. He crouched beside Osgan's chair like a conspirator. 'Why do they want him dead so badly?'

'Ask your big Rekef man out there,' Osgan suggested. 'Surely he's told you.'

'Oh, they haven't even told him ,' Marger said. 'But they've told him just how far they intend going just to have him dead. Do you think the Empire really cares two spits about Khanaphes or those Scorpion savages? Oh, maybe the Scorpions would make good Auxillians, but that's not the point . They're here just for Thalric, all of them. All the thousands of them currently attacking the bridge out there — they're here because the Empire wants Thalric dead.'

'I … don't understand,' stammered Osgan.

'No, I don't understand,' Marger told him, 'because it makes no cursed sense at all. Someone wants Major Thalric the Regent-General so very dead that they've sent Skater assassins and a Rekef team and engineers and leadshotters and a whole desert full of Scorpion-kinden, and they'll see forty thousand Beetles dead so long as his corpse lies somewhere amongst them. I swear they'll kill every living thing within miles of here just to make sure he's dead. That's what it's all for, because the Empire doesn't care a toss about this city. Someone very highly placed within the Empire wants Thalric dead, as dead as he can possibly be and — and this is apparently the important thing — every trace of how it happened buried under the rubble of a dead city so that nobody can ever pick up the pieces of what went on or work out who to blame. Now what in the wastes is going on?'

Osgan goggled at him. 'Why are you asking me ?' was all he could say. 'It's nothing to do with me .'

'Because I hoped you would know,' said Marger, abruptly exhausted by the whole business. 'I really did. Because nobody is talking about it but we all know it's mad. Something's gone wrong back home, to have all this happening out here in the sticks. I mean, I don't dislike Thalric as a man. I really don't. But when orders come down from the bloody palace to see him dead by any means, including exterminating an entire people, then you jump to obey.'

Someone called out Marger's name from the next room, and the man started guiltily, putting some paces between himself and the prisoner. 'In here,' he said loudly.

One of Sulvec's men put his head around the door. 'Word from the sentries,' he announced. 'There's been some movement at the pyramid. It's dusk anyway, so time to move.'

The Scorpions had not stopped hurling themselves continually at the barricade until the sky began to darken in the east. In the thick of it, loosing snapbow bolts as fast as he could charge the weapon, Totho had wondered whether they might not eventually whittle the horde down to nothing, slaying so many of them that their corpses mounded up against the barricade and fell off the bridge into the river on either side.

There were only five left now of the original thirty Royal Guard who had held the breach, and many of their replacements had fallen also. The Khanaphir losses were far less than the Many's, but the Nem had far more warriors to lose. The Scorpions did not even have to kill them, only to force their way through the breach just the once. They had come close to it several times, but Meyr and Amnon had held the line, in their mail that was proof against axe and crossbow bolt, fighting like murderous automata until the force of the latest Scorpion charge ebbed.

Halmir, he who wooed the widow, had lost half his face to a Nemian halberd and Totho did not know if he lived or not. Dariset had her shoulder laid open by a greatsword, but her armour had saved her, leaving the wound messy but shallow. She still fought on. Old Kham had broken two shields defending Amnon's back at the moment when the Scorpions were closest to breaking through, and he would not let his cousin forget it. Totho had already shot several hundred bolts, and sent to the Iteration for more.

He had sent new orders for Corcoran too. Having looked out at the west bank and seen the monstrous mass of fires out there, he had realized that, despite all its losses, the war-host of the Nem had so far been spending only the small change from its pockets. Tomorrow would be worse: Amnon could only trust the Royal Guard to hold the breach, but so many of them had already perished out on the field. Their numbers grew slender, and the archers had taken their losses too, under crossbow bolts, axes, javelins. They could all be replaced, but only by weakening the force that waited, up and down the shore, for any rafts or boats the Scorpions could scrounge together.

There were some fires burning now behind the barricades, a force of soldiers waiting in case of an assault. Marsh folk were stationed on the wall itself, their eyes better in the darkness. Any creeping force of Scorpions would be rudely surprised by their arrows.

Totho found Amnon fiddling with the straps of his armour, his gauntleted hands clumsy with the buckles.

'Hold still,'Totho said. 'I'll take you out of it.'

'Tighten it,' Amnon told him. 'If they attack tonight, I will be needed.'

'If they attack tomorrow, you will be needed too, and then you will be in need of sleep,' Totho said. 'Meyr and I will quarter the night between us.'

'The three of us will take a third each,' Amnon argued stubbornly.

'As you will, but you sleep now. I'll take first watch, Meyr will take the middle, you the last. Meyr can see in the dark, anyway.'

Amnon sighed. 'Get me out of this, then, but I will sleep here alongside my people.'

Totho stripped off his own gauntlets and stood close to him, finding the buckles from long experience. 'Tomorrow will be ugly. They have enough fresh troops to force the breach,' he observed, his tone neutral.

'I know.'

Totho glanced up, but the firelight revealed no expression on Amnon's face. 'You have a plan?'

'I have some thoughts for delay. It will be only delay. A second barricade at the bridge's foot, supported by every archer who can still draw a bow, deployed from the bank and the rooftops.'

'That will last only until the Scorpions think of bringing a leadshotter to the bridge's peak,' Totho said sadly. 'Then … no more barricade. We are now at the only point where we can hold without their shot smashing us to scrap as soon as they find the range.'

'I'm glad I listened to you regarding that, at least,' Amnon said. 'One less failure that could have been mine.'

'You? You've fought like a hero!'Totho assured him.

'Yet still I have failed my people. I am First Soldier. Who else should take the blame?' A tremor ran through him, and he tore himself from Totho's ministrations. 'Except you, old man!' he exclaimed.

Totho looked up, taking a moment to see the robed figure of the First Minister. Faced with the weary soldiers, the fires, the vast host of the enemy lit up red along the western bank, Ethmet was looking twenty years older.

'I came to see …' he began, and his voice trailed off.

'Well, you have seen,' Amnon replied. 'No doubt the Masters have already told you how this will all end. In truth it needs no prophecy, but I would spare my soldiers your words of doom. What do you want here?'

'The Masters … are considering,' Ethmet almost mumbled. He looked confused, an old man out too late, who has forgotten the way home. 'They … I wait for them to instruct me.'

'Oh, really?' Amnon said, but there was a catch in his voice, and Totho thought, Still he believes, despite all he says. If these Masters were to rise up now and smite him for his failures, he would not care so long as they saved the city .

'Amnon,' Ethmet came close, 'you must tell me.'

'Tell you what?'