Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

Che walked closer and wiped slime away from the inscription to read it clearly.

'Elysiath Neptellian, Lady of the Bright Water, She whose Word Breaks all Bonds, Princess of the Thousand,' she translated.

'Maybe she didn't care for the likeness,' said Thalric harshly. 'Now, can we get out of this festering place and …' His voice choked off and Che looked around wildly.

'What? What now?'

'I … thought I saw something …' he said, voice openly shaking. 'Ahead there. Something pale …'

'The lamps. The shadows of the lamps,' Che said hurriedly. 'The lamplight on the stone.' She was tense as a drawn bow, waiting for whatever terrible thing was about to descend on them. The air was thick with it.

When it came, it came from behind them: a long, drawn-out scream of human agony. Thalric whirled around, his sword in his hand instantly.

'Wait-' Che started but he snarled, 'Osgan,' and was away from her at once, plunging back the way they had come, and leaving her to scurry in his wake.

Totho was awoken by the sound of stone, great loads of it being hauled up the span of the bridge by sled, and by the noisy efforts of a labouring draught beetle.

Are we building the barricade now? he wondered vaguely, but had they not already built it? Had they not defended it for a day already? I refuse to go through that again .

He sat up, seeing the great bow-backed animal settle, antennae twitching, as the sled was unloaded. By the barricade itself, the centre had been reinforced, going some way towards repairing the petard's damage, and some complex woodwork was being lashed together, a slope on either side of the central point, with what seemed like a vast quantity of rope lying about. He could make nothing of it.

He jumped up, looking for authority, and spotted Amnon. The big man was supervising the unloading. Meyr, whose watch it was, leant against the barricade well out of the way.

'What's going on?' Totho asked him. 'When did this start?'

'Hour ago,' Meyr said. 'That Amnon, he's got an idea or something. Look down at our end of the bridge.'

Totho did so, seeing a great many torches down below, and what seemed like two hundred Khanaphir busy hauling stone about. A second barricade . 'Amnon!' he called out. 'I told you, once they get a leadshotter up here, they'll sweep away anything you put down at the shore. They'll just smash it to pieces.'

'That is indeed what you told me,' Amnon confirmed.

'Then what?'

'I have been speaking with Praeda about the engines of the enemy, and what they are capable of,' Amnon revealed.

'Yes, that's exactly what I meant when I said you should go home to her,' Totho remarked drily. 'So what did she have to say about it?'

'Firstly, she said she is an artificer, and a professor of artifice at their College, so she knows about these things,' Amnon told him.

Totho shrugged. 'That covers quite a range of competences.'

'She then also says that our stones cannot resist their shot, because our stones are rigid. She says that Collegium walls have a soft core to them, where the mortar is, that makes them move when struck, which is why these engines would not beat them down so easily. True?'

'True,'Totho admitted, 'all true. So what's going on?'

'Down there they are preparing a very great deal of stone, all of it we have dressed and ready to place. As of now there is a narrow pass to one side, to let the defenders here escape, but that will be filled at need,' Amnon said. 'We are building bands of wall: stone backed with wood and wicker, then stone again, and so forth, the whole of it a score of feet deep at least, and high as we can build it. The spaces of softer stuff, Praeda says, will give the stones somewhere to go when they are struck. The enemy will take twice as long to batter through. And she says, when the leadshotters shoot at it, they will only be turning standing stones into rubble that they will have to climb across. We will have archers on every roof. What do you think, about my Praeda?'

'I think she's thought it through,' Totho conceded. 'As last lines of defence go, I can't think of a better one. I should have thought of that myself.'

'Good to be appreciated,' he heard a female voice interrupt. Praeda herself came walking towards them up the slope. She had traded her Collegium robes for hard-wearing artificer's canvas, and there was a crossbow of Iron Glove make slung over her shoulder. 'Amnon, you're sure the barricade can hold them off here while they complete the barrier down there, after you fall back?'

'Of course.' Amnon was looking at Totho as he said it, and the wince was evident, that told of the lie.

Every plan has its flaw . 'So what's this up here?' Totho asked hastily, to ward off more questions from Praeda.

'When this barricade is due to fall, my soldiers will still need time to flee down to the eastern shore,' Amnon explained. The labourers were loading great blocks of stone on to the ramps that flanked the barricade's mid-point, building them high and securing them against the slope with ropes. Totho extrapolated, seeing two big columns of stone, poised and straining, waiting to thunder together in the centre, an instant breach-blocker.

'That's mad,' he said. 'What if the ropes go? Anyone fighting in the centre will be squashed flat.'

'We make good ropes, and we know our stone,' Amnon replied. 'We have been building like this for a thousand years. The ropes will hold until we cut them. I will be in the centre of our line. It is my own life that I stake on this.'

Totho shook his head at it. Oh you say that here and now, with that confidence, because your lady is with you. It would not do to point out the cracks in this plan . It would not take the Scorpions long to break through the barricade, as soon as its defenders had retreated. Another petard would suffice and they would surely have one ready. If there were sufficient bodies on the far side, or if they possessed the Art, then they might even just swarm straight over. At the foot of the bridge the fleeing soldiers would either be trapped by the barrier's completion, or the barrier would not be finished in time, letting the Scorpions through.

Unless . But he did not need to voice that 'unless' here. You are a fool, Amnon. You have more to live for than you know . Amnon's sense of duty was crippling to be near, and Totho could barely imagine it. If he himself had been born with all the advantages that Amnon owned, with his strength and energy and easy manner, and if he had a Beetle girl who loved him, then there was nothing in the world that would make him turn away from it. Not duty, not honour, nothing.

But, then, perhaps that duty is what makes Amnon what he is .

'You should sleep again,' Amnon told him. 'It is your turn.'

'Small chance of that,'Totho grumbled.

'They will be done here soon enough.' It was true, the piles of stone, immaculately placed, were now almost as high as the barricades. The webwork of ropes that held them in place had been run to pulleys fixed on the bridge's sides, and then back to a single ring set in the stonework behind. It would take a sword's blow to those taut ropes to drop four tons of stone together like clapping hands.

'I don't think I'm going to get much sleep tonight,'Totho admitted. 'Tomorrow is oppressing me already.'

Amnon settled down with his back to the bridge's right flank. His glance, away from Praeda towards the western bank, caught him wearing a strangely irresolute expression. 'Praeda,' he said suddenly, 'would you leave us? Return to the city?'

The Collegiate woman frowned at him. 'Actually I …'

'You were going to stay to face the dawn,' Amnon finished for her, nodding. 'You bought a crossbow from one of the Iron Glove people. You want to fight alongside me, tomorrow.'