Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

He spared his snapbow for now, letting the Khanaphir archers do their work. A solid volley hammered into the howling advance just before it engaged, and what reached the Royal Guard was pitiful, thrown back into the arrowstorm without a single loss to the defenders. The very sight of Amnon seemed to turn the Scorpions away.

'More coming!' Tirado shouted down. 'Shields!'

The archers had become old hands at arcing their shots over the curve of the bridge to fall blindly amongst the packed enemy advance. This time there were fewer cries of pain, more sounds of arrows thudding in wood. The Many of Nem were being taught battle tactics the painful way, but they were learning.

The advance was slower now, warriors not used to bearing shields were getting in each other's way. The arrows still found the odd mark, and an injured or dying man with a three-foot shield became a hazard to all around him. Teuthete and her people began loosing their own shafts, the bone and stone heads cracking stolen shields wherever they landed, or clipping the rims to punch home into faces or legs behind them. Totho sighed and worked the snapbow handle, charging pressure. He loosed all five shots at once in a narrow arc, forming a fist that smashed the shield-wall in as his bolts holed shields and flesh and barely slowed. He ducked to recharge, the archers all around letting fly so that each shield soon grew heavy and unwieldy with arrows. Men were running from the construction works on the east bank with fresh quivers. Khanaphes seemed to have an endless supply of arrows.

If we had a snapbow that could fire a bolt every few seconds, and it had a magazine of hundreds , Totho thought, I could hold this bridge alone … or with one man to feed in the bolts. I should mention it to Drephos .

'Crossbows!' Tirado called out, his high-pitched voice clear over the sounds of battle. The Scorpions in the second rank had brought up bows and levelled them over the shoulders of their comrades. The men behind them had shields up over their heads to protect them, a crude imitation of Ant-kinden tactics. 'Crossbows!' Tirado yelled again.

The Royal Guard had braced themselves behind their shields, but the heavy crossbows the Scorpions had been given were powerful enough to penetrate straight through half the time. They could not give up the breach. Tirado could shout at them all he liked.

Totho remained down until he heard the massed clack of two score crossbows. He saw men and women hurled back from the breach, shot through. Others stumbled, taken through the leg, or simply because of the massive impact on their shields. Amnon was crying for them to hold, and the archers kept aiming down for that elusive gap between shield-lines that the crossbowmen were shooting through.

Totho popped up and struck down another handful of shieldmen, giving the archers a clear shot at the men behind. The Scorpions were already surging forward, armoured warriors pressing from behind, the crossbowmen separating to let them through. Amnon cried to hold again, and then the lines clashed together. Greatsword and halberd battered against Khanaphir shields, as the Scorpion finest strove to smash their way through the weakened line with main force. Amnon himself was unmovable. Their strokes slid off his sculpted armour, deflected from his shield. He fought with his spear until the shaft splintered, and then he hacked at them with his sword.

To the right of him the line wavered. A huge Scorpion had leapt up to the barricade, hurling back two of the Guard, laying about him with a double-handed axe. Teuthete put an arrow between his neck and shoulder, shooting almost vertically down into him, but there were another three Scorpions taking his place, eager to force that one breach that would undo the defenders.

They met a wall of aviation-grade steel as Meyr rammed them with his shield. With all the thunderous momentum he could muster, he flung all three Scorpions back onto the blades of their fellows. The force of his charge took him beyond the barricade, momentarily in the midst of his enemies. He swung at them with a great bronze-reinforced club that had been a scaffolding bar only two hours before. As the enemy hacked at his mail, he hurled them left and right with monstrous blows, making even the burly Scorpions look like children. Amnon was shouting for him to get back in line and the Scorpions were all about him, halberd-blades seeking his throat, his armpits, any gap in his mail. Meyr finally stepped back, finding the barricade's edge by concentration and memory, and then retreating behind the reformed line of Royal Guard.

There was no shortage of the Scorpions, however. They were still packed solid all the way to the western shore, with no sign that they would ever break off.

'Tirado!' Totho ordered. 'Send for the Iteration! '

The Fly-kinden saluted, and darted off down the river. The archers were drawing and loosing as fast as they could, sending their shafts towards every unprotected piece of Scorpion skin they could see. Still Amnon held firm in the midst of the Royal Guard's overlapping shields as the Scorpions hurled themselves onto the bloody points of the Khanaphir spears. Now Meyr was fighting from behind the line, using his height and reach to swat any Scorpion that gained a foothold on the barricade. At any moment it seemed that the Scorpions must lose their fervour, that the attack would ebb away in a flurry of final arrows, but still they pressed and pressed. The corpses were mounting up and they used them as stepping stones up to the Khanaphir shields. A score of the Guard had fallen and been replaced, and the numbers of waiting reinforcements were now getting sparse. Totho saw old Kham, Amnon's cousin, jerk backwards with a huge gash splitting halfway into his chest, dragging the Scorpion sword from its wielder's clawed hands as he fell.

On board the Iteration they had kept the engines turning over, waiting for the call. In truth Corcoran had hoped that it would be noon before the ship's intervention was needed, but Tirado dropped down on him before the sun was clear of the horizon.

'Already?' the Solarnese demanded.

'Oh, yes,' Tirado confirmed. 'Absolutely yes.' He was in the air a moment later, zigzagging back towards the embattled bridge.

Corcoran cursed, thinking, It isn't our city , for the thousandth time. He shouted the orders, though. They had learned a lot from the Empire, those in the Iron Glove. If you wanted to do well, you did what you were told. Totho's got a plan. Totho's got a plan . He repeated it to himself over and over, ignoring the way it sounded hollower each time.

They cast off, and the Fourth Iteration 's engines rumbled them towards the bridge. Its approach would not have gone unmarked by the enemy, and even now they would be wheeling out the leadshotters, not to be caught by surprise as they had been the last time.

'Get the smallshotters to the rail!' Corcoran called. 'Once we're in range I want every damn one to go off. Cut them a new road back to the Nem: grapeshot and scrapshot all weapons.'

He took out his glass and unfolded it to its full length, raking the western shore for the enemy's disposition. Sure enough, there was a roil of activity there, but the mass of Scorpions pushing to take their place on the bridge was so dense that the crew of the Iteration could slaughter them blindfold. They've stepped it up today , Corcoran realized. It was barely dawn, and yet the Scorpions were already throwing everything into the fray.

He spied the smoke from the first leadshotter before he heard the sound, clutching at the rail in sudden fear. The shot went short and wide, though, so far off that it was useless even for ranging. That's it lads, you go and waste your powder . His own people knew the limits of their weapons. They had their steel lighters ready, carefully withholding their fire until their weapons were well into range.