Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

Totho struggled to his feet, feeling sharp pains from his ribs. His breastplate had a prodigious dent to one side, where the stone had struck him. He staggered a little, and then ran up to stand to Amnon's left. With a desperate concentration, he resumed the business of running out of ammunition, emptying each magazine in turn into the host of Scorpions, punching holes in their mail and through their mail, even through one man and into the next. Beyond those that Meyr crushed and Amnon slew, the bridge was heaving with them. He could see bigger, better-armoured warriors forcing their way through the breach, eager to get to the fight. There was no subtlety now, no pretence at tactics. Only three men stood on the bridge between the Scorpions and their prey. Faced with that, it was down to blade and claw. Crossbows, leadshotters, all were forgotten, as the Many of Nem returned to what they knew best.

Amnon was down on one knee, his pauldron bent almost in two by a halberd blow. Totho shot the wielder through the head as he raised the weapon for a second strike.

Meyr's breastplate was buckled, the catches at his side split apart by the stroke of a greatsword. It was impossible to tell how much of the blood on him was his own. There was a broken spear jutting from beside his neck that must surely have pierced his mail. The Scorpions were leaping on him, climbing up him, trying to unshell him with daggers and their clawed hands.

Totho loosed and loosed, reloaded and recharged and loosed again, picking them off every time Meyr remained still enough to shoot at. The giant grabbed them and tore them away from him, roaring in rage. If he got both hands on the same man, he ripped the wretch apart. Totho wondered whether anyone had ever seen an enraged Mole Cricket before.

Abruptly the Scorpions facing them were more heavily armoured, larger. They thundered into the shields of the two defenders hard enough to drive them back a step, hacking with sword and axe. Meyr backhanded one into the river. Another slammed an axe at his throat which was deflected by the plates of his shoulders. The strap on Amnon's shield broke under a sword blow and he discarded it, taking his sword in both hands.

Totho slung his snapbow and rushed in beside him, with his own shield on his arm. He received three strikes immediately, two on the shield's curved face and one to his helm that made his head swim. He tried to lunge back with his sword, but it was all he could do to just stand upright, shield held up and being struck at repeatedly by the Scorpions — all he could do not to fall back immediately and yield the breach to them. I am not a warrior . All he had was his armour, the one thing standing between life and death for him.

Another blow struck his shield so hard that he was knocked into Amnon. The Khanaphir did not even pause in his sword work, merely pushing Totho back with his free hand.

A stingshot struck Amnon clean in the chest, flaring gold, and he staggered. The Scorpions surged forward, but Totho was there to meet them. He raised his shield and sword against the blows, putting his shoulder to the enemy as though he was trying to hold a door closed. Meyr was being swarmed, Scorpions hacking at his legs, leaping up to drive their claws at his throat, hanging off his armour. Totho felt four solid blows land on his shield, numbing his arm. His sword was battered out of his hand.

A Scorpion woman was abruptly in front of Meyr, stepping aside from his descending fist with a deft grace and then driving her spear up with all her might past the edge of his breastplate, under his arm. Totho saw the shaft sink deep through the sundered mail with an explosion of blood. Meyr struck at her furiously with both hands but she ducked inside his reach and ripped at his throat with her claws. Another man, a Scorpion halfbreed, was beside her, one hand outstretched. Totho saw the bolt of golden light strike Meyr's helm around the eye-slit and the huge man staggered back, rearing to his full height.

The Scorpion woman tore her spear free, turning as she did so and coming back to hurl it into Meyr's throat, where it stuck, shaft quivering. Totho could hear himself shouting something wordless.

Amnon was there. Amnon was there now, but it was too late. Meyr collapsed on to one knee, a hand on the spear-shaft that was running with his blood. Amnon lunged forward at the woman, for a moment not caring if the Scorpions were through the breach or not. The halfbreed got in the way, fending the sword off and reaching out with the open palm of his off-hand. The stingshot struck Amnon's damaged pauldron hard enough to rip it off, then the halfbreed's sword jammed into the Beetle's side, scraping against mail and severing straps.

Amnon rammed his own blade into the man's chest, driving it in two-handed up to the hilt. He was ducking immediately to scoop up a new sword, a sharp, slender piece originating from the Iron Glove factories. My sword , Totho recognized it. My sword .

The Scorpions had paused a moment with the halfbreed's death, and Totho realized it was to give the woman room. She grinned fangs at Amnon and took hold of her spear with one hand, wrenching it from Meyr's neck. The giant gave out a sound, a monstrous sigh, and toppled backwards.

Totho knew he should find another sword or unsling his snapbow, but he found he could only watch Amnon and the Scorpion woman. Amnon stood unevenly, his weight on one leg. His once-pristine armour was a maze of dents and scratches, missing plates and broken buckles. He had been fighting for too long. It was not the mail that weighed on him, but a deadly weariness. The Scorpion woman looked fresh, fleet, long-limbed and strong. Worse, she looked skilled.

'You killed him,' she said, with a nod at the dead halfbreed. 'You saved me the trouble. I shall kill you now.'

'Do it,' Amnon urged her. 'I'm tired.' He braced himself for it, left hand extended before him to reach for her spear, sword held wide to cut.

A stir of unease rippled back through the Scorpions, and at first Totho imagined it was because of the two combatants, perhaps because they had realized who Amnon was. They were looking upwards, though, more and more of them following suit. He tried to do the same, but the lobster-tail plates that guarded the back of his neck had locked in place. Now Amnon himself was tilting his head back, falling from his fighting stance, and the Scorpion woman too. Totho cursed and wrenched at his helm, finally tearing it from his head entirely.

Something struck him in the face as he did, and then another: tiny impacts like insistent little insects. A third followed soon after. He touched his face, which was grimy with dirt and sweat, and found it wet.

There was a look on the faces of the Scorpions that he could not identify. Amnon had tilted his helm back, the better to see what was happening. His expression looked shaken, wide-eyed with fear.

'What?' Totho demanded of him. 'It's only rain.'

Amnon stared at him. All around them the drops of moisture were slanting down, thicker now, the air grown misty with them, the sound a constant hiss off the bridge's stonework, off the river below.

'Rain,' Totho repeated. Amnon shook his head.

'I know of rain, for I saw it once in the Forest Alim. It rains on the sea, sailors say, but it never rains here.'

'It must,' Totho argued. The Scorpions were actually cowering back. Only the woman still stood straight, clutching her spear as though it was a talisman.

'It has never rained in Khanaphes,' Amnon said firmly, barely audible now over the rain which fell faster and faster, battering at them. 'Not ever, in written record, has it rained here.' He could not have looked more horrified and frightened if the Scorpions had been about to skin him alive. 'It is the wrath of the Masters, their judgement on us.'