Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'And for what?' one of the Wasps asked. 'They'll have us staked up on crossed pikes. This is a total disaster.'

'Maybe not,' Angved said. There's one thing left that could turn this from a footnote in the histories into an Imperial triumph. After all, who gives a spit about a few dead Scorpions or whether some backwater city gets sacked or not? You just have to step back from things to see what's really important . 'Genraki,' he beckoned.

'Chief.' The sodden Scorpion looked more oppressed by the rain than by the death of so many of his fellows. They were not a sentimental breed.

'You took to the artillery business fine, didn't you? You enjoyed it?'

The Scorpion nodded cautiously.

'Now things have gone sour for your lot here, but the Empire can always use an Auxillian engineer or two. We need to get back to the Empire, quick as you can. Get us there and you and your men will get paid, rewarded. Which is more than I can say about anything that might happen to you around here.'

Genraki nodded again. 'Away from this city,' he agreed. 'Away from the Masters' anger.'

'Whatever.' Angved felt for the satchel containing his precious samples, his notes and calculations. 'And don't think the Empire will forget about this place. I've a feeling the black and gold might be back in sight of here sooner than you think.' He looked around at the doubting faces of the other Wasps. 'Just you follow my lead,' he told them. 'I'll pull us from the fire yet.' They'll make me a major for this, at the least, which will give me a nice packet to retire on .

'Get us to the Empire,' he told Genraki. 'Guide us through the desert. You'll be well paid for it, and if you want to stay on there, we can find work for you — engineers or Slave Corps, your choice.'

He grinned. Life was looking up. Even the rain was stopping.

'It's another dead end.'

Sulvec flinched at the words. 'Look again.' His voice came out as a croak. 'You must be wrong.'

'I checked, sir. I looked everywhere. It's not the way out.'

'Then find the way!' Sulvec shouted at him. They listened to the echoes of his voice pass back and forth down the hall. In their waning lamplight, the Wasps' faces looked pale and drawn. Sulvec's eyes were very wide, as though trying to scoop up as much of the failing light as they could. A muscle tugged at the corner of his mouth. 'How can we be lost?' he whispered. 'Where have all these tunnels come from?'

'We'll have to go back, sir. We must have taken a wrong turn.'

'So many tunnels, all dark and covered with slime … so many of them.' Sulvec swallowed convulsively. 'We'll go back. We must have missed a turn, that's all. We're probably just a hundred yards from the entrance.' He ignored the expressions of his men which said, A hundred yards of solid rock . 'Get moving!' he snapped at them. 'And bring him along too.'

He kicked out at Osgan's collapsed form, which had been keeping up a steady, ragged whimpering. The two soldiers looked at their leader with revulsion that was only half-concealed.

'Sir,' one of them said, after a moment, 'he's going to die anyway. He's stabbed through the gut. I'm amazed he's not gone already.'

'He's not gone yet because I still have a use for him,' Sulvec spat out. 'Now just bring him.'

'Sir,' the soldier said again, 'can't we leave him? What's the point of dragging him around this place? I mean, can't we finish him off?' They were Rekef men, but there were limits.

Sulvec snarled at them. 'What's this? Bleeding hearts in the Rekef? Think this is Collegium, do you? You're taking my orders, and my orders are to bring him.' Sulvec felt as though the world was falling away from him, here in this horrible darkness. Marger had not come back. Thalric had not come back. They had seen no living thing since the fight, and yet the darkness beyond their lamps had seemed to throng with monstrous, massive shapes. He needed Osgan. He needed Osgan because as long as he had Osgan in his power, Osgan who would scream and writhe at Sulvec's whim, he was not helpless. Osgan was his hold on the world.

'Sir-'

'One more word,' Sulvec shrieked at him. 'One more word and I'll make you envy him!' There were tears in his eyes, for his men were on the point of mutiny. He felt his fingers flex and curl with the need to hurt something. He settled for kicking Osgan again, drawing a choked cry. 'Now bring him.' He watched as they levered the mortally wounded man up between them, the strain causing Osgan to gasp and retch. The stricken man's face was nothing but a haggard mask of pain, and Sulvec smiled to see it. While I have you, I have control . Osgan sobbed wretchedly, wailing each time they shifted his weight.

Sulvec took up the lantern and led the way back down the hall, peering ahead and yet not really looking, not wanting to see what the lantern might reveal. That was another use for Osgan. The prisoner was an anchor to slow their progress, so that the things in the dark had time to get themselves out of sight.

When I see daylight again , Sulvec thought grimly, I will rip him open. I will pull his organs out of him. I will gouge out his eyes. That's only fair, after he and that bastard Thalric dragged me down here .

Osgan was suddenly quiet, and a tremor of fear ran through Sulvec. He's dead? He can't be dead. Not yet. I'm not done with him yet . He whirled around to face the two soldiers, half expecting to see that they'd cut the suffering man's throat. Instead, he found himself looking into Osgan's face. It had been transformed. The expression written there had gone beyond fear of anything that Sulvec might do to him. It was almost blissful in its terror, the look of the man who sees the thing he most dreads come to pass, and knows he need not dread it any more.

'He's coming,' Osgan whispered.

Sulvec flinched away from him, and the soldiers let go, dropping Osgan to his knees. He knelt there, arms wrapped about his bloody stomach, dragging in halting breaths, and just staring.

The soldiers were already spread out, palms aimed at the darkness. 'Something's coming,' one of them said.

'Nothing's coming!' Sulvec insisted, although he did not believe it. 'Nothing! You're letting a dead man get to you. Pick him up!'

'Sir,' said the soldier, and then he died.

Sulvec saw it happen, as a sudden line of red across his throat, the flash of a blade outlined in blood, and the man dropped. The other soldier loosed a stingshot into the dark, then again and again, backing away from something Sulvec could not see. Sulvec opened his mouth to yell at him, but then the second soldier was dead too, twin sprays of blood from head and body and he had fallen away into the darkness.

Osgan was laughing, the sound twisted into a hideous cackle by the pain he was suffering.

Sulvec backed off, but he was backing off from nothing he could see. 'Show yourself!' he ordered. 'Let me see you.'

And then there was someone there, standing between the two corpses. Sulvec did not understand how he could have missed him. A tall, slender man with pointed features, a Mantis-kinden of the Lowlands with a claw on his hand. Sulvec could see him clearly although the lamps were almost out. Whatever illuminated the Mantis shone on nothing else.

He advanced in a delicate stalking movement that made no sound. The light on him fell from one side, and Sulvec could see only whatever that ghost-light touched. The rest of him was made of darkness that even the lamplight could not dispel.

Sulvec loosed a stingbolt at him, but the Mantis seemed untroubled. The Rekef man tried to draw his sword, but his hands were shaking too much. He backed off, further and further away from the discarded lamps of the dead soldiers. His own flickered and died, its fuel spent.