Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'My brother is at large in the city already. Not you nor all your servants shall catch him. And what I know, he knows.'

A dead silence fell between them, the great Masters regarding the defiant Ant-kinden with what Che realized was dawning puzzlement. At last it was Jeherian's expression that changed, sagging with bitter weariness.

'The old Art,' he acknowledged. 'The old Art of the savages. It has been far too long and we have forgotten too much, how they were in each other's minds, the folk of the Alim and the Aleth.' Che saw realization ripple through them all, stripping away their majesty and leaving a sad bewilderment behind. She found that, despite their malevolence and their vast power, she still felt sorry for them in some strange way — atavisms that remembered only ruling a world that had long passed them by.

'What could we say?' she said. 'Who would believe us anyway? We will return to the sun, and say nothing. There would be no profit for us in being dubbed liars or madmen. We leave you to your rest. Do not think ill of us.'

The Masters of Khanaphes regarded them stonily for a long moment, until Jeherian nodded minutely and said, 'Go.'

Che would remember for ever the sight of them as she glanced back one last time: beautiful by an alien aesthetic, huge and commanding and gleaming in that bluish light. The immortal Slug-kinden, the Masters of Khanaphes.

She led the way back. Thalric tried to at first, but he went off course over and over, leading them in circles through the maze of halls by the light of Accius's quisitor's lamp. The true path to the light was clear only to Che and, once they had finally accepted that, she led them confidently until they found the corpses.

There were four of them there, three close by and one at a distance. Che had not quite identified them when Thalric knelt down beside the middle one of the three. She heard him take a long breath, and only then recognized the corpse as Osgan's.

'Oh,' she said. 'I'm sorry, Thalric. Really I am.'

'I left him behind,' Thalric said. 'He was in pain, but I left him behind.'

'We should go,' Accius said shortly, still very anxious. Thalric looked up at him balefully and Che recalled how it was only because Accius had been abducting her that Thalric had abandoned Osgan to his fate.

'No fighting, no disagreement,' she ordered them flatly. 'We leave here at once, or the Masters may change their minds. Thalric, I'm sorry, but we should spend no more time here than necessary.'

'You're right, of course,' he said, standing up. She took his hand and led them on, past the final corpse, that was twisted, both face and body, into an attitude of unbearable horror.

The thought she had, crossing into the next hall, was, We must be close now. There is his armour on the throne . She thought that until she saw the head lift, and the dead eyes of Garmoth Atennar stared out at her. Even then the others did not see, not until she flinched back against them, dragging them round to watch the colossal metal-clad form stand up, sword in hand.

'Garmoth Atennar,' she declared. 'Lord of the Fourth House, whose Bounty Exceeds all Expectations, Greatest of Warriors.' She could remember every word of it. 'We are leaving your realm.'

'I know of your words with my peers,' he boomed. 'Even as our slaves have diminished, so has the foolishness of the Masters grown. Not mine, though, and I care not if you have a hundred listeners. They shall know first-hand the fate that awaits trespassers into these halls.'

The might of his mind oppressed them, but Che found it weaker now that he was alone. She could shrug it off with ease, ward it off from the others, thinking: Is this magic? Am I a magician now?

Garmoth Atennar took one great stride forward. His sword dropped towards her ponderously and Thalric pushed her out of its path. His stingshot struck shards from the Master's Mantis-crafted armour. Garmoth changed his grip on the sword and swung it in a scything blow towards him, but Thalric took flight briefly and avoided it, leading the sword point upwards. Accius darted in and rammed his sword into the huge man's knee.

Che expected Garmoth's armour to fend off the blow easily, but the Mantis plate crumpled at once, cracking like fire-warmed paper. With a grating roar, Garmoth collapsed to his knees, and Accius slit his throat, stepping back to avoid the huge body as it toppled to the floor in a cacophony of metal.

In the echoes of that crash, that seemed to go on and on, Che waited for repercussions, but the other Masters made no further appearance. Perhaps they slept already. Perhaps they were as heedless of their fellow as they had been of their servants.

'Rusted through,' Thalric observed. She blinked at him, realized he meant the armour. 'Look,' he pointed, 'the backplate is cracked without a blow being struck. This was no good place to store armour.' He laid a hand on one of the massive pauldrons, and half of it came away without effort.

'Greatest of warriors,' she whispered. Was he genuinely so, in his day? Or did he rely merely on the awe he was held in to win his battles for him? What have we slain here today? She felt they should move the body to the pedestal where he had lain for so long, but the three of them could not have managed it, even with Accius's strength.

He had awoken several times, but retained only a sketchy memory of each occasion: aware that he was in the infirmary of the Scriptora, and that she was beside him. When he moved, he felt as if every bone and joint had been under the hammer. Amnon, the First Soldier of Khanaphes, opened his eyes.

They had not given up on him, he saw, for this was one of the little rooms reserved for Ministers or people of importance. His soldiers, most of whom had suffered worse than he, would be tended in the communal infirmaries of their barracks, or in converted storerooms. There would be more than enough work today to keep all Khanaphes's cutters and salvers busy.

He remembered, in fits and starts, that the city still stood, that the Scorpions had been washed away, that he had held the bridge just long enough. He squeezed the hand that he found in his, startling his companion from her doze as she sat beside the bed.

'Hello, Praeda.'

She looked haggard and he guessed she had not slept much these last few days. She bit her lip, watching him, and he levered himself up to a sitting position, determinedly ignoring all the complaints of his body. 'Don't tell me I look as bad as that,' he chided.

'I am so angry with you,' she said tightly. Her grip on his hand became painful. 'I can't believe just how angry I am.'

'You have every right to be.'

'Don't be reasonable about it now!' she snapped. 'You have no right to be reasonable now, after what you did. You were going to die, you and those other idiots. You were going to stay behind and die. What … What sort of a way is that for anyone to behave?'

'It is what the First Soldier of Khanaphes does, if it is needed,' said Amnon calmly. 'It is what the Chosen of the Marsh people does. For Totho and Meyr, I cannot say why they did it, and perhaps they cannot either. How long have I slept?'

'It's now evening of the day after the battle.'

'And what do the healers say about me?'

'Damn the healers. I stitched your wounds myself,' she informed him. 'We know our medicine in Collegium.'

'So what do you say about me?'

'That you're a cursed fool. And you got off lightly. I saw your armour after they'd cut it off you. It looked like someone had thrown it off a cliff and then put it into an industrial grinder. They should have taken you out of it in pieces.'

'You sound disappointed,' he noted.

'Because you won't learn ,' she said bitterly. 'I know you soldiers, you'll remember that you won and that you survived, and you'll call it glory, and you'll do it again.'