Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

He was here to oversee the extinction of the traitor Vargen and the return of another piece of the Empire into the proper hands. He was here, as a sign of the Empress's favour, to inspire Pravoc and the rest, and to remind them that they were fighting for the true Imperial bloodline.

The thought made him twitch.

He was also here because, lately, he had seized any opportunity to be out of the presence of the Empress herself. He was a man in his middle years, a veteran of the battlefield in his youth, a veteran of the games of the Rekef for two decades and more. His skin bore the burns and scars of his history like medals. He had survived where others had fallen. He had killed with his blade and his sting and his bare hands, started and quelled rebellions, tortured women and slain children, hunted and been hunted. He had done all of this and Seda was still just a slip of a girl, barely of age, yet he feared her like nothing else. His skin crawled at the thought of her.

He heard a horn sound, way out on the plain, as Vargen's host began its slow advance. He saw the dust start to rise from hundreds of feet, as compact formations of Beekinden started to trudge forward. To left and right, Vargen's Wasps moved out in loose order, ready to take to the air, and behind and around them was a great mass of Flykinden from Shalk, Vargen's other conquest. They were not reckoned a dependable asset on a battlefield, Fly-kinden, but these wore striped leather cuirasses and carried bows. Thalric suspected that Vargen was depending on them to pin down the Imperial airborne until the crossbows of the Bee-kinden could be brought to bear.

That prompted a smile: Vargen's tactics were sound, his politics less so. Thalric had already seen the little figure of the Shalken ambassador skulking into Pravoc's tent, confirming that the Flies always knew where their best interests lay. At a certain point in the battle they would vanish like last night's bad dream, leaving Vargen exposed on both flanks. Thalric had no doubt of their commitment, just as he had no doubt that their abrupt disappearance would come only when the battle turned against Vargen. Fly-kinden had an impeccable sense of survival, and the skill was in knowing how to use it to one's own advantage.

He next heard the orthopters starting up their engines. Pravoc had only a dozen of them, but they were all new-built Spearflights, which were swiftly becoming the workhorses of the Imperial air force after their achievements over Solarno.

And didn't we lose Solarno? And since when did we ever have an 'air force'? But progress was the watchword, now. Battles against men like Vargen were small change in the pocket of history. Every strategist within the Empire knew that one day they would be turning towards the Lowlands again, looking for a more worthy adversary. The battle of Solarno had at least taught them that mechanized air power was a solid part of their future.

The fliers lifted off in an almost simultaneous leap, their pilots casting them low over their own troops, and then reaching for height as they turned to approach the enemy. There went a new breed of Wasp soldier: the warrior-artificer who lived at speeds Thalric could barely imagine.

The flying machines now banked over the insurrectionist army, and a little cloud of the more optimistic enemy airborne rose to try and confront them. Thalric barely heard the first explosive as it landed, saw only the plume of dust and smoke arise over the army's right flank. The steady, slogging Bee-kinden advance faltered there as a hole was punched into one of their tightly packed squads. The battle had started.

At a signal from Pravoc, the loyalist shields began their cautious advance. It was a slow pace, almost an amble. They were more than happy to let the Tyrshaani do all the walking. Thunder spoke from behind Thalric, a single cough that rattled the ground, and another great geyser of dust flowered from thirty yards in front of the enemy advance. The mechanized leadshotters were finding the range in a leisurely manner.

Thalric turned back to his tent. The Imperial camp was close behind the Wasp lines but, unless Pravoc's reputation was merely hot air, the battle should only move further off towards the doomed city once the Tyrshaani got into snapbow range. It was not that Thalric had no stomach for watching an Imperial victory, although perhaps that thought did not fill him with the same joy it once had. It was just that the inevitable grinding of Pravoc's workmanlike battle tactics was unlikely to provide enthralling entertainment. Outside, the leadshotters thumped again, two or three of them in unison, so that the wine jar and bowl rattled on the table. Thalric stared over at his armour, set out for him by some diligent menial. He was supposed to have someone around to dress him in it, as a mark of his rank. The thought made him irritable: as a soldier, he could shrug his way into a banded cuirass without flunkeys.

He had no need for armour at all, of course, but there would be men of the Empire fighting and dying, so it seemed wrong to eschew it. Being without it with a battle nearby made him feel naked.

He put on his special undercoat first. This was long force of habit, although the copperweave shirt was not the torn and battered piece that had saved him in Myna, in Helleron and Collegium. The stuff was murderously expensive, but rank had some privileges, after all. The undershirt did not rely on the copperweave alone, either. There was an extra layer beneath it, for occasions when mere metal would not suffice. Over the copperweave, that was so fine and fluid that it would be almost undetectable, he pulled on his arming jacket and his cuirass, shrugging it out until the plates hung straight.

Now at least I look like a soldier .

He felt better for that, since Seda's court was full of men who did their best to look anything but. Thalric hated them all, both individually and collectively.

He turned for the tent flap and saw the assassins.

They were so clearly such that, in other circumstances, it would have been funny. He had caught them in the act of creeping in, two Wasp-kinden men in uniform with drawn blades and narrowed eyes, wearing expressions of horrified guilt. It must have seemed to them that he had been somehow expecting them, that he had carefully armoured himself in preparation for them, then waited patiently until they entered the tent.

His sword was still attached to his civilian belt lying on the ground. With a convulsive movement he ripped it from its scabbard, slashing a wide arc across the rear of the tent. If this had been a simple soldier's tent, that would have been it: the freedom of the sky open to him in an instant. He was no longer a simple soldier, though, and this tent was made out of carpets and needed three men to carry. His blade barely cut into it as the two assassins rushed towards him.

One loosed a sting bolt from his open hand as they charged in, but the other assassin was so eager that he nearly caught it in the back. The shot went wild and Thalric tried to bring his sword back into line to parry the quicker man's incoming thrust. He twisted aside as he did so, but the man's blade went home anyway, digging in at his side where the regulation armour plates did not cover him. The sword dug in hard, but skittered off the copperweave mesh underneath. That trick isn't going to save my life for ever , Thalric considered. Someone's going to stab me in the face eventually . Meanwhile he was putting an elbow into the man's ear and thrusting his palm forward at the second killer, almost in the same moment. They loosed together, crackling bolts of energy lighting up the tent's dim interior. Thalric felt the heat as he ducked, letting the stingshot sear past his face. His own shot punched the man across the shoulder before it scorched its way into the tent fabric, which promptly started to smoulder. Now he had a chance to look he saw that, behind him, it was actually on fire.