The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  He counted down the seconds in his mind. He was slightly late for, just as he counted two, the entire bridge jumped beneath him. Those still standing, meaning most of the Scorpions, fell down. Some were thrown from the bridge altogether.

  It will destroy the whole city, he thought, and clawed his way up to look. The river Jamail had burst its banks, the water breaking against the bridge, which still stood despite all laws of architecture. The Jamail had exploded from its course in a ruinous wave of destruction, but heading only to the west.

  Totho simply stood there, watching the murderous wall of water roll over the Scorpion war-host, sweeping them without mercy through the pillaged streets of the western city. He saw smaller buildings collapse even as Scorpions sought sanctuary atop them, the detritus of the last few centuries' expansion obliterated in seconds, leaving only the greatest and the oldest of buildings untouched. A few Scorpions managed to claw their way to safety on top of those but, of the Many of Nem, the vast majority were already gone, swept away and drowned by the rushing waters.

  The eastern bank still held firm, and that was another thing that Totho knew was impossible. Later he would construct all manner of explanations to account for what he had seen, but right then, faced with the enormity of it, he simply knew that it could not be done, and yet it had been. He had no words for it.

  The rain was still coming fast, and hard enough to sting the skin. The Scorpion woman was looking back, watching her people try to flee, fighting amongst themselves to escape, pushing each other from the bridge or being carried away by the roiling waters. When she turned back his way, her face was death.

  'Amnon!' Totho shouted, and the Beetle just managed to regain his feet before she was on him. She struck him across the helm with the shaft of her spear, hard enough to stagger him, and then rammed the point into his unarmoured shoulder, drawing a thick welt of blood. Amnon drove for her with his sword out, but she spun aside and struck him across the back of the head, whirling her spear one-handed about her. The claws of her off-hand lunged for him, but scraped off his armour. Amnon cut back at her, making her jump away. He was moving too slowly, though, and she was as swift as a Mantis. When safely at a distance, she stabbed at him with her spear, when within his sword's reach her claws raked for him. She danced about him, never still, forcing him always to stumble after her.

  She lashed her spear across the side of his head, snapping him round and sending him to one knee. Her claws pincered around his neck, digging into the mail there. She twisted his helm back and poised her spear above the eye-slit.

  Totho shot her through the centre of the chest. The bolt passed straight through her, and she shuddered once, but remained standing for some time before the spear fell from her hand and she collapsed. He turned to face the other Scorpions. He had surely broken some law of single combat, and no doubt they would come for him now.

  They were backing off. Although there was only water beyond their end of the bridge, they were backing off. Totho could not understand it until the Khanaphir soldiers passed him.

  They were just the neighbourhood militia, untrained civilians with their spears and shields, but they were enough. They swept the demoralized Scorpions ahead of them like the river itself, furious and fierce, and when they had done their work, the Jamail took over. So ended the Scorpion siege of the city of Khanaphes, and the enduring memory Totho had of its conclusion was Praeda Rakespear kneeling beside Amnon, trying to pull his helm free as she wept.

  Forty-Four

  For a long time, Angved was too shaken to make any rational decision. The words, Well, now I've seen everything, just kept rolling round his head like a mindless mantra. At his back was the leadshotter, half covered by a tarpaulin. By the time they had got that far, it and they had been so thoroughly soaked that the effort had grown pointless. The only problem with firepowder artillery is that you can't shoot in the rain, even if you would want to. He knew that damp powder would not have mattered if they had a row of trebuchets, but even then it would be impossible to spot targets in this downpour. Loading would become a nightmare of slips and errors. I've never known rain like this, never. In the Empire, the serious rainfall tended to come late in the year, but Angved had visited the Commonweal during the war, where up north in the highlands it rained more, and even snowed. There had been nothing to touch this, though. An entire army swept away. Well, now I've seen everything.

  His Scorpion crew were crouching beside him, all bravado stripped away. Another half-dozen Scorpions had been lucky enough to climb up on to the roof there, which was now an island in the rising flood. He was accumulating Wasps, too. The other engineers were abandoning their placements to find Angved, because they were soldiers, and in times of chaos they looked for authority.

  One of the Slave Corps landed nearby at a skid, shaking himself. It must be a nightmare to fly through this, but they had been trying to find Hrathen, seeking orders.

  'Any sign of the Captain?' Angved asked.

  The man shook his head. 'He was in that, last I saw.' He was pointing somewhere, but the rain veiled anything he might be pointing at. Angved knew he meant the bridge. 'The Khanaphir are driving what's left of the Scorpion army into the river. I saw no fliers. He must be dead.'

  'Right.' Angved shuddered. 'How's the water level now?'

  'Steady,' another of his engineers reported. 'Not risen for a little while, so it must have peaked. What in the pits are we going to do?'

  'I'm assuming command as ranking officer,' Angved said, loud enough to be heard. It did seem to him that the rain was now lessening. 'Listen to me and do what you're told, and we'll get out of this yet.'

  '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.

  The Mantis reached Osgan and stared silently down at him until the wretched Wasp was able to lift his head.

  A voice came cold and clear to Sulvec. The Mantis's lips moved. I remember you.

  Osgan made a great shuddering sound that was part sob, part laugh. 'I knew …' he got out, with the greatest of efforts, 'you'd come. They said … you were dead … but I knew …'

  You sat beside the Emperor, came the Mantis's distant voice. You had your knife, little scribe. Would you have fought to defend your master? Osgan's strangled response was wordless, incoherent, but the Mantis said, Yes, I think you would.

  His off hand, the arm jagged with barbs, rested on Osgan's shoulder. I shall give you more, at least, than these your kin. There was a moment of understanding, dying man to dead one, and the spectral blade speared down just once, precise and final.

  Sulvec saw something seep out of Osgan's tortured frame, saw the racked and twisted man relax at last, muscle by muscle. The long release of breath he heard was without pain, was at peace. It was Osgan's last. He swayed and pitched on to his side, and Sulvec knew for sure he was dead.

  The Mantis looked up and his eyes, one lit and one shrouded in shadow, found Sulvec.

  'Now,' he said, as the lamps went out.

  Che sagged back into Thalric's arms, mind still full of the swollen river, even though the images had now left her. Looking up at the assembled Masters, she saw not one of them was looking at her. They did not even mean to show me, she thought numbly. I just got carried along, when they looked. What have I seen? I cannot take it in.

  'What?' Thalric was demanding. 'They haven't done anything. What's happening, Che? What's wrong?'

  She stepped away from him, feeling a tug of resistance and then release. 'Do not ask me,' she said. 'I cannot say. I don't have words for what I've seen. Oh, Thalric, I can't hope to make you understand.'

  There was a great sigh from the Masters, and she knew that they had finished. A great burden of sorrow was upon them, their faces disfigured by the dregs of effort. Some simply walked away. Many lingered as though, having awoken, they were unsure what it had been for. Only one was missing: armoured Garmoth Atennar had absented himself, perhaps to take his huge sword to the Scorpions in person.

  'Such waste of our resources,' said Jeherian bitterly. 'We should be angry with our servants for putting us to this, but I cannot find the will to care.'

  'But what happened?' Che asked them. 'How did you do it? Such a ritual, brought to bear so swiftly!' Words of Achaeos recurred to her. 'I know the Moths would never have attempted it.'

  'No,' replied Elysiath, 'but they, like most kinden, are brief and impatient. What you saw was not the making of a ritual, but the breaking of one. It is very simple.'

  'Not to me, it's not,' Che insisted. 'Please, you must tell me what you did.'

  Elysiath sighed,
her shoulders slumping as though the very act of having to explain herself to Che required more effort than she could countenance. 'Little child,' she said, 'we have told you.'

  'Yet it is important she understands,' Jeherian put in, surprising Che. 'We have told you how, when we foresaw the changes these lands would suffer, we came to the decision to absent ourselves from the harsh surface above, and to work our great ritual from these our halls. Our ritual is for the restoration of the land, the balance that was broken by that great earthquake and cataclysm so long ago. For nine hundred years we have maintained it, and so we shall for millennia to come, if need be, however long our work may take. For we foresaw that the only way to break the drought was to hurry it to its ultimate ends, spur it on to its worst excesses. Of a dry land we have made a desert, watered only by the deep wells, and by the faithful Jamail.'

  'You made the desert?' Che asked, astonished.

  'By our will it has not rained in these lands for centuries past. It rains over the Forest Alim, where the clouds break on the mountains, and thus the Jamail does not run dry, but from over our city and dominion, we take the rain and hide it from the world, for year after year.'

  'That's monstrous,' Che protested in a small voice. She could not conceive of it.

  'Who may presume to judge our actions? We who live longer, see further. Without us, the land would dry and dry, over the ages. Instead we have brought that drought before its time, and hold it while the rain gathers, forcing it to burn too bright, to consume itself in its own heat. We have broken our ritual just to save our idiot servants. We have set ourselves back two hundred and seventy-five years of rain.'

  Che could not speak. The man smiled, arrogant beyond the dreams of emperors.

  'When we shall unleash that hoarded rain, when we have finally gathered sufficient of it, we shall transform the entire world. We shall strike a blow whereby we shall reverse the cataclysm. The land shall be green again, and we shall rule it directly once more.'