Eventually they elected a spokesman, by democratic application of superior force. The man chosen was Genraki, most promising of the new-minted artillerists. His use of artillery to settle personal feuds had already been noted and approved of. It was therefore reckoned less likely that Jakal would have him killed if he did something wrong.
Genraki entered, stooping, through the building's kicked-in door. It was a decent-size two-storey, this one, where some Beetle family of means had lived, enjoying their view of the river. The thought amused him, for it was about time the Khanaphir knew fear and hardship. They had lived behind the safety of their walls for long enough. Genraki loved the Empire, for everything it had given his people. They had always possessed claws to cut flesh; now they had a fist to break stone.
The noise, that skull-boring sound, came from above, and he padded up quietly, taking a moment to peer around the corner, from the head of the stairs. There were two Wasps there, and one of them was Angved. They were hunched over some small mechanism, looking duly impressed.
Genraki cleared his throat and Angved glanced up.
'What is it?' he asked, speaking above the sound. 'Hrathen wants me?'
'What is this sound, chief?' Genraki asked him. 'Nobody else can sleep.'
Angved smirked at that. 'A little experiment of mine.'
This close, Genraki thought he could feel his ears shake under it, not particularly loud but terribly insistent. 'Must it go on so long, chief?' The title was based on the authority that the Warlord and the Wasp leader gave the old man, for he was clearly a chieftain of his own tribe of artificers.
'Well, that's the whole point. How long have we had so far?'
The other Wasp, also an artificer, checked some small device. 'Three hours fifty-seven minutes.'
'Shut it off at four hours,' Angved decided, to Genraki's relief. If he had retreated from this place without some result the others would not have been pleased with him. Angved was ushering him into the next room.
'Tell me, Genraki,' he said, 'this rock oil your people use, how common is it?'
'Not so common that it is everywhere, but we know all the places to find it. Where it is found, there is much of it. More than all the tribes need.'
Angved digested this. 'It burns for a long time, doesn't it?' he said.
'That is why we use it,' Genraki confirmed.
'It's been running that little makeshift engine for hours,' the artificer mused. 'Your people trade, don't they?'
Genraki shrugged. 'When we have the patience. We would trade oil for more leadshotters and weapons,' he added, with a fanged grin.
'You may just have got yourself a deal.'
Above their conversation, the whining buzz stopped, at long last. Genraki could almost feel the whole camp relax with it. Angved's expression was complex: one he could not entirely read but dominated mainly by greed.
There were swift footsteps on the stairs and one of the other Wasps came up, half running, half flying. 'Captain wants you, Lieutenant,' he told Angved. 'Khanaphir have been busy overnight. Time for us to match them.'
Angved did not rush to attend on Hrathen. As soon as he presented himself, the tide of mundane war would descend on him, and he would have his hands full with jobs more befitting an apprentice than an experienced battle-artificer. Can't we just let the Scorpions get on with it?We've given them half the city, so surely they can take it from here. But Hrathen was in charge, and it was clear which of his bloodlines the halfbreed had chosen to support. I hear he's sleeping with that hideous Jakal creature. Angved shuddered. He himself had never been one to take advantage of the women of lesser peoples. Even if he had, he wouldn't have started with Scorpion-kinden. Only among Thorn-bugs are there any uglier people in the world, he decided, or more dangerous to sleep with. And the Captain definitely gets his looks from the wrong side of the family. Better, maybe, that the man forced himself on the fanged horrors here rather than good Wasp women back home.
Am I fooling myself about this rock-oil? The Nem was largely unexplored, unexploited. The Empire's internal squabbles had set back its timetable for subjugating the world, or there would have been black and gold all the way to Khanaphes by now, and Jakal's people would have become either Auxillians or history. And maybe I should be grateful that, with all the fuss back home, I'm the first serious artificer to come here and make this discovery. He was a man growing old for the army, yet still only a lieutenant. If he kept this all to himself, and if it was what he believed it to be, then 'Major Angved' had a nice ring to it. A comfortable retirement position running some research workshop in Sonn, perhaps? He could afford to be pushy, provided his new currency was as pure as he thought.
He had only told one of his crew about his discovery, and already he was considering whether he might have to kill him. Here, among the Scorpions, it would be easy to hide such an act. This is much bigger than I had thought. An idle curiosity was giving way to a real fire of ambition.
He found Hrathen at last. 'Reporting for duty,' he said, banishing such thoughts for the moment. The Scorpion woman was nearby, watching them with arms folded. Her expression was sceptical and Angved guessed that she had been expecting more progress. Half the city in just two days, and still she's hungry.
The halfbreed nodded to him. 'We take the bridge today,' he stated. 'I've decided. Enough of this attrition.'
Angved waited. Empty posing, he thought, to impress his woman. Well, let him.
'I want you to get a leadshotter on to the roof of one of these three-storeys,' Hrathen told him, straight-faced.
Angved raised an eyebrow. 'I'm not even sure that's possible.'
'Make it possible. Have some locals haul it up the stairs. Build a hoist, anything. When you've got the right elevation, start making calculations to hit the barricade without damaging the bridge.'
'That will call for a great deal of accuracy,' Angved said.
'Then that's what you'll give me,' Hrathen snapped.
Angved kept his expression carefully neutral, wondering whether it was yesterday's or last night's performance that had shown the man up in front of Jakal.
'We could try using the scrap-shot,' the artificer suggested, 'if we can get the range. That way, no danger of weakening the bridge.'
'Whatever you have to do,' Hrathen replied. 'Have the rest of your artificers make grenades. You know the type: clay pots, wax stoppers, fuses. Fill them with oil, or with firepowder and nails.'
'I'm not sure our troops here will be able to use them effectively. Not on the enemy at least.'
'They're not for Scorpions. I'm committing the Slave Corps soldiers as grenadiers. Any fool can drop a pot.'
And usually when you least want them to. 'I'll put my people on it,' Angved agreed. 'We should have a decent stock by mid-morning, after you've warmed people up.'
'Between that and the crossbows, we'll be on the far side before dusk,' Hrathen declared. He was saying it to Jakal, and Agved saw the Scorpion Warlord shrug and turn away. Hrathen's expression, momentarily exposed, was comical. She has him on a leash, Angved realized. This is why you can never really trust halfbreeds. He supposed he felt sorry for the man, torn between Imperial orders and trying to be a Scorpion savage at the same time. What will they do with him when we're done here?Will he want to stay on and live with the barbarians? Will the Rekef get rid of him? Will the Scorpions, for that matter?