The Scarab Path

'They have forgotten all I taught them of war,' rumbled dark Garmoth Atennar from behind them.

'But they're now calling out for you!' Che told them. 'They pray to you. They invoke your aid.'

'Do they?' Elysiath actually cocked her head to one side, listening in some way that Che could not imagine. She smiled faintly. 'Ah, yes, they do. How faint they sound. Ah, well.'

'"Ah, well"?' Che protested. 'Don't you see what that means? It means that they believe in you still. To them, after all these centuries, you are still the Masters of Khanaphes. You are what they have lived for, and now you are the reason why they are all going to die. You still have a responsibility to them. They are your servants.'

'Responsibility? To the slaves?' Elysiath echoed, as though the concept was remarkable.

'You said they'd failed you,' Che told her. 'They haven't. They're fighting for you even now, as we speak. They're bleeding and dying for you, for your city. The first city, remember? The city you built so long ago. They're giving their lives to preserve it from the Scorpions, who will soon turn it into one more desert ruin, and put an end even to the memory of you. And perhaps they'll come down here. If there are enough of them, or if the Empire tightens its hold, then maybe even you won't remain safe. Your tests and traps cannot hide you for ever.'

The man was frowning, as though he had eaten something distasteful. Lirielle toyed with her comb. 'But what can we do?' she said.

'It would be such a waste of our power to intervene,' the man mused. 'The cost would be terrible. It would set us back so much.'

'What were you saving it for?' Che asked him.

'The revivification of the land, of course,' he replied. 'The reversal of the change that the great cataclysm brought about. To bring green back to the desert, that is our great purpose.'

Che blinked at that, at the sheer hubris of it, for she could not imagine that even the Masters could even start to accomplish such a thing. Are they just living empty dreams then, despite all their power? 'And who will then profit from this,' she pressed them, even so, 'if your own people are gone?'

The man gave a petulant frown. 'It will demand a great effort, hardly worth it, surely, to preserve so little.'

'So much effort,' Lirielle agreed, as though just combing her hair for so long had exhausted her.

'They're dying,' Che said, reaching the end of her ability to explain herself to them. 'As we speak, they're dying.' Totho is dying. Oh, I am so sorry, Totho.

'I would rather have slept,' said Elysiath, surly. 'Jeherian, will you lead us?'

The man beside her nodded wearily. 'So much lost,' he said sadly. 'Ah, well.'

Che started, as someone moved past her. Without a sound, another of the Masters stepped forward to join Elysiath and the others, a great bulky man whose lustrous hair fell down past his shoulders. Looks were exchanged between them all. Even as Che noted him, she saw another woman come padding from the darkness beyond them, as tall and voluptuous as the rest, the necklace about her throat bearing a kingdom's ransom in precious stones. Next, another two came, hand in hand, to stand nearby. Then, at last, Che saw what she had long imagined. On the nearest sarcophagus, the crowning statue stirred, stretching languorously, without visible transition from cold stone to live flesh. Thus do the Masters of Khanaphes sleep out the centuries.

There were almost a score of them soon, male and female, looming from the dark to join their kin, their grave and beautiful faces all marked with expressions of concern. Che expected chanting. She was waiting for them to enact some ritual, as Achaeos had said the Moths did. It took her a long moment of frustrated silence until she realized that they were already at work.

Each of them was looking up, towards the vaulted ceiling, up towards the embattled city of Khanaphes and the sky beyond. Each and every one of them was sharing in the same act of concentration, staring at some great focal point she could not imagine. She knew she should hate them for their callous detachment, but there was such grief and loss evident on those noble faces that it nearly broke her heart.

What have I driven them to? she wondered. What is this, that they sacrifice here?

Pictures blurred and stretched in her mind again, taking her back to the city above.

'Would you look at what they've done,' Hrathen said. 'How much effort went into that?'

'So they've brought some more stone to fill the breach,' Jakal replied dismissively. 'It will not stop us. An act of desperation.' She jabbed a thumb-claw towards a nearby Scorpion. 'Call my guard together.'

'We knew they were working on something, and now it looks like they've built the world's biggest single-use nutcracker.' They were standing on a rooftop overlooking the bridge and the river, Hrathen with his telescope to his eye. 'The archers, all the rest, are running for the second barricade.'

'Bring it down,' Jakal told him. 'Use one of your petards. Or move one of the engines up on to the bridge.'

'No need for the sweat,' Hrathen said. 'All that effort, and we'll still crack it in less than a minute.' He signalled to one of his own, one of the few Slave Corps soldiers left. Of late, the Khanaphir archers had become very good at shooting them down. 'Fly to Lieutenant Angved,' he instructed. 'Tell him to sight on that blockage and bring it down.'

'Yes, sir.' The man kicked off and made a short dart over the rooftops to where Angved and his leadshotter were waiting.

Jakal regarded Hrathen with a slight smile. It was not a fond look, for Scorpion faces did not lend themselves to fondness. There was fire in it, though: anticipation of victory had set light to her.

'You'll go in yourself now?' Hrathen asked her.

'Their archers have fled. I shall destroy what warriors they have left. You should bring your engines up to the bridge's crest, so that we can destroy their second wall.' Her understanding of artillery and its uses was increasing by leaps and bounds. 'My warriors must see me fight. They must remember why I am Warlord.'

'Then they will see me fight alongside you,' Hrathen said. 'The engineers can manage without me.'

She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head. 'Your Empire breeds fools,' she said. 'If my warriors obeyed my words as swiftly as yours obey you, I would not need to shed my blood for them. Still, you shall have the chance to prove yourself, if you so wish.'

'Why do you go, then?' he asked her. 'It's not as though your host is short one more warrior.'

Her smile was scornful. 'I am Warlord because I am the best. I slew many to take the crown, and there are many who would slay me for it in turn. If I did not fight they would all take up arms against me. I too must shed the blood of the Khanaphir, but I shall choose when I shed it. I am not destined to become mere prey for arrows. My people shall see me take the bridge itself, and they shall remember.'

'They shall see us take the bridge.'

'Are you strong enough?' she asked him. 'Does your blood run so pure? You may just as well remain behind. My people would not care.'

It stung like a slaver's lash. 'I have the strength of my father's kinden and the guile of my mother's,' he told her, 'as you will soon see. Perhaps it will be I who will challenge you.'

That made her smile. 'I would welcome it.' Below, in the ravaged street, a company of Scorpions had assembled, huge men and women loaded with scavenged armour. A dozen of them stamped and rattled, waiting impatiently. Jakal had chosen them carefully, Hrathen knew, from among the most vicious and bloodthirsty of all her people, thus keeping her potential enemies close to her.

She descended to join them and they greeted her with a roar of approval. Today was their day. The day their Warlord had delivered their ancient enemy to them. Hrathen followed as they struck out for the bridge, after sending back an order to have one of the leadshotters brought up after them.