The Scarab Path (87 page)

If we had come with twenty men in full mail, we would have held
against anything the Scorpions or the Empire could throw at us
, he
thought.
We could have held off the world
.

‘They’ll
bring a petard up to blow the barricade down,’ he warned the others. ‘We won’t
have long before we must fight again.’

‘We
won’t need long,’ Amnon told him. ‘Just enough time so they can complete the
works, close up the breach at the far end. That is all the time we need to buy
them.’ Totho wondered what Praeda Rakespear was doing right now, whether she
had realized that Amnon was not coming back to her. He wondered whether Amnon
had left people ready to restrain her, to stop her running up here. Probably he
had: it was the sort of thing the big man thought of.

He
spotted the plume of grey smoke, and knew immediately what it meant.
Leadshotter on a rooftop
. There were words in his mind to
warn the others, but he had no time to give actual voice to them before the
missile struck the barricade.

The
noise passed by him, the physical force overriding it. A piece of broken rock
hit his chest like a sledgehammer, his feet skating from under him, so that he
slammed down on his back. The air was all dust, with stone fragments pattering
all about them. Gasping for breath, he could not get to his feet yet, but he
tried to peer through the drifting white veil, to see what had been done.

The new
stones had fallen, forming a broken pavement between him and the barricade, and
the Scorpions were coming through the breach. He realized even then that their
artillerists would have preferred a second shot, to widen the gap, but the
warriors already on the bridge had been so long denied this chance that nothing
could have held them back. They surged in along with the stone-dust, as Meyr
and Amnon met them at full charge.

It would
have been suicide but for the mail. It could have been suicide anyway. There
were enough weak points – throat, armpit, groin – that one spear or blade could
have ended either of them. They thrust themselves into the thick of the
Scorpion weapons, and Totho saw Amnon take a dozen blows, and Meyr twice that
number. Each rebounded from the dented plate, frustrated by its fluted curves
that turned the strongest blow aside. Amnon’s sword descended repeatedly,
chopping indiscriminately at the enemy. Meyr laid about himself like a mad
thing, crushing the Scorpions, flinging them from the bridge with great swipes
of his club. They tried to drag him down, to get under his reach, but Amnon
killed them as they came, shield high and sword never still.

Totho
struggled to his feet, feeling sharp pains from his ribs. His breastplate had a
prodigious dent to one side, where the stone had struck him. He staggered a little,
and then ran up to stand to Amnon’s left. With a desperate concentration, he
resumed the business of running out of ammunition, emptying each magazine in
turn into the host of Scorpions, punching holes in their mail and through their
mail, even through one man and into the next. Beyond those that Meyr crushed
and Amnon slew, the bridge was heaving with them. He could see bigger,
better-armoured warriors forcing their way through the breach, eager to get to
the fight. There was no subtlety now, no pretence at tactics. Only three men
stood on the bridge between the Scorpions and their prey. Faced with that, it
was down to blade and claw. Crossbows, leadshotters, all were forgotten, as the
Many of Nem returned to what they knew best.

Amnon
was down on one knee, his pauldron bent almost in two by a halberd blow. Totho
shot the wielder through the head as he raised the weapon for a second strike.

Meyr’s
breastplate was buckled, the catches at his side split apart by the stroke of a
greatsword. It was impossible to tell how much of the blood on him was his own.
There was a broken spear jutting from beside his neck that must surely have
pierced his mail. The Scorpions were leaping on him, climbing up him, trying to
unshell him with daggers and their clawed hands.

Totho
loosed and loosed, reloaded and recharged and loosed again, picking them off
every time Meyr remained still enough to shoot at. The giant grabbed them and
tore them away from him, roaring in rage. If he got both hands on the same man,
he ripped the wretch apart. Totho wondered whether anyone had ever
seen
an enraged Mole Cricket before.

Abruptly
the Scorpions facing them were more heavily armoured, larger. They thundered
into the shields of the two defenders hard enough to drive them back a step, hacking
with sword and axe. Meyr backhanded one into the river. Another slammed an axe
at his throat which was deflected by the plates of his shoulders. The strap on
Amnon’s shield broke under a sword blow and he discarded it, taking his sword
in both hands.

Totho
slung his snapbow and rushed in beside him, with his own shield on his arm. He
received three strikes immediately, two on the shield’s curved face and one to
his helm that made his head swim. He tried to lunge back with his sword, but it
was all he could do to just stand upright, shield held up and being struck at
repeatedly by the Scorpions – all he could do not to fall back immediately and
yield the breach to them.
I am not a warrior
. All he
had was his armour, the one thing standing between life and death for him.

Another
blow struck his shield so hard that he was knocked into Amnon. The Khanaphir
did not even pause in his sword work, merely pushing Totho back with his free
hand.

A
stingshot struck Amnon clean in the chest, flaring gold, and he staggered. The
Scorpions surged forward, but Totho was there to meet them. He raised his
shield and sword against the blows, putting his shoulder to the enemy as though
he was trying to hold a door closed. Meyr was being swarmed, Scorpions hacking
at his legs, leaping up to drive their claws at his throat, hanging off his
armour. Totho felt four solid blows land on his shield, numbing his arm. His
sword was battered out of his hand.

A
Scorpion woman was abruptly in front of Meyr, stepping aside from his descending
fist with a deft grace and then driving her spear up with all her might past
the edge of his breastplate, under his arm. Totho saw the shaft sink deep
through the sundered mail with an explosion of blood. Meyr struck at her
furiously with both hands but she ducked inside his reach and ripped at his
throat with her claws. Another man, a Scorpion halfbreed, was beside her, one
hand outstretched. Totho saw the bolt of golden light strike Meyr’s helm around
the eye-slit and the huge man staggered back, rearing to his full height.

The
Scorpion woman tore her spear free, turning as she did so and coming back to
hurl it into Meyr’s throat, where it stuck, shaft quivering. Totho could hear
himself shouting something wordless.

Amnon
was there. Amnon was there now, but it was too late. Meyr collapsed on to one
knee, a hand on the spear-shaft that was running with his blood. Amnon lunged
forward at the woman, for a moment not caring if the Scorpions were through the
breach or not. The halfbreed got in the way, fending the sword off and reaching
out with the open palm of his off-hand. The stingshot struck Amnon’s damaged
pauldron hard enough to rip it off, then the halfbreed’s sword jammed into the
Beetle’s side, scraping against mail and severing straps.

Amnon
rammed his own blade into the man’s chest, driving it in two-handed up to the
hilt. He was ducking immediately to scoop up a new sword, a sharp, slender
piece originating from the Iron Glove factories.
My sword
,
Totho recognized it.
My sword
.

The
Scorpions had paused a moment with the halfbreed’s death, and Totho realized it
was to give the woman room. She grinned fangs at Amnon and took hold of her
spear with one hand, wrenching it from Meyr’s neck. The giant gave out a sound,
a monstrous sigh, and toppled backwards.

Totho
knew he should find another sword or unsling his snapbow, but he found he could
only watch Amnon and the Scorpion woman. Amnon stood unevenly, his weight on
one leg. His once-pristine armour was a maze of dents and scratches, missing
plates and broken buckles. He had been fighting for too long. It was not the
mail that weighed on him, but a deadly weariness. The Scorpion woman looked
fresh, fleet, long-limbed and strong. Worse, she looked skilled.

‘You
killed him,’ she said, with a nod at the dead halfbreed. ‘You saved me the
trouble. I shall kill you now.’

‘Do it,’
Amnon urged her. ‘I’m tired.’ He braced himself for it, left hand extended
before him to reach for her spear, sword held wide to cut.

A stir
of unease rippled back through the Scorpions, and at first Totho imagined it
was because of the two combatants, perhaps because they had realized who Amnon
was. They were looking upwards, though, more and more of them following suit.
He tried to do the same, but the lobster-tail plates that guarded the back of
his neck had locked in place. Now Amnon himself was tilting his head back,
falling from his fighting stance, and the Scorpion woman too. Totho cursed and
wrenched at his helm, finally tearing it from his head entirely.

Something
struck him in the face as he did, and then another: tiny impacts like insistent
little insects. A third followed soon after. He touched his face, which was
grimy with dirt and sweat, and found it wet.

There
was a look on the faces of the Scorpions that he could not identify. Amnon had
tilted his helm back, the better to see what was happening. His expression
looked shaken, wide-eyed with fear.

‘What?’
Totho demanded of him. ‘It’s only rain.’

Amnon
stared at him. All around them the drops of moisture were slanting down,
thicker now, the air grown misty with them, the sound a constant hiss off the
bridge’s stonework, off the river below.

‘Rain,’
Totho repeated. Amnon shook his head.

‘I know
of rain, for I saw it once in the Forest Alim. It rains on the sea, sailors
say, but it never rains here.’

‘It
must,’ Totho argued. The Scorpions were actually cowering back. Only the woman
still stood straight, clutching her spear as though it was a talisman.

‘It has
never rained in Khanaphes,’ Amnon said firmly, barely audible now over the rain
which fell faster and faster, battering at them. ‘Not ever, in written record,
has it rained here.’ He could not have looked more horrified and frightened if
the Scorpions had been about to skin him alive. ‘It is the wrath of the
Masters, their judgement on us.’

‘It’s
just rain!’ But Totho had to shout, and even then he was not sure his words
were heard. He looked into the sky and saw it boiling and thunderous, full of
pregnant clouds that surely could not have been there a moment ago. The sun had
gone dark with them.

He felt
his stomach turn as he looked upriver, and the sight struck a blow that his
armour could not protect him from. There were clouds rolling and seething in
the sky all the way north. They were following the course of the river, a great
train of deluging clouds as far north as the eye could see, curving with the
meanders of the Jamail.

Impossible
, he thought, but his eyes saw what they saw,
although, as the rain became more and more furious, he could see less and less.

Amnon
was now crouching, in terror or reverence, and many of the Scorpions were
fleeing the bridge or milling madly. They could have captured the eastern half
of Khanaphes right then, but the storm had struck them with the same fear as
had infected Amnon.

And what about the other Khanaphir?
Totho turned and
peered at the east city. He could see little enough of it, but it seemed to him
that the roofs of the houses were dark with people. He went to the bridge’s
parapet and gazed north again. Abruptly he could not breathe. He wanted to
shout a warning, wanted to tell Amnon to brace himself. He wanted even more to
deny what he was seeing. Instead he could only cling to the bridge’s rail and
stare, unable even to close his eyes.

There
was a wall of water rolling down from the north. It seemed impossible that it
would not dissipate itself along either bank, but it did not. It descended
purposefully on the city of Khanaphes with the inexorable speed of a rail
automotive. The bridge, of course, stood in its path. Totho had cause to
remember the bridge’s many pillars, narrowed and lowered to impede shipping. At
last he dropped to his knees, still holding on to the parapet.

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.