The Scarab Path

Nine

The grand army of General Vargen had arrayed itself before the city of Tyrshaan, black-and-yellow armour crossed with a sash of blue, the old badge of the Kings of Tyrshaan that had not been seen during this last generation. General Vargen, whose rank was self-given, and who was elsewhere known as just another one of the traitor-governors, had decided to risk a field battle, not trusting his forces to endure a siege. It was not necessarily a poor choice, for Thalric had seen the siege train that the Imperial forces had brought with them. Tyrshaan's walls were neither high nor strong.

Vargen's men made a fierce spectacle at this distance, but Thalric had heard the scouts and the spies report. There was a core of Wasp-kinden, mostly the garrisons of Tyrshaan and neighbouring Shalk, that would fight to the death. Dying in battle was preferable to dying in the fighting pit or at a public execution, especially given how inventive the new Empress had become. The bulk of Vargen's force were Auxillians, though, who had less to gain from victory, less to lose from defeat. Those solid blocks of armoured Tyrshaani Bee-kinden would see no reason to throw themselves on to the pikes of the enemy on behalf of their usurper lord. They now made dark squares against the tawny ground before the city walls: halberdiers, crossbowmen and masses of the interlocking hexagonal shields that the Tyrshaani favoured. The Bees were no match for the trained and keen soldiers of the Empire, either singly or en masse. Their only battle virtue was an implacability of spirit that Thalric suspected they would not be deploying today.

Vargen had placed a quartet of solid-looking automotives in the vanguard of his force, but Tyrshaan had always been a backwater, and their boxy, six-legged design was now twenty years old. By contrast, the punitive force had brought orthopters, snapbows and mobile artillery.

'I make it five of theirs to four of ours,' said a lieutenant next to him, peering through a spyglass. 'Not counting the Flies.'

'Well, who would?' sniffed Colonel Pravoc, the Imperial commander. 'So we outnumber them four to five. Good.' He gave Thalric one of his sickly smiles. Pravoc was a lean man who looked as though he lived primarily off ambition and a joy in the downfall of others. He had been chosen for this role because he was an able battlefield commander, and because having a mere colonel sent to oppose him would throw the self-made General Vargen into a rage. Altogether, Pravoc was a man of few words and fewer compliments.

'I trust it all meets with your approval,' he said, a flick of his fingers encompassing the might of the Imperial army that was falling into place around them.

'I'm not here to approve,' Thalric told him.

Pravoc's answering look said, And why are you here? but he was too much concerned with his own future to say it. The presence here of the Imperial Regent had inspired rather than shaken him. 'They'll be marching for us soon, according to our spies.'

Thalric shrugged. 'I'll leave you to your command, Colonel.'

He went to look over the black and gold of Pravoc's divisions: the usual array of light airborne waiting behind shieldwalls of the medium infantry which were supplemented, now, with snapbowmen. Those slender new weapons were about to make a sorry mess of the Bee-kinden armour, Thalric decided. It was just as well the Empire had suffered its crisis before the weapons had spread to the provinces.

General Vargen was not unique, of course. There had been a full score of provincial governors, mostly in the East- and South-Empire, who had decided to strike out on their own. A few had banded together to make little realms — Empirelets? — Emporia? — of their own, but most had been stubbornly solitary. It had been the succession that had provoked it, and Thalric was surprised it had not turned out worse. Emperor Alvdan the Second had died with no legitimate children, nor even a living bastard, having been so ruthless in dealing with potential threats to his power that he had put into danger everything that his father and grandfather had built. The rescuing hand, when it arrived, had been that of his sister, now Empress Seda the First. That had not sat well with many, because in the Empire men held power and women served. It was a tradition that went back to when they had all been squabbling tribes stealing each other's wives. There had never been a woman soldier or merchant or chieftain, and certainly there had never been a woman as ruler.

Seda had done her groundwork, though, and her allies were formidable. In the end, the central Empire including Capitas, Sonn and the neighbouring cities had bowed the knee to her. The West-Empire was lost for the moment to rebellion among the slave-races, and with it any dreams of conquering the lush expanses of the Lowlands. That could wait, however. Men like Vargen could not.

Vargen, like all his peers, had not believed that Seda's rule would hold. He had staked his future on her grip failing, on more and more turning against her. She was, after all, only a woman.

Thalric chuckled bitterly over that attitude. He, of all men, knew Seda, and how she had grown up with a knife at her throat every minute of every day and night, the only surviving relative of the paranoid Emperor Alvdan. It had taught her a certain outlook: Seda had become a woman of iron and Thalric would not want to cross her. If he had his time again, he would make sure he had nothing to do with her. The offer she made him had seemed too good to be true. Only now, when he was too close and had learned too much, did he understand how it was exactly that. How many men envied him: Imperial Regent, most important man in the Empire, and even sharer of the Empress's bed? It meant nothing, however. It meant that he was a mere figurehead, a man for the Empress to parade in front of those who expected to see a man close to the seat of power. He had no power, only an awful knowledge. He knew Seda now, when it was too late.

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.

Who in the wastes made this tent? It's a deathtrap!

Abruptly none of them much wanted to be inside it, and yet the two assassins were giving him no leeway. The swordsman had recovered from the blow enough to try and stab again but, this close, Thalric was able to trip him and then stamp on him hard before barrelling for the tent entrance. The second man got in his way and they tumbled over each other through the tent flap. Thalric punched him in the face by instinct, then called up his sting before finding that his sword had already run the man through, slipping between the plates of his mail.

Feeling light-headed, Thalric got to his feet, the sword-hilt greasy in his fingers. He heard the other man approaching from inside the tent and turned to catch him, hearing distantly a sharp 'snap' but not recognizing it for what it was.

Something slammed him hard in the gut and he went over, mind turning utterly blank. There was quite a lot of pain, and he felt a warm wetness of blood. Breathing was difficult, as though a strong man had kicked him under the ribcage. It was all he could do to stay conscious, keep his eyes open. He heard footsteps running closer.

The second assassin emerged from the tent, looking singed and angry. He glanced past Thalric at the newcomer.

'Took your time,' he said — and Thalric shot him under the chin, cutting him off without even a scream, the killer's face vanishing in a sudden inferno. Thalric rolled over, feeling a brutal stab of agony in his side. The third man went stumbling away from him, his face slack with shock, feeding another bolt into his snapbow.

Thalric extended an arm towards him, but the pain made his head swim and he missed his chance. As the snapbowman finished his fumbled reloading and raised the weapon, Thalric gritted his teeth and hurled himself away on to his good side.

His impact with the ground and the impact of the bolt came at the same time. The metal bolt ripped across his left arm, opening a shallow line across his biceps. He gritted his teeth, clinging to consciousness, and loosed his sting over and over. The first three shots went wild, but the man was idiotically trying to reload again rather than watching his enemy or using the weapon his Art had given him. Thalric's fourth shot burned him across the leg and he dropped to one knee, spilling bolts across the ground.

Thalric hissed in pain and then shot him in the chest. Under other circumstances he might have wanted the man alive, but just now he simply was not up to the bother. Feeling the drain on his body's resources he put another two searing bolts into the corpse just to be sure.

He sat down abruptly, hearing the tent crackle merrily behind him. The bruised ribs from the thwarted sword were nothing, and the gash on his arm would mend well enough. With shaking hands he reached for the first snapbow bolt, lodged in his stomach. He kept his eyes closed, because he could not bring himself to explore the wound any other way than by tentative probing.

The little bolt had punched a jagged hole in his cuirass. Carefully — oh so carefully — he unbuckled it, whimpering as that jogged the bolt. He then slid a hand under it, blindly feeling.

His copperweave had fared no better, but the bolt was jutting proud of it, however much it might feel that it was buried in his guts. The delicate mesh had parted like string before the snapbow missile. They had always told him those weapons were good, but he had never expected to be on the receiving end of one so soon.

The bolt had cut into him, but shallowly. His third layer of armour had stopped it going further: Spiderlands silk. The early tests by the inventor had confirmed its efficacy. Like an arrow or crossbow bolt, the snapbow's missile spun, which made it accurate, but also meant that it snarled hopelessly in silk. Thalric had three layers of folded silk pressed beneath the copperweave and, after penetrating two layers of metal, this mere cloth had slowed the bolt to nothing.

It hurt him as badly as it had being stabbed, that one time outside Vek. He could not have felt much worse if the bolt had simply run him through. He wasn't going to die, though, and in a little while he would be ready to stand up and walk around. And then he would want some answers.

Out on the field, the battle ground towards its predetermined ending. The double line of snapbows that Pravoc fielded ripped into the heavy Tyrshaani infantry, butchering them in their uncomprehending hundreds. Predictably, as the scales tipped, the Fly-kinden rose up in a great cloud and simply vanished away, fleeing for either the city or the wilderness, depending on their faith in the victors. A few were bold enough to put a final arrow of farewell into some Tyrshaani officer or other that they had reserved particular contempt for. Meanwhile the orthopters had started preliminary bombing runs against the Tyrshaan gatehouse, on the assumption that the city would require a little extra persuasion to open up.

Colonel Pravoc's entry into the governor's palace in Tyrshaan went unopposed. By that time the controlling elements of the Wasp garrison had been almost completely obliterated, and to the Tyrshaani themselves it meant nothing which slavemasters held their leash. The surviving Bee-kinden soldiers surrendered in good order, laying down their weapons and sitting down outside the walls of their own city, while tearing off the blue sashes that had never been more than empty symbols — Vargen's illusion of autonomy. Wasps being what they were, there were a few incidents of revenge killing, just as there was some looting once the Imperial forces got inside. It was all within the tolerated bounds of military discipline, and Pravoc's orders were for the city to be left intact and simply returned to the Imperial fold.

In the governor's own war room he found Vargen, already doubled in stiff rigour over the table, scattered markers and tiles oddly mirroring the fate of Vargen's own crushed army. The man's face was purple and twisted, his tongue protruding and his eyes wide.

There was a pair of Fly-kinden waiting there for Pravoc, one in the drab of a servant, the other dressed in Imperial black and gold, and not a blue sash in sight. Pravoc raised his eyebrows at them, seeking explanations.

'When it became clear that his cause was lost,' said the better-dressed of the Flies, 'Governor Vargen took poison. Tragic.'

Pravoc, seeing the outraged and horrified expression on the dead man's face, wondered if Vargen had known that was what he was doing, when he had taken the wine. He noted the Fly's careful use of the word 'governor' rather than 'general'.

'Who are you?' he demanded.

'My name is te Pelli. I am a factor of the Consortium out of Shalk,' the Fly replied, his face displaying nothing more than polite deference. 'I wanted to be the first to assure you that we of Shalk were only yoked to Vargen's schemes through threat of force.'

Pravoc sniffed. He had no illusions about how little a threat would have been necessary, nonetheless it suited him well enough if the Fly-kinden were happy to do his job for him. The faster he could report an unequivocal victory, the higher he would rise in the eyes of his masters.

Thalric found him there later, after the ex-governor's body had been removed, along with the poisoned wine.

'What happened to you?' Pravoc asked, and then added, 'Regent,' a moment later. 'Get caught up in the fighting? Unwise.'

'It came looking for me.' Thalric studied the man's narrow face and found it devoid of anything meaningful. 'Some assassins tried to kill me.' As he said it, he found the words sounding petty in his own ears. Had he still been Major Thalric of the Rekef it would have been a reasonable thing to say. It would have been the preface to organizing a plan of action, a counterplot, a piece of espionage. Thalric the Regent was not free to pursue such courses, and so it came out sounding like a whine for attention, a demand that something be done.

Pravoc's change of expression, however slight, conveyed the same opinion. 'Makes sense. Vargen was against the Empress and you're her man here. Makes sense that he might try to remove you.' He left a measured pause. 'But you came through all right, I see, Regent.'

With his ribs pulsing in pain, his arm bound up, Thalric felt unexpectedly lost for options. The Rekef man he once was would have accepted none of it. With the threat of the entire secret service behind him, he would have ensured that colonels, even generals, would gabble out anything they knew, rather than offer cool insolence. The Regent, though … he felt, as Regent, that he should have more respect from this brusque soldier, and at the same time the thought made him sick of himself. Respect for what? Earned how?

'I survived,' he said, turning to go. As he reached the doorway he stopped. 'I was surprised there were none of your men at hand, Colonel. When the attack occurred the camp all around me seemed quite deserted.' He turned, but surprised no admission of guilt, no new expression at all, on Pravoc's face.

'I was fighting a battle,' Pravoc said firmly. 'If you'd asked me for bodyguards, I'd have found them. Complain to the Empress if you want.'

Thalric's smile in response was thin. He appreciated this man's confidence in his own abilities, in his refusal to bow to such an empty thing as the Regent of the Empire, but also he did not trust Pravoc at all. For a Rekef man, trust came hard and often never.

'The Empress shall know that you have done your work here adequately,' Thalric declared blandly. 'What else is relevant?'

He made sure that his gait revealed nothing of the stabbing pains in his side, where the snapbow bolt had been within three layers of silk of killing him. Someone out there knew now that he had fought off three men and was still alive to complain of it.

Let them worry, he thought.