The Scarab Path

Twenty-One

The boat cut through the water at a surprising pace, its shallow draught moving cleanly and with almost no wake. Che huddled inside her cloak and felt miserable.

'I don't see why I have to join this circus,' she complained. Her last few days had been hectic — the Fir was still giving her occasional stabs of queasiness and she had not come to terms with meeting Totho either — so the last thing she wanted was to be dragged from her bed to go on some hunting expedition.

'It's in your honour,' Manny explained airily. 'Or perhaps our honour.'

'Berjek didn't have to come along.'

'Master Gripshod isn't the ambassador.'

Che shook herself irritably. The locals had come to fetch them two hours before dawn, which had been a surprise to everyone except Mannerly Gorget. Manny himself had been downstairs and ready, drinking hot spiked tea, having neglected to tell anyone else of the arrangements he had made. It had meant a bungled rush for Che and Praeda to get dressed, and then be bustled down to the docks. They had reached the river to see the first bare streaks of dawn kindling in the eastern sky.

The boat that awaited them there was not what Che had expected. For a start it had no mast, and it seemed very small. It was a long, slender craft that rocked alarmingly when Manny transferred his bulk on to it, little more than an oversized canoe. At both prow and stern the curving shape tapered and rose into a stumpy carving of something that Che could not identify.

There were two boat crew, standing fore and aft, and although they must already have been waiting an hour they did not show it. Che, cowled and half-asleep, did not get a proper look at them until they had cast off and were under way, each standing upright to paddle with great strong strokes, alternating left and right. Then, belatedly, she realized that they were not Khanaphir. They were slender, with silver-grey skins, and though they had shaved heads and simple tunics like Khanaphir servants, Che recognized their angular features instantly.

'Mantis-kinden?' she exclaimed, blinking herself wider awake.

'They call them the Marsh People,' Praeda informed her. 'They seem to be attached somehow to the city, under its control, though the relationship between them and our hosts seems complex. We're going out into the delta now, you see. It's their place.' She spoke distractedly, something else clearly on her mind.

They had just passed between the great pillars of the Estuarine Gate, and Che carefully did not look back at the morass of cloth that was the Marsh Alcaia. 'I didn't realize the Khanaphir had subject peoples,' she said. 'The city's not exactly cosmopolitan.'

'And more than just the Marsh-dwellers,' Praeda confirmed, 'but they keep to their places. I've been asking to go upriver, to see some of the other settlements. The Dominion of Khanaphes has at least four disparate kinden within it, I believe.'

'What keeps them in line?' Che said softly, almost to herself. She looked up again at the nearest Marsh-dweller, silhouetted against the lightening sky. The Mantis woman did not glance down, but kept paddling strongly, stroke after stroke. What do they get out of this servitude? Who can manage to hold Mantis-kinden in thrall?

The Moths could — Achaeos's people. The thought came automatically, and she knew she was touching the secret again, hearing the pulse of Khanaphes's hidden heart. The Moths were a sorcerous, Inapt race, whereas the Khanaphir were not … or at least that was the face they showed to the world.

The river beyond the gates was swathed in mist: white curtains of it rose from the waters, cloaking the banks and muffling the deep ratcheting of the crickets and the boom of a distant cicada. Abruptly they were within it, and the world had been left behind, only the pale and ragged sheets of the mist itself coursing over and around them.

'We're not just going out alone are we?' Che whispered. 'Aren't there supposed to be more of us?'

'They'll be waiting for us further out on the river,' said Manny, with slightly hollow confidence.

'Do we have any idea what we're supposed to be hunting?' asked Praeda. Even she sounded slightly nervous.

'Fishing,' Manny said dismissively. 'After all this, it's only fishing. So I intend to get a decent look at the local fauna while everyone is fooling about with nets and things.'

There was a slight sound from the forward Mantis, which might have indicated humour. Che looked up abruptly to see a definite smile being fought off the woman's face. Her stomach sank, knowing that Manny's research had not been as thorough as he thought.

Something loomed ahead in the clearing mist, and Che made out a greater boat, a broad barge that was ten times as long as their little punt, equipped with a bare mast and a canopy to keep off the sun that would soon be burning the mist away. Che saw several robed figures standing at the rail, watching them with polite interest. She recognized Ethmet and a few of the other Ministers, obviously come to watch the sport.

'Why aren't I on that boat?' she asked.

'Ah, well,' said Manny, in a tone that admitted guilt even while he was choosing his words. 'We were given the choice, of course, but I reckoned we'd see nothing from up there.'

'Manny, are we … participating in this hunt?' Praeda asked him.

'Well, not so much — not unless you wanted to. I just wanted to make sure we were close enough to the water to see what was going on, get a decent look at the wildlife.'

There were other boats now skimming along the side of the barge. Che saw that they were tiny, barely five feet long and with a single Mantis-kinden poling or paddling them, poised with impossible balance as they scudded across the river. Those craft were not of wood, but merely bundled reeds, and where the bunched reeds were lashed together, at front and rear, they formed the original of the wooden carving that her own boat was capped with. She turned to point this out to Praeda, but the woman was already bent over the boards of their own craft, examining its construction.

'Fascinating,' she said finally. 'You realize there are no nails in this boat at all?'

'Don't be foolish,' Manny sneered. 'What's holding it together then?' He shifted his place and the craft rocked alarmingly. The Mantis crew accommodated the movement with a slight shift of balance, as though it had all been rehearsed between them and Manny the previous day.

'Rope,' Praeda revealed. 'Just rope, passed round and through and round again. It must shrink in the water, to hold everything together. But it's perfect Inapt boatbuilding. The techniques must be centuries old.'

Just like everything around here, Che thought.

Another boat came up beside them, the mirror of their own but twice as long, four Mantids back-paddling to bring the craft alongside. Amnon was standing at its carved prow, stripped to the waist and wearing only a kilt. Che heard Praeda murmur, 'Oh, grace and favour, look at him!' in civilized horror. She kept looking at him, though, Che noticed, and when she glanced away her eyes were drawn back to him soon enough. A conversation with Manny recurred to her, and Che wondered if similar word had crept round to Praeda.

The big man grinned down at them. 'Welcome!' he said. 'At last you are with us: the hunt can begin. It is my honour that you have agreed to participate as bold hunters along with us. In this way shall the skill and the courage of Collegium be known.'

Che grimaced up at him. 'Captain, I think you should first let us know just what we are hunting, and how to go about it,' she said weakly. 'We are rather new to this.'

'Of course, of course. You should watch me make the first kill, perhaps.' He put a bare foot up on the side of his boat, scanning the riverbank beyond them, then jabbing out a finger. 'There, you see,' he said. 'They come to warm themselves in the sun. Do you see them there?'

'Fish basking in the …' Che could see nothing but rocks amongst the foliage, but she heard Manny whistle in astonishment, and then one of the rocks opened a bulbous eye to appraise her. There were half a dozen of them, the least of them the size of a man. Slick-skinned, brown creatures with stubby front fins like arms, and high-set, goggling eyes, they lounged half-in and half-out of the water. One of them yawned, and its mouth was cavernous, the needle-sharp teeth glinting in the dawn light.

'Oh, loose knives and bloody thunder,' Manny said in awe. 'They're fish. Those are the fish they're hunting.'

'Land-fish,' Amnon said proudly, as though he was personally responsible for their existence. 'But we will not hunt these, of course. They are only young. It would not be fair to pit our skills against them until they have fully grown.'

'I want to go on the barge,' said Che, but the Mantids were suddenly thrusting the boat forward, almost toppling her backwards. Amnon's crew did the same, and she saw a few other boats like their own coursing ahead over the water, moving beyond the wallowing barge.

'Catch these!' Amnon called out. 'You must have the tools to hunt them!' He took up a leather-wrapped bundle that was as long as he was and cast it, with no appreciable effort, across the water towards them. Manny took it full in the chest and would have toppled overboard with it had Praeda and Che not grabbed hold of his robes. With a certain avid interest he unwrapped it, spilling arrows into the bottom of the boat. There was a brace of shortbows, too, curled forward ready to be strung, and a spear with a barbed head attached to a neatly coiled line.

'Nets and things,' said Che pointedly to Manny. 'What have you got us into?'

'That Amnon, he claimed it was fishing,' the fat man protested.

'Well, to him, this probably does count as fishing,' Che snapped. 'We will keep well clear of all this hunting, and Waste take the honour of Collegium.'

'Agreed,' said Manny, slightly shaken by this turn of events. Che sat back and put a hand to her head. Land-fish stared at her with sleepy suspicion from the banks, and so she turned her back on them, looking out at the other boats.

From the far side of Amnon's craft another boat emerged. It had two Mantids poling it forward, but a third man was standing near the bows, spear in hand and cloak billowing. It took Che a moment to recognize him.

Thalric. And of course what she should be doing now, instead of performing this ridiculous charade, was talking to Thalric and smoothing things over. But it would have done no good to seek him out, she saw, because she was not the only ambassador to have been invited on the hunt.

He glanced over at her, and on his pale face she could see bruising, and her heart sank. Totho thought he was rescuing me. Trallo had explained to her how Thalric had taken her from the Fir-eaters, only to lose her to the Iron Glove. I am changing hands so often, they should put customs duty on me.

She raised a hand to send a feeble greeting over the water. She saw him nod in response. That small contact, the opening of negotiations, brought her a disproportionate relief. Has Totho now usurped him as the person I know best in this city? Or do I know Thalric even better, at this remove? Thalric has been drifting nearer, while Totho began close to me but he seems so far away now.

There was a series of shrill whistles that Che could not locate. As they sounded again she realized they came from beyond the river proper, amid the channels and marshes of the delta which spread its tangled fingers from here all the way to the sea. Amnon's boat went coursing towards the sounds, and her own followed under the swift, sure oar-strokes of the Mantis-kinden. She saw Thalric's craft leap forward also, his wings flickering to keep balance. There was another Wasp sitting in the boat behind him, looking every bit as ill and miserable as Che herself felt. She thought it might be the same man who had reacted so badly to the Mantis statue, and wondered how he was getting on with their boat's crew.

Two of the little reed craft suddenly shot on to the broad waters of the river as though they had been spat out, their occupants poling them with precise grace and astonishing speed. There was a line trailing from one — Che could see it cutting ripples on the water — it was attached to-

It was attached to one of the land-fish, but a creature almost as long as Amnon's boat. Its maw, snagged by a harpoon head and gaping with fury, could have swallowed Che whole. It powered over the mud and ferns, its stumpy front fins granting it a startling pace, and then sloughed into the river with a bellowing grunt. Amnon's boat was cutting close, as the big man stood ready with a bow strung and drawn back. For a second the fish was invisible in the brown wash of the water, but something guided Amnon's hand as he loosed the arrow into the murk, and then the fish leapt to the surface to meet this fresh assault.

They want it in sight of the barge, Che realized, but still in the shallows, where it can't escape. Amnon and the Mantis-kinden were playing a dangerous game, herding the enraged monster up and down the river bank, not letting it slip into any of the smaller channels, nor vanish into the depths. Time and again it hurled itself at Amnon's boat, but the Mantis crew pirouetted and sliced through the water, always cutting aside from the creature's furious charge. Everyone on the boat, Amnon and his crew alike, remained standing throughout, as the big Beetle sent arrow after arrow into the furious beast. It turned from him towards the other boats, those fleeting little reed constructions, but they nimbly skittered out of its path. Once it was too quick for them, its jaws slamming down on a bundled stern. The Mantis poling the boat was in the air at once, wings glittering, as the monster shredded her craft into scraps with mindless rage.

'What a barbaric spectacle,' Praeda remarked, sounding disdainful, but she was clutching tightly at the boat's side. Manny just stared, silently, fingering one of the bows they had been given.

At last it was done. The cornered fish, jaws agape in threat, reared up out of the water, its hide bristling with arrow shafts. Amnon held a spear now and took precise aim, spinning himself completely around to give the cast more force, yet barely rocking the boat as he did so. The heavy-headed lance plunged into the monster's throat, and Amnon leant forward to take hold of the butt and drive it further in. The great fish recoiled under the shock of it, thrashing down on to the mud, and Amnon took up the bow again. He sighted on the beast's eye, the arrowhead moving in minute twitches to track the creature's death throes. His fingers released the string.

Che grimaced. 'I think I prefer fishing the Collegium way,' she said weakly.

'Nonsense,' Manny declared. 'Can't visit a foreign place and not try a few of the local pastimes. String this for me, would you?'

One of their crew took the bow from him and bent it back effortlessly, seeming to turn the curved wood almost inside out before she hooked the string over the notched end.

'You're not planning to use that, are you?' Che demanded.

'Might as well look the part,' the fat man said jovially. 'After all, I hear that fish-hunting is a proper hero's pastime, and I want it to be said that I did my bit. A reputation for heroism around the city could work wonders'

'You're drunk,' Praeda retorted flatly. 'Or you're mad.'

'I am only slightly drunk,' Manny assured her. 'And, as to the other, neither you nor I am qualified to diagnose. Let us hunt the land-fish!'

'Let us stay close to the bank,' Che advised, 'and watch, if you have to. While we're all on this boat, you're not taking it near one of those creatures.'

The other boats were splitting away now, some hunting down the channels of the delta, swiftly lost to sight amongst its riotous vegetation, others coursing across the clear water of the river, waiting for game to be flushed out. Che huddled in her cloak. The land-fish terrified her, their bloody fate appalled her. It was a very foreign land she now found herself in.

'Remind me why we're doing this again?' Osgan complained. He had his arms wrapped tightly about both himself and a bottle, but he still looked uncomfortably sober.

'They wanted the Imperial ambassador to come hunting with them,' Thalric explained. 'They gave me a chance to sit on the barge and merely watch, but Marger and I agreed it was not politic to choose that option.'

'You're going to kill one of those things, are you? With just a spear?'

'Spear, sting,' Thalric said vaguely. 'Wings, too. We're better equipped for this sport than our hosts imagine.'

'I'm not the strongest flier.'

'So long as you can fly better than a two-ton fish, you'll be fine,' Thalric replied. He was conscious of forcing the humour, but it helped. It gave him an act to maintain, which meant he did not have to think about more awkward matters. He was playing the role of Imperial ambassador, upholding the honour of the Empire by showing these savages just how good the Wasps could be at whatever they turned their hand to. That was easier than brooding over his revenge on Totho of the Iron Glove, or reflecting on his recent conversation with Marger.

Marger was up there on the barge, of course, since there needed to be someone to keep an ear open for what the Ministers were saying. The Fly, Trallo, was there, too, ostensibly as a servant of the Lowlanders, but then he was a servant of Thalric as well. He had many pockets, Trallo, and he could take anyone's gold. Useful, but not a man to trust.

At Thalric's direction, the two Mantids guided their boat into one of the channels. There were several reed punts moving ahead, hunting out a land-fish of suitable dimensions. Smaller beasts flopped and grunted on the mudbanks, staring back at the intruders with their huge eyes, raising bright red fins in warning.

A chorus of whistles from somewhere ahead signalled the scouts finding suitable quarry. With a word, Thalric bid his crew urge the boat forward. 'I think Imperial honour will be satisfied by our driving one of the beasts into the river,' he decided. 'Let Captain Amnon deal with the bloodletting.'

They noticed the commotion ahead, then the little boats were hurrying back towards the river, while the humped back of a fish, fin raised like a banner, came surging through the shallow water after them. The Wasps would be too late, Thalric guessed, but he would be able to make a show of it, anyway, perhaps burn a few holes into the beast as Amnon dispatched it. His boat reached the fish's wake, abruptly jolting over the disturbed water so that he had to use his spear to push himself off a stand of reeds and keep his balance. He saw others rushing out amidst the green, following the hunt on foot as they dodged between the giant horsetails and rushes.

He had turned to order his crew to chase the beast when the image of the runners struck a chord in his mind. Where have I seen that? followed by, What was I seeing? Those dashing figures, skipping swiftly between mud and greenery, walking on the water.

The first arrow knocked the Mantis at the bows right off the boat. Thalric saw him arch backwards, mouth open in silent surprise, and then vanish into the waters with barely a splash. Thalric's wings flared, and he kicked off from the rocking craft. Another arrow sped across the water, and he heard Osgan cry out.

He saw them clearly then, or some of them. They were skipping over the water, crouching low from cover to cover. He had assumed they were the local Mantids at first, but they had long limbs and short bodies, all angular elbows and knees. They wore cuirasses of darkened metal scales, and they all carried bows. He saw three, in that brief moment, and one was aiming up at him already.

He let his sting speak for him, the old reflexes coming back. The arrow shot off to one side of him as he shifted in the air, but his own aim was true, the impact of his fire striking the man between neck and shoulder. In an instant the assassin was gone, his Art dying with him, the water receiving him at last.

The other two were shooting then and the air offered nowhere to hide. Thalric dropped down to just above the river's surface, hovering near the boat. 'Get moving!' he snapped, but the Mantis woman had snatched up a bow, a little recurved thing, and was kneeling at the stern to sight up on some target invisible to Thalric. His heart lurched when he spotted Osgan lying groaning in the bottom of the boat. There was an arrow all the way through his upper arm, digging an inch into his ribs.

The Mantis let fly with her arrow, and at the same moment a shaft struck Thalric in the side. He was not wearing his army-issue mail, but the copperweave was hidden beneath his tunic. The arrowhead — broad-bladed to cleave flesh — did not pierce through, but the impact knocked him into the water.

His wings were abandoned at once, and for a moment he could do nothing but splash. Then his feet found the bottom and he reached up to drag himself into the boat.

The killers had broken cover, were racing towards them over the water, shooting as they came. One of them sprang backwards, with an arrow punching through his mail. The last assassin leapt up from the surface of the water onto the boat's side, drawing back his bowstring again and aiming straight at the Mantis.

From river-level, Thalric put a hand out and loosed his sting, catching the man at a range of five feet, splintering his bow and melting his mail, hurling him back off the boat into the water. When Thalric cautiously lifted himself up and into the boat, there was no sign of any of them, all their bodies reclaimed by the river.

Skater-kinden from Jerez, he named them, acutely aware that there could be more of them nearby, and another team of three would just about settle matters here. Skater-kinden? It was a long way from Jerez to Khanaphes, but of course there were Skaters in service to the Empire, with all the skills and the temperament necessary for the assassination game. That someone had sent them this far afield said a lot about how much they wanted Thalric dead. And if I had stayed in Capitas, what might they not have sent against me?

He had grown complacent, stopped thinking like a Rekef officer, and it had come close to killing him.

'Get this boat back on the main river,' he snapped. 'If we're to deal with assassins, let's have witnesses too.'

But the Mantis woman did not move, peering still into the tangled ferns. 'There are more,' she said, nocking another arrow. 'Between us and the rest of the hunt.'

Fly, thought Thalric, and it would be simple enough — save that even in that short space between here and the barge he would become a target for any halfway competent archer. It would mean leaving Osgan as well. Crouching low in the boat he studied the injured man. Osgan was shaking, skin gone pale, but he was conscious still.

'Now,' the Mantis said, and stood up suddenly to loose her arrow. Thalric raised his head briefly, saw a confusion of movement, heard a cry. Another arrow zipped past, a foot over his head. He saw the Mantis sighting up again.

'Out of the boat,' she urged abruptly. 'Into the trees.'

'What …?' Thalric started saying, but she kicked hard at the boat's side and it capsized neatly, dumping its two Wasp passengers into the murky water. Thalric, one hand still clawing at the curved hull, felt it quiver twice, knew that arrows were hammering into it from the far side. The Mantis woman had sprung into the air, her wings flickering. She loosed another shaft at a target he could not see, dodged in the air as a return shot sped past her. The arrow that jutted from her side was as unexpected and unlooked-for as a magic trick. She hissed in pain, fell towards the overturned boat, still reaching for her quiver.

'Go!' she spat, and Thalric waded two steps, then turned to haul up Osgan, who was spluttering and splashing fitfully. The man cried out as Thalric jogged the arrow through his arm, but there was no time to do anything about it. Thalric dragged him through the water, sometimes with Osgan's help and sometimes despite it. The Mantis woman landed beside him, just as he reached the nearest stand of ferns, and she shoved Osgan forward into the green and the mud. She collapsed shuddering beside him, the spine of the arrow in her side jerking in irregular time with her breathing.

Thalric crouched, watching, but he saw nothing more. That the assassins were still out there he had no doubt, but the same leaves now keeping him alive also hid his persecutors. Osgan gasped loudly, and Thalric hissed at him, 'I know, you're shot. Keep quiet.'

'She's dying,' Osgan's voice responded, sounding more controlled than Thalric would have expected. He glanced back to see the other Wasp sitting up with his back against the segmented trunk of a horsetail. Pain was written in sharp lines about his eyes, but it had chased the drink away at least.

The Mantis was still lying on her back, her teeth bared in defiance at something Thalric could not see. The arrow had penetrated deep but it was that final effort of getting her charges to cover that had finished her. Thalric reached over and took her hand, and she gripped it fiercely, the spines on her arm flexing.

'Still between us … and the river …' she got out. 'Further in …'

'I know,' Thalric interrupted. 'Don't speak.'

She coughed violently, and he felt it racking through her, holding on to her hand until the final spasm and the quiet that followed told him she was dead. It was no more than the Rekef man had always tried to do. He had always done his best for those that served him.

'What now?' Osgan asked, with a tremor, but some vestige of the career quartermaster of old had dragged itself to the surface and was holding the man together for now.

And indeed what now? The thought had come to Thalric again that he could just trust to his wings. He could flit from green to green until he had the open river before him, and then he could skim for the cover of the boats and hope that the assassins valued secrecy over success. But that would involve leaving Osgan here alone, wounded and fair game for any killer or predator that found him.

What would the Rekef man in him do? And he knew that same Rekef man had possessed one oft-boasted and overriding virtue, which was loyalty. Even though the Rekef itself had been torn out of the heart of that man, the loyalty remained.

'Further in, like she said,' he told Osgan, and draped the man's good arm over his shoulders, sinking calf-deep in mud to lever him to his feet. 'We'll take a curved path, head back for the river somewhere closer to the city.' Looking about him, searching for bearings in this baffling maze of channels and fronds, Thalric kept his voice confident for Osgan's sake. 'And when we get back, I'll give Marger something worthwhile to put in his cursed report.'