The Scarab Path

Thirty

It was a bright, cloudless morning, as they always seemed to be here. The dust of an army on the move had not yet started to choke the air. The war-host of the Many of Nem was just stirring.

In the distance, within a day's hard strike, the green that was the river Jamail was in sight, with all its treasures. Through a spyglass, focusing the little device awkwardly with his clawed hands, Hrathen could see the walls of Khanaphes in some detail. He passed the glass to Angved the engineer. 'Your professional opinion?'

Angved spent a long time passing the telescope back and forth, in minute increments. 'Big walls,' he said at last. 'Big old walls. Carved real pretty too, it looks like.'

'That doesn't count as a professional opinion,' Hrathen growled. 'How will the leadshotters fare?'

'Sir,' replied the engineer, 'given that it never rains round here, they might as well have made those walls of paper and spared themselves the effort.'

Hrathen frowned down at him. 'So confident?'

Angved shrugged. 'I've seen Beetle-kinden walls, and those aren't them. Those are great big blocks of stone set one on another, all beautifully cut and dressed, but there are walls and walls. We could bring those walls down with trebuchet and rock-throwers, maybe a tenday's investment, maybe less. With leadshotters? We'll have a breach in two days at the most. This is old, sir. It's all old work. When they built these walls, my trade wasn't exactly foremost in their minds.'

Hrathen nodded thoughtfully. 'So now we just have to get there.'

'They've moved their army out, then?'

'Just started to come for us, it looks like.'

'It's what I'd do, too. With walls like that, they must know they can't withstand a siege. A victory on the field is their best chance.'

Hrathen shook his head. 'Not like that, apparently. It sounds like this is what they always do whenever the Scorpions come for them. They tend to win, too, so you can see why they've not changed the recipe. The Scorpions have all sorts of excuses, but it comes down to basics. The Khanaphir are better disciplined, and the Many were never this many, before. Also, the Khanaphir had a superiority at range — with bows and the like.'

'Well, I can't say we've entirely solved the discipline problem,' Angved observed. 'Still, your woman there, Jakal, she seems to have them well in line.'

'We work within our limits,' said Hrathen. He had spent last night with Jakal, talking over what tactics they could reliably impose on the Scorpion warbands. Talking them over, and nothing further, despite what he had hoped for. The bitch is stringing me along, and she's enjoying every minute of it. He could challenge her, he knew. He could try to take her by force, but that would not achieve the Empire's goals here. And let me be honest with myself: I don't think I would succeed. She had not become the Warlord of the Many by anything less than ruthlessness and skill.

'The crossbowmen are looking good,' Angved remarked idly. 'They've picked up the idea of shooting all together, at least. When we started they were all for just popping off a shot and then up with the axe and go charging in. We were lucky to find that caravan. Live targets make all the difference for practice.'

The caravan had been a little convoy of foreigners, tomb robbers and relic hunters set on pillaging the ruins of the outer desert. They had been heavily armed, forming up around their wagons and hoping to stand the Scorpion outriders off, but instead of simply descending on them with knives and hatchets, Hrathen had sent for the crossbowmen.

It had been bloody work, and not swift. The thieves and their hangers-on had tried to stay together, to find cover, as the crossbows had loosed and loosed. The Scorpions had begun to learn the joys of killing at a distance: now the same crossbowmen would not trade a kill at thirty yards for all the savage delight of getting their claws bloody. It had been a useful object lesson, as they had begun to understand the archer's pride and joy in seeing the enemy wither and fall, without ever having a chance to fight back. For a Scorpion it was no great mental leap.

'Your woman's coming,' Angved reported, and prudently absented himself, heading off to check the siege engines. Hrathen turned to greet Jakal, finding her in her full armour, spear in hand.

'I have spoken to the chiefs,' she said. 'We have our battle order, as you call it.'

'Is it as we discussed?'

Her strange eyes regarded him. 'I have taken those I like least, or those who will not stand the fight, and made them our centre. I have gone among the others, telling them not to worry if these break, since they are marked as weak. The crossbows will make the claws on either side, with the better warriors, and you yourself have the sting.'

'Lieutenant Angved has the sting, yes,' Hrathen agreed. 'The weapons are designed for siege, not open field work, but it has been known. It will test the crews.'

Jakal shrugged, one clawed hand spread wide. 'Let them be tested, then. Have you found a place for yourself in all this planning, Of-the-Empire?'

'Of course. I shall drive your chariot.'

He had amused her at last. 'Will you, indeed? And you are so used to chariots in your Empire that even the word was strange to you, at first.'

'But your beasts will know their work,' he said. 'And I shall speak with them, and let them instruct me.'

'And you will follow my orders, without question?'

'I have brought you weapons, and the knowledge of how to use them,' he reminded her. 'Now you must use them — use them as you will. I shall bow my head to you, for as long as the battle lasts.'

Beneath the rim of her helm she was smiling. 'Have I conquered the Empire now?' she teased, one thumb claw coming up to rest along the line of his chin. 'Well then, you shall indeed have that honour.' Her eyes met his directly now, bold and fierce and utterly unlike the eyes of any Imperial woman. 'Perhaps you shall have other honours, when we have driven them from the field. Perhaps we shall celebrate, you and I, if I am pleased with you.'

The plume of dust that the Khanaphir army was raising was more clearly visible. They wanted to fight the Scorpions far enough from the city that the river would not become a barrier at their back. Hrathen was fretting at a lack of scouts, but he did not want to risk any Wasps to the bows of the enemy, and the Scorpions had no fliers, and slower cavalry than the defenders. He was obliged to rely on his telescope and the reports he had heard of older conflicts. At least the Khanaphir did not seem to be the type to innovate.

The difficulty, as he had discussed with Jakal, was to make best use of the Many's new-found advantages. The crossbows were slower than the shortbows the Khanaphir favoured, but they outranged them. And perhaps not really so much slower, for that matter. They were the old Imperial heavy crossbows for which the archers were supposed to draw the string back by winch, but most of the Scorpions had notched their thumb-claws and were tensioning the weapons by hand in half the usual time. The Empire had not considered just how strong they were. There would be more than a few broken claws by the battle's end, more than a few broken crossbows for that matter, but they had quickly made the weapons their own. It only remained to give them the best chance to use them.

The normal Khanaphir tactics were reliable and unimaginative, from what he had been told. They fielded an infantry-strong army with good cavalry wings and archer support. It was not something out of the Imperial tactics textbooks, but he could see the strengths and weaknesses. The Scorpions were more mobile, so that meant that, for a decisive victory, the Khanaphir would at some point have to come to them and follow them up. Otherwise the fight would go on all day, with the Scorpions picking and choosing the targets of their strikes.

The Khanaphir would understand the same thing, Hrathen was counting on it. The plans had been made, so no point worrying about them now. They would deform and change as soon as they met the enemy, just as plans always did. The Scorpions were not a disciplined force, but the Khanaphir knew that too, and it became just one more factor that a clever general could use.

He stretched and went off to see about Jakal's chariot, to have a talk with her beasts and set them straight.

The army of Khanaphir marched tirelessly, as Beetles could. To Hrathen it was a great row of white squares, reinforced with steel in the centre where their heavy infantry was posted. On the flanks there was an odd mixture of the Mantis-kinden skirmishers, Khanaphir archers and chariots. The beetle cavalry, seated on its long-legged black animals, was taking a wide path in order to flank the Scorpions when the forces were engaged.

'How do their riders stack up to ours?' he asked. Their chariot jolted and bounced, finding its place on the Many's left flank. He could feel the minds of the animals, keen and hungry. Each had an armoured shield fixed to its outside pincer and barding of chitin over its back.

'They are faster, but scorpions will kill beetles if they catch them. They will hold off until they can catch us unawares, perhaps come all the way round behind us,' Jakal told him. The chariots are different …' She stopped, gave a particularly vicious laugh. 'Or they were until we got your crossbows. I've told them to aim for the beasts first.'

'And your soldiers will stay with the plan?' The chariot was in place now, amongst a slew of other vehicles arrayed about the Scorpions' left flank.

'Probably.' Jakal shrugged. 'Mostly.' The Khanaphir had stopped now, waiting. Hrathen saw their front rank bristling with spears. Behind them were archers, identifiable at this range because they had no shields. The Beetles would wait for as long as it took, Hrathen knew. They were a naturally more patient people, but it was all taken care of in the plan.

Jakal took up a bulbous horn made from a hollowed-out stinger, took a great breath and sounded it. The strange, wailing note sounded out across the restless, uneven lines of the Many's war host. Instantly it was eclipsed by a great roar, a thousand Scorpion throats cheering on the initial charge. The centre of the lines surged forward, a great mass of halberdiers and axemen rushing for the Khanaphir centre. Hrathen steadied the chariot beasts, feeling in his mind their instinctive urge to follow, looking to his right to assure himself that not too much of the host had just committed itself. He felt a wash of relief when he saw that at least two-thirds of the infantry was still waiting, although milling angrily, obviously exercising every drop of restraint they possessed. On either side of that belligerent centre were the crossbowmen, looking already more ordered and disciplined, as though he had sewn Wasp brains into their heads. He and Jakal had gone over the plan with their chiefs in great detail, so they knew their glory would come.

The sky above the charging Scorpions turned abruptly dark. The Khanaphir archers had loosed their first volley, arrows arching over their own spearmen to impact among the onrushing warriors. If the Scorpions, unevenly armoured as they were, had come charging in a block, then they would have been slaughtered. Their own lack of discipline helped them in this one thing, for their running mass was so loosely knit that, although the sleeting shafts killed many, there were just as many missed shots as the arrows fell into the gaps between them.

That was the first volley, and the shortbows of the Khanaphir did not have the range of a proper battlefield weapon, but the second volley caused havoc amongst the Scorpions' rear ranks as they pressed closer in anticipation of making impact — the Khanaphir arcing their arrows high to fall on them, making exquisite use of the limited tools they possessed.

Hrathen grinned, his hands tightening on the reins in anticipation.

The Scorpion vanguard struck, and he saw the enemy line bow under the force of them — under the great cleaving blows of axe and halberd. Scorpions were not soldiers at heart, but they were warriors: they knew how to fight. They were taller, stronger, longer-armed and vastly more bloodthirsty by nature than their foes. The Beetle lines bent before them, even as dozens of Scorpions died on the enemy's levelled spears.

The charge had struck at the point where the Khanaphir light infantry met the Royal Guard. The unarmoured militia buckled helplessly, shields cracking and splitting under the Scorpions' ferocious blows, the men behind trying to give ground in order to stay out of the reach of the hacking polearms. The Guard pressed forward even as the Scorpions advanced and Hrathen saw swords rising and falling behind their solid line of shields. They were now butchering the men confronting them, turning their front line into a flank, rolling up the Scorpion advance. Behind them, more shields were stepping forward to keep the line intact. It was an impressive display of military order.

Now the Scorpions were falling back. The Khanaphir pursued them a dozen yards before re-forming seamlessly, as though they had not lost a man. The Scorpions outpaced them in their retreat, then turned around ready for another charge. By now their numbers were greatly reduced, but they did not seem to care. Fighting spirit, Jakal had called it, and their blood was up. She seemed to think it made them more dangerous as a people, though Hrathen had kept silent and reflected on how an Imperial army would exploit such a weakness.

The Scorpion vanguard tried another assault under the raining arrows of the Khanaphir archers. Hrathen could feel the restlessness of the main army reaching a fever pitch. Even as he had the thought, he heard Jakal say, 'We can't keep them back much longer. Nature shall take its course.'

The second advance was a shambles. The Scorpions faltered before the strike, losing even more men to the archers and denying themselves the impetus of their charge. When they struck the Khanaphir line, they broke and ran almost at once, an utter rout. The Khanaphir followed them up, further this time, no doubt heartened by the predictability of their foes.

There was a shrill whistle from Hrathen's right, blown by one of Angved's engineers. It told him that the Khanaphir host was now within crossbow range.

'Over to you,' he said to Jakal. He then looked out for the Khanaphir cavalry, seeing the nearest detachment still far to his flank, waiting on a rise for their chance.

And if it never comes? He ducked his head as Jakal sounded her horn again, the note cutting stridently through the shouts and yells and screams. The main host should now be separating into three blocks, opening up two avenues that led down towards the advancing Khanaphir. Most of that did not happen: it had proved too much to try and teach the Scorpions in the short time they had. Thankfully, Angved would be aiming high.

A count of twenty, Hrathen thought. It was all the pause Angved would leave. Obligingly the Khanaphir forces had halted again, waiting for the next charge of the Many. This was how they had won their previous battles: short, unstoppable advances whilst the enemy wore themselves down against their interlocked shields.

He put himself into the minds of the beasts, warning them, steadying them. There will be a great noise, he told them. It is not for you to worry about.

The whole chariot quivered with their fear, even so, when a dozen leadshotters spoke in rapid succession. He looked back to see the great plumes of smoke from behind the Scorpion army, marking where the firepowder-charged engines had discharged their shot. For a moment both armies seemed in disarray, and then the missiles began to land. Angved had not used the solid balls that would soon crack the walls of Khanaphes: instead he had something purpose-made for this moment. Each shot would smash and shatter as it impacted, scything metal fragments into the tight-packed ranks of the surrounding enemy.

Well over half the shots missed the Khanaphir army altogether, impacting behind or beside them in colossal clouds of dust, but two or three landed directly on their mark, crashing down amidst those shoulder-to-shoulder squares of armed men.

This was part of any modern war, Hrathen knew: acceptable, unavoidable losses. Soldiers too spread out were inefficient, hard to command, ineffective against any solid enemy force. Only Ant-kinden possessed the almost supernatural discipline to change from close to open formation at will. It was part of any modern war, but the Khanaphir had never fought a modern war until now. Angved had made history: he was the first man to bombard the people of Khanaphes.

Hrathen had half thought they would break then and there, but they were made of sterner stuff. They held together, reeling and milling, and all the time the leadshotters were reloading. Command was slow in coming: no mindlinks here for instant readiness. They stayed still, and Hrathen admired the restraint of his own crossbowmen in not playing their hand too early. The army of Khanaphes reordered its ranks, and then the leadshotters spoke again.

His artillerists had been given a chance to correct their aim, and some had over-corrected. One shot struck within the Scorpions' own front line, and another, worse still, ploughed through thirty loose ranks of Nem warriors, exhausting itself before it ever reached the enemy. Hrathen felt the shock whip through his forces, knew that he must find a use for them soon or they would attack their own artillery.

Two shells had missed the entire army again, proof of the practice the Scorpions still needed, but the rest were on their targets, eight separate explosions rocking the Khanaphir lines.

And there's more where that came from, Hrathen thought. Work it out.

He cast another look to his left and saw the Khanaphir cavalry mustering, falling into a phalanx.

'Messenger!' he bellowed, and one of his Wasps dropped down beside him.

'Send to Angved, have him ready his crossbowmen. The cavalry are readying for a charge.'

It was the right thing to do, of course, assuming there were no more surprises. Just as the main army was about to do the 'right thing', on the same assumption.

Whoever was commanding the Khanaphir centre had now realized that staying still was a death sentence. The bombardment, a mere friendly greeting by Imperial standards, had killed more of them than both of the Scorpion charges, and it did not take any great mind to see that such tricks would be of limited use once the armies converged.

The Khanaphir army sounded the charge, and their ranks of locked shields thundered towards the disordered Scorpions with a great battle-cry. Their chariots began to rattle forward on either flank.

Hrathen took a deep breath, waiting for the whistle. Angved took his own time over it, but then it sounded high and clear over the sounds of battle. Second whistle: crossbows loose.

He was expecting a rabble of individual shots, but the crossbowmen had inherited a kind of pride from their teachers, and that paved the way for something more military. When they loosed, each unit was mostly together. The staggered crossbow discharge caught the Khanaphir in mid-charge. Their right flank managed to take the brunt on their shields, stumbling to a crawl but keeping their lines intact. The Khanaphir left, on the far side from Hrathen, fell apart instantly, men lanced through or speared in the leg, men falling over fallen comrades. That entire flank of the Khanaphir army was crashing into itself, utterly still, the uniform advance ruined.

The crossbowmen would be drawing back their strings with all of their strength. The Khanaphir centre had slowed to keep pace with its comrades, the charge faltering. The crossbowmen had made, by their discipline, their own chance for a second shot.

It struck, without the previous savage cohesion, now that they were getting excited, but it was enough. The Khanaphir right began pulling inwards, retreating. On the broken left it was the unshielded archers that took the worst of it, dropping in their scores. The left-flank chariots had mostly stopped, some wheeling in disarray, others stilled, their beasts brought down.

Hrathen looked back at Jakal and was about to signal to her, but she had the horn to her lips already, sounding it loud and long.

Third horn blast: charge. It was the end of tactics, for the most part, but tactics had played their part. Now the great host of the Many of Nem descended upon the halted Khanaphir line with all of its ferocious might, and the real killing began.

From his station amongst the cavalry, Amnon felt abruptly hollow inside, on hearing that earth-shaking roar from behind the Scorpion lines. Something in him had cracked. His former certainty was leaking out.

It was not immediately obvious to him what had happened, but something had struck within the infantry lines. He saw the dust, heard the distant cries. It was some device of the Empire, but he could not link cause and effect. It seemed like magic to him, that the enemy could simply punch ragged holes into his army.

He hesitated, four score of riders about him trying to calm their high-strung mounts, which were baring their mandibles in terrified threat at the very sky, as though to challenge the echo.

Then the sound came again, and he managed to connect it with the smoke of a moment before, the line of brief flares visible behind the Scorpion host.

'Form me a wedge!' he shouted out, but he had to give the order three more times before his troop got their animals under control. The beetles were pattering about madly, gaping their jaws and flaring their wingcases in threat, trying to scare off the future. Their riders, lightly armoured men and women, with shields slung over their backs, struck the beasts with the butts of their lances or the reins of their Art until they were back under control. By that time, Amnon's officers had set the main army to moving forward. It was the right thing to do.

'Charge with me!' he cried out. He could not remember what name Totho had given to the weapons but he recognized the description. 'They are exposed at the enemy's rear, these noisemakers. We will kill the men who operate them.'

They were mostly behind him now. Penthet the locust bucked uncomfortably beneath him, folding and refolding his wings. He and Amnon had been through a lot, and the insect's simple mind trusted him.

He put his spurs in and the locust leapt twenty feet forward, the banner of Khanaphes streaming out behind him. The beetle cavalry would come scuttling after at their top speed, long-legged over the uneven ground, catching him at the end of each jump and then being left behind again. He readied his first lance, letting it rest between Penthet's antennae as the world wheeled and plunged about him.

Enemy cavalry was already moving to intercept him, but the armoured scorpions were sluggish compared to his own fleet warriors. Only the swiftest outriders of the Scorpion-kinden were in time to cause him any inconvenience. Amnon couched his lance and let Penthet choose his own path down, wings steering so as to bring the steel point thrusting through the chitin of a scorpion before the creature or its rider even realized he was upon them. He unslung his bow as a rabble of the Many's fleetest riders bore down on him. His own fastest follower caught the closest of them with a lance, skittering in from the side and hooking the Scorpion cavalryman off his mount, while the Beetle archer seated behind the lancer was busy loosing his shafts at more distant enemies. There was a chariot rattling down towards Amnon, two beasts yoked to a two-wheeled cart. The soldiers within were training some weapon upon him, but Penthet sprang obediently into the air and Amnon sliced an arrow back down at them, killing one of their animals and dragging the chariot to a stop. A moment later, he and the bulk of his riders were past the enemy cavalry. The last few of his wedge would meet them, he knew, peeling off to throw themselves at the enemy's stings in order to buy time.

He spared a glance for the main army and saw that something was wrong. They were now locked in with the Scorpions, but were being forced back, the host of Scorpions surging to both sides of their formation.

Before him he spotted the strung-out line of weapons, long black tubes that the Scorpions were swarming around in some arcane ritual. He goaded Penthet onward, knowing that the riders behind him would take up the pace.

There were other Scorpions rushing to get between him and the weapons, but he knew a cavalry charge would break them. The Scorpions had no decent spear-wall to fend off riders, and their own cavalry was hopelessly outmanoeuvred.

Penthet came down before them, and he realized his next leap would clear the mob of Scorpions entirely. He felt the locust's hind legs bunch with all the power of their colossal muscles, knowing that his charging followers would scatter and smash the Scorpions and join him on the other side of them.

Even as he jumped, he saw the enemy crossbows let fly into the charging riders.

He came down right behind them, within three yards of the hindmost Scorpions, and turned to see his cavalry. By that time, more than half of them were dead.

Something tightened inside him. The ground the Scorpions faced was strewn with fallen men, with dying animals. Riding beetles, whose shells could shrug off javelins and axe-blades, had been pierced through with holes, the short, heavy bolts barely slowing for chitin or barding. They lay on their sides or on their backs, legs twitching and kicking in uncomprehending agony.

By now, the survivors had struck the Scorpion line, which fragmented before them, the enemy simply running left and right. Though many of the crossbowmen fell to the lances of the riders, or under the feet of their mounts, there were still plenty left.

'Onwards!' Amnon cried, although he heard his own voice sounding raw with grief. Penthet took him another great stride towards the enemy weapons, and his men followed without question. The crossbow shot began to fall on them from behind now, and from the left where the main Scorpion army was. The bolts zipped through the air like wasps. One bounded from Amnon's shield. Another skipped across Penthet's thorax right in front of him, leaving a shallow gouge, barely slowed.

The Scorpions were fleeing from the nearest weapon but he was too quick for them. He came down in their midst, his lance impaling one, and then his sword lashing out to kill two more. A scattering of riders reached him, slaying the rest before they could escape. He felt Penthet prepare for the next leap.

They had shifted the next weapon round, he saw. Some of the crew there were not Scorpions but Wasp-kinden, such as had so recently been the guests of Khanaphes. The gaping maw of the leadshotter was now facing him.

Amnon gave out a wordless cry, feeling two crossbow bolts impact into Penthet's side. The locust kicked off from the ground, unevenly but high.

The thunder spoke.

It was not just that one, but many, the others dropping shot on to the rear edge of the Khanaphir forces. That one weapon filled Amnon's view, though: the flash of fire followed by the plume of smoke. The lead-shot ball struck into his cavalry just as it was forming, smashing three riders and their beasts smashed into bloody shards.

The crossbows loosed again, and now there were just two riders behind him. The crew of the weapon ahead of him had scattered, and he did not have the numbers to hunt them down, or the strength to break the iron of the weapon itself.

He came down again, his two survivors still with him. 'Rejoin the army!' he bellowed. 'Fly!'

Penthet could fly, not strongly but enough. The beetles could manage a brief hop: a frantic, buzzing barrelling through the air. It would have to suffice.

The locust launched itself into the air, wings spreading into furious motion right behind him, battering Amnon with their force. The beetles lifted more slowly, clawing for height. One faltered, the bolts finding it an easy target, piercing its underbelly in a dozen places and bringing it down. The other one took three bolts but stayed in the air, in a single strained burst of effort that took it down behind the Khanaphir lines. Amnon felt the shuddering impact as another quarrel took Penthet in the abdomen.

Amnon's officers had already begun the retreat. With what discipline was left to them, the Khanaphir forces were falling back. In places it was already a rout, but the centre — the Royal Guard itself — was holding the Scorpions at bay, selling their own lives at a ruinous cost to the attackers.

Behind them, on the approach to the river Jamail, there lay farms and tributary villages, herders' hovels, dozens of little homes that had trusted to Khanaphes's protection. The army retreated through them at the best pace it could, and the Scorpions, who might have harried them right up to the very walls of the city, fell away to seize on this immediate chance to loot.

So it was that the remnants of the army of Khanaphes regained its city. Half of the men and women who had marched out that morning never came home.

Jakal came to him at last, that same night, after the host of Nem had made its camp amongst the burned-out farmhouses, the ruined fields. When the last prisoners had finally been tired of and slain or packed off for slaves, when the bloodlust of the battle had simmered into an anticipation of the morrow, she came to him, at last, naked save for a belt where a long dagger was sheathed.

In the gloom of his tent, by two guttering oil lamps, he could see her well enough. The bluish light tinted her pale skin with an undersea glow. She was lean and muscled, her breasts small, little of the feminine about her. Hrathen was more used to slave women, Wasps or other kinden of the Empire. Jakal's jaw jutted with narrow fangs, her hands bore claws curving over thumb and forefinger.

Gazing on her, he felt such a surge of arousal as he had never known. She was the Warlord of the Many of Nem, on whose word the horde of Scorpion-kinden fought and died. She had marked him out from the start: a constant teasing, backed with steel, that had found all the gaps in his Rekef facade. Her eyes still glinted with amusement at the victories she had won in her own personal campaign.

'Do you not trust me, yet?' he asked, looking at the dagger. She knelt beside him, pressed one hand to his broad and hairless chest, pushing him back on to his bedroll.

'I will never trust you, Of-the-Empire,' she replied, 'but this is our way. We are a fierce people, after all, and couplings turn into killings sometimes. Claws, daggers … perhaps I should take one of your crossbows into bed with me, to mark today's conquest.'

He had reached for his own sword-belt, but she pounced on his arm, pinning his wrist with her claws, gripping hard enough to draw blood.

'What need have you of steel?' she demanded. 'I know you are never unarmed, Of-the-Empire, for your Art lives in your hands — the Art of both your kin.' She drew his hand to her mouth, biting at it gently, the rank of her fangs barely denting the skin. He felt her tongue lick his palm, as though exploring where his Art came from. He could feel his palms warm with the sheer excitement of it. She released his hand and laughed at him delightedly.

She is ready to kill me, he thought, but that was no revelation. She was equally ready to kill him at any time, for any reason. It was how they lived, the Scorpion-kinden, and it meant he belonged.

She was upon him in an instant and they wrestled briefly. He might have been the stronger by some small margin, but she fought with more fire — the Warlord of the Nem demanding nothing less than a complete surrender, pinning him down beneath her and clasping him between her claws.

Her eyes held his, and he thought: Claws first, and then sting. Always the way of it. His death was now in the forefront of her mind, being contemplated, and that did nothing but inflame him more.

She thrust herself down on to him, and he was more than ready to enter her. Locked together, still grappling, his hands warm against her cool skin, in that moment he abandoned the Empire, all the games and rules and weaknesses.

Later, separated, they lay watching each other, as the watches of the night turned towards morning. Scorpion-kinden did not slumber in one another's arms. Jakal had fallen back out of arm's reach, perhaps close enough still that the claws of her hands could scrape against those of his.

'Let me in,' he said, barely more than a whisper. 'What is it that I cannot understand of your people? I want to be part of your world.'

'Have I not let you in, this very night?' she asked him, amused.

'I have worked with your kinden for years, in the Dryclaw,' he told her, feeling an urgency about it. 'You are not like them: they have been corrupted by the Spiders, by the Empire. How is it you have not?'

'They forget their true enemies. They forget their past,' she explained, with a one-shouldered shrug. 'They tell no histories, they keep no lore. We hold firm to our histories here. Perhaps you had not thought of us as scholars?' He saw her fangs bared in a grin. 'Our histories are our grudges, told by each generation to the next. We hold to those grudges, and we would never let them go. Let our cousins of the Dryclaw be seduced away from their past. We remember.'

'But remember what?'

She eyed him, still smiling. 'And why would you know?'

'Because I would be a part of it. Your grudges are mine.'

'So besotted, Of-the-Empire?'

'I will kill you if you name me that again.' The words came out flatly, but sharp-edged. She paused a long moment, regarding him, turning his death over in her mind once again, but the smile stayed put.

'At last you speak as we do,' she said. 'A warrior needs no more reason to shed blood tomorrow than because the sun shines, but perhaps you should know our story, at last. We remember. We remember to the time when the desert was green. Long and long ago, when the desert was green and the cities of the Beetle-kinden were strung across it like dew on a spiderweb. Long ago when we lived in the dry fringes. When the whole world was ruled by the Masters of Khanaphes, and we alone would not bow the knee.'

Hrathen felt an odd feeling stir inside him, as though he was at the edge of a chasm, looking down. How many generations? he wondered. How much was 'the whole world' when that was true?

'Year on year, mother to daughter, and the slaves of the Masters tried to tame us. They forced us to the very edge of the world, but we would not be their slaves. We alone, of all the kinden of the world, would not surrender, nor would we flee to seek other lands and other masters.'

Other lands and other masters? Hrathen had never been a student of history, but he guessed this must mean what they called the Bad Old Days, those times in which the world had belonged to very different kinden: Moths, Spiders. Were these 'Masters' in fact Spider-kinden? It sounds like their way.

'Then the dry times came,' Jakal went on, 'and the green lands faded and the Beetle-kinden departed. Year on year, mother to daughter, the land dried, and the Beetle-kinden returned to their river, where it was always green. It was not that they could not have survived in the drier lands, but that their Masters could not, and where their Masters' power failed, so they failed also, for they were slaves always to their Masters.' Jakal's telling had started to sound almost ritualized, recalled words told over and over, told to him now in this tent in sight of Khanaphes's walls. He sensed history all around them: the clawed and brutal story of the Scorpion-kinden.

'So we came unto the lands that had once been green, and we came unto the cities of the outer desert and the mid-desert, and all the things that the Beetles had left behind. We took their metal and made swords from it. We took their wood and made spears of it. Such was the wealth they had discarded that we yet mine their cities for the commonplace treasures they have left behind. Only the cities of the inner desert are barred to us, for there the Masters posted their guardians, and those we may not disturb.'

The inner desert? Hrathen shivered again. Nothing lived in the inner desert, of course. Even the Scorpions could not survive there. That had been the Imperial understanding, at least. It had not been considered that fear of something worse might keep them away.

Once Khanaphes is dust, he thought, I shall go there and view these cities, But it was a hollow boast because, in absorbing the Many's history, he was adopting their strictures too.

'Yet still,' Jakal watched him carefully, 'still our enemies kept to the river, and held all the land that was still green, and penned us up in the dry lands, year on year, mother to daughter. Until the strangers came from the north and brought us many weapons, and showed us how to take those green lands from the Masters' servants. And we smote the servants of the Masters and tore down their walls, and slew them, women, men and children, each and every one,' and she said it sweetly, very sweetly indeed, and he loved her for it.