Part 35 (1/2)

'Get me Teuthete,' he ordered. 'Then bring me all my officers.'

Thirty-Three.

Her name was Teuthete. The word she used to define herself was 'Chosen'. The t.i.tle was woven through with history: the long and complex interactions and accords between her people and the Masters of Khanaphes.

She was slender, five feet and a half tall at most, far shorter than any of her distant western kin. Her skin was silvery grey, like light s.h.i.+ning on silty water. She wore the armour of her people: a breastplate, shoulder and leg-guards of wicker and wood woven together tightly, interlaced with sinews and tightly plaited cords of hair: enough to turn a sword-stroke or snarl an arrow. Her own hair would have been white, except that she had ceremonially re-shaved her scalp before this mission. That was the mark of her servitude, her calling.

Being Chosen was not just about being in service to the city, for she was something more than the levies of their army or the followers of their hunts. She was hostage for the freedom of her people, for the continuance of their ancient ways. Her personal loyalty bound her people to the city, and protected them from the wrath of the Masters. Such wrath had not been felt since time out of mind, but it was remembered nevertheless. They had warred with the Khanaphir, in that very distant past. The Marsh people had fought with all their skill and stealth, and their diminis.h.i.+ng numbers, until the Masters had offered them a truce. A truce of servitude but not slavery, for Mantis-kinden could never abide slavery. With their backs to the wall they found other names for it and called it loyalty.

And now Khanaphes itself looked to be facing its last days. Teuthete was no fool: she had read Amnon's face even as he delivered to her the word of the Masters, or what was left of that word once it had pa.s.sed through him. Amnon did not seem frightened. She reckoned the man did not quite know what fear was. He had been severed from hope, though. This was not a man who looked forward to the next dawn.

It would be easy enough for the Marsh people to withdraw now, to step into the mists and shadows of their murky realm and wait until it was over. The Many of Nem were not equipped to hunt Mantids through the waterways, and if they tried it, they would regret it and then die of it, in short order. Teuthete's people were not directly threatened, and the descending rod would strike only the backs of their age-old taskmasters. The mission they had given her, given her people, was a death waiting to happen. It seemed to her that they would none of them see their villages again.

She had thought and the thought shocked her of turning away from the Khanaphir in their time of need. It was only a thought, though. To act upon it would be to break an oath her people had sworn generation after generation, and that she herself had sworn as their proxy, as their Chosen. The sense of honour that bound her would have been entirely understood by her kin in the distant Lowlands, whose existence she did not even guess at.

She had a score of her people with her, as many as she dared take. They were all Marsh hunters, skilled in the ways of silence, blessed by their Art to strike fast, to step unseen. They padded wordless out of the Marsh on the west side of the river, with the walls of the city standing bravely to their right, the festering camp of the enemy directly ahead of them. It was three hours before dawn, those longest hours when sentries slumbered and it seemed the night would never end.

They carried their bows made from layers of different woods and sinews bound together with fish glue, curved and recurved so that, when unstrung, they coiled forward like worms. The Mantids would hold one end down with a foot, bracing their entire bodies, wrestling the rebellious strength of those composite materials until they had turned them inside-out, then secured them with ten-times interwoven hair and imprisoned all that straining power within a bow that looked small enough to be a child's toy. Their arrows normally had heads of stone or bone; the best of them were tipped with the hard, sharp chelicera of a certain water spider, and were lethal with venom. They had spears, too: long, flexible weapons headed like their arrows. They had the flexing spines that sprang from their forearms. There was not a piece of metal on any of them, and they were barefoot. The Scorpion thousands, equipped with their halberds and armour, their greatswords and axes and usurped Imperial weapons, awaited them.

The sentries were sporadic, loose, inattentive. There were even gaps where several had deserted their posts. Teuthete found one, though, staring directly out towards the Marsh. She crept close enough to see clearly the man's narrow eyes, trusting to her Art to hide her. She nocked an arrow tipped with a spider's fang. The first blood must always be shed properly. To stint on that now would be to curse their mission.

She drew the bow back slowly, with incremental motions of her arm, her shoulder, her entire frame taking the strain of it. Another Scorpion was pa.s.sing by, weaving slightly, already drunk on looted beer. She waited, untiring, until he was gone.

Then she loosed. The arrow was gone from her bow, had lanced through the man's eye, without seeming to cover the brief distance between. Instantly she and her fellows were on the body, and had hauled his heavy corpse off into the night.

She took out her best knife, its blade a serrated razor of stone. The others of her party gathered around reverently. Before a hunt of this importance, these things must be done. There were rites that must be observed.

She cut the dead man's armour free and opened him up, spilling as much of his blood as she could on to the earth. Dabbling her hands in the gore, she anointed her fellows one by one, placing a handprint in steaming red on each forehead, the fingers of it curling over each shaved skull.

'Now let us hunt,' she said, and they surged into the Scorpion camp, at a fast rush that was not running, but a silent, ghostly charge.

Amnon had explained to her what they must do, and she had not completely understood, other than that at the camp's heart there were some great iron weapons that the Khanaphir feared. Amnon's foreign creature had tried to tell her how best to disable them, but his words had shattered on the s.h.i.+eld of Teuthete's Inapt.i.tude, and she had not grasped them. In his frustration the foreigner had offered to come with them, but Amnon had dissuaded him in time. No outsider could hunt alongside her people and live to tell of it.

The Scorpions remained oblivious as Teuthete's hunters pa.s.sed between their tents. Most of them slept but there were plenty still wandering about in the dark, laughing, fighting, drinking. However stealthy they were, the Mantids were not invisible, not quite, so it was inevitable that they would be spotted eventually. Meanwhile, they continued soundlessly, deeper into the camp, relying on their speed to take them close to where they needed to be.

She could see ahead of her the tarpaulined shapes that matched Amnon's words. There were many Scorpions nearby, some sleeping, some not. One of the weapons had its cover stripped back, and a foreigner was doing something to it, prodding and poking.

We have come far enough.

Teuthete drew back her bowstring once more, and around her the others followed suit, save for the few that trusted their spears more and were getting ready to leap.

The arrow sped from the string, plunging through the foreigner so far that its stone head shattered on the iron of the weapon he was busy working on. Simultaneously, a dozen other arrows rammed home into the Scorpions standing around him, killing them instantly. Teuthete was already moving forward, bow now slung over her shoulder. There was no time to admire her handiwork.

The Mantids screamed as they came in, each one of them giving a high, whooping yell that froze the Scorpions briefly in their tracks. The spears then lunged in, flickering fast. Many of the enemy wore armour that could have broken the bone spearheads or snapped the stone points, but the Mantis were precise. They lanced eyes, throats, skewering under arms or into groins. When they had left no target standing, they began killing those on the ground, those just now waking up, with brutal efficiency. Half of them continued loosing arrows into the bulk of the camp at every new figure that presented itself.

Teuthete vaulted on to the uncovered weapon with a brief s.h.i.+mmer of her wings. It was mostly composed of a solid iron body. There were various holes and pieces to it, but it seemed invulnerable to her. The foreigner's instructions had been just words and they had made no sense to her.

One of her hunters fell, a stubby arrow protruding from the man's lean body, having punched through his woven armour as though it were not there. Her own archers kept loosing over and over. She noticed a bright flash from somewhere, a bolt of golden flame that she danced aside from.

There was a bowl of blue-burning oil nearby, by which light the foreigner had been working. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and poured the contents into the orifices of the weapon. She could not tell if it did any harm, but the burning oil was flooding across the surface of the machine now, and perhaps its innards would be more vulnerable to flame.

The Scorpions were now rallying, alerted to the killers in the heart of their camp. Teuthete saw a shambles of a charge, a score of half-dressed men and women with axes and swords, but it was cut down by her archers before they got within a spear's reach. Another three of her people were now dead to the Scorpions' own bowmen.

She found more burning oil to splash over the covers of the remaining weapons. The heavy canvas smouldered fitfully.

Her people called a warning to her. There was a much greater Scorpion force forming: at least half a hundred of them dressed in piecemeal armour, with a scattering of their guard-beasts as well. Arrows lanced into them, each shot exacting a death, but they gained in numbers all the time, and then rushed forward in a single body.

Now we come to it. Teuthete and her spears confronted the onslaught. They did not even wait to receive the charge but launched themselves into the Scorpions' midst, half-leaping and half-flying. The spears were lost instantly, each through the body of a foe, and they resorted to their spines, dancing and cutting. driving the bony spikes of their forearms into faces and throats. The Mantis archers were still loosing into the throng, impossible to miss at this range.

Teuthete killed: it was what her kinden did. It was the red heart of all their rituals and mysteries, their oaths and honour. It was what they put up all their masquerade of customs to hide. She killed because that was what she was made for. It was not glorious or n.o.ble, merely efficient.

Scorpions were not slack in that regard, either. They, too, had mostly cast aside their axes and blades. They had an understanding, their two kinden: unarmed is best unarmed is best. There was a pleasing simplicity in it, unmatched by the later layers of civilized war. Claws against spines, they slashed each other, Teuthete's handful a blur of blood and motion within the Scorpion host. The archers were not shooting now, but engaged in their own close combat.

It was over, and she knew it. She could feel it in the surge and swell of the melee, as each of her followers died. Not one of them departed before their path had been smoothed by the death of many enemies. Her own time was coming, and she accepted that without question. If she was Chosen, this was what she had been chosen for.

There was sudden thunder out of a clear sky, and she felt a mighty hand take hold of her, take those around her. Most were thrown flat, but she, with her wings momentarily outstretched, was hurled into the sky.

One of the weapons had died. Its death-agonies, instantaneous but colossal, had wrecked a s.p.a.ce of the Scorpion camp and broken open the weapon next to it. It had been the same one she had poured burning oil into, she realized.

So that is how you kill them. It was too late now to exploit this knowledge.

The air was abruptly busy with stubby machine-shot arrows sleeting up at her. The moment had gone. She saw three others of her kinden also airborne, although one was picked off as soon as she noted him.

She darted higher, labouring her way into the air. Her kinden were not strong fliers but the darkness cloaked them. The three survivors swooped over the camp, heading towards the city walls. Something tried to follow them, some flying foreigner in banded armour, but she turned in the air with her bow ready in her hands and spiked an arrow through him.

I live.

It was unexpected and she was not sure how she felt about it. The shackles of Khanaphes were still fastened upon her, but that would not last long. Amnon would find other ways for her to die. It was what being Chosen meant.

In the dawn's first light, Hrathen surveyed the damage. Angved and his engineers were picking over the damaged artillery. The bodies were being looted and then hauled off into the ravaged farmlands to rot. Scorpion-kinden were not sentimental.

'Give me a report,' the halfbreed growled. Angved clapped one of his men on the shoulder, telling him to carry on, and stood up.

'I counted around a hundred Scorpion dead,' he said. 'Half of those fell in the initial ambush.'

'Ambush?' Hrathen spat. 'How can we have an ambush occur in our own camp?'

'Well, whatever the word is.'

'What loss to your artillerists?' Hrathen pressed.

'Of the Scorpions? Three or four. They'd expected our crews to stay with their machines, I suppose. In that case, they don't know how much of a shambles this camp is. No great loss there. However, one of my better engineers got himself killed. One of the shotters had a jammed cartridge and he was working double-time trying to sort it out. Shows what you get for being too keen. Oh, and one of your Slave Corps lads got killed because he was stupid enough to chase their survivors into the dark.'

'Enemy dead?'

'Seventeen bodies recovered. Some kind of local Mantis-kinden, like we saw in the battle. I fought Mantis-kinden in the Twelve-year War: this could be a nightly occurrence.'