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 passing 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 shield of Teuthete's Inaptitude, 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 passed 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 shimmer 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 snatched 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 noble, 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. 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.