'Why laugh?' Hrathen asked him.
'The old and the new,' Angved said. 'You know, among these people, two in three aren't even Apt.' His lip curled in derision. 'They'd make the worst of slaves, back in the Empire, strong backs and nothing else. It didn't matter to them before, though — they didn't know any better. Then we turn up with a job lot of crossbows, and we make a warrior elite out of the best of them.'
'You've yet to say anything amusing.' The engineer's words were close enough to Hrathen's own thoughts to make him surly.
Angved cocked an eyebrow. 'Well, think about it. Who are the Inapt kinden that we're familiar with? Spiders, Moth-kinden, Grasshoppers. Not one of them that could go a day in full armour without collapsing from it. Thin and delicate, the lot of them. And yet with these lads, it's the Apt that get the decent jobs. Your host of bolt-fodder out there, with their swords and pikes, they're your Inapt. And they'll die, battle after battle, until it's only the Apt left of them. You reckon that's how it was with us, way back?'
Hrathen stared at him. 'You're quite the philosopher, suddenly.'
Angved shrugged. 'We're making a new nation here, sir. We've taken a rabble of monsters that was no use to anyone, and we've put a mirror to it, and made a kind of mockery of the Imperial army. All we need to do is paint them black and yellow, and they're ours.'
'And is that your brief?'
'Mine?' The grey-haired engineer laughed at that. 'I'm just an engineer, sir. I just have an inquiring mind, and I see the future, here. We've discovered the great natural resource of this desolate waste. We've struck the richest lode of Auxillian soldiers you could ever want to find. We just need to break their pride enough so that the Empire can put a foot on their necks. And it'll happen — not today, maybe not in this generation, but it will.'
Angved seemed to find all this reflection a cause for humour, but his words felt like lead to Hrathen. 'Go look to the siege engines,' he snapped. 'I want them ready for a field battle, not just to assault the walls.'
Implacable, Angved saluted and strolled off.
Is he Rekef? was the instant thought, and it was not the first time Hrathen had considered it. The artillerist would make a good watcher, someone Hrathen could not dispense with. Sulvec need not be the only sneak on this mission.
The Many of Nem were all ready now, proving Angved right as they made formations that looked like a child's sketches of Imperial battle order. Hrathen strode towards the automotives, aware of all eyes resting upon him. The Scorpions saw him as an outcast, as a foreigner, but also as a warrior, as a provider of this golden opportunity. They would follow him for now, and they would tear him to pieces if he failed them.
Then let their claws rend me now. But he stopped by the lead automotive and looked back towards them. If this is to be the last flowering of the Many of Nem, then let them go to it gloriously. They were not his people, but then he had never had a people, so they would do.
Without warning, Jakal was there beside him. She vaulted up on to the automotive's footplate and directed her spear ahead. 'Ruin!' Her voice sang clear out over the throng. 'Ruin and dust on the Khanaphir!' Hrathen saw her tusks bared in a mad grin, visible beneath the lip of her helm, her lithe body held straight and proud as she clung to the automotive's rungs, the spear thrust forward like destiny. 'Let the Jamail run red! Let us dam it with their corpses! Onward to Khanaphes!'
Watching her, as the automotives growled and rumbled, and were drowned out by the roaring of the war host, Hrathen felt his heart leap, wanting her as he had never wanted a woman before. He hauled himself up beside her as the machine began to surge forward, and she turned to look at him with flashing eyes.
He looked behind, to see the barren landscape crawling dark with the great mass of Scorpion-kinden and their beasts. Ruin and dust, he echoed, and curse the future.
The dust was bitter in his mouth as he trudged on through the wasteland, heading eastward, ever eastward. Meyr's people possessed a solid endurance, such as had endeared them to the Empire's slavemasters, but by now he was ready to drop. Sheer stubbornness alone kept him stomping on towards the river Jamail and the city of Khanaphes.
The journey through the earth had been taxing enough. It was an Art hard-learned, and draining to use. He had clawed blindly through the sand and grit, the compacted strata of the dust of centuries, and through the bones of rock beneath, as if swimming through the earth's very body. In grindingly slow sweeps of his massive limbs, he had dragged his way out from under the Scorpion camp. Then, feeling his strength failing, he had struggled for the surface, hauling himself hand over hand from the solid darkness into the light.
He had still been within sight of the Scorpion fires, so he had made pitifully little progress, for all his exertions. He could not rest, either. There was a long way to travel.
His shield and axe had been abandoned within the earth, deep within the rock where they would never be found again. He considered abandoning his armour, too, but they had made it for him especially. It had been the armoursmiths' greatest challenge, to adapt their designs to his mighty frame. It barely slowed him, anyway, and, more to the point, he did not feel that he had the reserves of mental strength to undo all the buckles.
So he had set forth, away from the Scorpions, with a slow and deliberate tread. Some uncounted hours later, he had observed the sun rising, and adjusted his aim to where the landscape first lit up red. It had been a cool night, the breezes from the distant sea treacherous with their promises. The sun, even while still low in the sky, had banished all that, beginning to roast him with its infinite patience.
We are not a people made for this. The Mole Cricket-kinden could toil in the earth for hours without complaint, but they had never been built to travel. He had long since stopped listening to the muscles of his legs. Their complaints had nothing new to tell him. He had retreated into some small part of his mind, focused on nothing save the horizon.
And it was all futile, he knew. He did not look behind him any more. He had already seen the great wall of dust that the Many of Nem were stirring up ahead of them. They were fresh, fierce and anxious to taste the blood of their enemies. They would easily overhaul a poor Mole Cricket lost in the desert. If he was lucky then their natural bloodlust would see them kill him in the moment of finding him: he knew them well enough to expect worse if he fell into their taloned hands alive.
I have regrets. His people were close-mouthed and inward-looking: even among their own kind, they said little. Perhaps there was little needing to be said. I should have let the Wasps kill me there in the camp. But the will to survive was deep-entrenched. Even another hour of life, even another hour of crawling through this barren, loveless land, was life enough. We are so tenacious, and for what?
His people were philosophers of a sort, but their philosophy was a fragmented thing. Few in number, slow to act, seldom roused to passion, they had been slaves in the Days of Lore, and they had been slaves ever since. Mere strength, sufficient to shatter stone and bend steel, was powerless against the imprisoning chains of history.
Something passed overhead, only a shadow on the earth to indicate it. He felt almost relieved: They have me, then. He had wondered if the Imperials would send scouts out after him. Perhaps they were not even looking for him at all, but simply flying ahead to see what defences Khanaphes had prepared. It mattered not, either way, for word would return to the host and then they would send out some cavalry, perhaps, to run him down.