Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

‘You say it as though we planned this,’ Dal said dourly.

Again Gaved shrugged. ‘I wish I could do something to help, but right now I’ve got my hands full just helping me. I have to go and dodge my fellow scouts now, and most of them can see in the dark.’

‘Luck go with you, Gaved.’ Tynisa put out a hand and he took it cautiously, clasping wrist to wrist. It was, she reflected, a Lowlander gesture, therefore unlikely to see much use amongst Wasps.

After he had gone, and Che had taken up watch again, Dal turned back to his fellows. ‘When they come tomorrow… if we can beat them off just once, then we’ll sally out,’ he suggested. ‘Those that can get away, go. Split up and lose them in the trees.’

‘They’ll be overhead and waiting for that,’ said his halfbreed follower.

He shrugged. ‘We’re at the end of the wire now. Maybe someone will get clear. But wait till tomorrow for that talk. Let’s have something more cheerful now. A song, anyone?’

One of the Grasshopper-kinden had a little instrument, a holed gourd small enough to be cupped in one hand, but she played something soulful on it, pleasant in its way but hardly qualifying as cheerful. After that the Spider, Avaris, told them some unlikely story about ghosts and buried treasure, and told it well enough to take their thoughts away from their cramped and grim surroundings. Then the other Grasshopper tried for a song, with a voice that was strong and pleasant at first, but the refrain seemed inexorably to speak of things past, things lost, time’s hand closing the book of days, until a quaver came into the singer’s tone, and he let his words fumble to a halt.

‘Ah, well,’ said Mordrec, into the ensuing quiet. ‘This is it, then. I’m glad we gave them the run in the end, but all we’ve done is move our prison cell eastwards a ways. No last-minute schemes, Dala? You always did have a head for them.’

Dal Arche’s expression suggested not. ‘I’d rather Ygor was with us now. He was always a good man in a scrape.’

Maure took a deep breath. ‘And Varmen, too,’ she said, and there was an odd tremble in her voice as she said it, suggesting something more than mourning.

‘And him,’ Mordrec agreed. ‘Why not? In fact, I’d rather we had about two hundred old friends and relations.’

‘But Varmen…’ Maure cast a guilty glance back at Che. ‘Varmen had a way out. Because Varmen was in this place before.’

‘Varmen’s dead,’ Thalric declared, probably more harshly than he meant, but Maure barely flinched.

Dal’s face remained expressionless. ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded. ‘Explain.’

‘He told me about a time during the war when he and some of his people were penned in by us Commonwealers, no hope of getting out – only of holding on a little longer before the end.’

‘Maure-’ Che started, suddenly understanding, but the magician hurried on with her story.

‘He challenged them to duel of champions. That’s the old way, here in the Commonweal. Before the Empire, that was the way that lords and ladies did it, to spare their people. Of course, the Wasps never saw the need, but Varmen used it to buy time.’

Tynisa saw that every pair of eyes had turned to her, inexorable as the dawn.

‘No, absolutely not,’ she heard Che saying distantly. ‘They have a Weaponsmaster with them. A real killer.’

‘I thought we had one here, too,’ Dal Arche said quietly.

‘But how will it help?’ the Beetle girl demanded.

‘Che, when two Weaponsmasters fight, people watch,’ Maure pointed out. ‘Even in the Commonweal it is a rare thing to see. There will be a chance to escape, win or lose. More of a chance than by staying trapped in here until…’ She faced up to Che’s accusing stare and shrugged unhappily. ‘Che, I want to live. I agreed to help you, but not to end like this. I want to live.’

‘As do we all,’ Dal Arche agreed.

‘You can’t ask her!’ Che snapped at him.

Dal stood up abruptly, with enough threat in his posture that Thalric intervened, hand extended, getting between him and Che. With that, everyone was on their feet, hands reaching for weapon hilts – everyone save Tynisa and Maure.

‘Hold! All hold!’ Dal snapped. ‘Listen, Beetle,’ he addressed Che, ‘we are due to die on the morrow. I have no illusions about the justice of our cause. We are robbers and killers, and so are those that oppose us, and all the justice in the world won’t tilt those scales an inch. But if there is a chance that any of us could live, then I can ask anyone anything. Death is a long road, Beetle girl, and trodden one way only, and those who put honour and principle before life belong in stories, not here in this ruin along with us. A challenge of champions might win us time to scatter and get away. If it means only another half-day of life for one of us, then I can ask.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s right regarding the old ways from before the war. They don’t apply to bastards like us, peasants and villains, but if the girl puts herself forward, I’ll wager the Salmae will agree. That way the princess’ll get to see the blood she most wants to.’

‘How can you even-’ Che started, but Tynisa just said, ‘Che.’ Not spoken loudly, but the word brought silence in its wake.

‘It’s a good idea,’ she continued. ‘I’ll do it.’ And when Che started protesting again, ‘I’ve seen the man fight, so who knows how matters might fall out? And, besides, I’d rather die at the hands of another Weaponsmaster I can respect, than fall to some chance spear or arrow.’

And in her head she heard the echo of the words, With me, you can win any battle, and they were followed by hollow, bitter laughter.

I could ask him back, even now, and he would come, but she knew bleakly that she would not. I will live or die according to my own merits, in the final analysis. The real man that my father was would appreciate that.

After that it had simply remained for them to choose who should deliver the challenge.

In the grey light of a mist-laden dawn, Thalric emerged from the tumbled tower, passing Dal Arche, who had watched out the last hours of the night.

‘Good luck,’ the Dragonfly wished him.

Thalric gave the man a sour look. This was, he was fully aware, a stupid idea, and he had no faith in it, whatever the late Varmen might have said. Still, it was marginally less stupid than sitting in the tower until the Salmae finally cracked their defences.

All I need to do is get Che out, he decided. Win or lose, he would manufacture the opportunity somehow.

And they take this seriously? This clash of champions? Now that it had been mentioned, he did find an old memory surfacing from the earliest years of the war. Imperial generals being called out, gorgeously armoured Dragonfly-kinden Weaponsmasters standing before the automotives and the massed infantry, and then pointing a levelled sword, trying to face down the future.

He frowned. There was a great deal of idealism in the Commonweal back in those days – amongst the nobility, at least, who didn’t need to worry about where their next meal was coming from. Storybook lives, princes and castles, dances and hunts and mock tourneys. Then the Empire had come and burned away centuries of accumulated romance inside the engines of its war machine. So where did that leave Salme Elass? Was she still the honour-bound idealist?

Emperor’s balls she is, Thalric decided. He would rely on two things: that there would be empty-headed idle nobles among her retinue by whom this nonsense would be taken seriously and that Salme Elass knew what she herself wanted.

He spotted their picket line even as he entered the trees, mostly because it recoiled from him at a distance of twenty feet, the scouts flitting back towards the safety of the camp. He guessed that they had spread themselves thin, a cordon about the tower with plenty of airborne keeping watch for attempts at an escape to the sky. But, then, they know Tynisa, therefore they know she cannot fly.