Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

For a moment, Che saw it all, the entire map of it, a prescient dream such as any Moth-kinden skryre would have wept at, and experiencing the full horror of what might happen stole her breath away.

But when she woke, after midnight, it was only with fragments like shards of ice melting, the sheer enormity of the vision defeating her, and all it left her with was a sense of dread – and an aftertaste of the Empress’s hunger.

I am running out of time, she told herself, I am here for a reason. When she slept again, her mind was focused not on the grand tapestry but on the threads, and there she saw Tynisa.

She let the rapier carry her forward, its needle point penetrating the chest of the Grasshopper-kinden before her, then whipping out again at her command, before flashing behind her without her even having to turn and look. She felt the slightest resistance as it carved into another enemy, and she exulted briefly in the sheer purity of the sensation. A spear was heading her way, its wielder scarcely seeming relevant. Her blade caught the shaft, bound around it in a circular motion that put her within the spearman’s reach, her point darting inside his guard until it had lanced him under the armpit.

For a moment she seemed clear of it all, unthreatened and alone in the midst of the skirmish, although Telse Orian’s people were still hard-pressed on every side.

Aerial scouts had reported a band of brigands lurking in the woods here, perhaps a score of them. Orian had set out with half as many again, a handful of nobles and Mercers backed by an unruly levy of Grasshopper peasants. The bandits had anticipated them, though, and then had come the ambush. The Salmae forces were outnumbered two to one, and many of the brigands carried bows, whilst of Orian’s party only the nobles were archers. The latter were better shots than the brigands, for sure, but numbers still counted. About half the panicking peasant levy had been scythed down, and several of the horses killed, before the ambushers had finally broken cover and attacked.

Those who met Tynisa regretted it, albeit briefly.

She had seen the ambush for what it was straight away. She had heard her father’s voice in her ear, felt him guide her eyes: they would be concealed here and here, and the main body of them there. She had said nothing to the others, feeling a need for blood building up in her. Let them come.

She picked her next target, a raggedly armoured Dragonfly cocking back his spear, about to drive it into a Mercer’s back. Levelling her rapier, she let it carry her to its inevitable destination, running the man through the ribs and out again, with barely more resistance from the flesh than from the air. She caught another before he even saw her, virtually by accident as he walked through the deadly path of her blade, and then she was passing on again, passing through the conflict like a plague, instantly striking down all who came within her orbit.

The rage was upon her, but it was harnessed now, tamed to her will. Her sword, her body, her father’s memory, all of them were working in seamless harmony, so that she could ghost through a scrum of half a dozen enemy, their spearheads and blades passing on every side, and barely have to sway or parry, their blows falling wide as if by prior arrangement. Once or twice an arrow flashed towards her, but she caught it with her sword, each shaft slanting away, spent or broken.

There was something in the faces of those she killed, and it was adulation. It was her due. In that succession of fatal moments, she became real and fulfilled, and so did her victims. She rescued them from a lifetime of greed and murder and made something great of them by using their bodies as her canvas.

She realized that they were gone, all the brigands. They had fled into the woods rather than face her. The ground was littered with them, and with the dead of her own side as well. She was not even bloodied, though. She was not touched. Instead she was smiling, and perhaps it was that smile alone that had finally driven them away.

As she looked round, something miscarried within her. For a moment the fierce killing flames guttered.

Telse Orian lay cradled in the arms of one of his fellows, an arrow sunk so deeply in his neck that the point must surely be jutting out behind. He was not dead, not quite yet, but beyond the skill of any healer they had brought with them, and it was plain that moving him would be certain to bring his end that much the sooner.

He was looking at Tynisa, or at least his staring eyes were turned towards her. His mouth worked, bloody at the corners, but no sounds came out.

Tynisa gazed about with fresh eyes. Of the score who had set out, only she and six others remained, four of the armoured nobles and a couple of the most fortunate peasants. The two of them, lean spearmen clad in leather cuirasses and helms, stood close together and regarded Tynisa with fear and awe. They did not look so very different to the bandits, and it seemed to her, in that moment, entirely possible that some of the flesh that had fallen before her blade might not even have been the enemy’s.

What am I doing? She asked herself, looking again at Telse Orian. His eyes were still fixed… no, not at her exactly, but as though he saw something – or someone – at her shoulder.

She saw the light go out, the last spark of what had been Orian, who, out of all Alain’s peers, had shown her kindness. For a moment she felt that she should run, should flee this place while she was still free of…

Tynisa shook her head to clear it of such foolishness. ‘We must report back to Alain,’ she told the survivors, assuming command effortlessly. ‘We must report how the bandits are driven back.’

For a moment they stared at her blankly, trying to equate her triumphant tone with the scene around them.

Che woke up into perfect awareness in the pre-dawn greyness, staring up at the ceiling. The previous night’s images stirred in her mind, but most of all she remembered Tynisa, fighting with breath-taking elegance and grace, and not alone. Her every move had been shadowed by a twisted figure always at her back, one hand on her shoulder, corded with vines and racked with thorns. Tisamon had found his daughter, and Che had witnessed how he was moulding her. What part of the Mantis Weaponsmaster that was still left to haunt the land of the living had obviously decided to cling to the ancient values of his kinden: blood and death, fierce and uncompromising, with not a hair’s-breadth gap into which mercy or regret could pry. Che remembered Tisamon, and what she had heard of the man’s last days. From what she gathered, regrets had eaten him alive, unable to reconcile his humanity with the impossible and terrible ideals his people aspired to.

It was plain that his ghost did not intend to let his daughter go the same way, even if he had to cut out her humanity to do so. What will Tynisa become?

Her sister was suffering, and there was nobody else who could go to her aid, but Cheerwell Maker.

By the time dawn had claimed the east, she was ready. She had dressed, recovered those of her possessions that Thalric and Varmen had brought with them, and now sat waiting impatiently for the light to waken her companions.

First up was Gramo Galltree, whom she had met briefly the previous evening, before she abandoned the world for much-needed sleep.

He eyed her cautiously. ‘You seem recovered.’

With what she now knew, such small talk seemed an unconscionable waste of her time. ‘Will the prince see me?’ she asked flatly. ‘Alternatively, will he mind if I take my leave…? Why are you smiling?’

Gramo coughed into his hand, a perfectly Collegiate way of hiding amusement. ‘Prince Felipe Shah departed, with his retinue, even as you were being… recovered,’ he told her. ‘He had an audience with one of your Wasp friends, and then he set off for Esselve. Today is the first day of spring. A prince-major is expected to visit his vassals, although for the last few years Prince Felipe has not been too prompt in that.’