Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

She slowed, watching carefully, seeking out the weak points. These were a better breed of brigand, she decided, with more sentries, and more alert ones, too. There were soon two score arrows pointed into the trees as the word spread.

So, a challenge.

Then she realized: Alain.

He would be bringing what men he could spare to put down an insurrection of fifty, not one hundred and fifty. He would not be ready.

I have to warn him. He can go back and find more soldiers. But in the meantime these bandits would be long gone, one step ahead of them as always.

But if they fight, we might lose…

She sensed a disappointment in the air around her. What are you thinking like? You are thinking like a cowardly Beetle, like a Spider . What is win? What is lose? Merely to fight is all. If you go back and warn your man, there will be no fight. How will you impress him then?

And there was no answer to that.

The fight had been glorious. Alain had brought perhaps ninety with him, a dozen nobles and the balance in peasant spearmen. The bandits had more archers, though Alain and his kin were better shots. The forest had not been grown with archery in mind, though, and although arrows picked off a handful on both sides, the spears met in short order, and then the real bloodletting commenced.

Tynisa had led the charge, exulting in it. The brigands she had picked as her targets had faltered, clearly recognizing her as the killer in the woods from just an hour before. They tried to keep her at the end of their spears, but they could as easily have penned in the tide. Like the tide, she flowed past them, leaving bloody wounds in her wake, her blade a cage of razors all about her, lopping spearheads clean from shafts, hands from wrists, inexorable as death.

Behind her she had felt the shock as Alain’s spearmen met the line of the enemy, pushing and shoving with their clumsy weapons, but surely they had to be exulting too, knowing that they were in the right. Surely the very vileness of the brigands’ cause had hindered the defenders. There was justice left in the Commonweal, and the bandits had discovered it at last.

Arrows constantly sought her, even in the midst of the fray, the best of the enemy bowmen trying desperately to find a way to kill her that did not involve coming within reach of her fatal sword. Her father stayed with her, guiding her left and right, letting the lethal shafts fall short or find other targets; or she would snip them from the air, her blade slicing swifter than they flew. Then she would go in search of the archers themselves, hunt them down, cut a red path towards them.

There had been one, she particularly recalled. She remembered him from before, and clearly he knew her also. She had tried again and again to reach him, but his wings had carried him clear, and he had shifted the defence with him, his followers keeping pace. Only then, for a moment, had she hungered for the greatbow that her father sometimes used, finding all her speed and skill not quite enough to bring her close to him.

But I will take you, she had silently promised him. I will bring you in chains before Alain, and he will love me for it.

Now, the conflict over and the bulk of the bandits fled, the survivors of Alain’s followers had rejoined the larger force, alongside the soldiers of Lowre Cean and Salme Elass and of the other leading nobles, camping between the trees in a great, sprawling network of fires and tents and hammocks. Tynisa strode through it all with her head held high, feeling their envious eyes upon her.

While in the midst of a conference with Lowre and some others, Alain saw her, and smiled. She could read fondness there, and admiration, and it lit her like a brand, and warmed her as she settled down to sleep.

She did not dream these days. She had not dreamt since the hunt, as though that energy within her that fed her dreams was being somehow siphoned away to feed something else. When she awoke in the forest with everyone gone from around her, then she was unsure for a moment whether it was all real or imaginary.

Her sword was in her hand, of course; whether in reality or dream it was her constant companion.

‘Who’s there?’ she demanded. She could tell that she was being watched, though she could not see another living soul.

The woman who appeared there suddenly, a dozen feet away, between the trees, was a stranger to her. She was a mongrel halfbreed with enough Moth in her for her eyes to lack irises, and dark hair with pale streaks running through it. She looked wary and harrowed, and abruptly something rose up inside Tynisa, something sharp-edged and unfamiliar that she took too long to recognize: fear! In the dismal surroundings of this empty forest, the sudden arrival of this robed figure could only signify a magician about to practise some evil on her. Tynisa remembered…

I remember…

In Jerez, when we had the Shadow Box, and Achaeos opened it… there was a terrible forest of thorns, and a dark figure in robes, and I… and I…

And she had stabbed Achaeos, although not realizing it at the time, and he had died of that wound afterwards, so she was a murderer , the slayer of her sister’s lover, and she had not been able to live with that, and had fled…

Here…

Tynisa screamed and lunged at the robed woman, again and again, but each time she seemed to miscalculate the distance, for no matter how far she reached, the stranger was still a foot beyond the rapier’s dancing point. At the same time the blade felt heavy and sluggish, and fear was building and building inside her at this blatant magic… and fighting against the memory that her sword had been heavy that night too, as though it had been trying to dissuade her from the murder.

What am I doing? But, even as she asked herself the question, another voice was commanding, Kill her! And she tried, she really tried, but the forest seemed to trip and baffle her, even though it let the magician slip through untouched, and thorns plucked at Tynisa’s clothing as the trees around her twisted into that other place.

What am I doing now? What is my body doing now? What of Alain? Am I killing Alain?

Her blade still directed with a straight arm at the magician, she froze. ‘No,’ she whispered to herself. ‘No, no, not this. Please, not again…’

‘This is shameful,’ the woman chided. ‘Come now, there’s no need to hide. I’m right here. You want me dead, I can see that, and you’re not the first. Come try me, then. Perhaps you’ll succeed, for I understand you had a reputation in that field. But not through this girl. What courage does that show, Mantis-kinden?’

Tynisa stared at her wildly, not understanding what she meant. The woman suddenly seemed to really focus on her, although she had been looking her in the face all this time.

‘Tynisa Maker, I am sent by your sister. She is coming for you. She wants you to be strong, do you understand? Be strong, and do nothing unwise.’

‘My sister…?’ Cheerwell?

But then the magician was looking not-quite-at Tynisa again, giving out a mocking little laugh. ‘Oh, is this really all you’re cut down to? I thought they called you a hero over Collegium way? The man who killed the Emperor, and here he is hiding behind his daughter’s skirts?’

And she felt someone move behind her, rushing forward, and in that instant something had left her, surging out from her in raging fury. The magician was already dancing away between the trees, though, and she saw the indistinct form of Tisamon chasing after her, his metal claw drawn back to strike, but forever just too far away, receding and receding and…

She woke up, crying out, and leapt to her feet still clutching her blanket. There was a faint lightening through the trees to the east, and all around her the earliest risers were already about their business.