Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

Dal was formulating a scathing reply, when he saw movement, and identified it a moment later as Soul and Ygor on their rapid return. The fools, they’ve been spotted, was his instant thought.

Without being told, Mordrec was heading back into the canes to rouse the others.

‘Report,’ Dal snapped angrily, but Ygor was grinning broadly.

‘You’ll love it,’ the Scorpion promised. ‘You’ll kiss me for it.’

‘ What, Ygor?’

‘It’s the raiding party. Our raiding party.’

Dal stared at him dumbly, then looked to Soul for confirmation.

‘It’s true,’ the Grasshopper confirmed. ‘We spoke with that Spider, Avaris. They got lost. Been wandering around for a day or so trying to find us.’

‘Just shy of a hundred fighting men and women now, they’ve got,’ Ygor added with great satisfaction.

Dal weighed up the numbers in his head.

‘Come morning, we head south,’ he decided. ‘We move fast, and in one group. When we meet the Salmae, we fight. There’s nothing else for it. We’ll break through them, or break against them. We’ve reached the end of it.’

‘They’re now moving in force towards the border. This leader of theirs is a resourceful fellow, it seems,’ Lowre Cean remarked mildly.

Salme Elass was not in the mood for mildness. ‘I want him brought alive to Leose. I want him executed before his followers, for denying the order of the Commonweal.’

Lowre raised an eyebrow at her, for that. They were in full war council, with two dozen other nobles crammed into her grand campaigning tent this evening, so he said nothing, but she took him up on it nonetheless.

‘By taking these liberties, it is not me that these wretches defy,’ she snapped, ‘it is our entire society. In turning on their betters, they are traitors to the very Monarch.’

‘No doubt it is as you say,’ Lowre replied softly, but with a slight edge to his voice that made the others stir uncertainly.

Tynisa glanced at Alain, sitting beside her. He had his arms folded, head cocked to one side. Catching her gaze, he raised his eyebrows. We’d both rather be out getting things done, his look seemed to say, and when she grinned a little, he repaid her twice over. She felt something stir and leap within her. I’m winning.

‘They have greater numbers than us,’ Lowre continued after a pause. ‘Certainly more numbers than any force we could intercept them with before they reach Rhael. However, I suppose we must make the attempt, or they will doubtless return in even greater strength, and we will never be done. I want this business finished.’

‘As do we all,’ Elass confirmed.

Again, Lowre eyed her, but said nothing. Like an Imperial general, he had a map to hand, on which stones of various colours marked the last known positions of the brigands, and of their own forces. ‘Our chief aim is to place a force in their path that will suffice to delay them. We have limited numbers, however, who can move swiftly enough to cut them off. Also, if we put too strong a force in their way, they are likely to change their course once again. We must tempt them into a fight they believe they can win quickly. Once they are engaged, our remaining forces can catch them up and close the trap. This will necessitate everyone moving throughout the night. Our forces will thus not be best fit for a fight in the morning, but I see no alternative. For those who stand in the brigands’ path, things will go hard. If our main force is delayed for any reason, it might be the end of them.’

‘I will stand there,’ Tynisa declared flatly. She was no noblewoman, no member of the Commonweal hierarchy that Salme Elass was so devoted to, but nobody denied her a place here, and those nobles who had once looked askance at her when she danced or hunted now stayed out of her way. She had gained a reputation written in blood.

Lowre Cean winced but nodded, accepting the inevitable.

‘With your permission, my Princess?’

Tynisa looked around for the speaker, recognizing the voice of Isendter Whitehand, the Salmae’s champion. She caught Elass looking at the white-haired Mantis with concern, as though she wanted to refuse to let him go, but feared looking weak.

At last she nodded. ‘With my blessing,’ she said.

One by one the nobles spoke up, those who had been in the thick of the fighting already, those who had suffered burned villages or lessened revenues. Others pledged their servants, those who could ride swiftly enough to hold the pace. The pledges trickled in until Lowre Cean raised a thin hand.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘That will be enough.’ He looked to Whitehand. ‘Isendter, I give you command over this business.’

Several of the nobles hovered on the brink of outrage that a mere servant should be given that honour. The calm, pale gaze of the Mantis-kinden soon silenced them. In that moment, Tynisa realized that Alain would not be coming, that she would make her stand without him there to admire her prowess. She glanced at him, and saw him frown at his mother. She will not let him fight, but how else will he grow strong? The thought crossed her mind that perhaps she would need to do something about Salme Elass, at some point – for Alain’s own good. How else could he become the man that Tynisa wished him to be?

As Lowre had decreed, they rode all through the night, and Whitehand set a punishing pace. Tynisa’s newfound skills were just sufficient to keep her on her mount, and at the back of the pack. The others, the nobles and their picked retinues, were better horsemen and women by far, but their skill had been learned over the years rather than dropped unearned on their shoulders.

Towards the dawn, she knew, Lowre would send a dragonfly rider, perhaps Alain himself, to scout out the whereabouts of the brigands. Their timing was tight. Too slow overnight and they might miss the bandit army entirely, or perhaps even run straight into them.

I would not mind if we did, Tynisa decided. It will save time. We will kill them all the sooner. That Whitehand’s little contingent would be outnumbered at least five to one was important only in giving her a greater opportunity to demonstrate her skill, and thus allow her to woo Alain on that much grander scale.

She had no idea of their progress, hanging on grimly at the rear, and the night passed in a series of swift rides across the countryside, interspersed with short breaks for the horses to be watered and fed. The Commonweal steeds had been bred for both speed and stamina, she could see: the Lowlands had nothing like them. Perhaps if Salma had used such beasts… but nothing was served by thinking of such things now.

When Whitehand called a halt, Tynisa did not realize that this was it, that they had already reached their goal, and were presumably ahead of the enemy. The sky was greying with pre-dawn towards the east, towards the Empire, and all around her the Commonwealers were dismounting, and tending their horses. They were a mixed band, and she had barely paid them any attention throughout the night’s journey. To her they were just ‘the nobles’, and she had dismissed them as such. Perhaps half of them were aristocracy in fact: graceful Dragonfly-kinden in glimmering armour of many colours, chitin and enamelled steel over mail and quilted cloth. They carried tall bows, long-hafted swords and short punch-blades, and Whitehand passed amongst them, singling out those whose steeds had lasted the journey best, setting them aside to fight on horseback in the morning. The balance of the force was made up of the retainers that had been promised, men and women of Whitehand’s own station or below. Dragonflies mostly, but with some Grasshopper-kinden amongst them, and a lone Wasp.

Tynisa stared at him for a long while until, as though he was one of those clever pictures the Collegium mathematicians drew, that flipped from one image to another as the eye adjusted its perspective, finally he turned into someone she knew.