Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

It lunged with the pike, and he hacked another line across its chest, while Tynisa hovered behind him, just waiting for an opening. She could hear the guards coming down from the deck above, shouting questions and drawing blades. Tisamon was buying them a little time.

The creature abruptly shouldered forward, as if stung from behind, and Tisamon dodged round it, driving his blade in-between its ribs in what was meant to be a killing blow. It shouted something at him again, with real words lost in a guttural accent, and then backhanded the Mantis with one hooked fist, sending him flying across the room.

It was already falling by then, but Tynisa lashed her blade across its throat just to be sure. Then she saw the next contenders appearing, and threw herself aside as their crossbow bolts punched up the stairway. She saw one of Bradawl’s men take a quarrel in the chest, which passed straight through him, armour and all, to embed itself right up to the fletching in the wood of the wall.

Two small men had darted out from below, hunchbacked and long-legged, frantically rewinding their massive double-strung bows, and even more frantically getting out of the way of whatever was following them. It turned out to be another of the hook-fisted creatures, its round head encased in a metal helm, and with no weapons other than its vicious hands. It thundered straight into the middle of the room. Bradawl put himself between it and his master, sword lashing out to cut it across the bicep, but it had already seen the Spider girl, and she was the one it was interested in.

Before it could take a step towards the girl, Tynisa had jabbed it in the back with her blade, sinking only inches into its leathery hide, and a pair of crackling blasts of stingshot had struck it across the chest from the Wasp soldiers now entering the fray. It charged them furiously, and Tynisa saw them raise their swords as they stood in the doorway that led to the deck. Founder meanwhile had loosed his crossbow again at some new target, and Tynisa whirled around to see.

The newcomer was a broad man, clad head to foot in pearl-sheened armour and brandishing some kind of slender lance. From his build alone, Tynisa would have thought him a Beetle. Bradawl lunged at him, his blade scraping off the unknown intruder’s mail. In the next moment, the narrow point of the lance had swept forwards to touch Bradawl’s waiting shield. There was a sharp crack and a bitter smell, and Bradawl was thrown back across the room as though he had been struck with a hammer.

Tisamon was on his feet again, approaching the newcomer cautiously. Founder was still crouching behind his desk, hastily reloading his bow. He looked up at the armoured man and shouted something that included the words, ‘She’s mine!’

The room was now getting very crowded, however spacious it had at first appeared. Tynisa cut across behind Tisamon to get closer to the girl, who was pressed as far into the corner as she could manage.

‘We’re leaving,’ she decided aloud. She saw that the Wasps had finished off the second huge man and were now taking cover behind furniture, trading shots with the little crossbowmen. ‘Tisamon!’ she shouted. The Mantis was still standing between Founder and the armoured man, and Tynisa realized that she did not know how far his honour would stretch when it came to fulfilling this supposed contract to protect the Beetle.

The doorway to the deck above was blocked with Wasps, although the monstrous crossbows of the small intruders were taking a toll on them. There was only one other exit from the room and it involved going out the way all their enemies were coming in.

Tynisa darted forward, forcing the issue. The armoured man turned clumsily as she approached, lunging out for her with the lance. Tisamon took the chance he had thus given her, driving his blade home at the shoulder joint of the man’s armour. It bit, but not deeply enough.

She ducked under the sweeping lance, saw its tip charring a line across the wooden wall. There was a leather pipe connecting it to the man’s back, she noticed, and with a flick of her blade she cut it in half.

She was never sure, thinking back, whether that was the right thing to have done, for she felt instantly as though she had been punched hard, and there came a flash of blue-white light that seared all other details of the room from her mind for a second. Then she was lying on the ground, her head spinning, and the palm of her sword hand was raw and burnt, even the grip of her sword blackened. The armoured man lay on his back across the room from her, already struggling to get up with the help of his small servants.

‘Come on!’ she shouted to the Spider girl, and she saw fear and desperation fighting in the girl’s expression, then desperation finally winning out. She dashed on past the armoured man in a sudden access of courage, but then a gauntleted hand closed on her ankle as she ran.

It was Founder who caught her, before she struck the floor, and Tisamon drove the point of his claw down into the gauntlet to break its grip, and then lashed a backhanded blow into the face of the man’s helm.

The helm cracked, not like metal but like a shell, and the face beneath it was pure Beetle-kinden, though pale as a drowned man’s and twisted in utter fury. The hollow voice emerging from behind the helm became recognizable words: ‘She is ours! You savages cannot take her!’

‘Go!’ Tynisa urged the girl, leading, the way to the front hatch. She had to pass the point where the intruders had come up through, and what she saw down there thoroughly frightened her.

A hole had been chewed in the bottom of the gondola, some machine or creature tunnelling up through the earth below to penetrate the wooden hull, but the tunnel was now entirely awash with water.

Even as she watched, there was a man down there, another of the huge, hook-handed creatures. As it half-swam and half-clambered to the surface, it was surrounded by a silvery nimbus that vanished as soon as it broke the water.

Tisamon was past her now, at the hatch, but he stared at it helplessly. It had been meant for Apt hands, and he could not manage the catches.

Founder literally pushed him out of the way. Behind them they could hear the last of his soldiers and guards being finished off.

He then had the hatch open, flinging it wide with a shout, as a bolt of energy struck him full in the chest, knocking him backwards to the ground, his face fixed in a rictus of shock.

There were Wasp soldiers gathered outside, not those in the pay of the Consortium but the sort Tynisa was more used to.

There was no time to check whether Founder was still alive. Tisamon simply leapt out through the opening, dropping the ten feet of space to land in the midst of them, lashing out at them even as he fell. Two of the Wasp soldiers spun away from him, wounded, while the others scattered, seeking for cover from which to shoot.

Tynisa grabbed the Spider girl, who looked utterly horrified, and slid down the sloping hull, trusting to her Art to slow her fall. Her burden was no help at all, just clinging to her as though she had never climbed a wall in her life.

When it was obvious the girl would not do anything as sensible as run for her life, Tynisa had to drag her three streets away to relative safety before turning back for Tisamon. He was already coming, though, running after them at top speed.

‘Where are the Wasps?’ Tynisa asked him.

‘They encountered our friends from inside,’ was all he said. He glanced away from her to the Spider girl, and Tynisa could see that he wanted to say that she would have been better left behind, but even so he was curious about her. Before he could speak, they heard shouting nearby, and the crackle of a Wasp sting.

‘Away,’ he decided, and they ran off into the muddy streets of Jerez, the Wasps taking to the air behind them.