Heirs of the Blade Part 27

She was just a dozen feet now from the stragglers, and saw they had sentries out on either side of the main group, and doubtless scouts ahead, but n.o.body bothered looking back the way they had come.

How best to . . .? the thought began, but these days she seldom had to finish such a question before that inner voice in the authoritative, confident tones of her father provided the answer.

Kill their watchers, was the solution. Kill their scouts. Make them fear.

She picked up her pace, virtually tasting their blood in her mouth already, skirting the edge of the moving band but keeping them always in sight. Her first victim made himself obvious by standing still as the rest moved on. He stared into the greenery, narrow-eyed, but he was not peering at her. He was Dragonfly-kinden, dark hair stippled with grey and his face gaunt, holding a spear in two hands at waist height, and wearing a leather and chitin hauberk that was slightly too large for him. Dragonflies had good eyes, she knew, but she was Tynisa, daughter of Tisamon, and the shadows loved her.

He was moving on again, a few trees out from the main herd, spear levelled ahead of him, but he heard nothing, saw nothing, as she sidled closer. For a moment the sheer power of it all almost overwhelmed her, deadly as a knife, quiet as a ghost.

Her rapier's needle point speared through his ear, grating a little as it sheared bone. As he dropped, she was gone and her blade with her, licking its lips and hungry for more.

Her first mark had not been discovered by the time she killed the second, this one a bony Gra.s.shopper woman with a n.o.ble's long-hafted sword resting on her shoulder. She was inconveniently tall for a slit throat, so Tynisa struck her from a crouch, inserting her blade under the ribs and into the heart. The woman died without a cry, her mouth gaping emptily, eyes already sightless as she hit the ground.

This time the victim was noticed in seconds, but Tynisa was already moving on. There were cries and exclamations. Names were called out. Then they spotted the absence of the Dragonfly man she had slain first, and the group milled, bunching closer. They seemed to have no clear leader.

She killed her third and fourth around the other side of the group, then moved on.

The fifth almost surprised her: a young Dragonfly who had been standing so still between trees that Tynisa virtually walked into her. For a second she thought she had gone unnoticed, since the other woman was looking inwards at her fellows, not outwards as a good sentry should. Tynisa drew her blade back, but the movement must have reflected in the corner of the Dragonfly girl's eye, for she leapt up with a shout, her wings flas.h.i.+ng about her shoulders. She was still not quite fast enough, the rapier's blade following her up, arrow-swift, to lance up beneath her sternum and bring her to earth. Then there were arrows cutting through the trees, and Tynisa faded back into the shadows, feeling her father's guiding hand on her shoulder again, letting her Art turn all eyes away from her, becoming still.

They were coming after her now, a vengeful rabble. She let the first dozen rush uselessly by, becoming more scattered as they went. The thirteenth she killed, dancing from her hiding place to slash his throat and sever his bowstring in the same movement, and then away. A couple of them had seen her, then. The closest was too near to hide from, so she put out his eye with a swift lunge, seeing how his arms lifted his spear-haft to parry even after she had killed him. The other witnessed that, and she saw her casual poise reflected in his eyes, his bravado souring to terror in an instant. He backed away, struck a tree, turned and ran. She savoured the moment. Fear was a form of wors.h.i.+p, after all. It was her proper due for her skills, just like coins thrown into a minstrel's hat.

By then the bandits had realized their mistake, and they were calling out to each other, drawing close again. Uncaring, she slew another three as they did so, and knew they would be counting heads as they rea.s.sembled, realizing by just how much their force had been diminished.

No order was given, but they were running now, abandoning their spoils, fleeing through the woods. She kept pace with them effortlessly, feeling strength flow into her with each successive stride as though the very earth was urging her on. Those that stumbled or fell behind were her rightful prey.

Are you proud of me, father?

And she was sure she heard his voice reply, from far away, There is more yet to do.

Something had caught her eye ahead, and it was a while before she realized what. Her fleeing victims were not alone now, but seeking sanctuary with their fellows. Ahead of them, hidden neatly in the deeper woods, was a larger band twice as many at least as the runners had started out with.

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 n.o.bles 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 Ela.s.s and of the other leading n.o.bles, 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, rus.h.i.+ng 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.

She stared at them blankly, the foot soldiers of the Salmae's army, those glorious, exultant bringers of justice. They sat in their huddles, spears leaning haphazardly nearby: Gra.s.shopper-kinden and Dragonflies in padded cuira.s.ses that were dirty and torn. Many were wounded, and she saw at least two who must have died overnight.

They looked frightened, she realized. They were tired and abused, men and women who had no taste for this conflict, but had been brought to it anyway, sore and bloodied and unwilling. It struck her that some of them probably had family and friends in the village that had been burned, or in places like it, and they had not been able to defend them or get them away to safety. They none of them want to be here. The revelation, in the face of the frenzy she had felt before, was shocking.

And how many had she consigned to death by not warning Alain of the trap? Was that costly victory really worth it?

'This has gone on long enough,' she said, and went off to seek out Lowre Cean.

When she arrived at his tent she found him sitting up in his hammock, dressed in a crumpled white silk robe. There was a bowl in his hand, two jugs at his feet, one lying on its side, already empty.

'Morning, Maker Tynise,' he addressed her, with a slight and melancholy smile. There had been no guards nearby. If she had been an a.s.sa.s.sin, she could have slain him right there, and walked out leaving his followers none the wiser. She briefly wondered if that was his intent.

She sat down, cross-legged like a schoolchild, and gazed up at him. 'Prince Lowre, there is a question I have to ask you and then a request, after that.'

'I thought as much. I'd expected you sooner, but you seemed to be so . . . so caught up in this . . .' His hand made a vague gesture encompa.s.sing a world of skirmish and conflict beyond the cloth walls of his tent.

'You are a war hero,' she said flatly.

His smile turned sour and he shrugged, before hooking another bowl from beneath the hammock with one bare foot. He stooped to reclaim it and the full jug, then divided the remaining wine between the bowls, with some juggling, before eventually handing her one of them. Had she not been watching carefully she would have taken him for a drunken clown, save that he did not spill a drop.

The wine she drank was the colour of blood, dry and sharp. After a mouthful, she repeated, 'You are a war hero,' almost accusingly. 'They all say so. When the Wasps came, you commanded an army, and of all the Commonweal tacticians, you alone slowed the Empire down. You commanded at Masaka, when the Sixth was destroyed. In the Lowlands a man like you would be found at the heart of things, a statesman and a leader. When times of trouble come, such a man would be the man persuading others, rather than having himself to be persuaded.'

'Ah, the war,' he sighed, as though he was just catching up with her first words. 'You've had war in the Lowlands, of course. For two years, was it? But then the Wasps had learned a lot of lessons after they finished with us. They had no idea, poor fools. I think, if they'd truly understood the size of the Commonweal, just how many of us there were, they'd never have started. It was a mad venture, and we outnumbered them ma.s.sively on many of the battlefields, especially at the start. What could they have thought when they saw the size of a true Commonwealer army?' He raised one white eyebrow at her, and she looked back at him uncertainly.

'Contempt,' he p.r.o.nounced precisely. 'Because if they had ten thousand, and we had a hundred thousand, still they had real soldiers, and we had . . . farmers, tradesmen, labourers. We depended on men and women whose lives were spent tilling the land, who had the next harvest to worry about, whose hands reached for the hoe and the rake, not the spear.'

She made to retort, but he silenced her with just a small motion of one hand. 'I was at the Monarch's court when news first came of the Wasp invasion. We had known that they were seizing the cities at our south-eastern border, of course, but we had the castle at Shol Amen, that had never been taken, and we . . . we had not believed it was possible, that those hill tribes would even dare to step on to the royal earth of the Commonweal. I remember . . .' He drank, eyes looking into a lost past. 'I remember how the Monarch called for his greatest seer, and demanded to know what response the crown should make to such impudence. She said . . . she said there were one million reasons to surrender and only one reason to fight. One of us, it might even have been Felipe Shah, asked her what that one reason was. "Freedom," she replied. The Monarch ordered that we should resist the Empire to our last breath. He was a bold man. His daughter, who is Monarch now, might not have done the same.'

'I don't understand,' Tynisa admitted. 'Surely there is nothing greater to fight for than freedom?'

'One million reasons,' Lowre intoned solemnly, before draining his bowl. 'I had a son, you know. My son, my Darien. He was a hero. I planned the battles, but he fought them. He even continued fighting after the Treaty of Pearl. He would never accept that we had lost. They killed him, of course, as they always do. My bold and das.h.i.+ng son. And all the men I led, in my victories,' he spoke the last word with an unexpected bitterness and force, 'where are they now? How long do you think I kept them alive, after all, after victory turned to ashes? All those farmhands and smiths and woodsmen and artisans, with spears in their hands. All my clansmen, my Mantis warriors, my nomads. All the many many who followed my banner.'

He turned his aching red eyes on her, for a moment appearing such a fierce figure that she felt a shock of fear run through her.

'I have known so many people during my long life, Maker Tynise, and most of them I led into a just war, for a good cause. What, as you say, is sweeter to fight for than freedom? Surely freedom is worth any price? But one million? One million? Can you even conceive of that number? n.o.body asked the seer what the one million reasons to surrender were: men and women and children, families, communities, friends.h.i.+ps, all that would have been saved had we simply bowed the knee to the Empire. If I could do it over again, I know what I would counsel.'

'But the Empire may come again,' she insisted. 'It may come against the Lowlands again. Are you saying that you . . . that we should simply surrender?'

He just stared at her, the empty bowl dangling loose in his hand. 'Ask Felipe Shah how he feels. Ask the Monarch for her thoughts. We were there, and we saw it all, from beginning to end, and all the fine n.o.bles' sons and daughters who buckled on their armour to the tune of a just cause and then never came back; all the village men and women whose lives would hardly have changed, tilling the earth for their prince or for some Wasp governor, but who instead we mustered up and gave spears to; all the idealists, the reformed thieves, the fierce warriors, who followed us, and believed us. I remember them all, every one. Of all the people I ever knew, the dead far outweigh the living. And they are dead before their time, before their children could grow, before they could even have children. We murdered a generation on the battlefields of the Twelve-year War. We extinguished a score of n.o.ble lines and a million lives. And we lost. And you ask me if freedom was worth it?' His bitter smile, out of context, could have been taken for humour. 'I led all the people I ever knew onto one battlefield or another, Maker Tynise. And in the end, here I am, and where are they?'

'But this . . .' She was off balance now, and the only thing she had to cling to was her purpose in coming here. 'These brigands, surely this is a . . .?' But she found that she could not now utter the words 'just cause'.

For a long time they just stared at one another, and then she finished her wine.

'But they are dying anyway,' she said at last. 'Because this bandit leader out-thinks us, even though we have more soldiers. And whether you took up the tactician's blade again or not, they would still die. Fewer would die, surely, if you took control here and guided Salme Alain and his mother to victory.' As he started to speak, she interrupted almost viciously, 'Yes I know. They would die under your command. They would be yet more corpses to lay on your back. But it's beyond that now, and we need you. Is that load so great that a few more corpses will break you, Prince Lowre?'

'You are cruel.'

'I know the weight of blood, and I will not claim this is a just war. I say only that it must end.'

His lips tightened, and she thought of the way he had lived before she had talked him into coming: hiding away in his secluded compound, pottering from one idle hobby to another, always at home to his old friends to those he still had left keeping his little court and offering no harm to anyone, for fear . . .

'I know,' she whispered. 'I'm sorry, but there's no other way. We have to bring this to an end.'

And at last he nodded, or perhaps his head sagged. 'I know,' he echoed her dispiritedly. 'I know.' He took a deep breath. 'I suppose I will have to dress as befits a war leader, then.' Some small ghost of his customary humour touched him, as he indicated his current state. 'Let Salme Ela.s.s know that I wish to have counsel with her, but I may be some little while.'

She stepped out of his tent and her father was waiting for her, laying his hands on her shoulders, guiding her, rea.s.suring her, reminding her of her true purpose. And she then forgot a great deal of what she had just felt and heard and said, and knew only that, once more, There will be blood.

Thirty-One.

As the three of them galloped up, Mordrec kicked off from his saddle, his wings coasting him over to Dal Arche, while letting his horse find its own way. Dal looked up as he landed. 'You've taken your time.'

'Getting them set up for a fight back in Rhael wasn't as easy as you might think.'

Dal grimaced. 'They didn't take it seriously?'

'They took it too cursed seriously,' Mordrec told him. 'We dumped a load of bows and spears and swords on them, and they had the wit to ask us how they were supposed to put them to use. We ended up staying there half a tenday more than we'd hoped, just drilling them in the basics. You should see Siriell's Town now: everyone and their grandmother's going about armed. You got the weapons we sent ahead?'

'I did.'

The two of them turned, as Soul Je and Barad Ygor rode up, too, and dismounted.

'Have you told him?' the Scorpion demanded. His companion clung to his back, her claws crossed beneath his collarbones, and her stinging tail curled about his waist.

'I was getting to it,' Mordrec snapped back. 'Dala, we've seen the Salmae on the move between here and the Rhael border.'

'I know,' Dal agreed. 'The game's changed, and we're pulling back. What have you got available in Rhael now?'

'There's close on five hundred just over the border, waiting for the word. If we don't use them soon, they'll go sour on us and either head back south or start fighting with each other,' Mordrec declared.

'We had them just where we wanted them until a few days ago, but then they got wise to us,' Dal explained. 'We were running them all over the place, keeping them guessing, and they were going for us every chance they got. We could lead them any way we chose. Then they went on the defensive all of a sudden, and wherever we decided to raid we'd find at least a handful of them on watch for us, with fliers ready to spread the word. We still scored a few hits, but our luck's turned. Time to regroup and take stock, I think.'

'If they're on the defensive, shouldn't we take advantage of it?' Ygor suggested slowly. 'I mean, if they're backing off, and we're also backing off, where will the fight be?'

Dal Arche shook his head. 'The way I read it, they want us to chase them, so instead we're going to creep quietly back to Rhael Province and join up with your force there, and wait for reinforcements from Siriell's Town. After that, we'll have enough numbers to come back and up the stakes a little.'

'How many are you here?' came the dry voice of Soul Je.

'Right now? About three hundred and fifty. I've a raiding party out at the moment of somewhere near seventy-five. We're moving as soon as they get back. What size parties did you see on the way here?'