Dragonfly Falling (64 page)

‘Then I must be an
intruder.’ He brought his hand up, and his gauntlet was on it now, though it
had been bare a moment before, with the blade unfurling. ‘And you will have to
kill me.’

Even as he said the
words, three of the Mantis-kinden sprang forth to challenge him, and Tynisa
assumed they would all set about him at once. By some signal or concord she did
not catch, two of them stopped short and one just kept moving, her own clawed
gauntlet slashing out at Tisamon’s face. He had no moment of confusion, for he
was part of their world and had known instantly who his real opponent was. He
was a step back before she had even completed her move, her blade passing
uselessly between them.

There was no moment of
breath, he was attacking instantly, and Tynisa saw what few outsiders had ever
witnessed, the vicious, graceful dance of the mantis claws. Tisamon and his
opponent shifted like dappled sunlight, moved like dancers, like insects
skittering over the surface of a lake. Their claws were cocked back behind
them, and then lashing forth in complex patterns, dancing and spinning, using
every joint all the way to the fingers to make them pirouette and wait and
stoop as though they were living things in their own right, like silver
dragonflies hovering and darting, and their bearers nothing but an abstraction.

Tynisa kept her hand
clutched tightly about the hilt of her rapier, and never realized that she did
so. She had seen Tisamon fight so many times before, but until now she realized
she had never seen him fight anyone so
good
. The
Mantis woman moved with him and Tynisa could not tell who led and who followed.
They fought as though they had rehearsed it, blades cutting air, striking
against one another high and low, and their off-hands flashing too, the spines
raised on their forearms, raking and cutting. They were far too close, not the
distance of a rapier duel but almost chest to chest most of the time,
constantly in one another’s shadow, and never touching, ducking and spinning
past one another, and even when turned away each knew the other’s precise
stance and position.

Then it was over. Tynisa
blinked. She had barely seen it, had to review the last few moves in her mind
to see that, yes, the reason that the woman’s arming jacket was now flooding
with red across her stomach was precisely
that
move
of Tisamon’s, not his last move, but one three moves before, and nobody, not
even his opponent, had realized.

His victim made a
shocked sound, and doubled over, striking the ground heavily, but Tisamon paid
no heed to her because the second challenger was upon him. This was a man a
little over Tynisa’s age, driving for Tisamon with a short-hafted spear.
Tisamon was already moving, even before the luckless woman struck the earth,
lashing out with his claw, trying to close.

This fight was different
again, a fight of space and distance, with the spearman trying always to keep
Tisamon at the end of his reach, and Tisamon forever closing, forced to be the
aggressor, sweeping the spearhead out of the way time and time again in his
effort to step in, so that the whole contest seemed to happen backwards as the
spearman retreated, step-perfect and never looking behind him, to keep away
from the flashing edge of Tisamon’s claw. He never blocked, either, and Tisamon
was the same. The two weapons seemed to exist in different worlds, meeting only
when Tisamon struck at the spear itself. Always it was drawn back, the claw
springing away from the head and not splitting the shaft.

Tynisa risked a glance
at the other Mantids, and saw no hatred there. They did not cheer the fighters
on, or wager, or discuss. Their entire attention was fixed on the battle, with
nothing short of reverence.

And Tisamon caught the
spear with his off-hand, just behind the head. The spearman had the chance for
a moment’s surprise, started to drop the weapon and fall back, but Tisamon’s
sweep cut the haft in two, and then he lunged forwards and the point of his
claw caught the man outside the collarbone, driving deep into his shoulder so
that the younger man’s already pale face went white with the pain and he fell
back into the crowd.

Tisamon was already
turning, claw crooked back again, as the third challenger came for him. She was
armed with a rapier, and Tynisa saw that it was a match in style for the weapon
she herself bore, down to the leaden-coloured, slightly shortened blade.
Tisamon rose to meet her with an expression that was madness and ecstasy
combined, a bloodlust and a joy in the fight that chilled Tynisa and called to
her equally.

They were faster now,
twice the speed of the first duel, as Tisamon changed pace to keep up with the
flickering of the rapier’s narrow blade. The woman across from him was older
than the previous two, but a good ten years his junior nonetheless, and she did
not fence as Tynisa had learned, with careful feet and a rapid hand. Instead
she flew, figuratively and literally. She made her sword into a lattice of
steel about her, using the edge more than the point, letting its momentum lead
her body where it would, and then the wings would explode from her back and carry
her over Tisamon’s head, landing and thrusting or cutting even as he turned,
and they were moving faster and faster, until Tynisa could not breathe.

She never realized that
her own face had slipped into the same almost religious expression worn by all
of the others, or that she had released her rapier hilt to clasp her hands over
the brooch of sword and circle.

Tisamon ducked and drove
in, trying to step inside the reach of his adversary’s blade, and she would not
let him, and yet when he walked into the razoring steel of her guard, he
stepped through it unscathed and she fell back as the spearman had, before
driving him away again. Her eyes were almost closed. The patter of steel on
steel was a constant staccato that had almost become music.

She took flight again,
and this time Tisamon leapt with her, lashing out with his full reach, and they
came down together, frozen in a single slice of time.

His claw was over her
back, folded so that the point touched near her spine, but held just short,
cutting her cuirass but not her skin. The spines of his right arm had drawn
blood where her shoulder met her neck.

Her blade was along the
line of his throat, his head tilted back so that the flat was against his
cheek, the point running through his hair. Her off-hand and his were locked
together, spines meshed with spines, between their bodies. Only then did Tynisa
notice that the woman wore the same badge that Tisamon did – that she herself
did.

The Mantis woman’s wings
flickered and died, and they stood very still, both looking past her at the
Loquae.

An almost crippling
sense of vertigo hit Tynisa, because she recognized that look, recognized the
moment. It took her back to the Prowess Forum, duelling some other student with
wooden swords, and at the end of the pass they would look over at Kymon to see
how they had done, to read his reaction.

Just
a game
, she thought, but the woman he had fought first was dead, and the
man badly injured, and now there was a razor edge to Tisamon’s throat, and yet
he was looking calmly at the old woman to see how he had done.

The Loquae closed her
eyes for a moment. She was clearly not happy, but something had been resolved.
‘You are one of us,’ she said at last. ‘What you have done is a heinous thing,
but there is no denying that you still have a place here. What would you ask of
us, Tisamon of Felyal?’

‘That you give my
daughter the same chance to prove herself,’ Tisamon said simply, as the blade
of the rapier was withdrawn and he stepped away from his opponent.

‘You should not have come
back,’ the Loquae reproached him. They were in her home, a hut cut into two
rooms by a wall pierced by a common firepit. ‘Whatever you have proved, to us,
to yourself, today, it would have been better if you had never returned.’

Tisamon listened to the
clatter and scrape of sword on sword, keeping a watchful eye through the
doorway. ‘If it had just been myself, Loquae, you would not have seen me again.
But I have a responsibility to her. She is mine.’

The Loquae made a
scornful noise. ‘None of her looks.’

‘Watch her,’ Tisamon
urged: Tynisa was fighting, rapier to rapier, against a Mantis youth of her own
age. It was her third bout: the other two had ended with blood, almost to the
death. She had taken two shallow cuts, to her shoulder, to her side. She had
not deigned to acknowledge them.

‘The Spider-kinden woman
that broke you must have been remarkable,’ the Loquae said drily.

‘She was not like others
of her kind.’

‘You mean she was able
to fool you,’ the Loquae said. ‘Be careful not to presume too much on our
acceptance, Tisamon. You were given a fair and balanced chance to prove
yourself. If I had decided to draw my own blade against you, matters would have
been different.’

Tisamon nodded,
conceding that point. For a moment the two of them watched Tynisa catching her
opponent’s blade in hers and twisting it from his hand. The Mantis-kinden
watching her wore expressions of loathing, but still they watched.

‘She can never be one of
us. She can never be more than abomination,’ the Loquae reiterated. ‘Still, you
have given her our skill, and she cannot be denied the badge.’ She sighed. ‘So,
Tisamon, what do you want? I know you have not come here solely to flaunt your
halfbreed daughter.’

‘I wish to speak to the
elders,’ Tisamon said. ‘All of them. It is possible they will never hear a more
important word spoken.’

They gathered in the
hall that was the only building there built even partly from stone aside from
the smithy. Stones that had been laid in the Age of Lore centuries before rose
to four feet, and wood often replaced made a broad and sloping roof from there
on up, so that, to be upright, all but the smallest had to stand along the
central line. The Mantis-kinden spent much of their lives outdoors, beneath the
trees, and they were not builders.

Nine of the Felyal
elders had gathered there that night, seven women and two men. This was not all
of them, but all of those who could be reached in such short time. Several of
them wore the badge of the Weaponsmasters. Tynisa was kept outside, hunched by
the door to hear, but barred from the council itself. She had not been
perfunctorily slain, and she understood that she had reached the limit of
Mantis acceptance thereby.

‘I am come to speak with
you of the Wasp Empire,’ Tisamon began. ‘You have heard of them, surely, these
Wasp-kinden from the east?’

‘We have,’ said one of
the elders, the youngest of the women there, though still a dozen years
Tisamon’s senior.

‘You may also have heard
then that they have attacked the Ant city of Tark,’ Tisamon said.

‘Tark is fallen, this we
have heard too,’ said one of the men. ‘Those fleeing its destruction have
passed our Hold. We have not heard more yet of Merro or Egel but it is possible
that these too have fallen.’

This news shook Tisamon.
‘Then matters are worse than I had feared. They will come here.’

‘They have already come
here,’ said the Loquae, who was an elder in her own right. ‘They have sent men
to speak with us and make their peace.’

‘You must not believe
them,’ Tisamon told them. ‘They will tell you that they only wish harm to
others, perhaps even to our enemies, to the Spiderlands even, but they lie.
They wish to conquer all of the Lowlands. They do not recognize allies or
peers, only enemies and slaves.’

‘You have a good grasp
of their talk,’ said the Loquae. ‘At least the talk of their second emissary.
The first was slain on entering the Felyal, by one of our huntsmen who had no
time for diplomacy.’

There was the slightest
murmur of amusement at this. It was a Mantis joke, Tynisa realized, for what it
was worth.

‘And the second?’
Tisamon asked.

‘He spoke the same words
you just put into his mouth. He told us we were warriors and so were his
people. He offered us respect, admired our blades. All the while, our seers
were looking into his thoughts. He was thinking, “
Savages,
living in trees and hunting wild beasts. Savages, and ripe for conquest
.”
When he was here his eyes could never be still for trying to guess our numbers
and our strength.’

‘You slew him,’ Tisamon
said.

‘We let him return to
his people. He could not tell our strength and what report he might give of it
would merely weaken their understanding of us,’ said one of the other elders.

Tisamon took a deep
breath, feeling in this strained diplomacy that he understood Stenwold a
little. ‘You must not fall into the same error that he did,’ he told the
elders. ‘The Wasps are rash and foolish, and they understand little, but they
are strong, and there are more of them than anyone here can know. I have been
into their Empire. I have seen how they storm cities. They have armies
comprising more soldiers than there are women, men and children in all of
Felyal. If they come here with swords and their Art-fire, then we will slay
hundreds of them, and tens of hundreds, but they will still send more. They
will burn the forest and bring close their engines of war, their flying
machines, their artificer’s weapons. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘We understand,
Tisamon,’ said the Loquae. ‘You tell us nothing we have not thought for
ourselves.’

‘And they
will
come here,’ Tisamon went on, yet the emotional
response he had been expecting was not evident. ‘They can tolerate no land that
has not felt the stamp of their heel. We hate the Spider-kinden for many
ancient reasons, but amongst those causes we hate them because they seek to
control, and because they live off the sweat of their slaves. The Wasps have a
lust to conquer and rule that the Lowlands have never confronted before, and
they hold more slaves, and more wretched ones, than any Spider Aristoi. And
when they come here, despite all our skill and speed, they will sweep Felyal
away as if it had never been. You must understand how we cannot ignore them. We
must act.’