Heirs of the Blade (50 page)

And yet we’re not losing.
It was hard to claim whether they were actually
winning
, in this chaotic shifting battlefield, but the simple fact that the Salmae had been unable to tie them down or force them into a serious battle seemed a victory in itself. Dal had lived the last few years in and around Siriell’s Town, jostling for power with the other bandit chiefs and sporadically wooing Siriell herself, playing his part in the chaotic running of that renegade province, which had depended wholly on the relative strengths of the major players there. Throughout this time, he had known that the people north of Rhael considered him their enemy.

A fair proportion of the population of seven villages had now turned out to swell the ranks of his followers. Several had burned their own homes. The mere appearance of Dal’s people seemed to spark off a madness of new horizons, people who had known nothing but gruelling work and taxation suddenly seeing for the first time
another way
. For Dal, the experience was like being carried away by a river current, but carried towards a destination that had never been within reach before. He knew, from personal experience, that a peasant’s life was hard, and that the privations of the war had only made it harder, but the people of Elas Mar had been living on the wrong side of poverty for years now as the Salmae settled their war debts through tithe and appropriation, without deigning to suffer privation themselves.

It would not be true to say that the people here wanted revenge, but they did want freedom. It took a desperate kind of squinting to mistake rule by brigands for
that
, but these were desperate times.

The thought kept occurring to Dal Arche now:
What if we win?
Would he set himself up as a local prince, put on the tyrant’s shoes and simply continue the way of the world, armed with everything noble but a bloodline? And what would the Prince-Major do about that? Reports suggested he had refused to come to the Salmae’s aid, and certainly none of his people had been seen yet, but that might change quickly if Dal started getting too many airs.

Well, I’m about to push my luck.
There was another village right ahead of them, and on the far horizon the moon picked out the crooked silhouette of Castle Leose. After avoiding the most recent attempt by the Salmae to entrap him, Dal had decided against leading his people back south. Instead, while his enemies hunted for him at the border of Rhael, he had gathered this band of desperadoes and taken them north, to within sight of the Salmae’s stronghold, albeit still the most distant sight possible.

‘He’s coming back,’ someone muttered, and Dal saw a figure hurrying – no, running – from the village outskirts towards the copse. It was his unofficial ambassador, a renegade Spider-kinden who called himself Avaris, and who had practised a variety of confidence tricks and crooked games up and down the Imperial border until he had alienated so many powerful people that he had been forced to flee into the Commonweal. He was a fast talker, though, and very protective of his own skin, which was why Dal had picked him.

‘Speak,’ he instructed as Avaris reached the cover of the trees.

‘They’re up in arms – but not for us,’ the Spider replied shortly. ‘They’ll have sent someone with news for the castle. I told you this was a bad idea.’

Dal did not reply, but took a moment to consider how he felt about this development. There was a plan for this sort of reception, of course, but recently the peasantry of Elas Mar had offered him a run of easy victories. His banditry had virtually been sleeping in its scabbard, but now he was put to draw it forth once again.

‘What do they think?’ he asked.

‘That the Salmae will protect them,’ Avaris reported. ‘I told you that, this close to the castle . . .’

‘I know,’ Dal cut him off, because he had seen all this before. Closer to a castle, the peasants were less discontented, the headmen hailing from families that had served thus for generations. They had grown to love the boot on their neck. The headman of Dal’s own village had been the same way, no doubt.

‘Pull back?’ Avaris prompted.

‘They’re well armed? Well defended?’

‘Spears and staves.’

Dal turned to address the rest of his followers, who had been following this exchange intently. ‘You may have had some illusions about what we’re here for,’ he told them, his voice just loud enough to be heard by them all. ‘Some of you have been telling stories, from the old times, about peasant heroes, about good deeds and just causes.’ He knew it was so. The conflict so far had sufficed to give their venture the illusion of righteousness. ‘You all remember the war. Many of you fought in it. There’s not a one of you that hasn’t known friend or family that’s ended up a corpse on some battlefield or other. Well, know this: the Wasp Empire killed off the old times. The Wasp Empire put paid to all that talk of heroes. Where were those heroes when the Wasps scythed us down in our hundreds?’ He heard his voice shake slightly, and brought his emotions to heel. ‘Our glorious nobility will tell each other that
they
were heroes, dying to defend their people, but for each one of them that fell, there was a carpet of our dead to cushion them. We’re no heroes but, for all that, they’ve shown us they’ve no right to lord it over us, and those that uphold their damned right to do so can burn.’

He watched their faces. He did not consider himself any great leader of men, but he was leader enough to keep hold of a group like this.

Without another word he turned away and strung his bow in one smooth motion. A moment later he was out of the trees, his wings flaring into being to coast him towards the village – and soon his bloody-handed retinue was following.

They coursed uphill towards the village outskirts, and Dal knew that if the headman had made swift preparations, then they would meet a fence of spear points at the summit. But there were no defenders, no attempt to stop them.
Maybe they’re with us, after all?

Looking ahead towards the village’s heart he saw a confused gaggle of men, women and children. They were Grasshopper- and Dragonfly-kinden, most of them unarmed and many only partly dressed, blinking in the moonlight as their headman addressed them in moderate tones, not shouting or ordering. And Dal Arche saw the headman look across as the front-runners in the bandit charge pelted in amongst the houses, with torches and blades. The man’s face fell apart, that was the only way Dal could think about it. He was an old Dragonfly whose whole life must have been spent in this same village. When the war came, Dal would put money on it, the Salmae had instructed him on who to send off to fight, and told him to stay here safe with his family. Here was a man who trusted implicitly the traditional order that set him over his fellows, and under his betters. He knew that Leose would protect him, and did not have it in him to credit Avaris. He had dismissed the garrulous Spider-kinden as a mere trickster.

Run
, thought Dal, even as he plucked back his bowstring, and some of the villagers were running. The mothers, the fathers, those who had the most immediate things to protect, they began breaking free of the headman’s spell, even as the old man continued to urge them to stay where they were. But not all of them were running; some were turning to fight. Others just stood staring, mesmerized by the certainty in the old man’s voice, as he kept croaking on at them despite the shock fragmenting his lined features.

Dal put his first arrow between the headman’s wide eyes and counted it as a mercy to the village as a whole, as more people started fleeing.

Lycene banked over the smoke, and then cut a wide arc around the ruined village’s perimeter. Astride the insect’s back, Alain looked down, with Tynisa clinging to his waist.

She had risen in the ranks of the Salmae’s soldiers since the fighting had started. The peasant levy now regarded her with almost superstitious awe, for she never flinched from bloodshed, never feared, never retreated. The brigands had learned to recognize her, too, and her arrival would sometimes send them fleeing even before she drew steel. Those that were bold enough to go up against her, she slew, or her flickering rapier cut their arrows from the air as she sped closer and closer.

But she could be in only one place at a time, whilst the brigands always seemed to be everywhere, or elsewhere. When Salme Elass led her forces down en masse, the bandits would be gone, or some small pocket of them all that could be found. Meanwhile they would strike somewhere else, not defending any of their gains but making daring inroads into Elas Mar Province like this – pillaging, burning and murdering even within sight of Leose Castle.

The Salmae kept a dozen dragonflies trained to carry a rider, and they were all of them deployed now, scouring the ground below for signs of the bandits. There had been some successes, and only a few days ago a mob of thirty ruffians were cut down to a man, after Alain had spotted them from above. Most of the time, however, the brigands were in and out of the trees, following shadowed and hidden roads to seek out their prey.

‘There,’ Tynisa snapped, squeezing Alain tighter with one arm as she pointed. He took a moment to read her direction, then nudged Lycene with his knees, propelling the insect across the speeding ground. In the first pass he missed them, but at Tynisa’s insistence he swung back, before spotting a score of figures hurrying across between stands of trees. No doubt these were the very villains who had set the fires.

Alain gestured in the direction they had come from:
We must fetch help.

She leant close and spoke in his ear. ‘Set me down.’

He glanced back at her, so that for a moment they were almost kissing. Tynisa felt her blood race.
Almost. I almost have him. Perhaps I shall win him with this deed.
She had been bold in the fray, since finding her new purpose, and none bolder. She knew that Alain and his mother had both been impressed by her fury and her skill, the many lives she had taken in their names. Surely her success was working on Alain’s mind, in this bloody wooing. He could not but acknowledge her as the perfect partner, predatory and loyal as any Mantis-kinden should be.

‘You’re sure?’ he said.

Does he have to ask?
‘Set me down,’ she repeated. ‘I shall trail them, track them. Bring on your nobles and your levy as fast as you may, you shall find me there.’

His grin sent fire flashing through her, and then he was guiding Lycene down, far enough to avoid watching eyes but close enough for Tynisa to soon regain the enemy.

‘Good hunting,’ he said.

For a moment she wanted to tell him,
For you, I do this for you
, but he must know her by her actions, not by hollow words. Then she had slipped off the dragonfly’s back, while the insect hovered just clear of the ground, and a second later Alain was darting back for the skies and she was alone.

She entered the woods, slipping from shadow to shadow with her sword eager in her hand, like some trained beast that she had often hunted alongside. Her feet did not falter: some additional sense told her just where her quarry was, as though a guiding hand led her this way and that to pick up their trail. Before long she could hear them: a score of men and women doing their best to be quiet, and she skulked silently closer, the woods they relied on now betraying them by hiding her from them.

They were laden with sacks, and she saw a few handcarts, the spoils from the latest ruined village being hauled southwards as fast as could be. If they were intercepted by the Salmae’s forces, she knew they would abandon the loot without a second thought. They were still being called bandits by the angry nobility, but such pillaging seemed to have become secondary to them, as if pride of place in their plans went to resisting their lawful masters.

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 nobody 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 Grasshopper woman with a noble’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.