Heirs of the Blade (54 page)

Thirty-Two

‘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.

‘How long have you been with us?’ she demanded.

‘All the way,’ he replied. It was Gaved, whom she had not seen since she was his guest on the lakeshore.

‘You weren’t at the council.’

He shrugged. ‘I asked Prince Lowre if I could join you.’

‘I’m surprised he didn’t have you thrown out. I’m surprised he ever wants to see another of your people, after the war.’

‘Then perhaps you don’t understand him,’ he replied, maddeningly calm. ‘Sef asked me to see that you were all right.’

Tynisa narrowed her eyes, smelling the lie, and he made a curious gesture, of proffering his fists as though wanting her to guess which one held the stone in it. She realized it was the Wasp equivalent of holding up open hands to stave off a hostile reaction.

‘It was a request,’ he admitted, ‘but from Felipe Shah.
He
wanted to know that you were well, and that you stayed that way.’

She was suspicious at that. ‘Why would
Felipe Shah
even know you exist, Gaved?’

For a moment he just stared at her, but then he shrugged. ‘Man in my position, it’s good to let people know I’m useful.’

‘And you’re being paid, of course.’

‘Gratitude of princes.’ He shrugged. ‘Still, as princes go, Felipe’s word is better than most.’

Whitehand passed nearby. ‘I’ve set watches. Get what sleep you can.’

Sleep?
Tynisa felt too fierce and full of fight to sleep, but a moment later some part of her had made its own calculation, and she knew that she would sleep undisturbed, and wake in an instant, fresh and spoiling for blood. Another gift she had not enjoyed a month ago.

‘I don’t need looking after,’ she warned Gaved.

‘Should make earning my wage that much easier, then,’ he replied, frowning a little as though he was trying to work out what was different about her. Abruptly, she turned her back on him, stretching out on the ground to sleep, as though she spent every night in the wilds. It was not so much that she wanted to dismiss him from her thoughts as that she felt her hand being drawn towards her sword hilt by the Wasp’s mere presence.

It was barely dawn when she awoke, sitting up abruptly with her blade in her hand. The sentries Whitehand had posted were just at that moment rushing into camp. It seemed the brigands were approaching.

‘They’re later than we’d thought,’ the Mantis was saying. ‘They must have rested up at least part of the night, and they’ll be fresher, but we only need to hold them until the rest arrive. Fetch me all of our archers.’

By the dawn light Tynisa could see their surroundings better: to their right the land rose in rocky steps, to the left, whence they had come, the ground was scrubby and uneven, fit pasture only for goats. The ten who Isendter had picked to fight mounted were already assembling there, a little way from the main force, leaving room for a charge. Northwards was a ragged forest edge, but Whitehand had chosen this clear ground for their stand, ground that the retreating brigands would be forced to cross.

‘They’re on their way.’ Gaved appeared at her elbow, and she had to fight fiercely to keep her sword still.

‘How do you know?’

He pointed upwards, and she saw a shape pass across the lightening sky: a dragonfly rider circling.
Alain, is it?
She was abruptly convinced that it must be, for even if his mother had kept him back from the fight, he would still want to play his part.
And he will see me.

Whitehand had set the archers up on their right flank, up amongst the rocks, leaving perhaps thirty spearmen and swordsmen to hold the centre. Tynisa saw what would happen if a large force struck them:
we will be folded back against the high ground.
It would guard their backs, but they would have nowhere to go. The meagre cavalry could charge in then, but if the enemy were ready, then the horsemen could meet a rain of arrows.

‘What if they just stand off and shoot?’ she asked.

Whitehand glanced back at her. ‘They have few good bows amongst them. Our reach is greater and our aim better, or else the flower of the Commonweal has fallen far since last it was tested.’

The last time it was tested was the Twelve-year War
, she reflected. Even though she
knew
, as a matter of absolute faith, that the odds did not matter, that the greater the foe the greater the glory, and the more chance she had to show her skill, some small sane part of her was noting that this action would stand or fall on the organization of the brigands, and the speed with which the relief force arrived.

She met Gaved’s gaze, and saw the same knowledge reflected in his eyes.
And you will fly for your life, if it comes to that.
The thought occurred to her, almost hungrily, that it would be easy enough to be rid of him in the fight, and nobody need know. The idea of shedding a Wasp’s blood seemed vastly attractive: this Wasp, any Wasp . . .

For a moment she felt almost dizzy with the number of conflicting thoughts inside her head. She remembered Sef, and the former slave’s simple happiness. She remembered how she had been a guest in Gaved’s house, that she had fought alongside him.

‘Stay away from me, when it starts,’ she forced out, fighting with herself to get the words spoken.

He regarded her doubtfully and she spat, ‘I don’t care what Felipe told you to do, just stay clear of me. I might . . . I can’t . . .’ She bit down on the words, either reasserting control or losing it. Something of the strangeness about her had got through to him, though, and he backed off. She could only hope it was enough warning. She also hoped it would not be enough. She had saved him, she would kill him: she felt a desperate need to simplify her world by going elbow deep in the blood of her enemies. Any enemies.

At that point she spotted the first outrunners of the brigands, a few scattered bands at first, but it was as though the woods were oozing with them, forming ever-deepening pools of shabby, patchily armoured men and women that gathered at the treeline, staring outwards. Whitehand walked to the fore, waiting for them with his clawed gauntlet on his hand, distinctive in his pale grey leathers. Tynisa guessed that his name would be passing among their enemies: the champion of the Salmae had come in person to meet them.

She moved to the Mantis’s side. ‘And if they won’t come against us?’

‘Then they’re more craven than I thought,’ he replied smoothly.

‘Our archers may outreach them, but they have more. Once they’ve found their range, why should they not stay out there and just drop arrows on us?’

He glanced at her, expressionless. ‘Then we shall have to go to them.’

She nodded, satisfied, and went to find a horse. There were plenty spare, of course, but few of them in any proper condition to go out and fight, worn down as they were by the night’s ride.
But then I won’t need one for long
, Tynisa reflected, and saddled the most promising mount, as best she could.

The brigands were advancing from the woods now, creeping forward cautiously and no doubt trying to discern where the rest of Whitehand’s force was hidden. They gathered out of bowshot, a great unruly mass of villains, and milled and tried to order themselves, clearly unwilling to commit to the fight. They could see the glittering armour of the nobles and even now, at the height of their rebellion, the sight of their former lords and masters in such numbers was unsettling them. No doubt they were expecting hundreds of peasant levy to spring up from the earth. Still, the idea must be trickling through their ranks:
What if this is all there is?