Heirs of the Blade

Twenty-Two

There was to be a grand hunt to celebrate the approach of spring, she discovered the next morning. The stags would soon be locking antlers in the woods, and apparently and there was no better time to match one’s strength with them.

Nobody had specifically stated that she, Tynisa, would be accompanying the hunt, but after her performance the previous night, nobody forbade it either. She had often fought for her life, even been a prisoner of the Empire, and yet there at least she had understood the rules of the game. This bewildering society of the Dragonfly nobles was beyond her, until the Mantis-kinden had found a door into it and had shown her the way.

And Alain had smiled at her.

The thought had been growing in her that redemption came in many colours. She had failed to save Salma, and in losing him she had lost her rightful place in the world.

He was mine, she thought bitter daggers at the Butterfly woman who had stolen his affections.

She had lost Salma, yes, but here was his very image. If she won him, against his mother’s apparent scorn, his steward’s sneers and the airy sophistication of his peers… if she won him then surely it would be as though she had found her place in the world again? Surely that victory would go some way to repairing the damage she had done, to balance the scales?

She was just aware enough to know that she was clutching at straws, and that if she stood back and looked at her position she would find it untenable. That way, though, led to a greater madness, because then she would have to face up to the guilt that, day and night, prowled around the outworks of her mind, looking for a way in. If she unlocked that door, then the ghosts fabricated by her mind would have her for good. Go forward, though, and look neither left nor right, and she could leave them behind for just a little while. Forward because ahead of her was Salme Alain.

As soon as she understood that there would be hunting, Tynisa had found drab garments of hard-wearing cloth: Mantis-kinden fabric that was more robust than the Dragonfly clothing she had seen here. She took a cloak too, green-grey and mottled, to help her stalk the prey, whatever it was. In truth she had never gone hunting beasts before, but she had heard Tisamon describe it, and observed Mantis hunters in the Felyal, east of Collegium, so she reckoned she knew how it was done.

The Dragonfly-kinden clearly had their own ideas about the art of hunting, however. The party that set off from Leose numbered perhaps a dozen riders, with twice as many servants, and none of them seemed to care if their quarry spotted them coming from miles away. The mounted nobles were all clad in bright silks: reds and blues and greens that shimmered like metal in the morning sun. They carried lances and most had a quiver of arrows and a shortbow holstered at their saddle. They were mostly of an age with Alain and herself, only two being older, and Alain’s mother, the matriarch of the Salmae, was not present.

The hunting grounds were some days west of Leose, beyond Lowre Cean’s compound. Tynisa had anticipated being able to ride alongside Alain, to talk to him and let him see more of her than the fragmentary glimpses that were all he had seen till now. What she had not taken into account was her horsemanship, a skill that the Lowlanders had precious little use for. The Commonwealer nobles all rode elegantly, as natural in the saddle as in the air, and whilst Tynisa could outdistance the mass of walking servants, the nobles themselves were lost to her as soon as the party set out. They rode ahead, frequently out of sight entirely, and she could not catch them up. When she could see them, they were engaging in mock manoeuvres and cavalry actions that she could not have joined in with. Alain was always at the centre of these, constantly in demand. Assisted by a small number of servants who had mounts of their own, the entourage of nobles even made their own camp, ahead on the trail, leaving Tynisa and the other menials far behind.

As they passed close to Lowre Cean’s compound, and neared the hunting grounds themselves, she caught up. The pause had been occasioned by a pair of new riders joining the party, and she was surprised to see the prince himself and his young messenger, with no retainers of their own at all. The old man nodded gravely to her, as though they were the only two sane people in the whole ridiculous expedition.

They rode north and west for a few hours, following the contours of the land towards the dark line of a forest. The ground here was still patchy with snow, and the sky above slate-grey with clouds. Tynisa found herself shivering, because even the middle of a Collegium winter was considerably warmer than this, but none of her companions seemed to feel the cold, so she put the best face on it that she could.

There was another half-dozen of the Grasshoppers waiting for them at the forest’s edge, and with them two more riders: not nobles but simply more elevated servants. One was the perennially disapproving Lisan Dea, clad in sober black in stark contrast to the nobles. The other was the Weaponsmaster Isendter, who gave Tynisa a small nod of acknowledgement.

‘Well?’ Alain demanded of them.

‘We have tracked a suitable quarry, my lord,’ the sour-faced seneschal confirmed. ‘The family has several females and calves, and a few younger males. The prince stag is somewhat large, though. I was concerned-’

‘You’re always concerned,’ Alain dismissed her. ‘Come, let’s see this prodigy. It is time to hunt!’

They pushed into the woods, and now it was not the pace, but the simple business of guiding her mount through the trees, that taxed Tynisa.

‘The Lowlanders plainly hunt afoot,’ one girl remarked, on seeing her lamentable progress. ‘Well, there is honest work for the infantry, too, in this.’ Her tone was disdainful, plainly equating ‘honest’ with demeaning. Tynisa could not help but notice that the Dragonfly-kinden rode and that most of their unmounted servants were Grasshoppers. For a moment she felt herself on the edge of an uncomfortable comparison, thinking of the Wasp Empire and its slave-Auxillians of many subject races. This was the Commonweal after all, though, so it was not the same thing, not at all.

‘Perhaps the lady would honour me by riding behind me.’ The speaker was a smiling young man dressed in scintillating turquoise, his finery enhanced by a breastplate of silvered leather. His manner was shorn of mockery. ‘Lady, I am Telse Orian, and you are Maker Tynise, are you not?’

‘Close enough,’ she admitted. A study of Lowre Cean’s expression revealed no reason why she should not avail herself of Orian’s offer, so she took his arm and let him pull her from her saddle and up behind him. Most of the nobles had a saddle that was built up before and behind, but her new companion’s was something lighter and more recognizable. She was realizing how very little she knew about the whole business of horsemanship.

‘So tell me, Maker Tynise.’ The arch-looking Dragonfly girl guided her horse closer as the riders set off at a comfortable pace, their servants loping with long strides all around them. ‘Tell me of your Lowland accomplishments. We have already seen your dancing.’ She put a peculiar stress on that last word, clearly wanting to make it an insult, nevertheless not quite able to do so. ‘You are great archers, perhaps, in the Lowlands?’

‘Not that you’d notice,’ Tynisa replied, trying to match the woman’s tone. In truth she would have been hard pressed to even find a bow in Collegium, where the crossbow was the weapon of choice – but a weapon denied to her because of her Inaptitude. Tisamon had been a fair archer, but it was a skill he had never tried to teach her.

‘Skilled horsemen, then, surely?’ the girl needled.

‘Not that either,’ Tynisa replied coldly, feeling the anger inside her respond to the taunting. In her youth, in Collegium, such petty barbs as this would have been beneath her notice, and she had been master of her own emotions. Her experiences at the end of the Wasp war, the loss of too many loved ones and the guilt, they had all conspired to throw her irretrievably off balance.

‘Why then surely-?’ the Dragonfly girl started again, but Orian snapped at her, ‘Velienn, enough.’

‘But you have raised her up and made her one of us,’ Velienn protested slyly. ‘Is she to be starved of conversation?’

‘If you wish to see what I excel at then I shall meet you on foot and with blades,’ Tynisa declared flatly, not even returning the woman’s gaze. She sensed Velienn ready herself for a retort, but then no words came, and she imagined the Dragonfly’s eyes flicking over her Weaponsmaster’s badge. Alain rode past them just then, and he must have caught Tynisa’s words, for he grinned at her briefly.

They ventured deeper into the wood following Isendter, the horses picking their way between the trees, now together, now wending their ways separately. There was barely a sign or a sound of life about them save for the trees themselves, which had retained a mantle of needles weighed down by the snow. Every so often, one of the horses or footmen would brush against a branch and dislodge its load of white in a swift recoil of branches, and once or twice the sound of distant breaking would echo through the quiet forest, as some flawed limb gave way beneath its burden.

Ahead of them, Alain raised his hand, and the company slowed and then halted. Tynisa peered through the trees, trying to see what they had been led to. For a surprisingly long time she missed seeing the animals despite their size, caught out by the vastness of the empty woods stretching in all directions. Then a movement caught her eye: a dozen beetles rooting in the snow, or attacking the tree bark with blunt mandibles. They seemed unexceptional creatures, dull black and brown, some full-grown adults and some smaller ones that had probably still been grubs in the ground last spring. Then a further movement caught her eye, and she spotted what must surely be their quarry.

The stag, as Alain had named it, was a grand patriarch of beetles, considerably larger than any of his family, and armed with magnificent branching antlers that were half as long again as his bulky body. At first they seemed too large to be useful, but then the beetle’s feathery antennae twitched, and it lifted its horns threateningly, moving them with a casual speed and strength.

Alain glanced back at his followers and raised his lance, apparently the signal to ready themselves.

‘We will announce our presence,’ Telse Orian murmured back to Tynisa. ‘The stag will stand firm, to let his wives and family flee. The beaters and huntsmen will form a ring about him, and try to ensure that he does not make his escape. It is thus we will take him. Know that there is an order of precedence, in the hunt. The prince must strike first, and then the others by rank of family, so that honour and protocol are satisfied.’ He twisted in the saddle to face her. ‘I myself am here only with my bow, so if you wish to strike at the stag, you may wish to find another mount.’

The various servants were now spreading out on either side, moving forward cautiously between the trees. One or two of the beetles stopped feeding, antennae fluttering. The horses stamped and snorted, surely plainly visible and audible by now to the grazing insects.

Then some of the servants began making noise, beating sticks against tree trunks, whooping and calling out, and the herd was instantly galvanized, females and younger beetles turning to thunder off, shouldering clumsily between the trees and dislodging curtains of cascading snow. The stag reared up, his great horns brandished fiercely against the sky, and abruptly Alain spurred his horse forward, lance in hand.

Tynisa could hardly breathe, in those brief seconds of his charge, as he propelled himself forward into the gape of those enormous mandibles. The huge stag was further away than she had thought, though, and Alain’s mount darted off to one side even as the beetle lowered its antlers. The horns ripped furrows in the earth, and Alain cast his spear just as his steed galloped past. The weapon glanced off the beetle’s thorax, dancing in the air for a moment before falling away.

The next rider was already in motion, his steed also hurtling forward as though he was deliberately trying to throw himself into the insect’s jaws, then veering to the other side, as another spear was cast. This shaft found some purchase at the base of the stag’s wing cases, thrumming there for a moment before rattling off, as the enraged beetle swerved and gave chase. The disdainful girl Velienn was next, seizing the opportunity of the insect’s distraction to pitch her lance into the creature’s abdomen, where it stuck and held firm.

The stag turned and lumbered away, with a surprising turn of speed, but by now the servants had completed their loose circle, and continued to shout and beat sticks directly in the creature’s path. To Tynisa’s astonishment it flinched away from them, rounding back towards the riders even as another of the nobles began to make his pass. The man was slightly slow in turning aside and, without warning, the great antlers were scything at him, so that Tynisa was convinced he would be crushed. Instead he just kicked up off his saddle, his wings pulling him up into the branches and well out of the beetle’s reach. His mount fled the enraged insect instantly, which gave chase.

The clamouring of the servants made no impression on the horse, and a moment later they were throwing themselves aside, as it charged through their ranks with the stag right behind it. Tynisa winced when one of the Grasshopper-kinden caught a blow from one clawed foot and was hurled aside with a shriek.

The next moment all the nobles were kicking their steeds into motion, chasing after the ponderous insect. Tynisa saw Alain draw alongside it and drive a second lance into the creature’s side, leaning halfway out of the saddle with his wings flaring for balance. Then Telse Orian was drawing level on the opposite side, with Tynisa still clinging breathlessly to his waist. With casual grace, the Dragonfly nocked an arrow and let it fly, even as he steered his horse away, and Tynisa saw the shaft ram into place between two of the beetle’s legs.

Abruptly the huge creature was no longer rampaging after the riderless horse, but making a break for the deeper forest. It went thundering off between the trees, in a blizzard of falling snow, the riders in hot pursuit and the footmen left to follow as best they could.

Alain took the lead, and Tynisa could not say whether this was more noble precedence, or whether he was simply the most skilled rider among them. When the stag scrabbled to a halt unexpectedly, his mount nearly ended up galloping up its wing-cases and on to its back. Tynisa could not see what had made the great insect stop, but it turned towards them now, at bay despite the open forest behind it. The riders pulled slightly away and passed back and forth before it warily, whilst their servants caught up.

Tynisa glanced from face to face, trying to understand if this was normal behaviour for the beast, but the young hunters were flushed with the chase, none of them seeming to find anything unusual. Looking beyond them, though, Tynisa noticed Lowre Cean frowning, while the Mantis Isendter glanced about him with narrowed eyes. She opened her mouth as if to warn against… what? She could put no words to it, but she had sensed something too.

Then Velienn gave a shrill cry and charged at the stag, nimbly guiding her steed beyond the range of the arc of its jaws to plant another spear between the plates of its carapace. Then the hunt was back on, and another two nobles made their passes – one missing entirely, to the derision of his fellows. Alain headed forth next, but the beetle charged even as he was making his approach. After having apparently made its stand, this move was wholly unexpected, and the prince’s steed was not yet moving fast enough to swerve out of the way. Tynisa heard the prince curse briefly, and she was already vaulting off Orian’s mount, her sword leaping into her hand.

Alain kicked up out of his saddle, wings flowering from his shoulders. The unstoppable bulk of the stag struck his horse head-on, its great barbed mandibles, that each reached almost the whole length of the wretched steed, clashed together, and lifted the horse’s jerking body clean off the ground, shaking it in fury. One flailing hoof clipped Alain even as he strove to spring clear, and sent him arcing over the stag’s back to land awkwardly in the snow beyond.

The stag turned on him, the horse’s ruined form dropping bonelessly from its jaws, but then one of the other riders gave a high, challenging cry to distract its attention. A mounted figure flashed past, his lance not held for throwing but couched in the crook of one arm, and only after he had gone did Tynisa recognize him as Lowre Cean. She saw the colossal beetle rear up before this new challenger, and saw Lowre begin to veer away. In that same moment, she thought he had left it too late, because he was cutting his escape much finer than the others had done. Lowre rammed his spear home with all the momentum his charging steed could provide, and only the high back to his saddle saved him from being thrown backwards by the shock of impact. He passed virtually under the stag’s raised foreleg, crouching low along his horse’s back, and in his wake, the beetle was already collapsing, his spear driven so deep between its jaws that more than half the shaft was hidden from view.

Alain was already starting to rise, shaking his head groggily, but Tynisa began running towards him.

‘Still!’ she cried out. ‘Alain, stay still!’

She had a brief sense of other hunters reacting to this – with puzzlement or with annoyance at such familiarity – but then Isendter was also moving.

‘My prince,’ he snapped, ‘heed her and be still.’

Alain froze, his eyes flicking from Tynisa to the Mantis, then to the stag’s great rounded body, and back again. Behind Tynisa, the nobles had gone suddenly quiet, aware that something was amiss but not at all sure what.

She was close enough now that she could not keep running, so she made herself as still as she was willing Alain to be. She was poised at the very edge of a boundary that was invisible, and yet glaringly apparent to her and to the other Weaponsmaster. It was a boundary that Alain had unwittingly crossed.

The thing that loomed over Alain, so motionless as to be utterly unnoticed amongst the trees, now shifted slightly, swaying a fraction, and a murmur of shock ran through the noble hunters. Tynisa heard the slight creak of a bow being drawn.

‘Make no moves,’ she instructed, without looking back at them. ‘Not while he is there.’

‘This is absurd-’ she heard a familiar disdainful voice start, and then another woman hissed, ‘Velienn, shut up.’

Isendter was standing at that notional boundary, and dropped to one knee as if to survey the ground. He shot a glance at Tynisa, and understanding passed between them without the need for words.

He nodded, just once.

Tynisa began to advance, not in a headlong rush as previously, but at a slow shuffle, pushing the boundary back and back, her sword extended before her as though she were facing a fellow duellist at the Prowess Forum. Her eyes were fixed on her opponent, which meant tilting her head back considerably.

Isendter reached out a hand to his master. ‘To me, my Prince – but slowly. Move as the girl moves, stop when she stops. Do not look back. ’

Alain gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes only on Tynisa. She shifted forward three steps, and he crawled the same distance towards Isendter. Two cautious steps in, matched by two careful steps out. Behind and above Alain, the great forest mantis shifted again, its all-seeing eyes watching each of them simultaneously. Alain was still well within the range of its spined forelimbs.

Tynisa could sense something else now, the same presence that had caused the stag to turn at bay. It was not the predator – though that was surely up to making a meal of the huge beetle – but something beyond it.

‘Do your own people live here, Whitehand?’ she hissed at Isendter from the corner of her mouth.

‘Once they did,’ he replied, which was the worst answer for her to hear. She had known places before where the Mantis-kinden had once lived, but dwelt no more. Sometimes they remained there, even though their living bodies had departed. She had not expected to find such a place in the Commonweal.

Another few steps in and she had passed Alain, usurping his place within reach of the insect’s killing arms. As she held up her tiny needle of a sword, a subtle succession of sounds behind told her that Alain had made good his retreat, and was being drawn away by Isendter.

Which just leaves me, she thought. She heard the creak of the bow again, and knew it was Orian, and that the young nobleman was intending to do something noble and foolish. She thrust her left hand back towards him, palm out: Wait!

No arrow sped past, although the insect’s head was cocked to one side now, the mandibles twitching like knife-tipped fingers. Slowly she reached for her brooch, tugged it from her jacket and held it up at arm’s length. You recognize this, don’t you? her gesture said.

Its triangular head tilted further forward, and she somehow knew that it was regarding the Dragonfly-kinden arrayed behind her. ‘They are under our protection,’ she murmured, knowing that Isendter was still there and ready to back her up. The overarching mantis swayed again, as though trying to study the situation from all points of view.

Then it was picking its way backwards, with its killing arms still raised, until it reached a precise distance from her where their circles of influence no longer intersected. Whereupon it dropped down and moved off unhurriedly between the trees, a long, dark insect that was soon lost amid the confusion of trunks.

In its place, Tynisa now saw what she had known must be there. Twenty yards behind where the mantis had reared up was a circular clearing. It was not large, and the vegetation had made ample inroads into recolonizing it, but the weathered stump at its centre had been a totem once, such as she had seen far south of here on the same night she had earned the badge that was still clutched in her left hand.

A Mantis-kinden ritual site. Any questions she might have had about whether the Commonwealer Mantids were substantially different from their Lowlander kin were now answered. Blood had been spilled here, year after year, and though the Mantis-kinden had moved on, their legacy remained.

And then she saw him, hovering grey in the air above the ruined idol. Filmy and translucent he might be, but unmistakable. She risked a glance at Isendter, then at Alain, and it was clear that neither of them could see. Only she could preceive how, coalescing into view within the Mantids’ sacred place here, was her father. Not that bloodied walking corpse that had lurked at the edge of her vision since his death, its outlines rendered barely human by the hacking treatment the Wasps had inflicted. This was the man unwounded and whole, for all that the trees showed through him, and though she stared and stared, he did not vanish, but grew stronger, heartbeat to heartbeat.

There was a moment when her three imagined haunters encroached on her, looming at her shoulders – Achaeos with his load of guilt, Salma’s bright smile, slaughtered Tisamon. In contrast to it, though, they were faint echoes. She had known hardship and horror, loss and remorse. She had seen her father hacked to death, had lost her beloved, had dealt a friend a mortal blow, and small wonder that she had peopled her world with reminders. Only now did she realize that they had been merely her crutch, forever distracting her, forever swatting her mind away.

She appreciated how far she had been from being mad until now, for the momentary glimpses of those three dead men were nothing in comparison to this. My father. Tisamon.

He was gazing at her with that smile he sometimes wore as he fought. How hard he must have fought, indeed, to claw his way back thus from death. She wanted to drop to her knees, but instead she found that she was holding her stance, keeping her blade up ready to fight.

I do not believe in magic. But those words became a distant, waning refrain, banished utterly as soon as she heard his familiar lost voice inside her head.

My daughter, spoke Tisamon. I am proud of you. I have so much left to teach you.

He had his hand held out towards her, and she had a dreadful sense of vertigo, as though she stood at a cliff edge, with a fathomless void below her, and she was leaning out… and leaning out, and.. .

Surely this is a terrible mistake. The dead must stay dead. But he was her father, and she was far from home and lost, and more in need of help than she had ever been.

She reached and took his hand.