Heirs of the Blade

Thirty

There was precious little cover out here, and Dal and his followers were lying low in a copse of twisted trees, an old orchard gone wild decades ago. Had the Mercers been scouring the sky above them, then this mob of brigands would have been discovered almost at once even under cover of night, for there were more than fifty of them, filling the space between the trees to bursting. The Salmae’s hunters were not here, however. They were further south, which could mean one of two things, depending on who was in control.

Either they’ve cut us off from our retreat into Rhael, Dal considered, or we’ve stolen a march on them. So far, the skirmishing between Dal’s people and the Salmae had lasted over three ten-days, with a dozen vicious hit-and-run engagements, ambushes and surprise attacks from the bandits punctuating a history in which the Salmae’s Mercers chased all over the Rhael-Elas Mar border, trying to pin them down. Their conflict to date had been so mobile that Dal reckoned neither side could be sure who had the advantage in numbers. Dal’s people were split into smaller groups, because it would have been impossible to feed them otherwise, and so, of necessity, the hunters had split up as well, to try and contain them. The only numbers that mattered at any given time were those who were in evidence here and now.

The Mercers were better equipped, Dal knew, even if their luckless levy of peasants was not. If Dal had met them toe to toe, fighting them with honour and dignity, then those iridescent suits of armour, their masterworked swords and man-length recurved bows would carry the day swiftly. Not only were his own followers just a rabble under arms, but they had no stomach for a hard fight either. They had not signed on to die for him, just to get rich and fill their bellies. The Mercers, on the other hand, were relentless, and their peasant troops were just as scared of Salmae retribution as they were of Dal’s arrows.

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.

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 flashing 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 worship, 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 reassembled, 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 nobles 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 bloody 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, pushing 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 shifted 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 Elass and of the other leading nobles, 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, rushing 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: Grasshopper-kinden and Dragonflies in padded cuirasses 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 assassin, 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 encompassing 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 massively 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 pronounced 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 dashing 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? Nobody asked the seer what the one million reasons to surrender were: men and women and children, families, communities, friendships, 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 nobles’ 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 noble 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 Elass 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, reassuring 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.