For a moment she thought he stumbled, the sloping ground treacherous beneath his feet, and she leapt for this opening instantly, faster than thought. Thought, catching up, cried, It’s a feint! but she had taken the bait already, lunging in even as he struck out at her whilst twisting aside from her blade.
There was barely an impact felt, but she heard a scream and thought it must be her own. Her sight was filled with red, and the slope of the ground seemed to roll under her feet, pitching her half a dozen reeling steps downhill, sword raised to ward him off, blindly covering one of a hundred approaches his blade might make.
It was Che who had screamed, she now realized. She herself kept silent as the tomb. There was blood in her eyes, and she drew a sleeve across them. That hurt, a burning pain shooting across her face where his blade had lashed her. My face—
One eye was still running with blood, but she had the other one clear, enough to see him approach again, steady and measured in his pace. The searing pain had not stopped, but she forced it away, locking it in the depths of her mind, perhaps in one of those chambers where Tisamon had so recently resided. Her mouth was full of blood, refilling each time she spat it out. He had cut her across her face . . . her face.
She had lived in two worlds, once. The Mantis child in her had fought, the Spider had smiled and plotted, painted herself in the mirror, charmed her enemies and made them fools. She had even smiled a path all the way to the Imperial palace at Capitas, because swords could not be relied on to win every fight.
She felt the Mantis path before her feet now, all others cut away. One-eyed, she met his gaze, and thought that he would understand. It was not true that every Mantis tragedy ended with a body on the floor. Some had two.
When he came for her next, she turned her body in a vain attempt to let his blade slide off her, while her own blade was already in motion. Her expected parry did not come, that he angled his blade to anticipate. Instead she dragged her hand back and up, the point of her rapier remaining almost motionless as she pivoted the rest of the sword around it in the air. The solid shock of contact came as his claw drove into her hip, driving a choking gasp out of her as she spat blood. His own left hand was lifting to catch her blade, but she drove it down anyway, calling on every ounce of strength to speed it on its way.
He had his hand almost in place, but the edge of her blade flayed his palm and cut the web of skin between thumb and forefinger down to the bone, and he could not put enough force into his gesture to deflect her.
Angled downwards and inwards, the point then dug into his pale leathers, just below his left collarbone, and it did not stop until the quillons were an inch from his ribs.
Through a film of new blood, she saw Isendter’s head cock back abruptly, his eyes closed. His expression was that of a man listening to musicians in some private, peaceful place. She felt his blade grind against bone and, for a moment, they were propping one another up.
She drew in a breath raggedly, and let go of her sword hilt, gifting him with the blade. When his own drew clear of her, from the bloody landscape it had left of her hip and thigh, she let out a brief, horrified bark of pain.
For a moment they just stared at one another. Blood had begun painting the grey of his arming jacket, welling slowly around the inch of steel she had left showing.
Something tugged at the corner of his mouth. It might even have been a smile. Then he let himself go, slumping down to one knee with a grating whoosh of breath. The whole world was silent.
She looked beyond Isendter and saw Salme Elass standing there, her face a picture of rage and denial. There came no instant command, though, no immediate breaking with the Commonweal’s ancient traditions. The princess was too shocked even for that.
Tynisa felt her legs tremble, and knew that if she also fell now, she would lose. She was the winner only so long as she stood. Salme Elass’s paralysis would not survive any show of weakness.
Tynisa turned, very carefully indeed, to see Che’s agonized face, Thalric’s grim one, and fewer bandits than she had remembered. They were standing uphill from her, of course, curse them.
The pain had become a constantly expanding fire in her, battering at her mind, demanding that she give in to it, tearing at her self-control. She remained upright only by application of pure will.
With the utmost precision she placed one foot in front of the other and began to walk.
Forty-Five
They could do nothing but watch Tynisa’s tortuous progress back towards them, even as some of the Salmae’s people began to approach their own kneeling champion. Tynisa swayed, and each time she put weight on her right leg a shudder went through her, like a dying thing, but somehow she was still on her feet when Che reached out to clasp her arm, and take her weight. The duellist’s face was a mess of blood, the wounds impossible to trace beneath it. One eye was clear and open, but focusing on nothing. Her teeth were clenched together hard enough for Che to hear them grinding.
‘Into the trees,’ Dal Arche snapped. ‘Get beyond the treeline. Keep her on her feet until then.’
When Che rounded on him furiously, he made a wild gesture at all the Salmae’s people. ‘They’re staying where they are because she won, and even when the princess gets her voice back and starts telling them that the fight meant nothing, a lot of them will hold back. Tradition, just useless, rotten tradition, but this once it works for us. Our champion won, so going after us now counts as bad form.’ He spat the words disgustedly. ‘Oh, they’ll come, sure enough, but we have some time so long as it’s us that won.’
‘But . . .’ Che started, already moving for the trees with Tynisa leaning on her, barely more than a dead weight.
‘That fellow she took down is still alive back there, for all her sword’s sticking in him,’ Dal shot back. ‘If she just keels over in full view, well, she might be dead, then. In that case their man won, and we’re all dead a moment after that.’ He glanced back anxiously. ‘Tell the truth, I’m not sure who did win there. Bloody mess, all of it. Soul—’
‘Stay by the treeline and watch what they do,’ the Grasshopper pre-empted him. He had an arrow to his bow, his eyes flicking left and right across the breadth of the enemy host, and then up to the sky.
The trees loomed sooner than Che had expected. ‘A doctor, there must be,’ she said. ‘We have to . . .’ She looked down in horror at the sheer quantity of blood. ‘Bandages, medicines, something . . .’ She tried to catch Maure’s eye but the magician would not look at her.
‘Carry the girl into the woods,’ Dal stated flatly. He glanced at Thalric, who bristled for a moment, but then got an arm round Tynisa’s back and simply gathered up her knees with the other, hoisting the girl in his arms. She gave out a wretched, rasping cry, and Che almost hoped she would pass out, escape for a moment from the agony she must be in. But instead, Tynisa rested her head on Thalric’s shoulder, sheer willpower twisting her face.
‘Go,’ Dal urged, and he and Mordrec set the pace, letting the other two keep up as best they could. Released from Tynisa’s weight, Che’s injured leg took the chance to register its own complaints, for all her durable Beetle nature. She let herself lean on Maure’s arm, while Thalric strode and stumbled ahead, trying to balance Tynisa’s weight. If Mordrec had been unwounded then the two bandits might have got clear of them and simply vanished into the trees, but his shoulder was troubling him still, sapping his strength, and Dal hung back to match his friend’s pace.
‘She’s dying!’ Che called out, not caring who heard her now. ‘I need to tend her wounds, please!’
Dal looked back, and she saw the internal conflict on his face, the man who wanted to run for it fighting desperately with the man so many had chosen to follow. He cast his eyes about furiously, trying to judge how far they had come. Not far enough, was written plainly in his expression, but then one finger jabbed out, indicating a dip where the land fell away, offering some pitiful shelter from enemy eyes.
Thalric manoeuvred his trembli
ng burden down, skidding a little on the slope before coming to a halt with a jar that made Tynisa clutch at him tightly. His face could not be read as he looked at the injured girl, but Che supposed miserably that he would rather she died as soon as they were out of sight of the Salmae, just to rid him of the burden.
As soon as they had stopped, Che was fumbling in her packs for some bandages, and a few little jars of medicine to clean wounds and to ease pain. And thank the world they didn’t take them off me, when I was caught. ‘Start a fire,’ she gasped. ‘Boil up some water.’
‘No time,’ Dal told her flatly.
She glared at him. ‘She’ll die—’
‘She may well die,’ he replied, ‘but we all will, if they catch us. You have minutes here only. Do what you can.’
The mistake Che made was in going for Tynisa’s face first, wetting a bandage with water from her canteen and then wiping away the mask of blood she had been left with. What she saw beneath made her recoil, for the blade’s single stroke had carved her sister from forehead to lips, in a long, crooked line. The mercy was that both eyes were still intact, one gummed shut with blood, but the wound had opened up Tynisa’s cheek and slit the corner of her mouth. The old Mantis-kinden had given her a new face to frighten children.
Che reached for her needle and thread, but Maure was already dragging at her sleeve. ‘No, Che,’ and she was indicating the wound at the Spider girl’s hip.
When she looked, there was so much blood that it seemed impossible that Tynisa could lay claim to it all, yet more kept coming. When Che peeled back the soaking rags of the wounded girl’s clothing it started to gush with a frantic rhythm while Tynisa arched back, ravaged face screwed up against the pain.
‘Stop the blood, stop the blood,’ Che said to herself, thrusting her hands against the wound, but she could not stem it. There was just too much. The life of her sister was emptying itself out between her fingers. A shadow fell over her, a presence looming at her shoulder. ‘Go away!’ she snapped, pressing harder until a brief, choking sound came from Tynisa’s lips.
‘Get out of the way, you stupid woman.’ A hand was on her shoulder and then she was abruptly slung aside. She heard the man grunt with pain as he did it, and recognized Mordrec kneeling at Tynisa’s side.
He’s going to kill her, so she doesn’t slow us down, she thought. Thalric had a palm extended, but was hesitating, as Mordrec put his own hands flat on to Tynisa’s hip, wrist-deep in blood instantly. Maure was holding her back, pleading, ‘No, Che, no,’ as she tried to lunge at the man, to drag him off her sister.
Tynisa keened, with a high sound like a saw biting into iron, one arm flailing madly at the Wasp, then Che saw a stuttering glow between Mordrec’s fingers, and smelt burning. Burning blood, burning skin.
She wanted to cry out, What is he doing? but realization came to her even as she opened her mouth.
After Mordrec stood up, whatever blood Tynisa had left inside her would be staying there, and the imprint of his big hand was seared into her skin in a glossy burn-scar that would surely stay with her for as long as she lived – however short that looked likely to be.
‘I didn’t know Wasp Art could do that,’ she admitted weakly, glancing at Thalric.
‘Don’t look at me. Mine tends to the opposite direction. I’d have blown her leg off.’
She saw Mordrec’s pallid face, sheened with sweat from the effort. ‘We have to go,’ he rasped.
Dropping back down beside Tynisa, Che took her wound-cleanser and soaked bandages in it, using every last drop. Her sister writhed and fought as she applied it, and from personal experience she knew how it stung, but Collegium doctors had long known how the difference between a fatal and a trivial wound would be whether it turned to corruption or not. She swabbed swiftly and aggressively at Tynisa’s face, cleaning away the blood and trying not to look at the twisted line of the scar, and then did her best with what Mordrec had left of the major wound on her hip. Tynisa looked paler than Che had ever seen another human being, or at least one who was still alive. The loss of blood might still kill her, or the shock, or any number of other things. Impulsively, Che took her hand, and was startled by the faint squeeze back. Tynisa was still conscious, and not through any of it had she let go, perhaps fearing that a temporary darkness could become permanent all too easily.
In Che’s mind was a great deal of dread, a terror of a future that did not have this woman in it. We came so far, and it cannot just have been to lose you now.
And: in the midst of her whirl of panicked thoughts, I will not have it.
She blinked. For a moment she had seemed to feel the world shudder, just a little, around her – the air and the earth trembling minutely, out of step with each other. She found herself meeting Tynisa’s gaze.
‘We have to move,’ Che whispered urgently. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
Tynisa squeezed her hand again, stronger this time, and then Thalric stepped in without being asked and picked her up. Straightening with a grunt, he glanced towards the sky, where a flurry of white was blowing between the branches. The last echo of the Commonweal winter had picked this time to enter its death throes.
Soul Je suddenly arrived, a shape leaping and bounding between trees. In one hand he held his bow, an arrow clasped across it.
‘All kinds of shouting,’ he reported. ‘Princess is telling them to get moving. They don’t like it.’
‘It won’t last,’ Dal decided. ‘Some of them will be keen enough to retain her favour. It won’t be all of them, but frankly it won’t need many.’
Thalric began walking away, almost at random, and a moment later they were all on the move.
Dal squinted up at the white-grey sky. ‘The snow’s a curse when it’s light. We can’t hide our tracks. If it’s heavy, though, there’ll be no tracks. We might hide in it all the way to the border.’
‘If it’s heavy, the cold will kill her,’ Che chided him.
‘Then find a way to stop the snow,’ he replied with a shrug. When Che just halted, he carried on.
She looked up at a lattice of branches with the flakes flurrying through.
‘Maure.’
The magician glanced back. ‘Che, no.’
‘Then what good is it, any of it? Or is that the great secret of magic, that it’s dwindled to uselessness, and that’s why the armies of the Apt run roughshod over the world? Have I come so far just to join the losing side?’
‘Che, you’ve power, but you’ve no direction, no training, and the power you have, it’s . . . not native to you. It was never intended for a Beetle-kinden to use.’
Che shrugged. ‘One thing about Beetles is that we adapt.’ And with that, she thrust her arms out into the chill air, directed back the way they had come, towards the invisible Salmae. For a moment nothing happened, and she could conceive of no possible way that she could affect the world. Magic was a fiction, of course, and all her early years of study confirmed that. Then she sensed the faintest catch, as though her fingers had brushed some kind of trailing veil, invisible in the air.
‘Masters of Khanaphes, you crowned me,’ Che murmured, less to herself than to the world at large. ‘You made me something new, me and the Empress – you gave us some mark or mantle of yours, made us your champions, however it works. After a thousand years of exile beneath the earth, you have recognized us. Does that mean nothing? Does that mean that when I speak to the wind, it just whisks my words away? What good is it all, then? What is the point of it all?’
She heard Thalric calling to her distantly, but the wind was picking up now, and she caught none of his meaning.
‘I am caught between two worlds,’ she considered, as Maure shifted from foot to foot beside her, keen to get away. ‘Child of the new, but scion of the old. Nobody could have intended that, but it has happened, and I refuse to let it become nothing more than a handicap.’ She was speaking quietly, calmly, but with that last word she summoned her will and pushed it through both hands, tearing at the sky
with invisible fingers, clutching and dragging and throwing . . .
The wind changed direction with an audible whump, and was abruptly whistling past her, back towards the pursuers that were surely coming. She heard it keening through the trees, followed by the snow, thicker than it had been a moment ago, rushing to fly in the faces of their hunters, while obliterating all tracks.
She felt something go out of her, as if some great reservoir had been emptied all at once – expended in a flood of power sent to batter the very heavens into submission.
But had I been skilled, oh then . . . For in that moment she saw that given a little application, a little care, she might have achieved the same result from so much less effort, and thus have something still in hand to deal with her enemies when they did finally catch up. For now, though, she felt leaden, hollowed out, and could only stumble behind Maure as the magician led her after the others.
The fierce snowstorm that would now be making their followers’ lives a misery was well behind her, and it stayed behind her as she hurried to catch up with Thalric. The air ahead and immediately around her remained crisp and still, the wind itself waiting for her to pass by before claiming another yard of ground.
Her progress was a mad lurch through the forest, the snow always building right behind her, gusting about her heels as though she was the harbinger of a second winter. Maure, helping to take Che’s weight, was shivering, the tips of her ears and nose turning blue with cold, but Che herself felt none of it.
Consequences, she thought to herself. I must be more careful whenever I try to move the world. My standpoint is more solid than I thought. At the same time, though, the scholar in her was considering, And though I believe I moved the weather, yet Thalric would simply claim that this snow was fortuitous. Magic must creep, now. It is not the fire and grandeur of the Bad Old Days.
She heard Dal Arche cry out from ahead of her, his words lost in the wind, but they could mean nothing good. Maure put on an extra burst of speed, without being asked, and a moment later Che saw Thalric, his hands outstretched, looking wildly around. Tynisa crouched at his feet, plainly awake and aware. Her eyes locked on to Che’s and she shouted hoarsely, ‘Look out!’
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