It was always the case: a few of Dal’s people had not withdrawn soon enough, still chasing some last piece of loot, or just believing they knew better. One of them caught an arrow in the chest, the lead Mercer standing up in the saddle to loose it without his mount’s speed slackening at all. The rest scattered as the six riders thundered between the burning ruins of the houses, aiming directly for the barge.
In the past, brigands had been nothing but angry, maladjusted farmers, with perhaps the odd woodsman amongst them who could string a bow. Mercers, even the local kind, were a constant terror to them. Even now the stragglers among Dal’s people were fleeing in all directions, while the Mercers rode past them, turning in the saddle to aim and loose arrows at every target, and hitting them more often than not.
Dal took careful aim and loosed, too, but the rearmost rider shouted a warning even as he did so. The shaft struck the approaching woman’s shimmering breastplate and glanced off, knocking her sideways and half out of the saddle. A moment later, she had taken to the air, as did half the others.
Soul Je took careful aim and put a three-foot shaft through the Mercer woman, striking an inch over her breastplate’s collar and plucking her out of the sky. Dal’s shaft was supposed to have provided the signal, but it was her blood that prompted the brigands to counterattack.
Of those fleeing to the barge, perhaps a dozen had courage enough to turn around and face the horses, bending bows and setting spears. Amongst them was the Wasp, Mordrec, his hands flashing fire as the Mercers came on. On all sides, though, Dal’s people were suddenly springing from behind bushes, from the perilous shadows of burning buildings, from the waters of the canal itself. Arrows danced and sang through the air, mostly to no avail, but three separate shafts managed to strike the same man and throw him from his saddle. He was still alive as he hit the ground, his mail preserving him from the onslaught of the flimsy hunting bows most of the bandits carried. Then there were spearmen converging on him, three or four of them together, and within six or seven stabs they had found some part of him the armour did not cover.
The other Mercers were circling, two on horseback still and two in the air. Had they chosen to flee then, they would have got away with it. Dal could see their faces, though, and realized that they could not believe what was happening to them – that peasants were taking such liberties with their lives.
Dal Arche selected another arrow, then waited for a target to present itself. He saw one of the horses rear and fall as Mordrec’s sting lashed into it. The rider tried heading for the sky but one of Dal’s men struck him across the back with a cudgel, and another, a Grasshopper, leapt high in the air and grabbed hold of him, bringing the stunned man down to earth again. Another Mercer had gone down with a crossbow bolt in the leg, courtesy of Barad Ygor, and now Ygor’s pet scorpion was busy savaging the victim, claws prying apart mail and plates to get at the meat beneath.
Dal Arche sighted carefully, as calm as a man on a practice range, and sent a shaft through one of the fliers’ throat even as the Mercer was drawing back his own bowstring.
Their final opponent was ascending, up and up, still staring downwards in incredulous horror. Dal called up his own wings, but Soul was aiming, string pulled back beside his ear as he sighted almost into the sun. The arrow leapt from his bow, so fast as to seem invisible, and all Dal saw was the shuddering impact, and then the Mercer was tumbling from the heavens.
In the old days, bandits had been those unable or unwilling to live under the rule of princes, and perhaps that had not changed. What had changed, though, was the number of disgruntled peasants who had been ripped from their land and forced to fight in a war, who had seen their friends and comrades and families cast away in one doomed battle after another, as the Empire ground its way across the Commonweal map. They had died in their droves, those levies of the Commonweal, given spears but no training and scattered like chaff against the greatest armies of the world. Those who had survived, though . . .
Those that survived had learned soldiering the hard way. Men like Dal Arche himself, baked hard in the fires of war, tough men with sharp edges. They had lasted out the war itself and then found they could not go home, either because it was now beneath the Imperial flag, or because they had changed so much in character that nowhere in the Commonweal seemed like home to them.
They were the men who had learned what comes of following princes.
When the fighting was over, Dal flew down to confer with his lieutenants, as the rest of his men prepared the barge for its departure.
‘We won’t get it that easy again,’ Mordrec remarked.
‘When have we ever had it easy?’ Dal asked him. ‘I want you three to go back south and keep recruiting. We’ll need more men.’
‘The Salmae are going to be riled,’ noted the Wasp. ‘We’re sure we know what we’re doing?’
Dal looked from face to face. ‘The Salmae have already shown us that they won’t accept us as neighbours. They wrote that message clear enough. Now we’ve sent them our reply, in proper noble language.’
‘We’ve declared war,’ Mordrec translated.
‘That’s what I said,’ agreed Dal, seeing Soul Je, who seldom spoke, nodding in agreement.
Dal turned to view his followers, casting his gaze over all of them. The new faces, those who had formerly been the peasants of Sara Tela, were staring at the dead Mercers with a world of possibilities in their eyes.
Twenty-Four
Salme Elass, Princess of Leose, felt herself poised on the brink of a great height, and the time had come to cast herself from it.
She sat in the chamber she governed from: not for her a garden, like Felipe Shah, but a high-ceilinged room where lofty windows let in coloured shafts of light that crossed each other like sword blades. There was a warrior statue on either side of her, the kind that the ancient magicians of her people had supposedly been able to imbue with life in order to defend their royal charges. All lost, she thought. Yet another thing lost, and nobody will do anything to stop these sands running through our fingers.
There were some, she knew, who had already grown sick with that loss, so that they turned away from the destiny that princes lived for. Felipe Shah had grown weak after the war, cut so deep by his losses that he feared to take any action, lest some further calamity befall him. Lowre Cean was another, although Elass still had a use for him.
And the Monarch is a third. A strong Monarch would make a strong Commonweal, but there was only silence from Shon Fhor. The land might as well now be leaderless.
It is time for someone of will and ambition to take a stand and recover what we have lost. The Commonweal can rise again, but those of us who are not grown palsied by doubt must act.
On either side of the two statues stood her chief servants: Isendter Whitehand, her champion, and Lisan Dea, her seneschal, both of them bound to her by the iron chains of loyalty. Both also thinking they knew best, but they were not prince or princess. They were not even Dragonfly-kinden, merely servants.
The brigands to the south were growing bold, no doubt expecting the usual Mercer patrols in response, just enough manpower diverted in their direction to make their raids difficult and costly and persuade them to look elsewhere for their loot. Thus the Commonweal had been dealing with its internal problems for years, either letting the villains run riot in abandoned provinces, or passing them on to a neighbour, who passed the problem on in turn, all motivated by some hope that time itself would smooth over the growing cracks.
No more. Elass had already sent out summonses to those minor nobles who she knew would heed her, and would therefore act. They were few enough, a half-dozen tiny families with a handful of house guards and a minuscule levy available to them. There were others, though, who had the resources but lacked the will. She needed a standard to inspire them, for the name of the Salmae was not yet great enough in its own right.
Ungrateful wretches, she thought bitterly. Her husband had died in the war, and her eldest
son, too, and then her middle son had been taken by Felipe and sent to die in the Lowlands. And still they will not rise up at my bidding.
It would be different, she knew, if it were Lowre Cean sounding the horn and leading the charge. The old man’s name still carried weight, one of the few Commonweal leaders who had won any significant victories against the Empire. The effort of it had worn Lowre out, though, since he had lost his lands, his wife, his adored son. Even though he lived on Salmae soil, and by her graces, he would not draw his sword for her.
Until now, I hope, for something had changed. The girl had come, the one who had been trailing Alain’s footsteps so much. Elass was unsure of the Lowlander’s significance, but apparently Felipe Shah had been much impressed with her, and now she was part of old Lowre’s household, and obviously held in some esteem. Then there had been that business with the dance, and some piece of drama at Alain’s idiot hunt. She had made a name for herself, and it was not hard to see the direction her affections were pointed in.
It would not be the first time that Alain had come back with some beggar girl following at his heels, believing . . . what? Believing that the sanctity of princes would make her an exception, Elass supposed. And of course, they had no princes in the Lowlands, no royal blood, nothing but a grubby overclass of merchants, so she understood. The Spider girl would never be a suitable match for Alain, but likewise she would never understand the barriers between them. But she might be useful: a tool to take in hand and turn against the world, for old Lowre Cean was sentimental, and had clearly taken the girl to heart. Where a princess’s pleas might fall on deaf ears, the same words from Maker Tynise could sway him. So long as Elass could control her. So long as Alain had not already overplayed his part.
The nobility of the Commonweal observed complex strata of love-play, tiers and hierarchies, subtle distinctions, all the soft arts and their related games – the degrees of distance and attachment. There were the casual attractions, involving a single meeting and a parting, and no more. There were the soul-mates married and matched and bound together. There were the comrades enjoying a closeness of delicate balance not to be marred by fierce passions but no less a bond of love. The Spider girl hardly merited either of the last two, but Elass could only hope that her son had not already made of Tynisa the former – already had her and had done with her – leaving nothing that Elass could use.
For of course there was another relationship, to be held close and yet not touched: that of the useful servant, the special tool that will only be persuaded by promises. And let Alain remember his station, what he is and what she is, and not raise her too high nor cast her too far away . . .
‘You are sure she will come here?’ she asked, speaking into the silence that had held sway for more than an hour now, while she reflected.
‘My divination tells me so – and soon. Today most likely,’ Lisan Dea replied.
‘Then you must be ready to greet her,’ Elass instructed, with a gesture of dismissal. Lisan was unhappy about the business, she knew, but it was not her seneschal’s place to comment on the designs of her betters.
‘The girl has changed since she was last here,’ Isendter observed, as the echoes of Lisan’s footsteps faded.
‘In what way?’
The Mantis was silent for a long moment before he spoke. ‘It is hard to tell. She may seem a Spider, but there was always something of my people about her, perhaps granted to her by the badge she bears. Now that part has become greater. I look on her now and my mind says Mantis, whatever my eyes tell me.’
‘She has thoughts still for Alain, however she’s changed, I am sure,’ Elass decided. ‘Will she join the fight?’
‘Yes,’ came the immediate and firm response. ‘You may have no fear of that.’
Tynisa had expected a change of weather heralding the spring, but instead the skies had opened up with fresh snow, which lay in foot-thick drifts as far as the horizon. Lowre Cean had told her this was perfectly normal.
‘I understand it is different in your Lowlands,’ he had mused, ‘but here the winter does not let go without a fight.’
And something had twitched with approval inside of her, and she had smiled without meaning to.
‘I must practise now,’ she had told him, and departed for the courtyard where, before an audience of Roach-kinden travellers and a gang of Bee-kinden Auxillian deserters, she had thrown herself through all the paces that her father had ever taught her, every trick of footwork and bladework, as the snow filtered down around her.
She did not recall coming back here after the hunt. Her mind had been so seared by that impossible image of her father standing there before the Mantis icon, gleaming and translucent, holding one spined hand out to her. She remembered nothing else. They told her that she had collapsed.
When she had awoken, the nobles were long gone, but one of their party had remained by her bedside. She had opened her eyes to see the severe features of Isendter Whitehand.
‘It has been two days, almost,’ he had informed her, before she could ask him.
She had stared into his face. I saw . . . but what would it mean to him? Instead, what had emerged from her lips was, ‘Alain . . .’
‘Is in Leose by now.’
‘But he asked you to stay with me,’ she had pressed, hoping.
‘I would have stayed of my own will, unless ordered away,’ he had told her but, after a pause in which she felt sour disappointment creeping in, added, ‘You are correct though. Prince Alain wishes to know when you are well again.’
She had swung her legs out of bed, staring at the floor just to hide her smile from him. ‘And now?’
‘I shall return to his side and report.’ Yet he had made no move, and she glanced up at him. His expression had been measuring, almost wary. ‘You have been . . . touched by something. I am no magician, but I sensed it there, at the shrine.’
‘Yes,’ she had confirmed, giving him no other details.
‘Be wary of such contact, Maker Tynise. The world of the living does not easily walk hand in hand with the world of either spirits or the dead.’
‘I have no fear of it. What else can I trust, if not this?’ she had replied blithely. His troubled expression had remained as he bowed and left her.
While dressing, she had looked about for some sign of her father, but he was not to be seen. Instead she heard an echo within her head, words remembered from long ago. You must practise. How else will you honour your gifts?
It was true that, since Tisamon’s death, she had not kept to the rigorous training he had prescribed for her. In the depth of her loss that had not seemed important, but now she suddenly felt that she had betrayed his memory by her laxness. She had a duty to the badge she wore, to a thousand years of heritage.
With the thought, she felt a distant surge of approval.
She did not believe in ghosts, but suddenly there was something new for her, a hand on her tiller to steer her course true. She could not have seen her father, of course, but even so, she felt him near her.
You must face the world without fear. Life is struggle.
Of course it is, she told herself. That was the Mantis way, after all: meet the world with a drawn blade, to either conquer or die.
What do you want? had come the question, the one she asked inside her own head, couched in that cold, far-off voice.
‘Salme Alain,’ she murmured in response, savouring his name.
Then you must stalk him and win him, she told herself, in that same voice. And I shall show you how.
Some days later she had left Lowre’s compound, in thick snow, and headed for Leose. The Commonweal weather, which had previously seemed something almost supernatural, was put in its place as just one more way for a Weaponsmaster to test herself.
She did not stop at Gaved and Sef’s hut. A Wasp and a Spider, what were they to her?
On waking up after the hunt, the world had seemed more simple, its colours brighter, the divisions between light and dar
k that much more clear. The endless round that her mind had kept treading – all those paths of guilt and worry – had fallen away from her. That her father and Salma were dead did not sting: they had died as warriors after all. That Achaeos was dead . . . She explored the thought like touching a rotten tooth. Regret is for the weak, came her inner voice. Do not hide from what your blade has done. If you slew him, then surely he was your enemy.
She had not yet let go of regret, but her grip was loosening. How attractive it would be to rewrite her personal history so that her stabbing of Achaeos became not a crime but a justified exercise of her superiority.
Her trek to Leose was almost completely solitary, with the vast expanse of the frozen Commonweal like a canvas about her: a world picked out in white and grey and dark shadow. She might have been the last living thing in the world.
Each day she would travel until noon, then pause to eat and to train, finding once again her perfect balance with the blade, all the old moves and passes that she had allowed to rust while she indulged her sense of guilt. Each session of bladework cleansed her of another layer of useless distractions, honing her to a point.
She had a purpose now, or rather, the purpose that she had been standing on the brink of for some time had now coalesced.
I want Salme Alain. And the answer came, And you shall have him, but you must perfect yourself until he cannot deny you.
So it was that she found herself at the gates of Castle Leose, under the wary eyes of the guards in shimmering armour.
They sent for Lisan Dea, of course, and the Grasshopper seneschal came out, eventually, to regard Tynisa wearily.
‘You have some message from Lowre Cean?’ she asked grimly.
‘You know why I am here,’ Tynisa told her evenly. Do not make me prove myself to you. A part of her weighed up the woman and found her wanting. She was nothing but a grand clerk, after all.
The Grasshopper stared at her, stepping close enough for Tynisa to impale her just by drawing her rapier from its scabbard, one fluid motion so swift that the guards would barely see it before it was done. The thought played itself out in her mind, and she had to fight against simply letting her body follow suit.
Heirs of the Blade (Shadows of the Apt 7) Page 31