Heirs of the Blade (53 page)

This long arm of the forest – this brigand’s road – would take them to within striking distance of the Rhael border, but he doubted that a few trees would keep the Salmae off his back from now on. They were obviously pushing for the endgame, and Dal found that he had overextended his people, driven them too far from home, too close to Rhael.
But we were doing so well!
Then he remembered the war, and the way that every victory against the Wasps, however striking, had seemed to be the prelude to an ever-greater defeat.
Just my luck that I find a Commonweal noble who actually learned something from all those cursed battles.

He drove his followers hard, keeping them moving and keeping them organized. He had scouts on either flank, and Soul Je leading a band of the fleetest in the vanguard, whilst Mordrec and Ygor marshalled the main force, chivvying stragglers and keeping some semblance of order.

The pursuing riders had plainly lacked the nerve to simply charge straight into the forest, where their advantage would be swiftly lost, after which so would they. However, Dal knew there was more. Cavalry on their own won few battles, so there would be somewhere ahead where the Salmae would have picked out an ambush point – or at least that would be how Dal himself would arrange it. After all, it was hardly a great secret as to which direction the bandits would take . . .

So perhaps we jump the wrong way?
Dal sent a runner ahead to fetch Soul back. ‘You know how the land lies ahead?’ he asked the Grasshopper. At Soul’s terse nod he continued, ‘What do you say to us breaking left, out into the open? Where can we find woods again, after that?’

‘A half-mile east and there’s a fair stand of cane forest, but it’s commune land.’

Dal stared at him hard, even as Soul loped along beside him, keeping pace. ‘Stick-kinden?’ he said, expressionless.

‘You don’t believe in them?’

‘I’m sharper than that, but even so . . . Three hundred brigands heading through Stick-kinden land, someone’s going to get it wrong, and we don’t need more enemies.’

‘We can always skirt the edges. Salmae might not follow,’ Soul suggested. ‘Break for the open again, quarter-mile, there’s denser woods. We can hide up there, set watch and stay overnight.’

They got clear of the woods without delay, despite a fair proportion of Dal’s people demanding to know where they were going. They lacked the discipline and the stamina of true soldiers, and the march was already beginning to tell on them.

But out in the open they found new motivation: the thought of the Salmae cavalry looming in every mind. Dal rode back and forth along the length of their ragtag formation, keeping them together and on the move. Soon enough, one of his people had spotted the enemy: a small shape dark against the sky. That was one of their nobles, high above on a dragonfly, hovering as its rider located the brigands and worked out where they were going. The sight sparked a certain satisfaction in Dal Arche.
So, you didn’t guess we’d do this, eh?

Still, the Salmae were making the most of their new discipline, and their first troops were in sight just before the brigands made it to the edge of the cane forest. Footmen and riders both were approaching, but far enough away still for Dal’s people to get themselves under the suspect cover of the bamboo without trouble.

Once they had all assembled amongst the boles, Dal halted them. Around them the countless tall stalks remained ominously still, the field of close-packed verticals playing tricks on the eye. The sky above was darkening now, cloudless enough to promise a chill night. As the brigands stamped and shuffled, Dal waited on Mordrec and Ygor, who had gone to the perimeter to see what the Salmae would do next.

They were holding off, came Mordrec’s report at last. Nightfall had seen the sparks of Salmae campfires out beyond the canes, where they seemed to be settling down and waiting for dawn.

‘Which leaves us with a few possibilities,’ Dal remarked. ‘They might be tricking us and come for us at night, which’d mean a mess for all concerned. We could try and make our own move at night, and hope they won’t notice. Or perhaps they reckon they can match us as we move around the cane-forest edge, and pen us in here.’

‘We don’t want to be in here any longer than we need to,’ Ygor stated. ‘Mord and me, we saw something, we think. Like a man, a very tall man, watching us.’

‘Well, we’re still alive for now,’ Mordrec added, pragmatic as always. ‘What’ll it be? Make camp or make our move?’

‘Soul?’ Dal asked, and the Grasshopper seemed to materialize at his shoulder. ‘You know these places, yes?’

‘A little, from the war.’ Soul Je had been an Imperial Auxillian in the Twelve-year War, and not enjoyed it much.

‘The . . . locals, they might come for us at night?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘They can be reasoned with?’

‘They like their privacy, Dala.’

Ygor muscled in, then. ‘Looks like they’re around a third of our number.’ The skin over his eyes creased, where a man with eyebrows would have raised them. ‘Fight? Attack them overnight?’

‘Sounds like they’re inviting it,’ Dal agreed. ‘Which is why we won’t. There’ll be more of them, for sure. They wouldn’t have kept us hopping all day just to fail so badly now. We need to get clear of them. If we fight, we fight when and where I choose. Soul, I get the impression you can talk to our . . . hosts in here? You’ve done it before?’

The Grasshopper looked sour. ‘Wouldn’t say it worked well, but I’ve seen it done. I know a little of their speech.’

‘Then I have something for you to tell them.’

The brigands made camp, with plenty of eyes keeping watch towards the dimly glimpsed fires of their pursuers. By his own orders, it was only Dal Arche who allowed his gaze to turn the other way, watching Soul as he sat some way deeper into the cane forest. Dal had always had good eyes, even for one of his kind, and at last, an hour later, he saw Soul standing up. For a long while there was nothing more save that he could hear the distant murmur of the Grasshopper’s voice. But then there was a movement, and Dal realized that the Stick-kinden were here, or one of them at least. The newcomer was freakishly tall, standing a good two feet higher than Soul, who was as lofty as most of his kind. Beneath the shrouding cloak, Dal could make out broad shoulders, but there seemed to be little more substance to this creature, just a great gaunt scarecrow, two long-fingered hands moved, making patterns in the air, but Dal heard no voice other than Soul’s. The conversation, such as it was, went on for a long time, the Grasshopper giving soft replies to the signs that the Stick-kinden used. When Soul talked at length, Dal lost sight of the tall creature entirely: standing utterly still as it did, its Art cloaked it in shadows and led the eye astray. Only when it spoke with its hands did it attract the attention,

There could be dozens of the things all around us.
Dal forced himself to keep calm. If that was so, there was little he could do about it.

At last, Soul Je came back, looking worn down by his negotiations.

‘Get everyone up,’ he said, and Dal quickly kicked the nearest half-dozen awake, and sent them grumbling and complaining to wake up others.

‘They’re going to kill us?’

‘They’re going to guide us through their lands,’ Soul replied. ‘Don’t ask why, because I don’t know. We’ve nothing they want. Perhaps they just like lost causes.’

‘Not lost yet,’ Dal decided.

‘One condition, though: blindfolds. Everyone must be blindfolded. They’ll kill anyone who so much as peeks. We’ll be passing through their heartland, Dala.
Nobody
’s ever seen it. They want to keep it that way.’

Dal nodded grimly, and began to pass the word along.
It’s not going to work
, he already knew. The temptation would be too great. Worse, it could be a trap. They might none of them come out of this alive. ‘You trust them, though.’

‘They’re not like us,’ Soul replied. ‘They don’t care about politics, they don’t pay taxes, they don’t want more land. They’re apart from it all.’ His voice sounded almost wistful. ‘If they didn’t like us, then we’d be getting shot at right now, or we’d just never see them at all. They have no need of betrayal.’

Studying him now, Dal thought he saw why the Stick-kinden had been so compliant. Perhaps they had seen in Soul some little fragment of their own nature.

By that time the bandits were all awake, though not happy about it, and even less happy once they were told to blindfold themselves. Mordrec tied together every rope and cord he could lay his hands on, supplemented with torn cloaks and tunics after they ran out. Soon everyone was holding on to a section of of his makeshift lead, the brigands making a long, untidy string of baffled and angry people. Beyond the forest edge, the Salmae camp was waking up too, hearing the disturbance and no doubt expecting the brigands to make a break into the open under cover of darkness.

Of course, that break never came, so the followers of the Salmae milled about and watched intently for hours, as the bandits melted away into the heart of the cane forest.

Dal Arche had been expecting an eerie, almost mystical experience, but a couple of hundred brigands, all blindfolded and tied together and being led through a forest, made enough noise for the entire business to sound more like a particularly raucous troupe of travelling clowns. Not a moment passed without someone falling over, stumbling into the hard, ridged bole of a bamboo cane, or stepping on someone else’s foot. It should have been hilarious. Instead, Dal was on edge the whole time, thinking of what else those noises might be covering.

There would be those amongst his followers who could not bear not knowing, so they would find a moment to lift the blindfold, despite his strict instructions. They would regret it, too; Dal was sure of that. He had a sense that all around them loomed the Stick-kinden: towering, angular and silent, staring with mute antipathy at these clumsy intruders, their hands stayed only by their anonymity. There were occasional screams amidst that chaos of stumbling and complaining. They were brief, cut off even as they started, but they were unmistakable.

How long it took them to cross that forest of cane, he could not say. The enforced darkness seemed to blind him to the passage of time as much as it did to the stars and moon. Eventually, though, he became aware that he was no longer being tugged along, and all around him people were standing still.

‘Eyes open,’ he snapped, hoping he was right, and that this was not some cruel trick of their hosts. When he pulled the cloth from his eyes, though, he saw that the canes gave out only yards ahead, and open ground lay beyond.

He located Mordrec and tugged at his arm. ‘Make a count,’ he suggested, and the Wasp nodded. As he passed through the band, counting heads, Dal spotted Soul and Ygor, and felt a sudden rush of relief when he saw them still alive.

The Scorpion was already moving out into the open, crouching low and with his companion beast ranging ahead of him, its claws and tail raised threateningly. Dal moved towards him but, as he approached, Ygor raised a hand abruptly and dropped to one knee.

Dal crept up beside him, but he had spotted the problem before he could ask about it. There were campfires visible out there, quite a large band of people, perhaps the same size as the group they had left behind.

‘This is impossible. Nobody could be that far ahead of us.’ A sudden thought struck him. ‘They must have a seer, a really good one, to be able to see in such detail.’

Ygor snorted, for he was Apt and didn’t believe in any of that. ‘They’ve got us to rights here, anyway,’ he replied. ‘I don’t reckon we’ll get back through the woods again, either.’

Mordrec and Soul Je joined them quietly. ‘We’re down thirty-seven,’ was the Wasp’s grim report.

Dal nodded.
We would have lost more, had we turned and fought, though
. He could not guarantee that, but it seemed overwhelmingly likely. Thirty-seven? Thirty-seven men and women who could not bear to stay blind in an unfamiliar place – and had that one last glimpse been worth it?

‘Soul, Ygor, scout them out,’ he ordered. ‘See how alert they are, their sentries, their preparations. We outnumber them and, even though they’re here, they might not be expecting an attack. We might get out of this yet.’

The Scorpion and the Grasshopper padded off into the darkness, with Ygor’s pet slinking along between them. Dal sat back on his haunches, staring out at the campfires.

‘We’ve been in worse,’ Mordrec reminded him philosophically. ‘Remember the steppes, hmm?’

‘Oh, certainly,’ Dal agreed, feeling suddenly very tired.
I’m just slightly on the wrong side of youth to be indulging in these all-night capers.
‘That double-cross at Mie Salve wasn’t much fun either.’

‘Only because of your bloody taste in women,’ Mordrec reminded him. ‘Matter of fact, the steppe business was women too.’

‘Well there’s no woman here now, Mord.’

‘There was Siriell,’ Mordrec suggested, impoliticly. At Dal’s responding glare he shrugged, setting the nailbow swaying on his shoulder. ‘I’m just saying.’

Dal was formulating a scathing reply, when he saw movement, and identified it a moment later as Soul and Ygor on their rapid return.
The fools, they’ve been spotted,
was his instant thought.

Without being told, Mordrec was heading back into the canes to rouse the others.

‘Report,’ Dal snapped angrily, but Ygor was grinning broadly.

‘You’ll love it,’ the Scorpion promised. ‘You’ll kiss me for it.’

‘
What
, Ygor?’

‘It’s the raiding party.
Our
raiding party.’

Dal stared at him dumbly, then looked to Soul for confirmation.

‘It’s true,’ the Grasshopper confirmed. ‘We spoke with that Spider, Avaris. They got lost. Been wandering around for a day or so trying to find us.’

‘Just shy of a hundred fighting men and women now, they’ve got,’ Ygor added with great satisfaction.

Dal weighed up the numbers in his head.

‘Come morning, we head south,’ he decided. ‘We move fast, and in one group. When we meet the Salmae, we fight. There’s nothing else for it. We’ll break through them, or break against them. We’ve reached the end of it.’