Heirs of the Blade (68 page)

Princess Salme Elass, last of her line.

‘We need to get out, not in. What are you doing?’ Thalric demanded. Varmen’s entrance had been noted, and the tail end of the Imperial awe that had got them this far lashed into the assembled Commonwealers. They did not see Thalric or Che, just that one indomitable armoured form – and, behind him, all the horrors of the Twelve-year War.

‘Varmen, we have to go!’ Che called. ‘They have a Weapons-master.’

The armoured man turned briefly, helm tilting to stare over his shoulder. His sword levelled past them, indicating the direction
away
.

Varmen took the next sword on his shield, long-honed instincts telling him where his new foe would be even without seeing him, calculating back from the angle of strike. He brought his sword back from signalling Thalric and Che, and chopped it into the path that he knew his assailant would take, feeling a solid impact and knowing that he had caught the man somewhere unarmoured. There seemed to be a host all about him, pressing behind and on both sides, not seen, not even heard, but felt through the weight of his mail. When he now advanced, the foe fell away as though he had a regiment at his back.

Another wave of Dragonfly-kinden dared him, and broke against his shield, passing him by as though they were so many autumn leaves. He felt the impacts of their blades and spearpoints, and had they simply stood against him, probed for the weak points in his mail, then they would have brought him down in short order. They would not stand, though, and these fleeting strikes were all they were good for.

His narrow frame of reference scanned about him: noting the campfires, the running and flying enemy, the tents.

He thought he saw the black and gold banner beside him, shadowed forms in striped mail, his comrades the Sentinels, but they were not really there. They had perished at Masaki, they had died at Malkan’s Stand, they had been disbanded by an Empire that no longer had need of them.

‘Pride of the Sixth,’ he croaked to himself, and took another step.

For a moment he thought he saw the Dragonfly girl, not this chaff that was sleeting past him but the girl he had duelled so long ago, in that moment his life seemed to hinge on.
When I was alive. For I was never so alive as in that moment.
He thought that she smiled at him, and nodded, and then turned to go.
Where I cannot follow, alas. I’d have followed her then, or had her follow me. She was a beauty and no mistake, even when she was trying to kill me. Especially then. After all, I’ve thought about doing the deed myself once or twice, after Malkan’s Stand. I can hardly hold it against her, then, can I?

Another staccato rattle of weapons striking home, arrows, most of them, One shaft stuck in his elbow-joint, clipping in under the shield, but it failed to touch him. None of it touched him.

He saw her. Not the ghost-girl now, for she had gone, or never been. He saw the leader of the enemy shouting her orders. Thalric and his Beetle woman were fleeing fast, he hoped, but he would detain his audience a little longer, to let them make their exit.

For my next trick . . .

He broke into a run then, and was willing to put money down that none of the enemy had realized he could do it. The weight of his mail made him unstoppable.

He saw the woman straight ahead of him, gorgeous in armour that would have taken ten times as long to make as Varmen’s own, and cost just as much more, even without the gold chasing, and would protect her far less from his blade. She spotted his approach in mid-shout, and he had her face framed perfectly within the slot of his visor, saw her anger stretch and split, shouldered aside by the horror now hatching behind it.

Salme Elass screamed, and her wings sprang into life, hauling her back into an ungainly leap to put more distance between her and the Imperial behemoth now closing with her.

Abruptly there was someone in between them: a pale figure with a twisting blade hooking out from one hand. He struck four times in swift succession, curving past Varmen’s shield each time, his metal claw feeling out for the strength of the Imperial mail.

Varmen’s steel held, and he forged forward. Whatever the antagonist had expected, it was not that. Presumably, when a Mantis-kinden stopped to fight you, you were supposed to stay fought, but Varmen shouldered on towards the Salme woman, and carried the Mantis with him. The man was too quick to get caught by the sweep of the Wasp’s blade, but Varmen gave him no time to seek out the joints and cracks in his armour, and all the while the Mantis was desperately trying to turn him aside from the princess.

The claw-blade came for his eyeslit, but Varmen just ducked a little, feeling it scrape off his helm. The next blow chopped between neck and shoulder, but that was why his pauldrons had those high ridges protecting his throat. A strike to his groin found only layers of mail and the articulated lames of his tassets. As the Mantis gave yet more ground, Varmen caught a glimpse of his face: blank frustration growing behind the warrior’s mask.

Others were also attacking. He felt the punch of arrows and spears against his back. It seemed impossible that one of them had not brought him down yet.
But I feel as if I have the whole army with me, the glorious Sixth. I feel like they could never take me, not all the Commonwealers in the world.

The Mantis was suddenly right before him, one hand hooking a thumb into his eyeslit, trying to force his head back, claw-blade ready to strike at his throat. It was a mistake, for now he had sacrificed all his speed and skill in order to brawl like a common soldier, and Varmen was the stronger man. He swept his shield around, feeling the rim catch his enemy somewhere in the side, forcing him away, and then Varmen simply swatted his enemy with the flat of it, knocking him aside.

There was nothing between him and the leader of his enemies, and he was immortal.

‘Pride of the Sixth!’ he roared, and charged. The princess had her blade out, but she was backing away still, stumbling as she ran into a tree. Her people had been all about her, but they were running too, not one of them willing to face the Wasp-kinden.

Then the old Mantis was back, and he had a spear levelled, coming in from Varmen’s sword side, the tip of the weapon already past his guard. Varmen lifted his blade to cut the man down, but something struck him a solid, jarring impact that left him completely still, all his surging momentum stolen away. The glory of the Sixth ebbed from him. He was immortal no longer. The dream had passed.

He stared at the Mantis, who met his visored gaze evenly, even respectfully. The white-haired old man still held his spear, but the head of it was gone, the shaft splintered. This moment between them seemed to last for ever.

Then Varmen nodded, understanding, and turned to go. He heard the princess’s voice shouting after him, demanding his death, but not one of her people would approach him, not even now. Feeling numb, more distant with every step, he trudged out of the camp, and they did not follow him, not yet, not then. It was almost as if a rearguard had taken up station behind him, the shadows of the Sixth guarding his slow retreat.

Maure found him just as his strength gave out and he was forced to sit, backplate resting against a tree, as he slumped down on to the forest floor. He felt her tugging at his helm, but managed to lift a hand to stop her.

‘Like this,’ he wanted to say. ‘Go as I lived . . . when I lived.’ But the words were so soft that they did not leave the quiet of his helm.

Her hands found the spearhead where it had lodged in that same hole the snapbow bolt had made at Malkan’s Stand, when progress had killed off his way of life. She did not try to remove it, just knelt there beside him, with her arms wrapped about his dented and bloody mail, and waited for the end.

The spectacle of Varmen had not been enough to distract all of Salme’s defenders, and when Che and Thalric broke from the camp there were enough who decided that chasing a fleeing Wasp and Beetle through the forest at night was safer than facing up to a defiant Wasp by firelight. The arrows kept skipping through the air even as Thalric tugged at Che’s arm, forcing her to run at his longer-legged pace and brutally hauling her to her feet again whenever she stumbled. The pain was vicious, legs sore from so many days enforced riding now shooting fire into her with every step, but the enemy were ahead and above, and outpacing them no matter how fast Thalric dragged at her.

‘Can you fly?’ he called back to her.

‘Easier than run,’ she agreed. Not necessarily faster, she knew, for her kinden did not have it in them to be graceful in the air, but on the other hand . . .

She gripped Thalric’s hand tight and took off at a tangent, wings unfurling from nothing and shimmering about her back. She was heading for the densest part of the forest, wheeling around tree trunks and between branches. There was an initial tug as Thalric resisted her, asserting his own judgement over hers, but then he let her guide him into the deeper, darker woods, with the Dragonfly-kinden at their heels.

They had good eyes, the Dragonflies. In daylight they could hover high in the sky and still watch the details of the land far beneath. In the night, their sight was as good as a Mantid’s or Fly-kinden’s in piercing the dusk. Not as good as Che’s, though. To her gifted eyes, the night itself was banished, the world picked out clearly in shades of grey, enjoying that rare Art of her people that let them see the world as their former Masters, the Moth-kinden, did. She was not graceful but she was sure, choosing her path through the upper reaches of the forest as though it were plain daylight. Now the Dragonflies’ swiftness betrayed them. They could not navigate as she could, so they must either slow down to her speed or risk losing her amongst the interlocking branches.

Still, the arrows went on coming, in ones and twos. Thalric kept them busy in return, flashing back at them with his free hand, the fire of his sting going wide, scorching wood, warning them off.

It was still not enough. Che had led them a dance, but she could see enemy ahead now, looping round while following their fellows’ voices. She dropped lower, hoping to cut underneath them before they realized she was quite so close.

An arrow lanced through her calf and, in the sudden shock of pain, her wings were gone. Abruptly she became just a weight on Thalric’s arm, and he could not support them both. He would not let go, and the two of them spiralled helplessly down to the ground. Che’s leg gave way the moment she tried to put weight on it, and immediately Thalric was standing over her, both hands out and his sting lancing towards their attackers. Che saw one of the Dragonflies reeling back, the armour over his shoulder burned away. There were too many, though. Arrows hissed past Thalric in the poor light, but closer each time. Che saw an archer drop down to Thalric’s left, unnoticed, drawing a bowstring back with patient care, and using the flare of the Wasp’s own stingshot to guide his aim.

When the arrow struck, it was swift enough that Che had no sense of its passage, only the missile suddenly sprouting from the same archer’s jaw, the force of it knocking him back. She saw Thalric start aside at the last moment from a sword stroke, then step in to grapple the attacker, the two of them wrestling in near-pitch darkness but every movement clear to her. Another Dragonfly, a woman in partial armour, landed with a spear levelled, trying to get a clear strike at Thalric, but an arrow struck her breastplate, staggering her. Che craned back and saw newcomers, a little pack of vicious-looking men darting between the trees. Most had bows, though one was a Wasp, and, as she watched, his hands flashed with a fire that looked pure white through her Art-vision.

A boot came down on her chest with shocking suddenness, and she saw another of the Salmae’s people standing over her, eyes narrowed as he drew back a spear, plainly intending to run her through and then escape while he could. She reached for the spear shaft, missed it and cut her fingers on the blade. Then a thin lance of steel had struck its way into her attacker’s armour, punching through as though it were made of eggshell, and he fell back, the spear clattering aside. Che looked up at her rescuer, and a jolt of mixed emotions ran through her.

Tynisa.

Forty-Two

With Che an increasingly stumbling weight in his arms, Thalric took in very little of their new companions. It was all he could do to keep up, pelting ahead into the dark, through the trees. Che’s wings flickered in and out as she tried to keep weight off her injured leg. He could feel her tense each time, gathering her waning strength, and after the second blur of wings he timed his bursts of speed to coincide with them, staying just on the heels of the fleeing Spider-kinden man ahead of him.

Abruptly he was alone, his escorts vanished like spectres. He skidded to a halt, Che crying out in pain, and someone tugged at his boot. He had a moment of fumbling Che’s weight, trying for a free hand, before he realized that there was a hollow here, excavated amongst the tree roots, where his guides had taken shelter.

He dropped obediently down, then was suddenly tumbling forwards as the hole turned out deeper than he had thought. His wings slowed him partially, then Che’s weight wrenched onwards, so he ended up on his knees, with the girl clinging to him.

For a moment all was dark, Che’s whimpering breath his whole world. Then he noticed a flicker of light, a familiar crackle that had him extending his palm into the dark, a single candle guttered into a wan glow. The Wasp who held it had just touched it to life with the slightest ember of his sting.

That Thalric recognized him instantly came as no surprise now. It seemed that the Commonweal formed a web of strange chances, of elaborately intertwined destinies.
No wonder the superstitious bastards believe so many stupid things.
But he could not hold to such a dismissive thought with a clear conscience any longer. He had witnessed too much of the wrong side of the world.
Give me a month in a sane man’s town, with automotives on the streets and gaslight at night, and I’ll recognize all this as a bad dream.