Part 42 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot beside her, keen to get away. 'Child of the new, but scion of the old. n.o.body 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, rus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+vering, 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 hoa.r.s.ely, 'Look out!'

The snow had not been enough. Even as Tynisa called her warning, a horse thundered between them, close enough to nearly shoulder Che aside. Something whistled by her head, like a large insect, and she only realized afterwards that it was a sword blade.

The horse reared as its rider tugged at the reins to turn it back. Soul Je's arrow nipped past him, clipping the armour on his shoulder. Then there were more of them. The snowstorm had stripped Salme Ela.s.s of most of her force, losing them in the labyrinth of trees and foul weather that Che had turned the forest into. They would have had other magicians, though, to cut a course for them through the wild wind, and now this handful of cavalry had found them, and there would soon be more to come.

Another rider bore down on Che and Maure, a spear couched in his arm, but Dal Arche's arrow flowered suddenly from the horse's neck, and the luckless animal rolled forward and over, its rider's wings flouris.h.i.+ng briefly to bring him down firmly on his feet. A moment later Thalric's sting knocked him down, cracking his intricate armour like an eggsh.e.l.l. A further crackle of stingshot sounded further off, as Mordrec defended himself from more of the Salmae's followers.

The swordsman had now turned to ride down Soul Je, who kicked himself backwards in a long arc, fifteen feet of leap at least, loosing another shot even as he sprang from the man's path. Then Che lost track of him, because an arrow drove deep into Maure's arm, and she cried out in pain and sat down hard.

The archer was mounted, holding his horse still to improve his aim. Che saw him select another arrow from his quiver and nock it to his bow. His face, those pleasant, golden-skinned Dragonfly features, was dispa.s.sionate, almost bored.

She knelt over Maure and reached out for whatever magic she could find.

'Go to her!' shouted Tynisa, or at least she tried to shout, pus.h.i.+ng Thalric away. He gave her an exasperated look, then was flying towards Che, but surely too late to stop the arrow. Tynisa ground her teeth together and stood up, clutching for the sword that she had left behind. The mounted archer sighted carefully, and then his hand flew open in release, the string invisible as it whipped the arrow straight at Che.

The fist of wind that buffeted them all at that moment had to be a freak of the unseasonal weather, Tynisa knew. She saw Che stagger under its battering, and the archer's horse reared madly. Where the arrow went, she could not discern.

Then Thalric had reached him, grappling the man off his horse under the full speed of his wings, and Tynisa heard the hiss of his Art burning into the archer's body from point-blank range.

There was a tremor in the ground, a flicker of motion, and Tynisa tried to cast herself aside, managing only an ungainly collapse, the pain roaring through her like a fire, just as the next horse pa.s.sed by, hoofs inches from trampling her. Without looking up, she knew, and was already forcing herself upright, determined to meet her fate on her feet. The strength borrowed from who-knew-where ebbed and flowed within her, always on the point of running dry, and yet she found herself standing up again, swaying and shuddering.

Salme Ela.s.s stared down at her icily, a long-hafted sword resting on her shoulder. The moment seemed endless as she studied her prey, and it was all Tynisa could do to stay standing and return the woman's gaze.

'Child of the Lowlands,' the Dragonfly princess said, 'what brought you here to kill my son? Tell me it was the business of the Empire. Tell me I have an enemy in some Beetle city. Make me understand.' Her hand flexed on the sword's grip, and Tynisa could envisage the diagonal cleaving stroke as Ela.s.s leant forward in the saddle to hack into her collarbone and come near to decapitating her. The princess was a skilled horsewoman who had judged the distance precisely, her victim well within reach.

None of Tynisa's comrades seemed to be close enough to intervene, this time. Thalric was still protecting Che, and the bandits were looking after their own.

Well, then, let it be this.

'Alain made me his sword to use in war,' she said simply. 'But when it then came to peacetime, he was careless and so he cut himself. Do not blame the sword.'

Ela.s.s's face contorted in fury and her blade whipped forward even faster than Tynisa had antic.i.p.ated. She closed her eyes.

The sound of steel on steel came in a single ringing impact, and then she heard Ela.s.s's horse whinny, and its mistress curse. When Tynisa's eyes opened, Ela.s.s was on foot, thrown from her horse, and the animal running off with its bridle swinging. Between her and Tynisa stood a pale figure. In fact Tynisa had never seen a paler. It was not just the grey leathers, which were torn and stained, but he carried the bloodless pallor of a dead man. Isendter, named Whitehand, stood before his mistress with his claw upraised. He was breathing like a dying sprinter, the red on his lips vivid against his blanched skin, and the web of bandages about his wound was running with fresh blood.

'Traitor!' Ela.s.s screamed.

'This is shameful,' came Isendter's reply, his voice as weak and ragged as Tynisa's own. 'I swore to defend your honour. She won!'

'Traitor.' This time the word was flat and ugly. Tynisa saw the blow before it landed, and cried out in warning, but Isendter must surely have foreseen it too. He made no move, did not dip his upraised blade by so much as an inch, accepting the rebuke of his mistress.

She ran him through, ramming the straight blade beneath his ribs, hard enough to lift him on to his toes. With a scream, Salme Ela.s.s wrenched her blade free from his body, and he dropped to his knees in the snow and keeled over. Tynisa needed only a glance to know that Isendter was dead.

Then Ela.s.s's blade was in motion again, scything in a flat arc towards Tynisa.

She turned it with her own and, though the impact seemed to shock half of the remaining life from her, her form was perfect and the smallest motion of her wrist deflected the heavy blow by just enough. In the back of her mind, where her father's ghost had once lurked, she felt a long chain receding into the past, master and student in an unbroken line of tradition: Weaponsmasters, just as Isendter had been, who had deserved a better end than that. The chain that bound her to that antique order was purchase enough to hold her on her feet just as it had sufficed to bring Isandter to her aid although the pain of her wounds had its teeth in her and would not let go.

Ela.s.s stared at her, then at the rapier in her hand. Where it had been until now, after they had so carefully removed it from Isendter's body, Tynisa could not say, only that it had come to her when she called. Isendter's last breath had changed something in her. She had given up on a pa.s.sive, easy death. She was a Weaponsmaster, of Spider and of Mantis blood, and neither of her parents would have stood and waited for the headsman's axe.

Then Ela.s.s struck at her again, putting all her strength into the blow, to batter through Tynisa's guard. The cut would have been impossible to stop, but Tynisa felt her arm and sword move along paths made easy by her training, not blocking but simply deflecting, so that in the aftermath of the ringing clash, Salme Ela.s.s had struck her rapier from her hand, but the n.o.blewoman's own blade had been thrown wide by the narrowest of margins.

There was renewed shouting, now, from the other Salmae riders, the movement around them intensifying, the thunder of more hoofs, but Tynisa and Salme Ela.s.s were in a vicious little world made for two.

Ela.s.s's eyes flicked to the rapier, lying in the snow and out of reach, but in the heartbeat it took her to draw her blade back, the slender weapon was in Tynisa's hand again. A Weaponsmaster was never to be parted from her sword. Just as she had awoken with the ancient Mantis weapon in hand, so long ago in Collegium, now it stayed with her no matter what.

The sight seemed to enrage Ela.s.s even more than the death of her son, as if the rapier and not the injured girl was her enemy. She struck again at the sword itself, as if she were a rank novice, knocking it from Tynisa's slack grip, and yet there it was again, directed at her, even before it had time to hit the ground. Had Tynisa possessed an ounce of strength, she could have ended the fight then, a riposte past the other woman's blade and a clean and instant kill, but she could do nothing but hold her trembling stance.

And then there were more horses flas.h.i.+ng past on every side, their riders' armour gleaming even through the snow, cloaks rippling behind them, and Tynisa realized that it was now too late.

She still waited for the next strike because, even if she was doomed now, even if a spear or sword was about to plant itself in her back, it was not in her nature to surrender. Let the b.i.t.c.h work for her blood!

There was a confusion of horses all around, a score of riders perhaps, circling, breaking fights apart, archers training arrows on everyone they found, and one cried out, standing up in the saddle with his wings flaring, 'Mercre Monachis!'

Salme Ela.s.s was no longer attacking. Her sword hung like a dead weight in one hand as she stared about at the newcomers. These were not her own followers. Allowed a moment to herself, Tynisa took a better look at them. Their armour looked both plainer and more functional than Salme Ela.s.s's people's, and their horses were a hand taller at least. These were lean, fierce, men and women, guiding their mounts with the casual synchronization of a shoal of fish. She saw both Ela.s.s's people and the brigands, all of them separated now, staring about at the strangers who had cut between them and now surrounded them. To Tynisa's left, Thalric was helping Che to her feet, and the halfbreed magician was sitting up, grimacing at the shaft in her arm. On the far side, Soul Je stood over Mordrec, the Wasp propped up on one elbow, with his metal-lined armour cut open and a b.l.o.o.d.y wound in his scalp.