Part 22 (1/2)

How many? He guessed at four dead and reckoned at least a pair of them must be left. Two teams of three felt logical, and he had sent such men out on Rekef errands enough to trust his own judgement. He guessed at four dead and reckoned at least a pair of them must be left. Two teams of three felt logical, and he had sent such men out on Rekef errands enough to trust his own judgement. This is not just some Tyrshaani malcontent This is not just some Tyrshaani malcontent. Somebody with power in the Empire wanted Thalric dead very much indeed. And then what? Kill the Regent and then what? Is my death the trigger for some uprising? Has a conspiracy eluded General Brugan? And then what? Kill the Regent and then what? Is my death the trigger for some uprising? Has a conspiracy eluded General Brugan? It was information he had to get back to Capitas, along with news of his own continued survival. It was information he had to get back to Capitas, along with news of his own continued survival. a.s.suming that news is still current by the time I get a chance ... a.s.suming that news is still current by the time I get a chance ...

Again the thought came to him: leave Osgan to the mercies of the swamp. If there were only two killers left, there was enough cover between here and the river to evade them. a.s.suming I still know which way the river lies a.s.suming I still know which way the river lies.

There had been no movement visible out there. The a.s.sa.s.sins were elsewhere, or they were close by and waiting patiently. There was no way to tell.

'Osgan,' he said, as loud as he dared, 'time to move.'

The quartermaster was now sitting up, looking as though he had died and come back to life. Thalric's uncharitable thought was that, without the wound, he'd have just a.s.sumed the man was suffering after a night's heavy drinking.

'Move where?' Osgan managed to ask, and he was clearly doing his best. Old military instincts were struggling to make themselves felt.

'Away,' Thalric replied. There was only one clear entrance to the stand of tall canes they were hiding in: one clear exit, too, therefore. Any killers that were watching could not help but appreciate that. 'We're going out the back way,' Thalric decided.

'What back way?'

'Have you the strength to use your sting?'

Osgan closed his eyes. The Wasp Art that had taken the Empire so far was tiring to use: it lived off the body's own strength. He nodded wearily.

Thalric levelled one hand towards the canes behind Osgan, and the quartermaster hauled himself round and did likewise. Worms of light now flickered and crawled across Thalric's open palm.

He unleashed the golden fire, putting a hand up to guard his eyes from splinters as the searing fire of his Art shattered the canes apart. Something inside them was flammable, the pith exploding like a volley of snapbows. He and Osgan turned their faces away as a score of canes combusted together, flinging fragments and splinters across them.

'Move,' Thalric urged, and he was already pressing through the gap that had been scorched between the canes. He lurched forward, across an open patch of water, ducking into the reeds on the other side. Laboured splas.h.i.+ng behind him told him that Osgan was trying to keep up. He turned, tugging at the man's good shoulder, just as an arrow cut across the water, clipping the ripples they had left. Thalric loosed his sting instantly, guessing at the archer's hiding place, then they were stumbling and staggering through the mud, the waist-deep water, burrowing ever deeper into the delta as the foliage around them grew taller and thicker, stilt-rooted trees and gigantic horsetails making a half-drowned forest out of the Marsh.

'Thalric ...' Osgan's voice, hoa.r.s.e with effort, came from behind him, 'Just keep moving.'

'Thalric water's getting deeper.'

He did not stop, still plunging on, dragging himself forward in sudden bursts, then letting Osgan catch up. The man was right, though. Surely if they were heading into denser plantlife they must be reaching the river banks, the shallows. Then it came to him just where they were. This is a delta ... the tide ... This is a delta ... the tide ... Of course the water level would be rising. The tide was coming in, and that was why all the trees around them were on stilts. Soon their spidery roots would be submerged. Worse, the rising levels would not hinder their Skater-kinden pursuers, but it would drag Thalric and Osgan to a standstill. Of course the water level would be rising. The tide was coming in, and that was why all the trees around them were on stilts. Soon their spidery roots would be submerged. Worse, the rising levels would not hinder their Skater-kinden pursuers, but it would drag Thalric and Osgan to a standstill. Can Osgan swim? Can Osgan swim? Not with only one arm, was the answer to that. Time was running out. Not with only one arm, was the answer to that. Time was running out.

Thalric came to rest, dragging Osgan down beside him. They were in the shadow of some tall ferns, as hidden as he could make them. As they crouched, the water came to their chests. We cannot just run. We need a plan We cannot just run. We need a plan. Osgan was breathing heavily, sucking at the air in great gasps. There was little more flight left in him. The wound and the heat and the man's habitual dissipation were killing him.

'I'm sorry I brought you to this,' Thalric said quietly.

Osgan lacked the breath to respond, just shaking his head in a denial that could have meant anything. He grasped at Thalric's arm abruptly, pointing something out.

a.s.sa.s.sins, was Thalric's first thought. He hunched forward, putting a hand out ready to sting. Osgan continued pointing, jabbing a finger urgently. Thalric tried to follow the direction of it, seeing only more green, more ferns and rushes and canes, and ...

There was a regularity to some of it, a distinctiveness to the angles. Something leapt inside him. Ahead of them was something that was not grown naturally, but built. But what? Where in the wastes are we? But what? Where in the wastes are we? The question was swiftly followed by, The question was swiftly followed by, It doesn't matter. We have no other compa.s.s point It doesn't matter. We have no other compa.s.s point. Thalric lurched up, slinging an arm around Osgan to haul the man to his feet.

'Go,' he urged, and cast himself off into the water, his wings surging instinctively to half-carry him, with Osgan a weight at the end of his arm. It was all too slow, he realized at once. They were too exposed. He gave his wings their full rein, ignoring Osgan's protest as his unwounded arm was almost wrenched out of its socket. Between the trees, Thalric spotted crude huts, barely more than platforms raised above the water and roofed with leaves. He saw movement too, spreading out to either side of them. They had been noticed.

'Khanaphes!' Thalric shouted out. 'Khanaphes!' hoping it would be enough to save them.

An arrow danced past him from behind, a hurried shot surely. He did not turn, continued towing Osgan through the water, knowing only from the man's curses that he was still alive. He had a brief glimpse of a silvery-skinned Mantis woman with bowstring drawn back, the arrow loosed instantly. There was no sound from behind, but from her very expression Thalric knew she had found her target.

He dragged Osgan on to a mud bank. They were sprawled at the edge of the village, no more than a cl.u.s.ter of spindly shacks gathered about a mound of higher ground cleared of vegetation. Knowing that nothing he could do now would matter, Thalric collapsed onto his back, feeling his muscles burn in protest. Osgan was wheezing and choking beside him, shuddering like a dying thing, but somehow still alive. He had sprouted no new arrows since, and Thalric could only hope that the a.s.sa.s.sins had not survived their clash with the Marsh's own killers.

He sensed movement nearby and pushed himself up on to his elbow. The Mantis-kinden were approaching, arrows nocked to their bows and spears levelled. These Marsh people were smaller than the Lowlander kinden that Thalric was familiar with, but they had the same poise, the same angular grace. Their faces had the same insular hostility, too. He held up a closed fist to them. 'We are friends we are guests of the city of Khanaphes.'

They had formed a ragged horseshoe around the two Wasps, leaving open the path leading to the village. One of them, a woman looking older than the rest, jabbed her head in that direction, and Thalric let out a great sigh and struggled to his knees.

'Come on,' he told Osgan, but the man would not move.

'Can't ...' he whined. 'No further ...'

Two of the Mantids were there instantly, catching him by the arms and lifting him up, ignoring his screams as the sudden movement tore at his wound. Thalric pushed one of them aside, moving to catch Osgan. Then he was very still.

Osgan swayed, still supported by one of the Mantids, almost clinging to him. His injured arm was held tight to his chest, the bindings newly b.l.o.o.d.y. Thalric felt the tiny pinpoint of sharp pain that had come to rest under his jaw, a.s.suming at first it was a spearhead, then knowing it for an arrow-point. He took a good moment, in lieu of any fatal attempt at action, to study their rescuers.

These were not the shaven-headed servants who had been poling the fis.h.i.+ng boats up and down the river to Amnon's tune. They were not clad as Khanaphir menials, merely a little hide and chitin and fish-scale to cover their modesty. Their long hair was pale, bound back with rings of bone and amber.

'We are not your enemies,' Thalric said carefully. In his mind the sands of the archer's strength were running out. She must soon either take the arrow away, or loose it. 'We mean you no harm. Return us to Khanaphes and you shall be rewarded.'

Osgan gave a bark of pain, dragged without warning towards the village. Thalric twitched, poised on the point of the arrow and knowing that there were enough of them to make an end of him whichever way he turned. Without warning the archer took a step away, the point still unwavering. Thalric followed Osgan's halting progress, conscious that every arrowhead and spear was aimed at him. Ahead, Osgan gave out a horrified cry.

The mound of earth that the village was strung around was not empty, not quite. They had erected something there, that Thalric had not registered before, his first glance letting the crude canework merge into the struts and poles of the surrounding village. He blinked, trying to identify what it was. Osgan was struggling now, shrieking for them to let him go, but three of them continued propelling him towards it effortlessly.

It's a statue, Thalric realized, a statue reworked to the locals' resources. Just as they had not a coin's-worth of metal in their possession, even their weapons being made of bone and wood, so there was no stone to their statue, just a lattice of canes lashed together into a shape that seemed abstract at first. Until he stood directly before it, and the s.h.i.+fting angles and planes of it suddenly made a picture.

It was a mantis, an openwork sketch of a mantis rendered in three dimensions, its killing arms raised high above them. The chamber of its body was large enough to fit a man, and Thalric knew this because the bones of the last occupant were still inside, buzzing with flies and dripping with a few lingering maggots. Osgan was still kicking vainly and crying out, and Thalric knew that somehow this thing thing, this idol, had become Tisamon in his mind, that what he was fighting against was more within his own head than outside it.

'What is this?' Thalric demanded, his throat suddenly dry. 'Do you kill the guests of the city so close to its walls?' The Khanaphes card was the only one he had to play, but he had put it on the table three times now without eliciting any interest. Now, at last, an old Mantis woman stepped between him and the idol. Uncomfortably close, she rested one forearm on his shoulder, so he felt her fighting spines dig slightly into his neck.

'You are ignorant,' she said, and it took him a moment to unpick her accent. 'You are from far away and know nothing.'

'I know that they will send people to look for me that my absence will stir the city up, and my own people as well.'

'Do not threaten us on our sacred ground,' she warned him, voice still soft but the spines jabbing him briefly. 'The city shall not come here, and you were hunted here by other foreign hands. There shall be no search to find your bones. We have made our pact with the Masters: any that cross this far are ours. It is our right.'

Another b.l.o.o.d.y thing the locals could have told us: that their tame servants have murderous relatives just a short walk away!

'I will fight,' Thalric said. His understanding of even the Lowlander Mantis-kinden was limited, so he had little to work with. 'Let me fight for our freedom. Choose your best, if you will.'

The old woman smirked. 'Your death shall not be at our hands, foreigner. Your blood shall be drunk by the earth, and by the avatar. Your comrade first, though. We must shed his blood while he still has it.'

They were opening up the wicker casing of the effigy. Osgan had collapsed, all his limbs drawn in, shuddering and lost to his own terrors. And perhaps that's a mercy And perhaps that's a mercy. Thalric made a sudden lunge back from the woman, feeling the barbs of her arm gash his flesh. He tried to put a hand out towards her, with some wild idea of holding her hostage, but someone struck him with a spear-shaft behind his knees as another glanced from the back of his head. He joined Osgan on the ground, reeling. Around them, the Mantis-kinden had begun a soft humming, barely audible save that they were all doing it, a slow tune, but a gradually building one.

'Osgan,' Thalric said, hunching closer. 'Osgan, snap out of it!'

The former quartermaster gave a great gasp, staring upwards at the latticed idol above them. 'We're going to die,' he said.

'Then die like an Imperial Wasp soldier, not like a Flykinden coward!' Thalric spat at him.

'You don't understand,' Osgan said hollowly. 'You didn't see.'