‘And guiding the Sarnesh doesn’t count as that?’ Che pressed her.
The girl matched her gaze, or tried to. ‘It hasn’t yet. My city is Princep Salma, Miss Maker, and the Wasps will destroy it if they can, because it opposes everything in their ideology, and because it lies there in their path. So I do what I can for my home and my people.’
‘As do I,’ Che added, feeling herself deliberately steer the conversation along the precise path she wanted. ‘But I must do more than simply aid the Sarnesh. The Empress is in these woods: you have heard me say it. She seeks . . . a power.’
‘I know,’ Syale said, her voice hushed. She was suddenly just a very young girl putting a brave face on for the adults all around her.
‘Then you know I must get there first, and keep it from her. So with your “diplomatic immunity”, can you guide me there?’
‘The heart of the wood?’ Syale whispered. ‘That is a place I cannot go and still remain beneath the Mantids’ notice.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it is not a place they go – or not willingly. None of them, Etheryen or Nethyen. It is the pit that divides them, the stain in their minds. They avoid that place, and yet still it takes some of them, one or two every few years. And yet others who would search for it cannot come to it, no matter how much they try.’ She shook her head. ‘You can walk from one end of these woods to the other and never find that centre. Or you can head outwards and outwards, and find nowhere else. And the moment I should step off the track and seek the heart, Miss Maker, I would become something alien to the Mantids, and they would deal with me in the same way they deal with all their problems.’ She regarded Che for a long moment, as they proceeded carefully at the head of the column. ‘Although you, whatever it is you have made yourself, maybe you’re the one problem the Mantids have no idea how to deal with.’
An hour of marching later, with the forest opening up somewhat around them – trees further spaced and undergrowth easier to trudge through – the Etheryen Mantids that Syale had brought along were abruptly accelerating, rushing ahead through the grey light that fought its way in from above, steel glinting in their hands. There was no mistaking that onrush: they were going into battle, without war cry or fanfare but no less determinedly for all that.
The handful of Sarnesh came to some group decision a second later, and then they were running ahead too, crossbows and swords out, but barely a rustle from their mail. And Che was keeping pace with them, her own blade to hand.
She could not have explained why. She had not quite formed the thought: I go to fight. Instead it was simply that those around her were speeding up, and some childish fear of being left behind whipped her on, hurrying her after those retreating backs.
Tynisa passed her on one side, rapier drawn and dashing in pursuit as easily as if she had never been wounded, and Che appreciated again how she borrowed strength from the blade, that Weaponsmaster’s bond as plain to see as if it were a glowing web between them.
Thalric was shouting after her, but Che kept running, and ahead she heard the clatter of blades, and then the shadows of the forest resolved themselves into warriors of the Nethyen.
There were nearly twenty – more than the Etheryen and the Sarnesh together – but nobody was holding back because of the odds. Arrows whispered through the leaves and she heard the clacking of Sarnesh crossbows. The fight fragmented almost immediately, individual Mantids breaking off to duel one on one, others plunging past to find their own opponents. The arena was evidently wider and more scattered than Che could take in, and yet some part of her was tracking it all, somehow, mapping out a battlefield in the clashes of steel and pinpoints of shed blood.
Thalric arrived by her shoulder, and her hand shoved him hard, sending him against a tree with a yell, just as an arrow cut the air between them, urgent as a messenger. She caught a glimpse of his expression: angry, unnerved, shocked. Then she was moving again – not to bloody her blade but to remain at the heart of it. She could not fathom her own impulses, but some inner magician had arisen there, some ancient instinct she must surely have borrowed from the trees themselves.
Ahead of her, two Mantis-kinden fought spear to spear, leaping and darting, still for a moment as they parted, then in again with their weapons spinning and lunging like living things, the wielders seeming almost an irrelevance. They looked interchangeable, but she could tell one for an Etheryen, the other for the enemy.
Amnon charged past behind them, putting on a burst of speed and taking an archer by surprise, gashing the woman’s leg even as her wings ripped her out of his reach. Then a crossbow quarrel rammed itself into the Mantis woman’s ribs and she fell at the Khanaphir’s feet. A swift lunge finished her off, and the big man straightened, blade already up to guard himself and looking round for another target.
Che just stood still and let her consciousness wash over, sensing them all distantly in some wholly new manner, never granted to her before. It was as though their very feet on the forest floor announced their presence, like the vibrations a spider feels from its victims in the web. The Mantids were bright, and she could see others, too – Terastos the Moth running between the trees, busy hands casting daggers at opportunistic targets, and Tynisa like oiled silk as she drove a Nethyen swordsman back. She could even find Maure clearly, for all the halfbreed woman was hanging far back along with Syale, keeping well away from the bloodshed. The Apt were far fainter, harder to read, harder even to see. The Sarnesh were simply an absence, but there was a certain aura to Amnon, a man who had dwelt close to old magic all his life without ever understanding it. Thalric, too, had a feel to him, as if touched by some hand . . . touched by my hand? No – touched by mine and the Empress’s both. He had been Seda’s consort, after all, before he had abandoned the Empire forever.
And Helma Bartrer – likewise clear of the fight and with no intention of taking part – possessed some buried spark that made her flare brighter than the empty Sarnesh in Che’s mind. Why?
Then the frenzy of the fighting had claimed her attention again, and she realized the conflict ranged far wider than she had thought. This pocket was just a skirmish, but there was a grander battle going on, split into little knots of combatants spread over nearly a square mile of woodland. How can they coordinate? she wondered, before recognizing that they could not. The Mantids would simply duel and die, seeking enemy after enemy until no foe could be found, and then their survivors would regroup as best they could. That was how they fought. They did not make elaborate plans: they were warriors alone, each and every one devoted to their independent skill.
And it was a shining, beautiful thing, which lit the forest all around her, and for a moment Che was lost in it: the dazzling silver fire that was the Mantis-kinden killing their own kin with their thousand-year-old fighting styles, spear and spine, claw and blade. For just a second she felt like one of them, experienced the exhilaration and the certainty, win or lose, the pride in their way of life, their joy in battle; heedless of victory, of pain, of death.
In that moment she also felt the wrong note, saw the hollowness, understood why they threw themselves into the fray to lose themselves: because they were not sure. These men and women had not chosen to fight their own kind, but wiser heads, leaders they trusted, had set them on this course. For one yawning moment Che sensed it all, their growing uneasiness with what was happening, their resentment of the outsiders within their domain – friends and foes both – and the doubts that no Mantis should entertain. So they fought because the fight itself was pure and, while they fought, the reasons for that fight did not need to trouble them.
Then they noticed her.
All at once at least half a dozen Nethyen were coming for her, their minds like barbed arrowheads. In their thoughts she could see their purpose clearly: Kill the leader. She was not sure how she had assumed that mantle, but it seemed inarguable.
One held a bow, but a flash of Thalric’s sting took the archer down before he could draw the str
ing. Che saw the Wasp step in front of her, one hand outstretched and a sword in the other. She could feel the Mantids approaching almost like a tide, a force of nature.
And I have to do something. And yet she remained quite still, passively observing all, incapable of breaking from her own spell. They can’t just . . . I was anointed in Khanaphes . . . I have authority . . . And, of course, it was this authority that the Nethyen wanted to snuff out. Should they not fear me? And she realized, with a jolt, that they did. The very fact of her, unnatural hybrid as she was, terrified them, but they were facing their fear. They were coming to kill her.
Thalric’s sting seared again and again, but the Mantids were moving too fast and never quite where he was aiming. He went for the leader with his sword, but had the blade parried away, and then another had rammed him with a spear, the point sliding off the Wasp’s Commonweal armour but knocking him aside nonetheless.
Hear me!
And for a moment they paused, some backing off. She saw bared teeth, wide eyes. Some leaking edge of her untutored power had cut across them, but it had been wild, random. There is something I can do, some way this is supposed to work. But she could not adapt herself to the situation. Whatever magical tradition she was tapping, she could only fumble with it. It would not work for her.
Then Tynisa came to her aid yet again. Che sensed the rapier first, and her foster-sister second, but then the woman was in the midst of the Mantids, looking like a Spider but fighting like one of their own. They scattered, then came back for her, and Thalric’s sting cut down another, striking from behind. Tynisa’s blade flickered madly in Che’s sight, never quite where she expected it to be – but her sister was being pressed back, giving ground step by grudging step. She could not hold off all four of them for long.
A hand tugged at Che’s arm, hauling her round, and Che looked into the grey-mottled face of Maure.
Perhaps there was some magical way to break her from the trance, but the halfbreed merely slapped her hard. Instantly, Che was back in the world around her, her uselessly grand perceptions shrunk again to just what she could see and hear.
‘Come on!’ Maure shouted, trying to pull her away, but Che knew Tynisa was fighting right at her back, and losing ground. She turned, her own sword raised – as though that way she could accomplish anything at all.
She had a moment of utter clarity, falling back without warning into that dream-state for just a heartbeat, but now fully in control, letting her mind ripple out between the trees. She tried to hold herself there but, with Tynisa almost backing into her, with Maure trying to drag her away, she couldn’t. But it was done: for a moment she had been a magician marshalling her troops.
Amnon came first, unaware that he had been summoned, but there he was, sword cleaving down, almost knocking a Mantis off her feet even though she got her own weapon in the way. Thalric’s sting spoke again, dangerously close to Tynisa but driving a couple of attackers away from her. A Moth dagger spun into the back of one man’s neck even as he made to lunge.
In the confusion, Tynisa struck, pushing past her enemies’ disrupted guard, her rapier binding past an enemy spear to puncture chitin and leather and flesh. Another Mantis lashed out at her face with a claw, but then Amnon’s opponent fell back and took Tynisa’s adversary along with her, and when the two of them had gathered themselves together, they were practically surrounded, by Amnon, Thalric, Tynisa, Terastos the Moth, and Che of course. It was to Che the pair looked: the leader of all their enemies. The magician.
Maure relaxed, and Che could sense without looking that Helma Bartrer and Syale were approaching, falling into their predestined places. My court, she thought, with an arrogance that was not really hers. But that is how magicians are supposed to be, and the forest has seen so many of them.
‘I challenge you,’ the Nethyen woman said, her voice just a ragged whisper. ‘Fight me.’
‘I’ll champion her,’ Tynisa put in instantly.
‘There’s no need,’ Che started. ‘There must be some other way . . .’ but her words tailed off because there were newcomers approaching, a score and more of them, armoured and making far heavier work of negotiating the forest than the locals who accompanied them. The Sarnesh, a sizeable group, with Sentius at their head just as Syale had promised.
Che saw immediately when the Sarnesh commander received a silent report from the scouts – the night attack, the death of Zerro – all of it writing itself on his face and being overwritten by the customary Sarnesh stoicism.
‘Maker,’ he called, approaching. Sentius looked haggard, not at all the almost cheerful man who had briefed her when they entered the forest, but someone older and more ill-used, someone who had fought hard and slept poorly since they had parted.
He stared at the two Mantids at bay, glancing from them to Che, and then to the Etheryen who had been fighting alongside him.
‘Surprised to see you still alive,’ he told Che. ‘I’ve lost more than one in three to . . . to these.’ And some to other causes, I’m sure, Che suspected, because it was there in the man’s face once you saw him in the right light. The forest did not like the Sarnesh any more than it liked the Wasps.
‘I challenge you,’ the Nethyen woman announced to Sentius, almost spitting in his face. ‘Fight me, coward.’ It was all she had left.
Sentius stared at her bleakly and everyone was still waiting for him to utter some response when a handful of his men loosed their crossbows, cutting the Nethyen pair down where they stood.
The Ant gazed about, at his soldiers, at the Etheryen. ‘This is war. We don’t piss about,’ he announced, almost to the forest itself as much as to anyone in particular.
Che held her breath, because surely this breached the ironclad Mantis code. Surely the Etheryen would revolt, would turn on their allies with bloodied steel?
But the Mantids just looked at the bodies, and at the Ant-kinden, and shuffled silently, and she felt exactly what they felt, as much as if she had been one of them – standing there on ground they no longer recognized, their way of life suddenly brittle in their hands. What is right? It could hardly escape their notice that the bulk of the bodies all around them were of their own kind.
That night, the Nethyen came.
With her blank eyes, which knew no darkness, Yraea watched them arrive: a dozen, then a score, then two score, filing solemnly through the trees with the Loquae at their head. The halfbreed Pioneer gave a warning, and the Empress’s camp was quickly up and ready, but the Mantis-kinden gave no sign that anything was amiss, save that they surrounded the little band, quietly and seemingly without threat.
The Moth watched the Imperials carefully – the Pioneers tense and unsure, with weapons to hand; the Red Watch man, Ostrec, taut as a wire, hands ready to sting or to strike. The Empress’s bodyguard had already rallied round her, their steel claws extended, and at their head was Tisamon, the abomination of steel and spirit that the Empress was so proud of. And I’m sure he scares those poor Apt generals and officers, but my people were playing with magic when yours were still trying to light fires.
Closer by, the old man Gjegevey was watching her. Does he suspect? What can he know? She found that she, too, was on a knife-edge. But it is too late for them to fight or flee. We have them.
Tegrec appeared at her elbow then, anxious as usual. ‘What’s going on?’
For a moment she wanted to tell him, in the hope that his loyalty really was to Tharn now, and not to the Empire he claimed to have turned his back on. But hope was not a luxury that circumstances allowed her. I’m sorry, Tegrec.
The Loquae stepped forward and bowed before Seda. ‘Empress, you must come with us. Let these others stay here, but the forest calls for you.’
Yraea shifted uneasily, because that seemed too transparent, and she would prefer this moment to pass without an actual fight – the Empress’s people would lose, but there was too much chance of Seda herself dying in some way that was no use to Yraea, or even of the Moth herself ge
tting hurt. Just do as I told you, she thought, knowing that her words would echo in the old Mantis’s head.
Seda was now speaking, as she glanced back at her followers.
‘Tisamon, Ostrec, Gjegevey,’ she decided. ‘The rest of you stay here and await my return.’
The Loquae made no complaint, and the Mantis-kinden parted, opening a ragged path forwards. Yraea saw doubt and confusion on the faces of those about to be left behind – and they will be waiting here until the forest claims them. Then the Empress went striding through the Mantis throng as though they were indeed her subjects, and her select handful hurriedly followed.
Gjegevey came last, the old man shuffling slowly and leaning on his staff, as his wavering steps brought him close to the Moth.
‘It is not too, hm, late,’ he told her, in a hoarse whisper.
She blinked at him, momentarily fearful. He knows? He can’t, or he’d have said something, done something . . . With no ready answer, she merely ignored him, and as the Mantis host began to filter off through the trees, she followed, slipping unseen from the camp, cloaked by magic and Art.
The old Mantis icons still stood in certain places of the forest, and Yraea knew that the Nethyen sometimes shed blood there after the fashion of the old ways. They had forgotten much of the rituals that would give true power to such sacrifices, but the Moths forgot nothing. Yraea had made a study of them before setting out. For one might wander forever in trying to find the way to Argastos, even with his covert aid, but blood will open the gate.
There it was ahead of them, the place that the Empress was being led to. The icon was composed of a patchwork of rotting wood, a great mantis sculpture eight feet tall, with its crooked arms outstretched for its next victim. The creatures of decay, and those that fed upon them, were busy about it, and the Nethyen would be constantly adding fresh wood to the feast. The idol lived through its own corruption, and in that it was part of the forest itself. Mantis magic is such a crude and single-minded pursuit, but sometimes one gains a little satisfaction in descending to their level.
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