The Dragonfly-kinden clearly had their own ideas about the art of hunting, however. The party that set off from Leose numbered perhaps a dozen riders, with twice as many servants, and none of them seemed to care if their quarry spotted them coming from miles away. The mounted nobles were all clad in bright silks: reds and blues and greens that shimmered like metal in the morning sun. They carried lances and most had a quiver of arrows and a shortbow holstered at their saddle. They were mostly of an age with Alain and herself, only two being older, and Alain’s mother, the matriarch of the Salmae, was not present.
The hunting grounds were some days west of Leose, beyond Lowre Cean’s compound. Tynisa had anticipated being able to ride alongside Alain, to talk to him and let him see more of her than the fragmentary glimpses that were all he had seen till now. What she had not taken into account was her horsemanship, a skill that the Lowlanders had precious little use for. The Commonwealer nobles all rode elegantly, as natural in the saddle as in the air, and whilst Tynisa could outdistance the mass of walking servants, the nobles themselves were lost to her as soon as the party set out. They rode ahead, frequently out of sight entirely, and she could not catch them up. When she could see them, they were engaging in mock manoeuvres and cavalry actions that she could not have joined in with. Alain was always at the centre of these, constantly in demand. Assisted by a small number of servants who had mounts of their own, the entourage of nobles even made their own camp, ahead on the trail, leaving Tynisa and the other menials far behind.
As they passed close to Lowre Cean’s compound, and neared the hunting grounds themselves, she caught up. The pause had been occasioned by a pair of new riders joining the party, and she was surprised to see the prince himself and his young messenger, with no retainers of their own at all. The old man nodded gravely to her, as though they were the only two sane people in the whole ridiculous expedition.
They rode north and west for a few hours, following the contours of the land towards the dark line of a forest. The ground here was still patchy with snow, and the sky above slate-grey with clouds. Tynisa found herself shivering, because even the middle of a Collegium winter was considerably warmer than this, but none of her companions seemed to feel the cold, so she put the best face on it that she could.
There was another half-dozen of the Grasshoppers waiting for them at the forest’s edge, and with them two more riders: not nobles but simply more elevated servants. One was the perennially disapproving Lisan Dea, clad in sober black in stark contrast to the nobles. The other was the Weaponsmaster Isendter, who gave Tynisa a small nod of acknowledgement.
‘Well?’ Alain demanded of them.
‘We have tracked a suitable quarry, my lord,’ the sour-faced seneschal confirmed. ‘The family has several females and calves, and a few younger males. The prince stag is somewhat large, though. I was concerned-’
‘You’re always concerned,’ Alain dismissed her. ‘Come, let’s see this prodigy. It is time to hunt!’
They pushed into the woods, and now it was not the pace, but the simple business of guiding her mount through the trees, that taxed Tynisa.
‘The Lowlanders plainly hunt afoot,’ one girl remarked, on seeing her lamentable progress. ‘Well, there is honest work for the infantry, too, in this.’ Her tone was disdainful, plainly equating ‘honest’ with demeaning. Tynisa could not help but notice that the Dragonfly-kinden rode and that most of their unmounted servants were Grasshoppers. For a moment she felt herself on the edge of an uncomfortable comparison, thinking of the Wasp Empire and its slave-Auxillians of many subject races. This was the Commonweal after all, though, so it was not the same thing, not at all.
‘Perhaps the lady would honour me by riding behind me.’ The speaker was a smiling young man dressed in scintillating turquoise, his finery enhanced by a breastplate of silvered leather. His manner was shorn of mockery. ‘Lady, I am Telse Orian, and you are Maker Tynise, are you not?’
‘Close enough,’ she admitted. A study of Lowre Cean’s expression revealed no reason why she should not avail herself of Orian’s offer, so she took his arm and let him pull her from her saddle and up behind him. Most of the nobles had a saddle that was built up before and behind, but her new companion’s was something lighter and more recognizable. She was realizing how very little she knew about the whole business of horsemanship.
‘So tell me, Maker Tynise.’ The arch-looking Dragonfly girl guided her horse closer as the riders set off at a comfortable pace, their servants loping with long strides all around them. ‘Tell me of your Lowland accomplishments. We have already seen your dancing.’ She put a peculiar stress on that last word, clearly wanting to make it an insult, nevertheless not quite able to do so. ‘You are great archers, perhaps, in the Lowlands?’
‘Not that you’d notice,’ Tynisa replied, trying to match the woman’s tone. In truth she would have been hard pressed to even find a bow in Collegium, where the crossbow was the weapon of choice – but a weapon denied to her because of her Inaptitude. Tisamon had been a fair archer, but it was a skill he had never tried to teach her.
‘Skilled horsemen, then, surely?’ the girl needled.
‘Not that either,’ Tynisa replied coldly, feeling the anger inside her respond to the taunting. In her youth, in Collegium, such petty barbs as this would have been beneath her notice, and she had been master of her own emotions. Her experiences at the end of the Wasp war, the loss of too many loved ones and the guilt, they had all conspired to throw her irretrievably off balance.
‘Why then surely-?’ the Dragonfly girl started again, but Orian snapped at her, ‘Velienn, enough.’
‘But you have raised her up and made her one of us,’ Velienn protested slyly. ‘Is she to be starved of conversation?’
‘If you wish to see what I excel at then I shall meet you on foot and with blades,’ Tynisa declared flatly, not even returning the woman’s gaze. She sensed Velienn ready herself for a retort, but then no words came, and she imagined the Dragonfly’s eyes flicking over her Weaponsmaster’s badge. Alain rode past them just then, and he must have caught Tynisa’s words, for he grinned at her briefly.
They ventured deeper into the wood following Isendter, the horses picking their way between the trees, now together, now wending their ways separately. There was barely a sign or a sound of life about them save for the trees themselves, which had retained a mantle of needles weighed down by the snow. Every so often, one of the horses or footmen would brush against a branch and dislodge its load of white in a swift recoil of branches, and once or twice the sound of distant breaking would echo through the quiet forest, as some flawed limb gave way beneath its burden.
Ahead of them, Alain raised his hand, and the company slowed and then halted. Tynisa peered through the trees, trying to see what they had been led to. For a surprisingly long time she missed seeing the animals despite their size, caught out by the vastness of the empty woods stretching in all directions. Then a movement caught her eye: a dozen beetles rooting in the snow, or attacking the tree bark with blunt mandibles. They seemed unexceptional creatures, dull black and brown, some full-grown adults and some smaller ones that had probably still been grubs in the ground last spring. Then a further movement caught her eye, and she spotted what must surely be their quarry.
The stag, as Alain had named it, was a grand patriarch of beetles, considerably larger than any of his family, and armed with magnificent branching antlers that were half as long again as his bulky body. At first they seemed too large to be useful, but then the beetle’s feathery antennae twitched, and it lifted its horns threateningly, moving them with a casual speed and strength.
Alain glanced back at his followers and raised his lance, apparently the signal to ready themselves.
‘We will announce our presence,’ Telse Orian murmured back to Tynisa. ‘The stag will stand firm, to let his wives and family flee. The beaters and huntsmen will form a ring about him, and try to ensure that he does not make his escape. It is th
us we will take him. Know that there is an order of precedence, in the hunt. The prince must strike first, and then the others by rank of family, so that honour and protocol are satisfied.’ He twisted in the saddle to face her. ‘I myself am here only with my bow, so if you wish to strike at the stag, you may wish to find another mount.’
The various servants were now spreading out on either side, moving forward cautiously between the trees. One or two of the beetles stopped feeding, antennae fluttering. The horses stamped and snorted, surely plainly visible and audible by now to the grazing insects.
Then some of the servants began making noise, beating sticks against tree trunks, whooping and calling out, and the herd was instantly galvanized, females and younger beetles turning to thunder off, shouldering clumsily between the trees and dislodging curtains of cascading snow. The stag reared up, his great horns brandished fiercely against the sky, and abruptly Alain spurred his horse forward, lance in hand.
Tynisa could hardly breathe, in those brief seconds of his charge, as he propelled himself forward into the gape of those enormous mandibles. The huge stag was further away than she had thought, though, and Alain’s mount darted off to one side even as the beetle lowered its antlers. The horns ripped furrows in the earth, and Alain cast his spear just as his steed galloped past. The weapon glanced off the beetle’s thorax, dancing in the air for a moment before falling away.
The next rider was already in motion, his steed also hurtling forward as though he was deliberately trying to throw himself into the insect’s jaws, then veering to the other side, as another spear was cast. This shaft found some purchase at the base of the stag’s wing cases, thrumming there for a moment before rattling off, as the enraged beetle swerved and gave chase. The disdainful girl Velienn was next, seizing the opportunity of the insect’s distraction to pitch her lance into the creature’s abdomen, where it stuck and held firm.
The stag turned and lumbered away, with a surprising turn of speed, but by now the servants had completed their loose circle, and continued to shout and beat sticks directly in the creature’s path. To Tynisa’s astonishment it flinched away from them, rounding back towards the riders even as another of the nobles began to make his pass. The man was slightly slow in turning aside and, without warning, the great antlers were scything at him, so that Tynisa was convinced he would be crushed. Instead he just kicked up off his saddle, his wings pulling him up into the branches and well out of the beetle’s reach. His mount fled the enraged insect instantly, which gave chase.
The clamouring of the servants made no impression on the horse, and a moment later they were throwing themselves aside, as it charged through their ranks with the stag right behind it. Tynisa winced when one of the Grasshopper-kinden caught a blow from one clawed foot and was hurled aside with a shriek.
The next moment all the nobles were kicking their steeds into motion, chasing after the ponderous insect. Tynisa saw Alain draw alongside it and drive a second lance into the creature’s side, leaning halfway out of the saddle with his wings flaring for balance. Then Telse Orian was drawing level on the opposite side, with Tynisa still clinging breathlessly to his waist. With casual grace, the Dragonfly nocked an arrow and let it fly, even as he steered his horse away, and Tynisa saw the shaft ram into place between two of the beetle’s legs.
Abruptly the huge creature was no longer rampaging after the riderless horse, but making a break for the deeper forest. It went thundering off between the trees, in a blizzard of falling snow, the riders in hot pursuit and the footmen left to follow as best they could.
Alain took the lead, and Tynisa could not say whether this was more noble precedence, or whether he was simply the most skilled rider among them. When the stag scrabbled to a halt unexpectedly, his mount nearly ended up galloping up its wing-cases and on to its back. Tynisa could not see what had made the great insect stop, but it turned towards them now, at bay despite the open forest behind it. The riders pulled slightly away and passed back and forth before it warily, whilst their servants caught up.
Tynisa glanced from face to face, trying to understand if this was normal behaviour for the beast, but the young hunters were flushed with the chase, none of them seeming to find anything unusual. Looking beyond them, though, Tynisa noticed Lowre Cean frowning, while the Mantis Isendter glanced about him with narrowed eyes. She opened her mouth as if to warn against… what? She could put no words to it, but she had sensed something too.
Then Velienn gave a shrill cry and charged at the stag, nimbly guiding her steed beyond the range of the arc of its jaws to plant another spear between the plates of its carapace. Then the hunt was back on, and another two nobles made their passes – one missing entirely, to the derision of his fellows. Alain headed forth next, but the beetle charged even as he was making his approach. After having apparently made its stand, this move was wholly unexpected, and the prince’s steed was not yet moving fast enough to swerve out of the way. Tynisa heard the prince curse briefly, and she was already vaulting off Orian’s mount, her sword leaping into her hand.
Alain kicked up out of his saddle, wings flowering from his shoulders. The unstoppable bulk of the stag struck his horse head-on, its great barbed mandibles, that each reached almost the whole length of the wretched steed, clashed together, and lifted the horse’s jerking body clean off the ground, shaking it in fury. One flailing hoof clipped Alain even as he strove to spring clear, and sent him arcing over the stag’s back to land awkwardly in the snow beyond.
The stag turned on him, the horse’s ruined form dropping bonelessly from its jaws, but then one of the other riders gave a high, challenging cry to distract its attention. A mounted figure flashed past, his lance not held for throwing but couched in the crook of one arm, and only after he had gone did Tynisa recognize him as Lowre Cean. She saw the colossal beetle rear up before this new challenger, and saw Lowre begin to veer away. In that same moment, she thought he had left it too late, because he was cutting his escape much finer than the others had done. Lowre rammed his spear home with all the momentum his charging steed could provide, and only the high back to his saddle saved him from being thrown backwards by the shock of impact. He passed virtually under the stag’s raised foreleg, crouching low along his horse’s back, and in his wake, the beetle was already collapsing, his spear driven so deep between its jaws that more than half the shaft was hidden from view.
Alain was already starting to rise, shaking his head groggily, but Tynisa began running towards him.
‘Still!’ she cried out. ‘Alain, stay still!’
She had a brief sense of other hunters reacting to this – with puzzlement or with annoyance at such familiarity – but then Isendter was also moving.
‘My prince,’ he snapped, ‘heed her and be still.’
Alain froze, his eyes flicking from Tynisa to the Mantis, then to the stag’s great rounded body, and back again. Behind Tynisa, the nobles had gone suddenly quiet, aware that something was amiss but not at all sure what.
She was close enough now that she could not keep running, so she made herself as still as she was willing Alain to be. She was poised at the very edge of a boundary that was invisible, and yet glaringly apparent to her and to the other Weaponsmaster. It was a boundary that Alain had unwittingly crossed.
The thing that loomed over Alain, so motionless as to be utterly unnoticed amongst the trees, now shifted slightly, swaying a fraction, and a murmur of shock ran through the noble hunters. Tynisa heard the slight creak of a bow being drawn.
‘Make no moves,’ she instructed, without looking back at them. ‘Not while he is there.’
‘This is absurd-’ she heard a familiar disdainful voice start, and then another woman hissed, ‘Velienn, shut up.’
Isendter was standing at that notional boundary, and dropped to one knee as if to survey the ground. He shot a glance at Tynisa, and understanding passed between them without the need for words.
He nodded, just once.
Tynisa bega
n to advance, not in a headlong rush as previously, but at a slow shuffle, pushing the boundary back and back, her sword extended before her as though she were facing a fellow duellist at the Prowess Forum. Her eyes were fixed on her opponent, which meant tilting her head back considerably.
Isendter reached out a hand to his master. ‘To me, my Prince – but slowly. Move as the girl moves, stop when she stops. Do not look back. ’
Alain gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes only on Tynisa. She shifted forward three steps, and he crawled the same distance towards Isendter. Two cautious steps in, matched by two careful steps out. Behind and above Alain, the great forest mantis shifted again, its all-seeing eyes watching each of them simultaneously. Alain was still well within the range of its spined forelimbs.
Tynisa could sense something else now, the same presence that had caused the stag to turn at bay. It was not the predator – though that was surely up to making a meal of the huge beetle – but something beyond it.
‘Do your own people live here, Whitehand?’ she hissed at Isendter from the corner of her mouth.
‘Once they did,’ he replied, which was the worst answer for her to hear. She had known places before where the Mantis-kinden had once lived, but dwelt no more. Sometimes they remained there, even though their living bodies had departed. She had not expected to find such a place in the Commonweal.
Another few steps in and she had passed Alain, usurping his place within reach of the insect’s killing arms. As she held up her tiny needle of a sword, a subtle succession of sounds behind told her that Alain had made good his retreat, and was being drawn away by Isendter.
Which just leaves me, she thought. She heard the creak of the bow again, and knew it was Orian, and that the young nobleman was intending to do something noble and foolish. She thrust her left hand back towards him, palm out: Wait!
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