Forty
The silence that had fallen around the fire was totaclass="underline" with the startled brigands-turned-fugitives staring at her in its guttering light. They had dug in to make camp, excavating a hollow between the roots of a great tree with practised skill and turfing out years’ worth of dead leaf mulch until the arching ribs of its roots had become the vaults of their low ceiling, and thus their fire would be hidden from any nocturnal hunters the Salmae might have sent out.
Or no longer the Salmae, for Salme Elass was the last of them now.
‘You killed the prince,’ Dal Arche said slowly. ‘I knew you’d make a play for my role sooner or later, but I think you might have overdone proving your qualifications, girl.’
‘I have no wish to be an outlaw,’ Tynisa snapped back.
‘Whoever does?’ remarked Avaris the Spider. ‘It’s more an honour that someone else pins to your chest, Bella Tynisa.’
‘The road leading to where we sit now is the same for us all,’ Dal stated, ‘although some of us apparently choose to ride it at a gallop. We’ve all been where you’ve been, girl; it’s just you’ve decided to achieve in grand style, and all at once, what most of us have made the work of a lifetime.’
‘Next you’ll be telling me that it’s a noble calling, to be a brigand. Or are you claiming to be a revolutionary, set on casting down the nobility?’ She tried to sound disdainful, but there was a curious note of need in her voice, despite herself. Can that be it? Can these ragged wretches have been right all along? Because that would mean I could justify what I’ve done…
‘A bandit, a man-hunter, a lawbreaker, a bow for hire,’ Dal replied. ‘I never wanted any grand cause. If it looks like I’m fighting tyrants, it’s only because the world’s so damned full of them that you can’t draw a sword without crossing some of their laws.’ He sighed, staring at the embers of the fire. ‘Easy as easy, it is, to become an outlaw. Come the war, they drafted me for their levy – emptied my village, and got pretty much everyone I knew from there killed. When the war was done, well, there was nothing to go back for, and nothing to eat. Twelve years of fighting and the farms had been turned into battlefields, or just left fallow because the labour was all off trailing the pike. And what food there was, half of it went to the Empire, can you believe? Terms of the Treaty of Pearl said that the food out of our mouths went to feed their soldiers. The other half went to the nobles, and you can bet they didn’t starve. Or maybe I’m too harsh. Maybe some of them stinted themselves and fed their people, but I never saw sign of it. They were our lords and masters after all, our betters, so there was hardly an incentive for them to help shoulder the burden.’
‘And so you lowered yourself to their level, is that it?’ she asked him.
His look was sharp. ‘I learned how easy it is to abuse power, girl. When you’re a soldier without a war, with a bow in your hand and nothing in your stomach, and you meet a man who has food and no bow, with no soldiering in him, it’s easy. He might be a merchant or a tax gatherer or a barge master or some noble’s prize messenger, but he has food, and you’re hungry and you can kill him for it. That’s all it takes. And next time maybe you don’t have to be quite so hungry, and eventually it’s become a way of life to take from others and, though you try to make a living at hunting fugitives or some such nonsense, the time will always come when someone has food and you don’t, and you’ll do it again. We’ve all been there, and now you’ve come to visit.’
There was a pause, and the Grasshopper, Soul Je, carefully added some more wood to the fire. Beyond their scooped-out hollow, Tynisa knew the fickle light would be all but invisible amongst the trees.
‘I don’t want to be your leader, and I don’t want to be a brigand,’ she said, and had to fight down a part of her that did. The ugly, violent thing that had driven her this far would relish it: somehow it seemed that one could have the same honour in killing thieves for a prince as killing princes for the benefit of thieves – so long as there was blood. She shuddered.
‘Then you’ve no need to share our fate, win or lose,’ Dal pointed out.
‘I…’ The world was out there, dark and harsh and unforgiving, and she had once again excised herself from it. If she left the company of these ragged creatures, then she would have nothing at all .
Perhaps Dal saw something of the truth from her face, for he did not press the issue.
There was a rustling above, and immediately all hands went to swords and knife hilts. It was Mordrec, though, squeezing in to take up all the available space, and with a bundle in his arms.
‘Just where we left it,’ the Wasp confirmed, slightly out of breath. ‘Glad we listened to you, now. Never thought we’d be coming back this way, myself.’
He unfurled the oilcloth, spilling out a meagre collection of knives, shortbows and an untidy stack of arrows. None of it looked like good workmanship, but the brigands helped themselves gladly, so that all of them save Mordrec now had a bow and at least a few shafts.
‘Any sign of their scouts?’ Soul asked.
‘How the pits should I know?’ Mordrec hissed back. ‘They can see better than I can. I just concentrated on keeping my head down, all the way.’
Tynisa sighed. ‘I’ll go look.’
They regarded her doubtfully, and at last Dal Arche said, ‘One of us, then?’
‘And not your leader,’ she insisted firmly. ‘I need to get away. You need to get away. I’m willing to bet that they want me more than you.’
That had to be explained for Mordrec’s benefit, and the Wasp goggled at her. ‘Shame you didn’t go report to the old woman before you sprang us,’ he said. ‘Could have wiped out the whole family. Make the Rekef proud.’
She glared at him, but the words hit close to home.
‘What’s the plan, then?’ asked Mordrec, settling down. ‘I reckon we’re a few points off the compass, but that’s just runner’s instinct. You got a plan now, Dala?’
The Dragonfly nodded slowly. ‘I reckon the reason they’ve not caught us already is because most of their people headed south, thinking we’d just repeat our dash for Rhael. As you’ve noticed, we’ve made best time by going due east, instead. Now they’ve got airborne scouts and cavalry, so they’ll catch our trail soon enough, and it’s only a matter of time before they overhaul us. Not many options for us, then. Too few of us to make much of an impression if we stand and fight. We could scatter, each to his own, and some of us would likely remain free, and others would be hunted down like beasts. That has an appeal to it, if only because it puts our enemies to the most trouble. However, I’ve a third way, if you want to hear it.’
‘Speak,’ Soul Je prompted.
‘We just hope to keep out of their reach, as we run east, and then we cross the border. It’s not as far as you might think. Don’t forget how half this Principality ended up on the wrong side of the Imperial lines, at the end.’
Mordrec spat. ‘You know what it’s like in the Wasp Principalities? You think they’re any easier on brigands there?’
‘I reckon they’re not already hunting us as brigands over there, nor as prince-killers either. So I think, right now, we’re better off risking our freedom with the slave-takers than our lives with the Salmae.’ As Mordrec was about to speak again, he added, ‘You sprang me from a Slave Corps cell in Myna, Mord, so it’s not something I’d suggest lightly. Still, by my reckoning we’ve just about outstayed our welcome here. Split off from us tomorrow, anyone that wants, but I’m for the border, and see how bold Salme Elass gets then.’
He met Tynisa’s gaze, and she asked him, ‘You’ve fought all this while against the Commonweal aristocracy? Don’t you think the Empire will be worse?’