Che held her breath, waiting and still waiting as the spectre shimmered and hung in the air. A disturbance was building up within it, and it writhed and twisted as though strung up on hooks. Her gaze sought out Maure, and found the magician pale and tense, as if awaiting an explosion.
Then, like an exhalation, it was gone, vanishing into infinite distance, yet without seeming to leave the walls of the decrepit hut they sat in, even as the very sunlight seemed to creep into the shade’s absence.
Maure let out a long, ragged breath. As the only one of them to know the risks intimately, she looked more relieved than Che cared to think about.
‘It’s done,’ she confirmed. ‘The shade is gone.’
‘Gone where?’ Tynisa asked, sounding shaky, but all Maure would say was, ‘Away.’
The Spider girl glanced at Che, tentatively probing her expression. ‘You saw it all? Tisamon? Achaeos?’
Che nodded tiredly. ‘I’ve never held Achaeos against you, Tynisa, nor has Stenwold, nor did Tisamon when he truly lived. The only one who ever did was you yourself. Do you at least accept that you’re not to blame for his death?’
Tynisa nodded. ‘I tried so hard not to believe in magic. I thought it was just a convenient excuse. You came a long way to tell me that, Che.’
‘Well of course I did,’ Che replied, almost offended. ‘We’re sisters, after all, despite everything. And you’ll be needed.’
Tynisa blinked. ‘I’ll… what?’
‘As we all will be needed.’
Tynisa and Maure were both staring at her now, but the words just fell from Che’s lips, her face slack and expressionless.
‘Falling leaves, red and brown and black and gold. A rain of burning machines over a city of the Apt. The darkness between trees. The Seal of the Worm is breaking.’
A beat of complete silence followed, as though the world outside their ruined hut had been utterly stilled. Then Che blinked at them and demanded, ‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Che, you said…’ Tynisa frowned. ‘I don’t understand what you just said.’
‘No?’ Maure asked. ‘The Moths call their magicians seers, and set them to sift the future for visions of what may come. Sometimes the visions arrive unasked. The Seal of the Worm, that’s what you said.’
‘Meaning what?’ Che asked, entirely thrown, but a man’s voice broke in, startling them all, Tynisa snatching for her sword.
‘The Seal of the Worm. That’s a bad old story.’ It was Soul Je, the Grasshopper-kinden brigand, crouching just outside the shattered doorway of their hut. Che guessed he had come to investigate the shouting of just a moment before.
‘Tell us,’ Che instructed him immediately, but the man shook his head.
‘Best not repeated. Old wars, old enemies banished to the depths, and let them long remain there. Besides, who knows the truth these days?’ He shrugged.
Che was frowning, her face screwed up in concentration. Something of the Moth lore… In trying to understand Achaeos she had read all that a Beetle might readily acquire, including mouldering histories that no other College hand had touched in centuries. ‘Worms
… some old war?’ And what had happened at the end of that war? But, of course, Moth histories were opaque, dense with allegory. The Moths had fought off so many challengers in the Inapt world of the Days of Lore: all of them defeated, hunted down, destroyed wherever they could be found, or else… banished?
Sealed away… came the uncomfortable recollection.
She opened her mouth to question Soul Je again, but he shook his head, discouraging it. A moment later the Wasp Mordrec bundled past him.
‘We’ve spotted their scouts! Time to move!’
Forty-Three
Salme Elass’s tactical problem now was that her entire force, including all the peasant levy and footmen, could not reliably keep up with the fleeing brigands. A large force was always slower, trailing its supplies and its unwilling conscripts. If she mustered her strength in one place, she might never catch her enemies.
She had taken the only step she could, by sending her followers out in detachments at varying speeds, trusting to the fastest to bring her quarry to bay so that the rest of her strength could regroup and finish the business once and for all.
At first the bandits faced only airborne opposition, the fleetest of the Dragonfly-kinden – nobles and their retinues in light armour. They were few in number, for their strength had been spread wide to locate the fugitives, and the wiser of them simply waited high over the chase, signalling by their very presence the whereabouts of the enemy.
The rasher of the scouts, those keen to make a name for themselves, tried to harry the brigands on the ground, stooping on them with spears or loosing arrows as they dived past overhead. They soon found, however, that Dal Arche and Soul Je were both easily capable of hitting a mark whilst still running, twisting back and up to follow the flight of a passing warrior and then letting fly without ever stumbling or slowing. The scouts had minimal armour, the better to fly far and fast, and after the brigands’ shafts had brought several down the rest kept their distance.
The column of scouts, circling like some bizarre localized weather, would serve its purpose, though. Soon enough, Avaris the Spider called out, ‘ Riders!’ as the first elements of the Salmae cavalry came in sight, still distant but gaining.
A handful still, but they would be harder to turn away than the scouts. Dal wordlessly changed his direction, striking out against the rise of the land. It was not clear to anyone if he had an actual destination in mind, and so Tynisa exerted herself to fetch up alongside him.
‘We can get under cover before they reach us?’ she got out.
He shook his head, saving his breath. Aware of her exasperated look, he grimaced and rasped, ‘These we kill. The next? Depends how soon, how fast.’
Tynisa nodded, dropping back. ‘Thalric, Mordrec,’ she snapped. ‘Rearguard.’
They both glared at her, neither of them happy to be taking orders from her. Thalric was supporting Che, who was still slowing them all with her injured leg. Wordlessly he passed her to Maure, who did her best to lend some strength to the toiling Beetle girl.
‘I count six,’ Tynisa stated. ‘Your stings, my blade.’
‘They could just go round us,’ Mordrec pointed out, half-breathless.
‘Then the archers must take them,’ Tynisa declared.
‘Let me take the lead,’ Thalric put in. ‘We need a horse kept alive for Che.’
The riders were closing swiftly, thrashing their horses to make up the distance, each one of them wanting to win the favour of Salme Elass. When they saw who awaited them, however, they faltered a little, two reining in and the rest swerving away. They fear us, Tynisa thought with satisfaction, and then she was rushing towards the nearest rider, even as he tried to haul his mount aside. He had ventured too close, though, and Thalric’s sting struck him against his breastplate. The scintillating mail turned most of the heat away, but the blow still sent the rider reeling back in his saddle, and before he could regain control of the reins Tynisa had lunged up, her blade piercing the chitin shell of his armour and running itself to the hilt into his side. She saw the man’s golden skin turn suddenly pale, and he toppled from his mount.
‘Maure!’ Thalric shouted. ‘Take the beast!’
The magician rushed forward but the panicking horse shied away from her, and as she stumbled after it, another rider charged her with lance levelled. Her wings lifted her from under the hoofs, but not fast enough to evade the weapon’s point. An arrow flowered in the rider’s neck, though, between pauldron and helm, throwing him sideways, jerking the lance aside. Maure dropped down onto the horse’s neck, kicking and elbowing until the rider fell from the saddle, and then snagging the reins with one hand and dragging the beast back towards Che. She looked around wildly to see Dal Arche fitting another arrow to his bow whilst, beside him, Soul Je aimed upwards, warning off the boldest of the scouts.