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 thus 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.