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 began 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!
No arrow sped past, although the insect’s head was cocked to one side now, the mandibles twitching like knife-tipped fingers. Slowly she reached for her brooch, tugged it from her jacket and held it up at arm’s length. You recognize this, don’t you? her gesture said.
Its triangular head tilted further forward, and she somehow knew that it was regarding the Dragonfly-kinden arrayed behind her. ‘They are under our protection,’ she murmured, knowing that Isendter was still there and ready to back her up. The overarching mantis swayed again, as though trying to study the situation from all points of view.