‘We’re not exactly equipped for a siege,’ the Wasp pointed out, although he sounded less adversarial now, the spirit of the idea working on him.
‘Let them keep their walls. I doubt that they can eat them, once they get hungry,’ Dal Arche declared. ‘I want the three of you gone by tomorrow for Siriell’s Town, or whatever’s left of it. Get your charges lodged there as soon as possible, and bring me back anyone you find who’s able to fight. Bring me weapons too, as many as you can: spears, arrows, axes even – whatever you can get. We’ve got plenty of hands all of a sudden, and nothing to put in them.’
He looked from face to face, seeing Ygor and Mordrec still unhappy, Soul Je merely impassive. ‘Or what?’ he asked them. ‘No, we didn’t ask for this. We came here to raid some villages, put a little thorn in the side of the nobility, get a little plunder. We knew that the Salmae taxed hard and all we thought was that the locals wouldn’t risk their necks to defend the tax collector’s haul. Well, fate’s dealt us more cards than we know what to do with. What would you do with what we’ve been given?’
‘Where does it end?’ Ygor asked quietly. ‘We break the Salmae, and then what? Felipe Shah? The Monarch?’
Dal shrugged. ‘Where does a bandit’s life normally end? What were you expecting?’
‘Dying rich in a Spiderlands whorehouse, for preference,’ the Scorpion considered. ‘But, seeing as I’m a few hundred miles out of my way for that, why not raise an army? Next-best thing, isn’t it?’
‘Damned right it is,’ Dal confirmed. ‘And you, Soul?’
The Grasshopper had remained silent a long time, but now he nodded, just the once. ‘Let’s do it.’
With that said, Mordrec gave in with poor grace. ‘We’re dead men from now on. They’ll stamp down hard when they think it’s bandits. If they find out we’re stealing their peasants, they’ll keep on stamping till we’re just a stain on the grass.’
Dal’s smile was resolute. ‘There comes a time in a man’s life when he gets the chance to be free, even if it’s just for a day or so. That chance doesn’t often come twice.’ In his mind he saw the marching armies of the Twelve-year War, as viewed from the midst of a block of terrified peasant levy being thrown headlong at the black and gold, without a choice, without understanding, just bodies for the grinding Wasp war machine to chew up and spit out. Who should a man blame for that kind of memory? Blame the Wasps? Oh, too easy. The Dal Arche of back then had no grievance with the Wasps, had barely heard of their Empire. When they come to throw you into the fire, he considered, don’t blame the fire for burning you, blame the hands that threw you.
‘I want to be free,’ he told them fiercely. ‘I want to be free of the nobles and their wars, just this once, and if they won’t let us retire free in Siriell’s Town, then the only way any of us can be free is to take the fight to them and give them a hard enough slap that they won’t come back. Now, round up your charges and be ready to head out with the dawn. The Salmae and their cronies will be on us soon enough, and I’ve got to make plans.’
She could now ride a horse, without help. The facility had come to her along with so much else, in that moment at the end of the hunt. Some level of calm and concentration in the saddle had been gifted to her, unearned and unasked for. Still, she was not the equal of the Commonwealer nobles and their retinues, so she brought up the rear as they hurried through sparse woodland towards the latest pillar of smoke. Some way behind them followed a grumbling levy of Grasshopper-kinden peasantry, given only spears and orders, and making the best time they could. Telse Orian had decided not to wait for them, though, once the smudgy pillar of black had been sighted.
He had mentioned the name of the village, but Tynisa had forgotten it already. The Commonwealer names all seemed interchangeable, and were a matter of supreme indifference to her. All that mattered was that the avenging Mercers arrived there in time to catch the brigands still at their pillaging.
Alain himself was scouting aloft with a few other nobles, perched on their glittering insects with the countryside speeding past below them. Perhaps he would be at the village ahead, she hoped, feeling a familiar eagerness steal over her. She had wanted to ride with him, but inside her a voice had said, You must prove yourself first, then he will not deny you.
Let there be blood, she proclaimed to the world, for she had accepted the truth now. In nothing do you so excel, the voice said, as in the spilling of blood. It is your calling.
So she had joined up with Telse Orian and his followers, judging him a man who would not be slow in joining battle, and even now the smoke of a murdered village blotted the sky above them as they surged through the trees.
Abruptly, Telse Orian had put the spur to his mount, and all around Tynisa the rest followed suit, breaking into a charge as they passed the treeline, and leaving her behind. Her horsemanship, however acquired, was insufficient to keep up with them at a gallop, so all she could do was tag along behind, losing ground with every hoofbeat.
Ahead she saw the village itself, much of it ablaze and a crowd of men and women clearly setting the next house alight. Telse lowered a lance now, and Tynisa saw the brigands scatter left and right, or straight up into the air. Arrows were already skimming towards them, several of the Mercers drawing and loosing smoothly from the saddle, which was another skill Tynisa did not possess.
But the voice within told her, You will have your chance, and she trusted it implicitly, kicking at her mount to get all the speed from it that she could.
A half-dozen of the arsonists were down already. They seemed poorly prepared for the assault, getting in one another’s way even as they tried to flee. Telse left off the attack, circling his horse in the centre of the village even as another roof began to smoulder with burning embers. He was peering down at the corpses.
‘Hold!’ he cried, but most of his followers were too busy chasing down the enemy, and only Tynisa heard him say, ‘What kind of bandits are these?’
To her eyes, they were dead bandits, and the only shame was that she had not slain them herself. Telse Orian stepped from the saddle, though, and knelt down beside one.
‘No armour – not even armed…’ He stood, frowning. ‘Hold!’ he called again. ‘These aren’t bandits. I’ll wager these are the locals themselves.’
‘Then what are they doing?’ Tynisa demanded.
‘Perhaps they seek to deny the real brigands the use of their homes, and-’ Telse started, as an arrow slanted from the gleaming chitin of his breastplate, knocking him off his feet.
There was now a second band of men breaking from the trees, and they were a far more fearsome prospect than the fire starters had been. Most of them had bows, and Tynisa saw swords and spears, leather and chitin mail, and even a few battered pieces of armour that had surely graced some Mercer or noble scion once.
Telse sat up again, still winded, but his people were already reacting without any guiding plan. She saw two of them cut down from their saddles by bandit arrows, as the rest flurried and circled, some passing one way and some the other. The advancing bandits were loosing arrows at every target that presented itself. One shaft nipped past Tynisa herself, to bury itself in the ground.
Now, came the voice in her head, and she felt her father’s hands guide her as she whipped the reins and dug her heels in, her mount breaking into a gallop. She heard Telse Orian call her name, but he was irrelevant now.
There was some ground to cover before she reached the first of the brigands, but they could hardly fail to spot her. An arrow danced to her left, another to her right. She had her sword thrust out, and the next shaft, impossibly, struck the blade, its impact jolting all the way to her shoulder. She was close, then, levelling her rapier as though it was a lance.