They were a vicious-looking crew, she noted distantly. Dragonflies and Grasshopper-kinden, with a couple of other breeds too. One in particular stood out like a leader amongst them, a burly Dragonfly-kinden with greying hair. He had an arrow nocked at the moment she marked him, and it was loosed as soon as she saw it. She felt the impact shudder all the way through her horse, as the shaft plunged into the animal’s breast right up to the fletchings.
Another two strikes followed rapidly from other archers, but the luckless beast was already toppling forward, its forelegs giving way. For a moment Tynisa stood in the saddle, then hurled herself forward, landing on her feet and rushing the last few yards to the bandit leader.
He bounded backwards with a ten-foot leap, his wings briefly glimmering, then his next shaft, drawn and loosed with remarkable speed, struck the rapier’s curved guard even as she lunged forward, the sword seeming to guide itself as it defended her. She saw his eyes widen, then she was laying about left and right, catching two of the brigands neatly between the ribs, both as good as dead in the same instant. A Grasshopper spearman tried to get in her way but the tip of her blade made a ruin of his face with an almost leisurely flick.
Then the enemy were fleeing, and she could hear the drumming of hoofs behind her as Orian’s people finally rallied. Tynisa thought the brigands had broken at first, assuming that the horsemen would follow the enemy into the woods. There was a core of discipline to the bandits, though, enough of them turning at the treeline to shoot that Telse Orian called his people back. Tynisa stood firm, arrows skipping at her feet, but she was not touched.
I will remember you, she warned the bandit leader in her mind. Whether you are a captain or a mere lieutenant, I will remember you.
Twenty-Seven
Che…
Behind her, the river Jamail flowed steady on its course, heedless of time or the deeds of mayfly humanity. The current chaos disturbing its slow waters, namely Amnon’s fish hunt, was a mere nothing, gone before the river could notice. It was just as irrelevant to Che.
Somewhere ahead of her, amid the moss-hung tangle of the trees, was the grey smudge that she told herself was Achaeos’s ghost, which had dragged her from her fellows to set off like a madwoman into the swamp. She had never been able to refuse him anything.
Some part of her knew she would discover, in time, that the apparition was not Achaeos at all. Instead, the parasite clinging to her mind was some fragment of Tynisa’s father, Tisamon, who had died destroying the Shadow Box. Somehow, the Mantis’s ghost had crawled from the very clutches of oblivion and into her head, then had lacked the strength to get out again.
So that was why she was here, as it led her a merry chase through the channels and mudflats and twisted greenery of the Jamail delta, impatient and demanding, and she followed gladly, because she thought it was Achaeos. Even though she knew that she was wrong, living through this a second time, she could not force herself to do anything different. There was a comfort in keeping her hand off the tiller and knowing the outcome, however painful it would be.
At last she had burst into the open, and found the little Mantis village: the reed-and-thatch circle of huts surrounding their sacred place of sacrifice. Even as she broke in upon them, the stunted Mantis-kinden of the delta were herding their latest two victims towards the wicker idol in the centre, its outstretched arms forever reaching for more blood.
Che had stepped forward, as she remembered, but realized there was now someone keeping pace with her. She glanced sideways, annoyed that the sanctity of her memories was being invaded, and saw a complete stranger, some halfbreed woman who looked as though she had Mantis blood herself. The intruder did not return her glance, but continued staring ahead at the two Wasp prisoners the swamp-dwellers had captured.
‘It is him, isn’t it?’ the other woman remarked, apropos of nothing. ‘I don’t know the sickly one, but your other man, that’s definitely… oh, what’s his name?’ And finally she glanced at Che, as if looking for help.
And Che had always been helpful. ‘Thalric,’ she supplied automatically, and found that mentioning the name opened up a whole world of other memories, unwelcome because she should now have been safe from them. But none of that has happened yet, and, as she thought that, she felt the world around her unravelling, unable to retain its integrity in the face of her returning knowledge.
No – it’s Achaeos! But instantly she felt embarrassed, caught pretending ignorance, when all the time she knew it was not her dead lover. She could not live this over again. It was false- A solid catapulted stone thundered down nearby, indicating that the Wasp artillerists positioned on the roof of the governor’s palace had finished moving the piece into place. Their angle of attack was awkward, but it still showered the nearest Mynans with sharp chips of masonry. Che shrank back, throwing an arm up, even though none of the fragments came anywhere near her.
Kymene stalked past just then, a retinue of self-appointed junior officers trailing after her. The night was dragging on, and the Wasps occupying the palace remained stubborn in their resistance. Everyone knew that Imperial reinforcements were on their way, and if there were still Wasp soldiers within the city when they arrived then the revolution that everyone had fought so hard for would be caught between the two, and most likely crushed.
Another detachment of Mynans was forming up, getting ready to rush the gates. The great doors to the palace were already gone, but the Wasps had put up a makeshift barricade, and were holding there with crossbow, spear and sting. The Mynans massively outnumbered them, but the Imperial defensive position was formidable. A dozen similar assaults had already been thrown back. Che stared at the citizens readying themselves for the push: men and women of all ages from mere youths to white-haired veterans, and most of them wearing either captured Wasp armour or the old black-and-red Mynan breastplates and peaked helms. The front half held triangular shields, the rear had a motley collection of crossbows. They were not trained soldiers, but then Myna had been occupied and enslaved for almost twenty years. These men and women were tough, bitter street fighters who had cut their teeth during the resistance, but this now was a soldier’s job, and they were not trained for it. And even professional soldiers might have balked at the task that awaited them.
One of them stepped out of the line: not a Mynan, this one, but some kind of muddied halfbreed woman not much older than Che herself.
‘At first I thought this was before the war, but you’re too young for that,’ she observed, approaching Che with her hands behind her back, as if the scene about her was intended merely for her personal amusement. ‘I suppose the Empire has been fighting all manner of people elsewhere, but in the Commonweal it’s almost impossible to get any news of it.’
‘Commonweal?’ Che eyed her blankly, but even as she said it there were new thoughts trickling into her mind. Yes, I will travel to the Commonweal, but that’s later, much later, and with that thought she was forced to accept that all of this, all the frenzy and bravery of the Mynan resistance, was history.
‘I charged the gates,’ Che murmured, recalling the moment in awe. She looked at the strange woman, who was holding a hand out to her.
There was pain, concealed in the palm of that hand, and Che wanted none of it. She turned away.
In Solarno, the angry crowd surged back and forth, the supporters of the Crystal Standard and Satin Trail parties shouting slogans, clashing messily with their slender, curved swords. Che had backed away as far as she could from them, waiting for the moment when this angry demonstration of Solarnese government-by-mob would flow over the low wall of the taverna and wash her away. But the fight flowed back and forth, prowling about the wall’s edge like a hungry animal, repeating the same round of violence over and over, and she knew she could wait for ever, the world trapped in amber, and be safe.