And Helma Bartrer — likewise clear of the fight and with no intention of taking part — possessed some buried spark that made her flare brighter than the empty Sarnesh in Che’s mind. Why?
Then the frenzy of the fighting had claimed her attention again, and she realized the conflict ranged far wider than she had thought. This pocket was just a skirmish, but there was a grander battle going on, split into little knots of combatants spread over nearly a square mile of woodland. How can they coordinate? she wondered, before recognizing that they could not. The Mantids would simply duel and die, seeking enemy after enemy until no foe could be found, and then their survivors would regroup as best they could. That was how they fought. They did not make elaborate plans: they were warriors alone, each and every one devoted to their independent skill.
And it was a shining, beautiful thing, which lit the forest all around her, and for a moment Che was lost in it: the dazzling silver fire that was the Mantis-kinden killing their own kin with their thousand-year-old fighting styles, spear and spine, claw and blade. For just a second she felt like one of them, experienced the exhilaration and the certainty, win or lose, the pride in their way of life, their joy in battle; heedless of victory, of pain, of death.
In that moment she also felt the wrong note, saw the hollowness, understood why they threw themselves into the fray to lose themselves: because they were not sure. These men and women had not chosen to fight their own kind, but wiser heads, leaders they trusted, had set them on this course. For one yawning moment Che sensed it all, their growing uneasiness with what was happening, their resentment of the outsiders within their domain — friends and foes both — and the doubts that no Mantis should entertain. So they fought because the fight itself was pure and, while they fought, the reasons for that fight did not need to trouble them.
Then they noticed her.
All at once at least half a dozen Nethyen were coming for her, their minds like barbed arrowheads. In their thoughts she could see their purpose clearly: Kill the leader. She was not sure how she had assumed that mantle, but it seemed inarguable.
One held a bow, but a flash of Thalric’s sting took the archer down before he could draw the string. Che saw the Wasp step in front of her, one hand outstretched and a sword in the other. She could feel the Mantids approaching almost like a tide, a force of nature.
And I have to do something. And yet she remained quite still, passively observing all, incapable of breaking from her own spell. They can’t just. . I was anointed in Khanaphes. . I have authority. . And, of course, it was this authority that the Nethyen wanted to snuff out. Should they not fear me? And she realized, with a jolt, that they did. The very fact of her, unnatural hybrid as she was, terrified them, but they were facing their fear. They were coming to kill her.
Thalric’s sting seared again and again, but the Mantids were moving too fast and never quite where he was aiming. He went for the leader with his sword, but had the blade parried away, and then another had rammed him with a spear, the point sliding off the Wasp’s Commonweal armour but knocking him aside nonetheless.
Hear me!
And for a moment they paused, some backing off. She saw bared teeth, wide eyes. Some leaking edge of her untutored power had cut across them, but it had been wild, random. There is something I can do, some way this is supposed to work. But she could not adapt herself to the situation. Whatever magical tradition she was tapping, she could only fumble with it. It would not work for her.
Then Tynisa came to her aid yet again. Che sensed the rapier first, and her foster-sister second, but then the woman was in the midst of the Mantids, looking like a Spider but fighting like one of their own. They scattered, then came back for her, and Thalric’s sting cut down another, striking from behind. Tynisa’s blade flickered madly in Che’s sight, never quite where she expected it to be — but her sister was being pressed back, giving ground step by grudging step. She could not hold off all four of them for long.
A hand tugged at Che’s arm, hauling her round, and Che looked into the grey-mottled face of Maure.
Perhaps there was some magical way to break her from the trance, but the halfbreed merely slapped her hard. Instantly, Che was back in the world around her, her uselessly grand perceptions shrunk again to just what she could see and hear.
‘Come on!’ Maure shouted, trying to pull her away, but Che knew Tynisa was fighting right at her back, and losing ground. She turned, her own sword raised — as though that way she could accomplish anything at all.
She had a moment of utter clarity, falling back without warning into that dream-state for just a heartbeat, but now fully in control, letting her mind ripple out between the trees. She tried to hold herself there but, with Tynisa almost backing into her, with Maure trying to drag her away, she couldn’t. But it was done: for a moment she had been a magician marshalling her troops.
Amnon came first, unaware that he had been summoned, but there he was, sword cleaving down, almost knocking a Mantis off her feet even though she got her own weapon in the way. Thalric’s sting spoke again, dangerously close to Tynisa but driving a couple of attackers away from her. A Moth dagger spun into the back of one man’s neck even as he made to lunge.
In the confusion, Tynisa struck, pushing past her enemies’ disrupted guard, her rapier binding past an enemy spear to puncture chitin and leather and flesh. Another Mantis lashed out at her face with a claw, but then Amnon’s opponent fell back and took Tynisa’s adversary along with her, and when the two of them had gathered themselves together, they were practically surrounded, by Amnon, Thalric, Tynisa, Terastos the Moth, and Che of course. It was to Che the pair looked: the leader of all their enemies. The magician.
Maure relaxed, and Che could sense without looking that Helma Bartrer and Syale were approaching, falling into their predestined places. My court, she thought, with an arrogance that was not really hers. But that is how magicians are supposed to be, and the forest has seen so many of them.
‘I challenge you,’ the Nethyen woman said, her voice just a ragged whisper. ‘Fight me.’
‘I’ll champion her,’ Tynisa put in instantly.
‘There’s no need,’ Che started. ‘There must be some other way. .’ but her words tailed off because there were newcomers approaching, a score and more of them, armoured and making far heavier work of negotiating the forest than the locals who accompanied them. The Sarnesh, a sizeable group, with Sentius at their head just as Syale had promised.
Che saw immediately when the Sarnesh commander received a silent report from the scouts — the night attack, the death of Zerro — all of it writing itself on his face and being overwritten by the customary Sarnesh stoicism.
‘Maker,’ he called, approaching. Sentius looked haggard, not at all the almost cheerful man who had briefed her when they entered the forest, but someone older and more ill-used, someone who had fought hard and slept poorly since they had parted.
He stared at the two Mantids at bay, glancing from them to Che, and then to the Etheryen who had been fighting alongside him.
‘Surprised to see you still alive,’ he told Che. ‘I’ve lost more than one in three to. . to these.’ And some to other causes, I’m sure, Che suspected, because it was there in the man’s face once you saw him in the right light. The forest did not like the Sarnesh any more than it liked the Wasps.
‘I challenge you,’ the Nethyen woman announced to Sentius, almost spitting in his face. ‘Fight me, coward.’ It was all she had left.