Another Mantis was coming in, spear in hand, but Amnon cannoned into him, both of them going down and then scrabbling to regain their feet. Beyond her opponent, Tynisa could see others retreating — a flash of pale hair — the Empress?
The distraction nearly killed her, as the Mantis’s blade darted towards her stomach, but her own sword knew its work and slipped in the way just in time, letting her dance backwards — losing ground again. And she knew that right now she was losing their best chance to win the war, to defeat the Empire in one stroke.
So go. And she went, whipping her opponent’s steel aside, cutting just enough of an opening to get past her, kicking into a full run even as she did so, and be damned to the price that her hip would exact later.
A snapbow bolt spat past behind her, its author not adjusting for just how fast Tynisa was suddenly moving. Then there was a Wasp in the way, raising his hand to sting, but her blade was already in motion.
He was a dead man — just some Wasp soldier with red insignia — but somehow he put his raised hand in the way of her stroke. From the shock of impact, it seemed as though she had struck metal, yet when he fell out of her path, there was no blood, no sense that she had wounded him. And no time to wonder about it.
She had already realized that she was following the Mantis path to its logical conclusion. It was hard to see how she would survive this, success or failure, but she had to try.
She saw the Empress in front of her, with an old man who looked like a malformed corpse in tow. Just twenty yards — fifteen — then the Wasp woman was shouting out a word — a name — and someone else stood in the way.
Tynisa saw a man armoured head to foot in a style she knew only from old books and museums, armour as fine and elegant as ever a Commonweal noble wore, but crafted to an entirely darker, sharper aesthetic. She had never seen a full suit of Mantis-kinden carapace armour before.
It gave her pause, despite her entire attack plan being built on going forwards, and then the man was coming for her, his clawed gauntlet stooping like a hunting dragonfly — barely turned by her own sword — then back to guard, without leaving room for a counter-attack.
She froze. She could not help it. Her mind had choked on the utter certainty that had come to her, even as her sword parried three more strokes and her feet carried her backwards.
Around her, the Empress’s followers were falling back after their mistress. The Wasp with the red badge and a Beetle snap-bowman passed her, retreating with professional care.
She took three more blows numbly, the last scratching her shoulder before she was able to turn it.
The name the Empress had shouted had been Tisamon. And even had the name been unspoken, she would still have known. She had fought her father before, and she had lived with his barbed ghost in her mind, and she knew him, and here he was.
Then Amnon was there, lashing a blade out at the armoured form, and the claw that had been stooping towards her veered aside to block his stroke. With a shriek of nameless emotion Tynisa lunged for him, for his very throat, but he had fallen back a step, her lunge failing to reach him, even as he nicked Amnon’s arm and deflected the big Beetle’s next blow.
Then there was some summons — Tynisa did not hear it, but it was plain from the armoured man’s — Tisamon’s — stance, and he was turning and sprinting away, in full mail but fast enough that neither she nor Amnon had the chance to strike at him. She was after him a moment later, barely enough of a delay to slide a knife blade into, but the forest around seemed suddenly very dark, shadows hung on every bough, and she was blundering into the gloom. And where was the Empress?
And. .?
She stopped, hearing the others catching up with her, Amnon almost at her elbow, staring about in confusion.
Where is she?
Of the Empress and her entire retinue there was neither track nor trace.
Nineteen
‘This is such a stupid idea,’ was Gerethwy’s informed opinion.
The night was unseasonably chill, or perhaps it was just due to the altitude. There were no clouds above, the stars clear as cut glass, and only the faintest sliver of moon to detract from them.
‘Wasn’t my first choice either,’ the airship’s master grunted. ‘Beats training on those deathtrap Stormreaders, though.’ His name was Jons Allanbridge and he seemed to be some kind of associate of Stenwold Maker, although he didn’t exactly speak of the War Master fondly. His vessel, the Windlass, was carrying the two Company volunteer officers and a fair number of their soldiers. Nobody had explained to Straessa that she would be one half of the Collegiate command team on this mission, and she had the unhappy feeling that possibly nobody had really thought about it either. Apparently the non-Mantis side of the operation would be spearheaded by the Mynans, and she and her people would just have to try and keep up. Although the overall plan might not be as foolish as Gerethwy claimed, the details really did seem to be lacking.
They put this one together in a hurry, and surely the Wasps’ll see us coming, and then. . But if the Imperial Air Force caught them aloft in these big, slow airships, that would be a death sentence for anyone who couldn’t take wing and fly. Gerethwy was right in that — all the artificers were in agreement that airships as a tool of war had had their day.
Until now, apparently, because heavier-than-air fliers just could not have carried this many people to the enemy.
There were a dozen other dirigibles blotting out the night sky around them, which were doing their best to be stealthy. They kept no lights, and were coasting on a westerly wind so that the nocturnal quiet was not defiled by the sound of engines. Even the enormous Sky Without, its elegant staterooms now the squatting ground of the Mantis warriors, was coursing through the upper air like a great, bloated ghost.
‘You’re sure you can even find the enemy? I never really appreciated just how much land there is until I saw it from up here,’ Straessa put in.
‘They’re coming along the coast, so it won’t be hard,’ Allanbridge told her. ‘More important for us not to overshoot.’ He checked his instruments. ‘Not much further, if reports can be believed.’
‘We’re going to get shot down. This is ridiculous,’ Gerethwy complained, from his post at the bow, but then a Fly-kinden messenger spiralled out of the sky to land at Allanbridge’s left side, making the man curse furiously.
‘Time,’ the small woman announced. ‘Down, now.’ Then she was off for the next ship: an old fashioned way of passing the word, but lamp signals had been judged too risky.
The other Company officer, a Fly-kinden named Serena from the Fealty Street Company, had come up on deck. ‘We’re going down?’
‘The easy way,’ Allanbridge confirmed. All around them, the airship fleet was descending, and there was still no sense that the Empire had noticed their coming.
‘Let’s go and get the troops,’ Serena suggested. ‘I’ll go over to the Sky and make some order there.’ At the end of those words, she was already standing on the Windlass’s rail, and kicked off with her wings flashing from her shoulders, catching the air and arrowing off towards the larger vessel.