She had it. She felt their minds, felt them shudder as she reached for them. You will know me!
It was Amnon who broke it, ramming out a straightened arm and knocking her from her feet with a scream, all her efforts in vain.
What is he. .? Why did he. .? Betrayer! Her fury was something beyond her, a magician’s self-obsessed rage at being thwarted, and she twisted on the ground to reach for him, intending to do she knew not what, hands out and fingers crooked like a stage actor hamming a witch.
She saw the stroke that came for him, that might have been coming for her. It unfolded from the trees, but he was closing with it, blade out, and had got closer than the attacker had intended. Instead of meeting the razor-spined inner edges of those terrible weapons, Amnon was simply struck by the hard backs as the twin arms lashed out. He was thrown clear over Che, sword spinning from his hand, and she heard him land behind her.
The mantis loomed over her, arms folding back with an air of disappointment. It was a drab green mottled with black, save where its underbelly was paler, and its eyes were the colour of old gold.
She heard Thalric’s yell, but she could spare him no attention. Those vast orbs were now her whole world.
The mantis twitched back, and the bright flash of the Wasp’s sting glittered across its carapace, to no visible effect. It went for Thalric with one arm, an elegant feint of a blow that sent him reeling away from its unexpected reach. Che could feel the creature as a knot in the weave of the forest, just as she could feel the Mantis-kinden themselves. And one in particular. She realized that the beast before her had a. . not a master but a companion, another mind, another pair of eyes, adding up to one formidable opponent, Mantis and mantis united.
It struck and, though she was watching, it moved faster than she could follow. The arms scything down and raking her up into their jagged embrace.
Thalric turned to see Amnon struggling to his feet, and Che — gone, no sign of her, just movement in the trees.
He turned, boots digging into the dirt, and let his wings carry him back the way he had come. ‘Amnon!’
The big Khanaphir threw himself forwards, but a Mantis-kinden woman leapt on him even as he did so, bladed gauntlet upraised. The two of them went down, and then Amnon had backhanded the woman off him. She turned, quick as a coiling centipede, driving for him again, but Thalric’s sting took her in the throat, snapping her backwards almost head over heels.
An arrow spun from between the trees and struck the Wasp full in the chest, and he himself went over, feet skidding out from under him. The force was like a strong man’s punch and his chitin breastplate cracked slightly under the force, but his mail kept his hide intact.
‘Where is she?’ he yelled at Amnon.
The big Beetle was looking about him wildly. ‘They took her! She’s. .’ He made an abortive little run into the trees, then backed off. ‘I don’t see tracks. No tracks at all.’
Like the Empress? Or perhaps they just flew, or. .
‘What happened?’ Thalric shouted.
Tynisa passed him, darting in between the trees and then skidding to a stop. ‘They’re coming for us!’ she shouted at him.
‘We have to go after Che!’ he insisted.
Her face, as it turned to him, was devoid of expression. ‘Where is she?’
Another arrow lanced towards them, and she turned it away with a lightning flicker of her rapier, without even looking. Thalric’s quick glance around detected plenty of movement coming their way, just as Tynisa said.
‘They know she’s special,’ he stated. ‘They wouldn’t. .’
‘They’re Mantis-kinden, Thalric. Of course they would.’ Only at these last words did her voice shake, a brief window on the fear and rage inside her.
Amnon had his snapbow out, a bolt chambered and the battery charged. ‘We fight?’
‘A sacrifice,’ Tynisa breathed.
Thalric stared at her, but he had no need to ask what she meant. Outside Khanaphes, other Mantis-kinden had very nearly done for him at one of their nasty little shrines. And of course, as he said, Che was special. She was owed a special death.
‘I’ve an idea, but it means we need to speak to them. So we need to be able to hold them off,’ Tynisa was dancing quickly backwards, heading in the direction where Maure had gone. ‘Come on, quickly.’
‘But. .!’
‘Thalric, die here and what have you accomplished?’ Whatever she saw in his face prompted her to add, ‘The Commonweal trick, Thalric. Remember?’
They were all of them backing off now, because the Mantids were so close. Thalric let his sting speak three times in the hope that it would deter them. The Commonweal trick. . ‘Didn’t work so cursed well last time.’ Her ravaged face, and the limp that seized on her the moment she wasn’t fighting or running, those were her rewards from the Commonweal trick.
And who’s to say it’ll work again? Another arrow glanced from his pauldron — uncomfortably close to his face — and abruptly he was running, and cursing himself for it. The other two followed right behind him.
Ahead of them rose those wooden walls, and he had already identified exactly what they had once been. He had seen vessels like this often enough during his time in the army. Imperial scout airship, old model — but there were still enough of them around by the end of the last war. Even before he saw it, he had been expecting the Seventh Army insignia he saw there: the badge of General Malkan’s Winged Furies that had been destroyed by the Sarnesh and their allies at the place still known as Malkan’s Folly.
The vessel’s hull lay at an odd angle within the clearing it had carved as it came down. There was little sign of a balloon or rigging, and the hull was mossy and probably part rotten from a few years in a place unfit for human craftsmanship, but it offered cover at least. The only problem was that it might become a tomb as easily as a hiding place.
Maure appeared at the open hatch, and then ducked back inside almost immediately, as an arrow thudded deep into the wood right beside her hand. Thalric let his wings bloom, kicking into an extended dive that pitched him neatly through the square opening, and then he was turning back, hauling Tynisa inside and putting out a hand for Amnon. The Khanaphir leapt to the hatch in one clear bound, paused there for a moment to discharge his snapbow — Thalric heard a cry as the hasty shot nonetheless hit home — and then dropped in, already fumbling for another bolt.
Thalric took up station with him at the hatch, one hand poised to sting as he waited for the Nethyen to make an appearance. There was plenty of movement between the trees, but nothing that made a good target. The corpse of the man that Amnon shot lay in a crumpled heap just inside the clearing. Too keen by half.
‘We’re not the first to end up hiding here,’ Maure observed softly, in the silence that descended. Thalric risked a glance backwards, and saw her kneeling by a skeleton still attired in Imperial armour, picked clean by busy scavengers long since.
‘Probably died in the crash,’ he decided.
‘He didn’t,’ the necromancer corrected him, and he felt disinclined to press the matter.
‘Where the hell are the Moth and that Collegiate woman anyway?’
Amnon shook his head. ‘They fell behind.’ There was a finality to his tone.
Behind them, Tynisa swore, but with a hint of awe in her tone. ‘Thalric. .’
Leaving Amnon watching, Thalric navigated the sloped interior to see what Tynisa had found. He expected another body, or some further evidence of Mantis atrocity. He had not expected to find a fortune, but there was a chest there — Quartermaster Corps heavy-duty issue — which was still nearly full of Imperial mint gold coins.