Heirs of the Blade Part 41

She seized the initiative, a three-step lunge from a standing start before he had even neared her, her sword las.h.i.+ng down on him, demanding an answering parry as he tried to catch her blade in the crook of his. Instead she drew her weapon back, whipped it at his face so he swayed aside, then was already drawing it back across her to pierce between his right-side ribs. His blade shadowed hers, his parry waiting for the strike to land as if it were a fly. Instead she wrenched her lunge up and stabbed straight at his face again, a strike meant to take him through the eye, but dropping for his throat even as he brought his blade up, hoping to slip under his guard.

Something rang across her skull, scattering her vision with sparks and lights, and she felt a solid impact on her sword-guard, a complaint of steel, and a pain in her side that seemed to spring from nowhere. For a second she could not see, but instinct brought her blade about to fend his off even as she stumbled back, and he let her go again, a second break, providing punctuation in the meticulous rhythm of the duel in his head, that he was carefully teaching to her.

That was what his expression meant, she realized miserably. It was the look of a hard teacher whose student is proving capable, if not exemplary.

He had punched her with his gauntlet even as he had the blade hinged down to catch her blow. Somehow she had warded off his first riposte, but the next had gashed her just above the waist. There was a trickle of blood down the side of her face where he had broken the skin.

The cold, ill feeling within her had crystallized. I am not as good as he is. The gap between them was certainly smaller than should be expected, given the difference in their years, but Isendter had been a master since before she was born.

He was stepping forward again, ready with his next lesson, and she felt a tremble inside. Save me he's going to kill me. She had never acknowledged such before. When she had fought Tisamon, so long ago, she had been too young and foolish to quite understand what losing a duel meant. Since then, she had fought many times, but no single opponent had really challenged her, not like this.

She tried another attack, putting her sword through a half-dozen feints and lunges, keeping him at its far end, and herself out of his reach. In her arm, her side, her face, the pain seemed to grow and grow. His metal claw had become a thing of horror, a torture implement. I don't want to be hurt. I don't want to die.

He let her stave him off for a little while, demonstrating a parrying style that moved his arm faster than she could flick the tip of her blade.

I am going to lose. The small voice was growing louder within her.

Dal Arche watched, and he knew enough to see how the fight was going. Everyone else was watching, too all save one. Someone tugged at his elbow urgently.

'Dal, we have to go.'

He dragged his eyes away from the contest to see the Spider, Avaris, hopping anxiously from one foot to another.

'Dal, it's the plan, remember. We leg it now, maybe some of us get clear, come on!'

He glanced back at the duel, saw the pair separate again, another flash of red on the girl's body. I owe her nothing, not even enough to watch her die. She's not one of mine.

But he realized, with sour reluctance, that somehow she was, even though it was she who had got them into this mess. She was his champion, after all. He was a peasant woodsman gone to the bad, but in this moment he owed her something of that feudal loyalty that princes never quite seemed to grant to their underlings.

'We're going nowhere,' he growled.

'What? Dal!' Avaris hissed, and then, when the brigand chief rounded on him, he bared his teeth in a rictus of desperation. 'I want to live, Dal. Don't do this.'

However that loyalty to his followers cut both ways, and Dal sagged and nodded, feeling off balance, and unfamiliar to himself. 'Those that want to, go now, creep off, but no sudden moves. The Beetle girl and her Wasp are staying, no doubt, and so am I. Maybe they won't notice those that leave, if some of us stick around.'

He turned his eyes back to the fight, hands clenching and unclenching on his bow, hearing the careful, wretched sounds of his people taking their chances. Someone stepped up to his elbow, though, and he glanced sideways to find Soul Je nodding to him.

'Go and take your chances,' Dal advised, but the Gra.s.shopper shook his head.

'Mordrec, then?' Dal asked.

'Right behind you, Dala. Don't feel up to running, anyway.'

At that he did glance around. As he had known, the Beetle girl and her escort had remained, and their magician too, though she seemed perilously close to flight.

'A man can die in worse company, it's true,' he decided, clapping Soul Je on the shoulder, and settled down to watch the conclusion of the duel.

He saw the Beetle girl s.h.i.+ft, coming half to her feet before the Wasp dragged her back down.

'Look at them,' Thalric snapped, his eyes not on the fight but on the Salmae's followers. 'See how many of them? And if you break the rules and interfere, why not them?' And then, perhaps in answer to some stubborn expression on the girl's face, 'And if you interfere by . . . other means, do you think they'd not know? They must have some two-stripe conjuror amongst them, if I'm to credit any of it.'

And Che sagged in his grip, but her eyes had never left the antagonists.

Tynisa backed and backed again, keeping Isendter away from her, but he simply walked into her reach, unhurried, careful and inexorable. When she tried to use this against him, to pin him at the far extent of her sword's length, he slipped by her guard like water, and his claw was already ready for more blood. Her little wounds were beginning to work at her as a pack, snagging at her every time she moved, trying to drag her down. Inside she was fighting a similarly losing battle with her fear. She had never realized just how bitterly she wanted to keep on living, for a tenday, a single day, an hour more. How terrible it was to have already seen her last dawn.

She worked up some alchemy to trans.m.u.te that fear to anger, and her next strike almost caught him off balance, breaking the rhythm that she had let herself succ.u.mb to. For a precious few steps she was driving him before her, the air suddenly filled with the dull clatter of steel. He parried and parried, his gauntlet making circles in the air as he took her sword's point aside, over and over, but her blade was as insistent as a fly over food, and she nearly blooded his arm, nearly gashed his ribs, then flicked a drop of blood from his ear. Now you fear!

But he was calm, weathering the storm until she overreached, and was then ready to take the initiative from her as easily as if she had held it out for him to grasp. That last strike went too far, he had taken only a half step, and her sword's point went past his head. The claw was ready, its metal darkness driving for her throat as he snapped his arm out. She kicked back, trying to regain her distance, too slowly, but from somewhere she got her off-hand up, slapping for the side of the blade.

She felt the keen, cold razor of it slide across her fingers, stumbled back on to one knee and then forced her legs to lift her up again. Her left hand was awash with blood, the wound so sharp and clean that she barely felt the actual pain, though it was waiting for her just a little way distant.

He let her back off, yet again, and she now felt that she knew him better than she had known any opponent save her own father. This fight was an intimacy she had shared with n.o.body else. She had learned respect for Isendter Whitehand the hard way. She could not hate him, or even dislike him. Her Mantis nature, however much she might wish to deny it, recognized the rightness of this moment. There was no shame in a duellist's death at the hands of a master.

He was coming again. From his expression, he judged her an encouraging student, whose education he would rather complete than cut short, but such was life. Learn, his look seemed to say to her. Improve. She backed off, intently watching his face, his eyes.

The justice of your cause? he had asked her. Simply by being here she had vouched for the thieves and thugs behind her, and his regard for her had not suffered. When she had turned the question back on him, however, as he must have known she would, she had seen the pain in his eyes. He was a man worth more than his service here, and she could only think how even the seneschal Lisan Dea had seemed to turn on her mistress, there at the end. How much more, then, would a creature of honour like Isendter wish to walk away? Understanding that, she deciphered his expression at last.

So help me, he wants me to win, she realized with a shock. He had no faith in the n.o.blewoman he was championing. He would far rather lose the duel and see justice done. But he could never fight to lose. To do so would slur his honour far more than would fighting for a bad cause. He was willing Tynisa to improve, to match him blow for blow and let him lose with dignity.

She was not equal to it, however. She risked repeated a.s.saults on his perfect defence, and came back wounded and bleeding each time, like someone trying to reach into a thorn bush, suffering a thousand cuts. She had not let him land a fatal stroke on her, not yet, but even her best defence could not keep him from whittling her away.

She put some additional distance between them, because that thought had led to another, darker one. She remembered old Kymon drilling her and the other College students in the Prowess Forum. What is the most important aim of the duellist? And always some fool would pipe up, To hit the enemy, Master Kymon. And the old Ant would snap back, By no means! It is to avoid being hit!

But she had failed at that. Her best skill had already gone into minimizing the damage that Isendter had caused her. She had no more resources to bolster her defences with. His siege of her swordcraft breached the walls further with every foray.

She wondered if she had read it in his eyes, but it was a terrible bleak thought, more fearful almost than his claw as it hunted her, twisting the hundred paths in the air between them, closer and closer with every motion.

A quick exchange of steel, a gash to the back of her hand, and she was clear again. The thought sat like a leaden weight within her, no, not that, even as she planned out how it might be achieved.

For a moment she thought he stumbled, the sloping ground treacherous beneath his feet, and she leapt for this opening instantly, faster than thought. Thought, catching up, cried, It's a feint! but she had taken the bait already, lunging in even as he struck out at her whilst twisting aside from her blade.

There was barely an impact felt, but she heard a scream and thought it must be her own. Her sight was filled with red, and the slope of the ground seemed to roll under her feet, pitching her half a dozen reeling steps downhill, sword raised to ward him off, blindly covering one of a hundred approaches his blade might make.

It was Che who had screamed, she now realized. She herself kept silent as the tomb. There was blood in her eyes, and she drew a sleeve across them. That hurt, a burning pain shooting across her face where his blade had lashed her. My face- One eye was still running with blood, but she had the other one clear, enough to see him approach again, steady and measured in his pace. The searing pain had not stopped, but she forced it away, locking it in the depths of her mind, perhaps in one of those chambers where Tisamon had so recently resided. Her mouth was full of blood, refilling each time she spat it out. He had cut her across her face . . . her face.

She had lived in two worlds, once. The Mantis child in her had fought, the Spider had smiled and plotted, painted herself in the mirror, charmed her enemies and made them fools. She had even smiled a path all the way to the Imperial palace at Capitas, because swords could not be relied on to win every fight.

She felt the Mantis path before her feet now, all others cut away. One-eyed, she met his gaze, and thought that he would understand. It was not true that every Mantis tragedy ended with a body on the floor. Some had two.

When he came for her next, she turned her body in a vain attempt to let his blade slide off her, while her own blade was already in motion. Her expected parry did not come, that he angled his blade to antic.i.p.ate. Instead she dragged her hand back and up, the point of her rapier remaining almost motionless as she pivoted the rest of the sword around it in the air. The solid shock of contact came as his claw drove into her hip, driving a choking gasp out of her as she spat blood. His own left hand was lifting to catch her blade, but she drove it down anyway, calling on every ounce of strength to speed it on its way.

He had his hand almost in place, but the edge of her blade flayed his palm and cut the web of skin between thumb and forefinger down to the bone, and he could not put enough force into his gesture to deflect her.

Angled downwards and inwards, the point then dug into his pale leathers, just below his left collarbone, and it did not stop until the quillons were an inch from his ribs.

Through a film of new blood, she saw Isendter's head c.o.c.k back abruptly, his eyes closed. His expression was that of a man listening to musicians in some private, peaceful place. She felt his blade grind against bone and, for a moment, they were propping one another up.

She drew in a breath raggedly, and let go of her sword hilt, gifting him with the blade. When his own drew clear of her, from the b.l.o.o.d.y landscape it had left of her hip and thigh, she let out a brief, horrified bark of pain.

For a moment they just stared at one another. Blood had begun painting the grey of his arming jacket, welling slowly around the inch of steel she had left showing.

Something tugged at the corner of his mouth. It might even have been a smile. Then he let himself go, slumping down to one knee with a grating whoosh of breath. The whole world was silent.

She looked beyond Isendter and saw Salme Ela.s.s standing there, her face a picture of rage and denial. There came no instant command, though, no immediate breaking with the Commonweal's ancient traditions. The princess was too shocked even for that.

Tynisa felt her legs tremble, and knew that if she also fell now, she would lose. She was the winner only so long as she stood. Salme Ela.s.s's paralysis would not survive any show of weakness.

Tynisa turned, very carefully indeed, to see Che's agonized face, Thalric's grim one, and fewer bandits than she had remembered. They were standing uphill from her, of course, curse them.

The pain had become a constantly expanding fire in her, battering at her mind, demanding that she give in to it, tearing at her self-control. She remained upright only by application of pure will.

With the utmost precision she placed one foot in front of the other and began to walk.

Forty-Five.

They could do nothing but watch Tynisa's tortuous progress back towards them, even as some of the Salmae's people began to approach their own kneeling champion. Tynisa swayed, and each time she put weight on her right leg a shudder went through her, like a dying thing, but somehow she was still on her feet when Che reached out to clasp her arm, and take her weight. The duellist's face was a mess of blood, the wounds impossible to trace beneath it. One eye was clear and open, but focusing on nothing. Her teeth were clenched together hard enough for Che to hear them grinding.

'Into the trees,' Dal Arche snapped. 'Get beyond the treeline. Keep her on her feet until then.'

When Che rounded on him furiously, he made a wild gesture at all the Salmae's people. 'They're staying where they are because she won, and even when the princess gets her voice back and starts telling them that the fight meant nothing, a lot of them will hold back. Tradition, just useless, rotten tradition, but this once it works for us. Our champion won, so going after us now counts as bad form.' He spat the words disgustedly. 'Oh, they'll come, sure enough, but we have some time so long as it's us that won.'

'But . . .' Che started, already moving for the trees with Tynisa leaning on her, barely more than a dead weight.

'That fellow she took down is still alive back there, for all her sword's sticking in him,' Dal shot back. 'If she just keels over in full view, well, she might be dead, then. In that case their man won, and we're all dead a moment after that.' He glanced back anxiously. 'Tell the truth, I'm not sure who did win there. b.l.o.o.d.y mess, all of it. Soul-'

'Stay by the treeline and watch what they do,' the Gra.s.shopper pre-empted him. He had an arrow to his bow, his eyes flicking left and right across the breadth of the enemy host, and then up to the sky.

The trees loomed sooner than Che had expected. 'A doctor, there must be,' she said. 'We have to . . .' She looked down in horror at the sheer quant.i.ty of blood. 'Bandages, medicines, something . . .' She tried to catch Maure's eye but the magician would not look at her.

'Carry the girl into the woods,' Dal stated flatly. He glanced at Thalric, who bristled for a moment, but then got an arm round Tynisa's back and simply gathered up her knees with the other, hoisting the girl in his arms. She gave out a wretched, rasping cry, and Che almost hoped she would pa.s.s out, escape for a moment from the agony she must be in. But instead, Tynisa rested her head on Thalric's shoulder, sheer willpower twisting her face.

'Go,' Dal urged, and he and Mordrec set the pace, letting the other two keep up as best they could. Released from Tynisa's weight, Che's injured leg took the chance to register its own complaints, for all her durable Beetle nature. She let herself lean on Maure's arm, while Thalric strode and stumbled ahead, trying to balance Tynisa's weight. If Mordrec had been unwounded then the two bandits might have got clear of them and simply vanished into the trees, but his shoulder was troubling him still, sapping his strength, and Dal hung back to match his friend's pace.

'She's dying!' Che called out, not caring who heard her now. 'I need to tend her wounds, please!'

Dal looked back, and she saw the internal conflict on his face, the man who wanted to run for it fighting desperately with the man so many had chosen to follow. He cast his eyes about furiously, trying to judge how far they had come. Not far enough, was written plainly in his expression, but then one finger jabbed out, indicating a dip where the land fell away, offering some pitiful shelter from enemy eyes.

Thalric manoeuvred his trembling burden down, skidding a little on the slope before coming to a halt with a jar that made Tynisa clutch at him tightly. His face could not be read as he looked at the injured girl, but Che supposed miserably that he would rather she died as soon as they were out of sight of the Salmae, just to rid him of the burden.

As soon as they had stopped, Che was fumbling in her packs for some bandages, and a few little jars of medicine to clean wounds and to ease pain. And thank the world they didn't take them off me, when I was caught. 'Start a fire,' she gasped. 'Boil up some water.'

'No time,' Dal told her flatly.

She glared at him. 'She'll die-'

'She may well die,' he replied, 'but we all will, if they catch us. You have minutes here only. Do what you can.'

The mistake Che made was in going for Tynisa's face first, wetting a bandage with water from her canteen and then wiping away the mask of blood she had been left with. What she saw beneath made her recoil, for the blade's single stroke had carved her sister from forehead to lips, in a long, crooked line. The mercy was that both eyes were still intact, one gummed shut with blood, but the wound had opened up Tynisa's cheek and slit the corner of her mouth. The old Mantis-kinden had given her a new face to frighten children.

Che reached for her needle and thread, but Maure was already dragging at her sleeve. 'No, Che,' and she was indicating the wound at the Spider girl's hip.

When she looked, there was so much blood that it seemed impossible that Tynisa could lay claim to it all, yet more kept coming. When Che peeled back the soaking rags of the wounded girl's clothing it started to gush with a frantic rhythm while Tynisa arched back, ravaged face screwed up against the pain.

'Stop the blood, stop the blood,' Che said to herself, thrusting her hands against the wound, but she could not stem it. There was just too much. The life of her sister was emptying itself out between her fingers. A shadow fell over her, a presence looming at her shoulder. 'Go away!' she snapped, pressing harder until a brief, choking sound came from Tynisa's lips.

'Get out of the way, you stupid woman.' A hand was on her shoulder and then she was abruptly slung aside. She heard the man grunt with pain as he did it, and recognized Mordrec kneeling at Tynisa's side.

He's going to kill her, so she doesn't slow us down, she thought. Thalric had a palm extended, but was hesitating, as Mordrec put his own hands flat on to Tynisa's hip, wrist-deep in blood instantly. Maure was holding her back, pleading, 'No, Che, no,' as she tried to lunge at the man, to drag him off her sister.

Tynisa keened, with a high sound like a saw biting into iron, one arm flailing madly at the Wasp, then Che saw a stuttering glow between Mordrec's fingers, and smelt burning. Burning blood, burning skin.

She wanted to cry out, What is he doing? but realization came to her even as she opened her mouth.

After Mordrec stood up, whatever blood Tynisa had left inside her would be staying there, and the imprint of his big hand was seared into her skin in a glossy burn-scar that would surely stay with her for as long as she lived however short that looked likely to be.

'I didn't know Wasp Art could do that,' she admitted weakly, glancing at Thalric.

'Don't look at me. Mine tends to the opposite direction. I'd have blown her leg off.'

She saw Mordrec's pallid face, sheened with sweat from the effort. 'We have to go,' he rasped.

Dropping back down beside Tynisa, Che took her wound-cleanser and soaked bandages in it, using every last drop. Her sister writhed and fought as she applied it, and from personal experience she knew how it stung, but Collegium doctors had long known how the difference between a fatal and a trivial wound would be whether it turned to corruption or not. She swabbed swiftly and aggressively at Tynisa's face, cleaning away the blood and trying not to look at the twisted line of the scar, and then did her best with what Mordrec had left of the major wound on her hip. Tynisa looked paler than Che had ever seen another human being, or at least one who was still alive. The loss of blood might still kill her, or the shock, or any number of other things. Impulsively, Che took her hand, and was startled by the faint squeeze back. Tynisa was still conscious, and not through any of it had she let go, perhaps fearing that a temporary darkness could become permanent all too easily.

In Che's mind was a great deal of dread, a terror of a future that did not have this woman in it. We came so far, and it cannot just have been to lose you now.

And: in the midst of her whirl of panicked thoughts, I will not have it.

She blinked. For a moment she had seemed to feel the world shudder, just a little, around her the air and the earth trembling minutely, out of step with each other. She found herself meeting Tynisa's gaze.

'We have to move,' Che whispered urgently. 'I'm sorry . . .'

Tynisa squeezed her hand again, stronger this time, and then Thalric stepped in without being asked and picked her up. Straightening with a grunt, he glanced towards the sky, where a flurry of white was blowing between the branches. The last echo of the Commonweal winter had picked this time to enter its death throes.

Soul Je suddenly arrived, a shape leaping and bounding between trees. In one hand he held his bow, an arrow clasped across it.

'All kinds of shouting,' he reported. 'Princess is telling them to get moving. They don't like it.'

'It won't last,' Dal decided. 'Some of them will be keen enough to retain her favour. It won't be all of them, but frankly it won't need many.'

Thalric began walking away, almost at random, and a moment later they were all on the move.