Heirs of the Blade Part 19

The flicker of a frown at this familiar use of the prince's name was almost lost in the curiously pained expression the Gra.s.shopper woman a.s.sumed. 'You understand nothing,' she said grimly. 'You have no means of protecting yourself from them at all.'

Tynisa felt a sudden surge of anger, almost as if it had sprung from elsewhere, and within a moment her sword point was hovering close to Lisan Dea's breast. 'I have no difficulty in protecting myself,' she snapped.

But the seneschal simply looked back at her, without fear or even alarm. 'Why did you come here at all?'

'Because of Salma.' The answer came unwillingly. And then, because that would make no sense to the woman, 'I mean Salme Dien. I was his . . . his friend.' Abruptly she felt ridiculous, and slid her sword back in its scabbard, now ashamed at being goaded so effortlessly. I have never been so shorn of grace before. She found her killing instinct could not stand against the utter indifference of the Gra.s.shopper.

'I remember Dien,' Lisan remarked, and a fond look transformed her face briefly, before it reverted to her professional blandness. 'But you should know that he has not dwelt in these halls for many years, not a trace of him.' And, with that cryptic observation, she walked on hurriedly, forcing Tynisa to follow her or become lost amidst the stones of Leose.

In the end, the room she was shown into was not so very poorly appointed, but was clearly not intended for a guest of honour either. It had bare stone walls draped with faded tapestries, and a single narrow window looking out over the gorge. They brought her gowns, then: objects of silk and layers, shimmering with colour. She found she could not wear them: they pinched in the wrong places, she could not walk properly without treading on the hems. Tynisa was used to Collegium robes, which were shorter and heavier, or else the breeches and arming jacket in which she had spent so long travelling. At the last she found a servant and prevailed upon her to fetch something more practical: a pale half-cloak over a long tunic of grey and gold that reached to her knees, with a belt that went three times round her waist.

The Lowlanders were never great arbiters of fashion, she knew, and Collegium's usual style was muted, borrowing any flair it possessed from seasons-old and mostly misunderstood Spider custom. The Beetle-kinden amongst whom she had grown up were a solid, pragmatic people to whom elegance did not come easily. Tall and slender and fair, she had walked amongst them wherever she wished, dressed how she wished, secure in the knowledge that they would deny her nothing. The other races that she had walked among were hardly different: blinkered Wasps, the rustic simplicity of the Mantis-kinden, the downtrodden grime of the Empire's slave races. She had never been obliged to try before. Certainly she had never strained to meet the standards of others.

Standing there in her borrowed garments, in this unfamiliar castle, she felt her self-confidence tarnishing by the moment. She did not know what to do, nor how to act, and a lifetime in Collegium had not prepared her for the web of intricate etiquette that bound these people together. Abruptly her simple room seemed close and crowded, and she heard Achaeos's spiteful reminder: And you cannot even fly, which all these people take for granted. The Beetles have ruined you for polite company. Tynisa shook her head, determined now to prove him wrong.

A dance, Alain had said. Well, it had indeed been a while since she had last trod a measure, but she knew that game. She knew the Beetle-kinden dances, which involved a great deal of romping back and forth in lines, changing places, turning round and, in the case of older, fatter or drunker dancers, falling over. She had skipped her way through enough of those, and even been admired for it. Then, again, there were the Spider dances, where the musicians set the measure and the dancers paired off and let their inspiration guide them, making grace and elegance their only standards. She felt she was ready for these Commonwealers.

The feast was disappointing. There were long, low tables seating a clear grading of guests, and she was placed at the end furthest from all the important people, meaning Alain and his mother and the more favoured of their n.o.ble invitees. She sensed Lisan Dea's hostile influence, but there was little she could do about it. Aside from herself, this gathering plainly represented Dragonfly aristocracy, resplendent in a rainbow of silks, cloth of gold, silvered leather and enamelled chitin. There was very little conversation between them, and none at all directed at Tynisa. If this gathering was to celebrate Alain's victories, n.o.body said anything about them, and his mother made no speeches. It was as though everyone had been thoroughly briefed beforehand, with only Tynisa left out. She ate in silence, finding the food too sharply and unexpectedly flavoured, and the portions small.

Then the gathering all adjourned into a further room, a circular s.p.a.ce with a vastly high ceiling painted in patterns of blue and white and gold, where a little troupe of Gra.s.shopper-kinden stood ready with instruments: long-necked lutes and rebecs and deep-throated drums. The guests spread out along the room's periphery, where Tynisa noticed several of them pairing off for the first dance. Her eyes sought out Alain, but he had already been secured by a coolly elegant Dragonfly lady, the two of them slotting together without preamble, as though the partnering had been arranged beforehand. Tynisa turned away, but there was someone unexpectedly at her elbow. For a moment she found her hand twitching for the sword she had left in her room, but it was a young man who had been seated near her at the table.

'Lady Lowlander, would you honour me with your hand for this dance?' he enquired.

She had no idea who he was, but his familiarity suggested that they had already been introduced. In truth, she had not paid her neighbours much attention during the meal. Seeing him standing so solemnly before her, she began to feel curiously off-balance.

'Of course,' she said nonetheless, because she could not back down now. Even then the drummer was moving his fingers over taut hide, producing a patter of fluid sounds like no drum Tynisa had heard before. Dancers were moving into place as if drawn by some magical resonance, each to a precise spot.

'We shall join the lower tier, of course,' her partner told her bafflingly, and then abandoned her to take his position across the room. In the end, she only knew where to go when two concentric circles had formed, with a single glaring gap in the outermost.

Faster than she was expecting, the music struck as soon as she had found her feet there, and she tried to move with it, but in a moment she realized that a Commonweal dance was something far removed from her experience of either Spider-kinden or Lowlanders. The inner circle of dancers had taken to the air immediately, converging in the chamber's centre and circling one another, whilst the outer ring began following some complex pattern of its own that seemed to have no relationship to that of their fellow dancers aloft. Small groups of them would come together, turn about one another with solemn grace, now facing in, now out, and then their smaller circle would scatter in a single instant, each leaping to another point either on foot or by wing. It should have produced a chaos of tripping and collisions, but Tynisa realized very swiftly that each and every one of the partic.i.p.ants knew their moves as if they had been rehea.r.s.ed in them. This was no Beetle b.u.mble with some half-drunk dance-master calling out the moves, nor a Spider-kinden improvisation where individual inspiration was all. These n.o.blemen and women had been schooled in some intricate dancing art, move by move and step by step, so that they worked together to an invisible pattern that she had no access to.

Tynisa soon backed out hurriedly, because the alternative was to get in someone's way, and already she had hopelessly lost the rhythm of the music. Across the room she saw the young man who partnered her also retiring, his face kept carefully neutral.

She was embarra.s.sed. It was a new feeling for her: she had discovered something that she could not do. Worse, Alain would have noticed her fail at it. Even though the dance went on, she felt all eyes on her. Achaeos's mocking laughter sounded in her head and she knew that Salma's imaginary smile was merely polite now. She had failed his people, and he had witnessed it, for all he was a year buried in the earth.

Those angry thoughts kept her busy until the dance reached its preordained conclusion, and Tynisa hoped naively that they might pa.s.s on to some other entertainment. Instead, she saw a swapping of partners, hands changing hands, and a new pattern being laid out in feet and bodies, whilst the musicians conferred briefly. No signal had been given, but as soon as the drummer started tapping away, everyone there immediately recognized the measure and was ready for it, leaving Tynisa again clinging at the sidelines, frustrated and surplus to requirements.

This time, Alain was partnering another young n.o.blewoman, an iridescent creature who reminded Tynisa far too much of the b.u.t.terfly-kinden that Salme Dien had fallen for. Grimly she watched the two of them pirouette and soar together, each beat of the music grating on her nerves, until she felt that she would have to quit the gathering, or else do something she might regret.

Instead, some stubborn part of her had rooted her feet to the floor, even as her temper wound tighter and tighter. The next dance proved even more intricate, dancers skipping from the floor all the way to the arched ceiling and back, hovering and darting and circling like so many mayflies. And, all the while, Tynisa just stared and stared.

She recalled now Lisan Dea's curious reaction to her, the pity the seneschal seemed to show, even that question about how Tynisa would defend herself. Well, now she knew what the woman had meant. She, who had found her own way amongst so many different kinden and cultures, had now encountered heights that she could not ascend to. Whatever her gifts, or her Art, or her training, she was still a low-born Lowlander. In contrast, these people were aristocracy, and their world was different to hers.

An older world, a wiser world, Achaeos whispered in her ear, but you were so bound up with your Beetle learning that you abandoned your own heritage, and what are you now? Apt? Inapt? You have lost them both. He was a presence at her elbow, and she dared not look round to banish him in case she found him stubborn, standing there with that bloodstain spreading across his body and his hand held out to partner her. She felt herself begin to shake ever so slightly. Every eye seemed to slide off her, with contempt or pity or simple embarra.s.sment in each look cast her way. She was scanning the host for Salme Alain, desperate to catch his eye. Just the once, she caught sight of his face amidst the crowds, and read only amus.e.m.e.nt there. At her? Who could know, but it cut her anyway.

She realized that she had stayed too long, and a waxing tide of bitter anger at being so excluded, beyond any ability of hers to remedy, was soon going to overtake her. The dancers had come back down to earth, moving out to the edges of the room, and she found herself stepping forward towards the centre, as if she ment to challenge them all, forcing them to face her on her own terms. Her sword had been left back in her room, but she felt its familiar contours against her fingers, only a shadow away from being in her grip.

She looked up to see a white-haired Mantis-kinden in a pale grey arming jacket stepping forward to meet her, and something in her said, yes, at the perfection of it. What better for her now than to fight and die against one of her own?

But Isendter, the White Hand, merely called out to the musicians. 'Play a martiette.' After a moment's startled conference, the drummer began a new beat, stronger and more rhythmic than before, still slow but with the promise of growing pace within it.

Isendter now stood before her, one hand out as though he held a sword, and she matched his posture, dropping into her fighting stance and waiting for his move. She could almost feel their blades crossing no, she could feel it, steel sc.r.a.ping against steel even though there was nothing between them but air.

The drum spoke louder, a single beat, and Isendter began to move. Instantly she had matched him, giving ground as he sought her, keeping perfect distance. The pace was increasing and, just as she was about to step away, dismissing it all as a nonsense, he moved again. Her feet mirrored his, their hands almost touching, and the dance began. For a long time there was no sound in that great hall but the rattle and tap of the ever-speeding drum, as Tynisa and Isendter fought.

At first she just reacted to him, sliding left as he slid right, retreating and retreating to his lead, but soon she was throwing in moves of her own, lunges and advances, feints and darts, which he echoed perfectly with his ever-moving feet. She forgot all about the others. She forgot Alain. Even the music departed her conscious mind, speaking directly to her body, so that all that mattered was the grave old Mantis before her. She never noticed how the rhythm of their dance was led by the drum, each louder beat signalling a strike. She never witnessed how the expressions of disdain on the faces of the Dragonfly-kinden became watchful, and then wide-eyed, as she and Isendter spun and pa.s.sed and came together again in the perfect collaboration of duellists.

She could have told, two minutes in, all there was to know about Isendter's martial history, just as he had laid her own similarly bare. She could sense which of his knees was slightly tender with age, where the past scars were that tugged at the fluidity of his movements all those mementos of his long career. They knew each other like lovers, during the moves of that dance, and she realized that he was better than she was, made slower by years but made wiser by experience. And the fight and the dance were running to an inevitable conclusion, and . . .

The drum had stopped, and she tried to identify that final sound, that pulled her out of her trance. A familiar sound and a comforting one.

Steel on steel.

Her rapier was in her hand, as rea.s.suring and impossible as dreams. Its blade crossed the metal claw jutting from the gauntlet that Isendter had not been wearing before, nor could have found the time to buckle on.

The dance was over, the room was silent, and the old Mantis nodded just once but with a Weaponsmaster's approval. Somewhere in the room she felt her father was watching her, adding his own satisfaction to Isendter's curt approbation.

Then the applause came, not the rowdy cheering of a Collegium theatre crowd, but a pattering of fingers on palms as the n.o.bility of Elas Mar Province allowed her into their world.

She looked across the room to meet Alain's eyes squarely, and he was smiling.

Twenty-Two.

There was to be a grand hunt to celebrate the approach of spring, she discovered the next morning. The stags would soon be locking antlers in the woods, and apparently and there was no better time to match one's strength with them.

n.o.body had specifically stated that she, Tynisa, would be accompanying the hunt, but after her performance the previous night, n.o.body forbade it either. She had often fought for her life, even been a prisoner of the Empire, and yet there at least she had understood the rules of the game. This bewildering society of the Dragonfly n.o.bles was beyond her, until the Mantis-kinden had found a door into it and had shown her the way.

And Alain had smiled at her.

The thought had been growing in her that redemption came in many colours. She had failed to save Salma, and in losing him she had lost her rightful place in the world.

He was mine, she thought bitter daggers at the b.u.t.terfly woman who had stolen his affections.

She had lost Salma, yes, but here was his very image. If she won him, against his mother's apparent scorn, his steward's sneers and the airy sophistication of his peers . . . if she won him then surely it would be as though she had found her place in the world again? Surely that victory would go some way to repairing the damage she had done, to balance the scales?

She was just aware enough to know that she was clutching at straws, and that if she stood back and looked at her position she would find it untenable. That way, though, led to a greater madness, because then she would have to face up to the guilt that, day and night, prowled around the outworks of her mind, looking for a way in. If she unlocked that door, then the ghosts fabricated by her mind would have her for good. Go forward, though, and look neither left nor right, and she could leave them behind for just a little while. Forward because ahead of her was Salme Alain.

As soon as she understood that there would be hunting, Tynisa had found drab garments of hard-wearing cloth: Mantis-kinden fabric that was more robust than the Dragonfly clothing she had seen here. She took a cloak too, green-grey and mottled, to help her stalk the prey, whatever it was. In truth she had never gone hunting beasts before, but she had heard Tisamon describe it, and observed Mantis hunters in the Felyal, east of Collegium, so she reckoned she knew how it was done.

The Dragonfly-kinden clearly had their own ideas about the art of hunting, however. The party that set off from Leose numbered perhaps a dozen riders, with twice as many servants, and none of them seemed to care if their quarry spotted them coming from miles away. The mounted n.o.bles were all clad in bright silks: reds and blues and greens that shimmered like metal in the morning sun. They carried lances and most had a quiver of arrows and a shortbow holstered at their saddle. They were mostly of an age with Alain and herself, only two being older, and Alain's mother, the matriarch of the Salmae, was not present.

The hunting grounds were some days west of Leose, beyond Lowre Cean's compound. Tynisa had antic.i.p.ated being able to ride alongside Alain, to talk to him and let him see more of her than the fragmentary glimpses that were all he had seen till now. What she had not taken into account was her horsemanship, a skill that the Lowlanders had precious little use for. The Commonwealer n.o.bles all rode elegantly, as natural in the saddle as in the air, and whilst Tynisa could outdistance the ma.s.s of walking servants, the n.o.bles themselves were lost to her as soon as the party set out. They rode ahead, frequently out of sight entirely, and she could not catch them up. When she could see them, they were engaging in mock manoeuvres and cavalry actions that she could not have joined in with. Alain was always at the centre of these, constantly in demand. a.s.sisted by a small number of servants who had mounts of their own, the entourage of n.o.bles even made their own camp, ahead on the trail, leaving Tynisa and the other menials far behind.

As they pa.s.sed close to Lowre Cean's compound, and neared the hunting grounds themselves, she caught up. The pause had been occasioned by a pair of new riders joining the party, and she was surprised to see the prince himself and his young messenger, with no retainers of their own at all. The old man nodded gravely to her, as though they were the only two sane people in the whole ridiculous expedition.

They rode north and west for a few hours, following the contours of the land towards the dark line of a forest. The ground here was still patchy with snow, and the sky above slate-grey with clouds. Tynisa found herself shivering, because even the middle of a Collegium winter was considerably warmer than this, but none of her companions seemed to feel the cold, so she put the best face on it that she could.

There was another half-dozen of the Gra.s.shoppers waiting for them at the forest's edge, and with them two more riders: not n.o.bles but simply more elevated servants. One was the perennially disapproving Lisan Dea, clad in sober black in stark contrast to the n.o.bles. The other was the Weaponsmaster Isendter, who gave Tynisa a small nod of acknowledgement.

'Well?' Alain demanded of them.

'We have tracked a suitable quarry, my lord,' the sour-faced seneschal confirmed. 'The family has several females and calves, and a few younger males. The prince stag is somewhat large, though. I was concerned-'

'You're always concerned,' Alain dismissed her. 'Come, let's see this prodigy. It is time to hunt!'

They pushed into the woods, and now it was not the pace, but the simple business of guiding her mount through the trees, that taxed Tynisa.

'The Lowlanders plainly hunt afoot,' one girl remarked, on seeing her lamentable progress. 'Well, there is honest work for the infantry, too, in this.' Her tone was disdainful, plainly equating 'honest' with demeaning. Tynisa could not help but notice that the Dragonfly-kinden rode and that most of their unmounted servants were Gra.s.shoppers. For a moment she felt herself on the edge of an uncomfortable comparison, thinking of the Wasp Empire and its slave-Auxillians of many subject races. This was the Commonweal after all, though, so it was not the same thing, not at all.

'Perhaps the lady would honour me by riding behind me.' The speaker was a smiling young man dressed in scintillating turquoise, his finery enhanced by a breastplate of silvered leather. His manner was shorn of mockery. 'Lady, I am Telse Orian, and you are Maker Tynise, are you not?'

'Close enough,' she admitted. A study of Lowre Cean's expression revealed no reason why she should not avail herself of Orian's offer, so she took his arm and let him pull her from her saddle and up behind him. Most of the n.o.bles had a saddle that was built up before and behind, but her new companion's was something lighter and more recognizable. She was realizing how very little she knew about the whole business of horsemanship.

'So tell me, Maker Tynise.' The arch-looking Dragonfly girl guided her horse closer as the riders set off at a comfortable pace, their servants loping with long strides all around them. 'Tell me of your Lowland accomplishments. We have already seen your dancing.' She put a peculiar stress on that last word, clearly wanting to make it an insult, nevertheless not quite able to do so. 'You are great archers, perhaps, in the Lowlands?'

'Not that you'd notice,' Tynisa replied, trying to match the woman's tone. In truth she would have been hard pressed to even find a bow in Collegium, where the crossbow was the weapon of choice but a weapon denied to her because of her Inapt.i.tude. Tisamon had been a fair archer, but it was a skill he had never tried to teach her.

'Skilled hors.e.m.e.n, then, surely?' the girl needled.

'Not that either,' Tynisa replied coldly, feeling the anger inside her respond to the taunting. In her youth, in Collegium, such petty barbs as this would have been beneath her notice, and she had been master of her own emotions. Her experiences at the end of the Wasp war, the loss of too many loved ones and the guilt, they had all conspired to throw her irretrievably off balance.

'Why then surely-?' the Dragonfly girl started again, but Orian snapped at her, 'Velienn, enough.'

'But you have raised her up and made her one of us,' Velienn protested slyly. 'Is she to be starved of conversation?'

'If you wish to see what I excel at then I shall meet you on foot and with blades,' Tynisa declared flatly, not even returning the woman's gaze. She sensed Velienn ready herself for a retort, but then no words came, and she imagined the Dragonfly's eyes flicking over her Weaponsmaster's badge. Alain rode past them just then, and he must have caught Tynisa's words, for he grinned at her briefly.

They ventured deeper into the wood following Isendter, the horses picking their way between the trees, now together, now wending their ways separately. There was barely a sign or a sound of life about them save for the trees themselves, which had retained a mantle of needles weighed down by the snow. Every so often, one of the horses or footmen would brush against a branch and dislodge its load of white in a swift recoil of branches, and once or twice the sound of distant breaking would echo through the quiet forest, as some flawed limb gave way beneath its burden.

Ahead of them, Alain raised his hand, and the company slowed and then halted. Tynisa peered through the trees, trying to see what they had been led to. For a surprisingly long time she missed seeing the animals despite their size, caught out by the vastness of the empty woods stretching in all directions. Then a movement caught her eye: a dozen beetles rooting in the snow, or attacking the tree bark with blunt mandibles. They seemed unexceptional creatures, dull black and brown, some full-grown adults and some smaller ones that had probably still been grubs in the ground last spring. Then a further movement caught her eye, and she spotted what must surely be their quarry.

The stag, as Alain had named it, was a grand patriarch of beetles, considerably larger than any of his family, and armed with magnificent branching antlers that were half as long again as his bulky body. At first they seemed too large to be useful, but then the beetle's feathery antennae twitched, and it lifted its horns threateningly, moving them with a casual speed and strength.

Alain glanced back at his followers and raised his lance, apparently the signal to ready themselves.

'We will announce our presence,' Telse Orian murmured back to Tynisa. 'The stag will stand firm, to let his wives and family flee. The beaters and huntsmen will form a ring about him, and try to ensure that he does not make his escape. It is thus we will take him. Know that there is an order of precedence, in the hunt. The prince must strike first, and then the others by rank of family, so that honour and protocol are satisfied.' He twisted in the saddle to face her. 'I myself am here only with my bow, so if you wish to strike at the stag, you may wish to find another mount.'

The various servants were now spreading out on either side, moving forward cautiously between the trees. One or two of the beetles stopped feeding, antennae fluttering. The horses stamped and snorted, surely plainly visible and audible by now to the grazing insects.

Then some of the servants began making noise, beating sticks against tree trunks, whooping and calling out, and the herd was instantly galvanized, females and younger beetles turning to thunder off, shouldering clumsily between the trees and dislodging curtains of cascading snow. The stag reared up, his great horns brandished fiercely against the sky, and abruptly Alain spurred his horse forward, lance in hand.

Tynisa could hardly breathe, in those brief seconds of his charge, as he propelled himself forward into the gape of those enormous mandibles. The huge stag was further away than she had thought, though, and Alain's mount darted off to one side even as the beetle lowered its antlers. The horns ripped furrows in the earth, and Alain cast his spear just as his steed galloped past. The weapon glanced off the beetle's thorax, dancing in the air for a moment before falling away.

The next rider was already in motion, his steed also hurtling forward as though he was deliberately trying to throw himself into the insect's jaws, then veering to the other side, as another spear was cast. This shaft found some purchase at the base of the stag's wing cases, thrumming there for a moment before rattling off, as the enraged beetle swerved and gave chase. The disdainful girl Velienn was next, seizing the opportunity of the insect's distraction to pitch her lance into the creature's abdomen, where it stuck and held firm.

The stag turned and lumbered away, with a surprising turn of speed, but by now the servants had completed their loose circle, and continued to shout and beat sticks directly in the creature's path. To Tynisa's astonishment it flinched away from them, rounding back towards the riders even as another of the n.o.bles began to make his pa.s.s. The man was slightly slow in turning aside and, without warning, the great antlers were scything at him, so that Tynisa was convinced he would be crushed. Instead he just kicked up off his saddle, his wings pulling him up into the branches and well out of the beetle's reach. His mount fled the enraged insect instantly, which gave chase.

The clamouring of the servants made no impression on the horse, and a moment later they were throwing themselves aside, as it charged through their ranks with the stag right behind it. Tynisa winced when one of the Gra.s.shopper-kinden caught a blow from one clawed foot and was hurled aside with a shriek.

The next moment all the n.o.bles were kicking their steeds into motion, chasing after the ponderous insect. Tynisa saw Alain draw alongside it and drive a second lance into the creature's side, leaning halfway out of the saddle with his wings flaring for balance. Then Telse Orian was drawing level on the opposite side, with Tynisa still clinging breathlessly to his waist. With casual grace, the Dragonfly nocked an arrow and let it fly, even as he steered his horse away, and Tynisa saw the shaft ram into place between two of the beetle's legs.

Abruptly the huge creature was no longer rampaging after the riderless horse, but making a break for the deeper forest. It went thundering off between the trees, in a blizzard of falling snow, the riders in hot pursuit and the footmen left to follow as best they could.

Alain took the lead, and Tynisa could not say whether this was more n.o.ble precedence, or whether he was simply the most skilled rider among them. When the stag scrabbled to a halt unexpectedly, his mount nearly ended up galloping up its wing-cases and on to its back. Tynisa could not see what had made the great insect stop, but it turned towards them now, at bay despite the open forest behind it. The riders pulled slightly away and pa.s.sed back and forth before it warily, whilst their servants caught up.

Tynisa glanced from face to face, trying to understand if this was normal behaviour for the beast, but the young hunters were flushed with the chase, none of them seeming to find anything unusual. Looking beyond them, though, Tynisa noticed Lowre Cean frowning, while the Mantis Isendter glanced about him with narrowed eyes. She opened her mouth as if to warn against . . . what? She could put no words to it, but she had sensed something too.

Then Velienn gave a shrill cry and charged at the stag, nimbly guiding her steed beyond the range of the arc of its jaws to plant another spear between the plates of its carapace. Then the hunt was back on, and another two n.o.bles made their pa.s.ses one missing entirely, to the derision of his fellows. Alain headed forth next, but the beetle charged even as he was making his approach. After having apparently made its stand, this move was wholly unexpected, and the prince's steed was not yet moving fast enough to swerve out of the way. Tynisa heard the prince curse briefly, and she was already vaulting off Orian's mount, her sword leaping into her hand.

Alain kicked up out of his saddle, wings flowering from his shoulders. The unstoppable bulk of the stag struck his horse head-on, its great barbed mandibles, that each reached almost the whole length of the wretched steed, clashed together, and lifted the horse's jerking body clean off the ground, shaking it in fury. One flailing hoof clipped Alain even as he strove to spring clear, and sent him arcing over the stag's back to land awkwardly in the snow beyond.

The stag turned on him, the horse's ruined form dropping bonelessly from its jaws, but then one of the other riders gave a high, challenging cry to distract its attention. A mounted figure flashed past, his lance not held for throwing but couched in the crook of one arm, and only after he had gone did Tynisa recognize him as Lowre Cean. She saw the colossal beetle rear up before this new challenger, and saw Lowre begin to veer away. In that same moment, she thought he had left it too late, because he was cutting his escape much finer than the others had done. Lowre rammed his spear home with all the momentum his charging steed could provide, and only the high back to his saddle saved him from being thrown backwards by the shock of impact. He pa.s.sed virtually under the stag's raised foreleg, crouching low along his horse's back, and in his wake, the beetle was already collapsing, his spear driven so deep between its jaws that more than half the shaft was hidden from view.

Alain was already starting to rise, shaking his head groggily, but Tynisa began running towards him.

'Still!' she cried out. 'Alain, stay still!'

She had a brief sense of other hunters reacting to this with puzzlement or with annoyance at such familiarity but then Isendter was also moving.

'My prince,' he snapped, 'heed her and be still.'

Alain froze, his eyes flicking from Tynisa to the Mantis, then to the stag's great rounded body, and back again. Behind Tynisa, the n.o.bles had gone suddenly quiet, aware that something was amiss but not at all sure what.

She was close enough now that she could not keep running, so she made herself as still as she was willing Alain to be. She was poised at the very edge of a boundary that was invisible, and yet glaringly apparent to her and to the other Weaponsmaster. It was a boundary that Alain had unwittingly crossed.

The thing that loomed over Alain, so motionless as to be utterly unnoticed amongst the trees, now shifted slightly, swaying a fraction, and a murmur of shock ran through the n.o.ble hunters. Tynisa heard the slight creak of a bow being drawn.

'Make no moves,' she instructed, without looking back at them. 'Not while he is there.'

'This is absurd-' she heard a familiar disdainful voice start, and then another woman hissed, 'Velienn, shut up.'

Isendter was standing at that notional boundary, and dropped to one knee as if to survey the ground. He shot a glance at Tynisa, and understanding pa.s.sed between them without the need for words.

He nodded, just once.

Tynisa began to advance, not in a headlong rush as previously, but at a slow shuffle, pushing the boundary back and back, her sword extended before her as though she were facing a fellow duellist at the Prowess Forum. Her eyes were fixed on her opponent, which meant tilting her head back considerably.

Isendter reached out a hand to his master. 'To me, my Prince but slowly. Move as the girl moves, stop when she stops. Do not look back.'

Alain gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes only on Tynisa. She shifted forward three steps, and he crawled the same distance towards Isendter. Two cautious steps in, matched by two careful steps out. Behind and above Alain, the great forest mantis shifted again, its all-seeing eyes watching each of them simultaneously. Alain was still well within the range of its spined forelimbs.