Tisamon passed behind
them, keeping ever on the move whilst a full half-dozen men tried to pin him
down. He closed for a second, his claw cutting and dancing, making them
scatter, and one of them went down, blood spurting from over his steel gorget.
Abruptly Tynisa went
sideways, slipping under the thrust of the spear to lay open a line of blood
across the Spider’s ribs. The axeman tried for her but held his stroke as the
mace-wielder stepped in its path. Grimacing with pain, the spearman was lunging
for her, anticipating she would continue her move further out.
She stayed close to him,
still within the reach of his weapon, coming up almost within his extended arms
to put an elbow across his nose. He reeled back and, while the mace-wielder
tried to avoid hitting him, she drove her sword past the man’s shield.
He twisted aside and the
point struck his chainmail, but it clove through the metal rings with only a little
more force and went deep into him, so that the mace fell from his hand. He
tried to clutch the blade but it sheared across his fingers. Then she was
darting away, the greataxe sweeping past where she had just been. She rounded
on the two of them, seeing the spear coming in towards her. Instead of staying
back she moved in and caught the spearhead with the guard of her rapier,
driving it towards the ground, using her sword-hand as a pivot for her whole
body, dancing over the spearhead and bringing a knee down on the shaft. It was
too good a piece to snap, but it bent and then sprang back, and she leapt past
the spearman’s startled, painted face and, when she had passed, her sword
followed and slashed his throat.
Tisamon was still
fighting, one against four now, so she turned to the axeman, who was staring at
her and backing away. She fell into her duelling stance, began advancing step
by step. To her surprise and gratification he turned and ran away.
She looked round for
Tisamon, saw him trading blows still with three men. They were obviously the
pick of the lot. There was another Spider whose rapier moved like light and
shadow, the second a rogue Ant-kinden complete with shortsword and tall shield,
and the final man was some kinden she did not recognize, white-haired and
whirling some kind of bladed chain about his head.
As she moved to join
Tisamon something cut across her back, just a brief slash of the blade. She
whirled, ducking into a crouch, silently cursing herself that she had not heard
the newcomer.
He stood there sneering,
a rapier in his hand, a tall, angular figure that she recognized.
Piraeus the
Mantis-kinden, and he had a lean and hungry smile on him.
‘Enough play,
Spider-girl,’ he said. ‘Let’s try it for blood now. Then we’ll see who’s best.’
‘Aren’t you going to
ring a bell?’ Stenwold said softly, holding them at his sword’s point, trying
to keep his eyes on both the men who were trying to reach for him.
‘A bell?’ Thalric asked,
wrong-footed for a moment.
‘Oh you know, sudden
betrayal, with Tisamon about to kick the doors down to save my sorry hide. It
just reminded me of poor Elias in Helleron. Never mind. If you want my sword
you’ll have to take it, and I’ll make that point-first if I can.’
Thalric glanced at
Scadran, who began to move forward on Stenwold, his two companions going left
and right so that the Beetle was now in a circle of five. He kept turning and
turning, sword first this way and then that, waiting for the moment when
everything turned to chaos.
‘Master Maker,’ Thalric
said, ‘I would rather take you alive, but that’s just personal sentiment.’
Arianna had joined him there, alongside Lieutenant Graf, and he saw the way
Stenwold’s eyes followed her for a moment. ‘You’ve been in the trade too long,’
he said harshly, ‘to lament over
that
. Sentiment is
folly, Master Maker.’
‘Perhaps I just have
higher expectations of people,’ Stenwold spat. He lunged at Scadran abruptly,
making the big man stumble away, then he dropped back into the centre of the
circle.
With a pained look Thalric
extended his hand towards Stenwold, fingers open. ‘Scadran, take him now. If
you can’t, I’ll shoot the man myself. Go!’
On the word ‘Go’ one of
the grimy, high-up windows to his left exploded in shards of dirty glass and
the man directly across from Scadran was punched from his feet, dead even
before he hit the ground with a hole torn in his chest. In the echoes ensuing,
like small thunder in the space of the warehouse, Scadran fell back quickly.
Only one of his band tried to rush Stenwold. The luckless man had got a hand on
the Beetle’s collar before he realized he was alone in his courage, and
Stenwold rammed his sword up to the hilt in his stomach. Even as the dying man
dropped away his sword was wrenched from its scabbard as Stenwold took it and ducked
low. Thalric’s sting scorched across his shoulder, charring his robes black,
and then Stenwold was running for whatever shelter he could find. A stack of
crates suggested itself, but the top one exploded into splinters even as he
neared it. He glanced back wildly, and just then there was another hollow boom
from above, and then two more. Another man of Scadran’s pack was dashed to the
ground, and the one next to him pierced through the leg by a finger-long
missile that then buried itself entirely in the floor beyond.
Stenwold kept running.
Thalric’s shots smashed a jagged hole in the planks of the floor nearest the
entrance and he veered away, knowing he was being drawn full circle. He put on
more speed, as much as he could manage, and raised his sword high. If this was
to be it, if there was no more than this, then he would make an account of
himself that even Tisamon would respect.
Another sting blazed
past his cheek and he suddenly changed his mind, diving to one side, bouncing
awkwardly on the floor where he had intended merely to roll, but ending up
crouching behind a solid-looking box. In a second he felt the shudder as
Thalric’s sting seared into it.
Piraeus dropped into his
own favoured stance and saw Tynisa do the same. He had been waiting for this
moment. She should realize his kind never forgot. She had blackened his
reputation, slurred his previously untarnished name. When she now disappeared,
no finger could accuse him, but everyone would
know
.
And blood-fighting, that
was his kinden’s game. Let the Spiders dance and prance and win their false
battles, he decided. He was a champion duellist in the Prowess Forum, but he
was also Mantis-kinden. Revenge and murder were imbued in his very sinews.
He lunged forward, a
simple move to start with, noting her style, her steps, as she backed away from
him. Perhaps he should have killed her when he stood unnoticed behind her, but
that would have given him scant satisfaction. He wanted her to
know
. To know who and to know why.
He had never challenged
her with a rapier, only the clumsy practice blade of the Prowess, but it was a
weapon that both their kinden knew well. She was some Spider dilettante,
though, while he had been fighting since his tenderest years. He was a warrior
from the Days of Lore, when his kind were acknowledged as the iron fist of the
old ways.
He pressed his
advantage, driving her back, enjoying the frown of concentration on her face.
Go on, try your tricks on me
, he sent his thought to her.
He quickened his pace, his sword constantly testing hers, batting it from side
to side, making his opening.
He blinked suddenly,
staring at her. She was abruptly much closer than she had been a moment ago and
his sword . . . she was inside the reach of his sword, which must mean that he
was inside the reach of hers.
He glanced down, but he
saw no more of her sword than the hilt. His own, in the meantime, was no longer
in his hand.
He frowned at her, at
that expression of concentration that had seemed so ludicrous before.
‘What?’ he said and
began to fall backwards.
She had been fighting
for blood, he realized at last, and he had still been playing.
Tynisa drew her blade
from Piraeus’s body, already looking around. Tisamon was still making heavy
work of the last two, the Spider and the man with the chain. The Ant-kinden lay
nearby, having been gashed across the throat over the rim of his shield.
Tisamon glanced at her,
and shouted, ‘Go get Stenwold out of there!’
She turned instantly and
kicked her way through the doors to the warehouse. There was a scene of utter
confusion, several bodies on the floor already. She located Stenwold, though,
or at least his back. He was crouching behind a great box, but he had his sword
in his hand and looked ready to make an unwise move any moment. There was a
scattering of men across the warehouse from him, busy taking what cover they
could, but it was not the threat of Stenwold Maker that had sent them there,
for a great roar erupted from a broken window high on one side, and she saw
wood splinters spray from the floor three, no, four times, punching a line of
shot towards them.
‘Come on, Stenwold!
We’re going!’
Stenwold heard her, then
threw himself to one side, his sword clattering away from him, as the box he
hid behind cracked in half. The unseen bowman high above loosed another
shuddering round of bolts at the Wasps, making them duck away, and Stenwold
reversed his course yet again, running for her and the door.
Tisamon was done when
they emerged, standing over the two last bodies, and waiting for them.
‘They could have more
men nearby,’ he said, his breath ragged. ‘We have to go.’
‘Not quite yet,’
Stenwold wheezed back, looking as though he could no more run than fly just
then. A few moments later, Balkus came running for all he was worth round the
corner of the warehouse, his nailbow in his hands.
‘Now . . . now we go,’
said Stenwold, as the Ant joined them. ‘I hope it was worth waiting for,’ he
added, to Balkus’s sudden grin.
Back in Graf’s office
they remained quiet for some time, watching their leader. Thalric stared into
the fire, his hands clasped behind him, and it seemed that he was fighting to
repress a great deal of anger that might spill out at any moment.
Lieutenant Graf stood to
attention, his eye staring fixedly across the room. It was his hired men that
had let them down, and it was obvious he expected the worst of the lash. The
other three sat cowed and quiet. Scadran was attempting to staunch and then
bandage the gash across his leg that a nailbow shot had made, grimacing as he
struggled to tie the knots but not letting anyone else help him. Hofi and
Arianna exchanged silent glances. Hofi, for his part, was strictly not a
fighter and had not even been there, while Arianna felt she could claim that
her task, at least, had been completed to specification.
Or had it? Stenwold’s
glance at her had suggested genuine betrayal, but they had been ready for the
trap nonetheless, with one of their men waiting on high to ambush the
ambushers. What had tipped them off?
Or had Stenwold just
been more cautious than she expected? After all, he was an old campaigner in
the intelligence trade. Perhaps that nailbowman had been hanging out of a
window every time that Stenwold went to meet the students. In Stenwold’s
business it was not whether things would go wrong, but when.
And she knew, as Hofi
knew, that this was all immaterial. If Thalric now decided to take it out on
them, because of some dislike of them as individuals or lesser kinden, or
simply to safeguard his own career, then reason need not enter into it. Graf
would be only too glad to offload the blame onto them.
At last Thalric spoke.
‘Playing your enemy in his own city is always a risk,’ he declared. ‘I had
hoped that we could at least strip a few of his bodyguards away from him, but
the Mantis and his girl seem to have survived this as well. So where are we
now?’
He turned to them.
Arianna noticed a muscle in Graf’s jaw twitch.
‘There are plans and
plans,’ Thalric said. He no longer seemed angry, had clearly conquered that. ‘I
was sent here with two, but one has come to nothing. Stenwold will be speaking
his piece at the Assembly soon enough. Now, we have our own people on hand in
the Assembly, who have taken our gold, but the Empire has seen how those old
men and women of Collegium cannot leave well alone. Look what they did to Sarn.
They think they have all the answers, and yet the philosophy they peddle is an
enemy to the Empire in its own right.’
He sat down at last, and
only then did Graf allow himself to relax.
‘I had hoped to take
Stenwold tonight,’ Thalric said. ‘This next part would be so much the easier if
we could pick over his brains. I still hope the Assembly will refuse him. All
that is now effectively irrelevant. We have a greater matter at hand.’
Arianna and Hofi glanced
at one another again, because this meant something Thalric had not mentioned,
and the comment surprised even Graf.
‘I sent a messenger to
Vek two days ago,’ Thalric told them. There was a thoughtful pause at that, and
he knew that he stood on a very narrow line, and must cross it soon enough.
There was little expression on Graf’s scarred face, compared with the wary
looks of the other three, but it was Graf who spoke.
‘The Ants of Vek, sir?’
They all knew how difficult Ant city-states were to infiltrate in the spy
trade, for it was nigh impossible to place agents within a city’s power
structure where everyone knew the inside of his neighbour’s head. They had to
kick about the edges like any other foreigner.
‘Do we have agents in
Vek, Major?’ Hofi asked.
‘Not spies as such,’
Thalric said. ‘An embassage, however. Official, formal, very respectable. They
got there about a tenday before I arrived in Collegium. Nothing underhand,
merely trade deals, talks of a possible compromise between their city and the
Empire. After all, Vek is a long way from our borders and, like all the Ants,
they are vain about their strength. Our envoys have been taking things
leisurely but now I’ve sent them word, they’re going to change pace. They’re
going to arrange for me to see that city’s Royal Court, and I’m going to put a
proposal to them that they won’t turn down.’