her blade back, the slender weapon was in Tynisa’s hand again. A Weaponsmaster was never to be parted from her sword. Just as she had awoken with the ancient Mantis weapon in hand, so long ago in Collegium, now it stayed with her no matter what.
The sight seemed to enrage Elass even more than the death of her son, as if the rapier and not the injured girl was her enemy. She struck again – at the sword itself, as if she were a rank novice, knocking it from Tynisa’s slack grip, and yet there it was again, directed at her, even before it had time to hit the ground. Had Tynisa possessed an ounce of strength, she could have ended the fight then, a riposte past the other woman’s blade and a clean and instant kill, but she could do nothing but hold her trembling stance.
And then there were more horses flashing past on every side, their riders’ armour gleaming even through the snow, cloaks rippling behind them, and Tynisa realized that it was now too late.
She still waited for the next strike because, even if she was doomed now, even if a spear or sword was about to plant itself in her back, it was not in her nature to surrender. Let the bitch work for her blood!
There was a confusion of horses all around, a score of riders perhaps, circling, breaking fights apart, archers training arrows on everyone they found, and one cried out, standing up in the saddle with his wings flaring, ‘Mercre Monachis!’
Salme Elass was no longer attacking. Her sword hung like a dead weight in one hand as she stared about at the newcomers. These were not her own followers. Allowed a moment to herself, Tynisa took a better look at them. Their armour looked both plainer and more functional than Salme Elass’s people’s, and their horses were a hand taller at least. These were lean, fierce, men and women, guiding their mounts with the casual synchronization of a shoal of fish. She saw both Elass’s people and the brigands, all of them separated now, staring about at the strangers who had cut between them and now surrounded them. To Tynisa’s left, Thalric was helping Che to her feet, and the halfbreed magician was sitting up, grimacing at the shaft in her arm. On the far side, Soul Je stood over Mordrec, the Wasp propped up on one elbow, with his metal-lined armour cut open and a bloody wound in his scalp.
One of the newcomers was sharing his steed, Tynisa noticed. Sitting ahead of an armoured woman, his wrists tied behind his back to the saddle pommel, was the Spider-kinden Avaris, with his face bruised, looking wretched and miserable. It was plain the newcomers had been busy.
Ten yards away from Tynisa, Dal Arche still had an arrow nocked and half drawn back as though waiting for a target to present itself. Perhaps it now did, although Dal wisely chose not to loose the shot. Two new mounts were picking their way between the trees, the riders cloaked against the gusting snow that only now seemed to be letting up. Tynisa knew them both, even before they were close, and so did Salme Elass.
The man lagging behind slightly was Lowre Cean, looking older than ever, as if physically pained to be drawn from his recluse’s life for this belated adventure. The man he followed was his fellow Prince-Major, Felipe Shah.
Prince Felipe approached Princess Salme slowly, his face expressionless. ‘I see you have caught your bandits,’ he noted.
The look that briefly flashed in the princess’s eyes was pure venom, but her voice remained controlled as she said, ‘A shame the Monarch’s response is too late.’
‘Or just in time,’ Felipe remarked mildly. ‘How many years have you been cautioning us against the great uprising from Rhael, I wonder?’
‘And I was right!’ she snapped. ‘The traitors have defied the law of the Monarch and raised an army, burned villages, murdered…’
Felipe guided his horse on a little further until it was beside her. ‘And here you have bearded their great chief, I believe,’ he said mildly. ‘Am I right?’
Another figure stepped from the trees, though keeping a careful distance from Salme Elass. ‘You are, my lord. Dal Arche, they called him at Siriell’s Town,’ explained Gaved, looking as though he would take to the air at the first hint of trouble.
Elass’s hand clenched on her sword hilt, but she simply looked aside, as if disdaining to notice the Wasp.
Tynisa had no such compulsion. ‘You live more lives than most, Gaved,’ she called out to him. ‘Changing your stripes already, is it?’
The look the Wasp gave her was a study in equivocation. ‘You’d be surprised, when a man sets out to have no master, how often he collects two, or even more,’ he replied philosophically.
‘Dal Arche,’ Felipe Shah called.
The brigand chief tensed, arrow still in place, but the newly arrived riders had several shafts already trained on him, and he simply held his shot, the string slightly tensioned, as though he had forgotten it was there. ‘These are the real thing, then, are they? Mercers?’ he enquired. ‘Servants of the Monarch’s throne, not just lackeys to some provincial princess-minor?’
Again Elass quivered with suppressed rage, but she held her tongue.
‘Indeed, and I’m lucky I was able to gather them so quickly. They – we – are spread wide these days, fewer of us each year, and the Commonweal as vast as ever,’ Felipe’s tone was conversational. ‘I’ve heard much of your exploits, Dal Arche.’
The bandit chief glanced first at Soul Je and Mordrec, then at Avaris, and Tynisa read the man’s thoughts in his eyes. He’s wondering if he can spare them somehow, wondering if his confession or his surrender might do it. But the Dragonfly brigand’s face then hardened. He knows there is no way out.
‘This is the man who has rebelled against my rightful authority,’ Elass declared, her voice pure winter. ‘This is the Monarch’s enemy. If you are her Mercers, then do your duty, and I only wish that you had heeded me sooner, and that we had purged Rhael of this filth before they grew so bold.’
To Tynisa’s ears she was overacting, playing the outraged voice of law and justice to cover the terrible, personal hatreds seething under the surface.
‘And this one is a murderess! She turned her blade on my own son! On my son, Prince Felipe!’
Felipe looked at Tynisa with a sad smile. ‘I have already mourned one of your sons, Princess Salme. You yourself must mourn the other.’
‘Is that all you have to say? What will you do? ’
‘I will ask why Siriell died, and why the stores at her town were burned.’
Elass stared at him blankly, utterly thrown.
‘Did you think your concerns were ignored, Princess? And did you forget that I served the Monarch as spymaster during the war? As my agents spied out the Wasps then, so they were in Siriell’s Town, evaluating your concerns. They told me that the wild and savage people of Rhael Province were at last working their way to something approaching civilization. And then your son and followers came, and killed the woman who had wrought such progress, and destroyed their foodstocks, and ensured that some, at least, would strike back at you, and thus give you your excuse to take Rhael for your own – as I had forbidden you time and time again.’
‘But they were outlaws!’ Elass snapped, not even attempting to deny a word of it. ‘They had turned away from the Monarch’s grace. They had defied our rule! That land had been left fallow for too long. I had a duty-!’
‘Your duty was to obey your Prince-Major, and no more. You do not owe fealty to the Monarch, but to me, and it is I who judge how best you should serve. For example, this girl…’ He nodded at Tynisa. ‘She is under my protection. She has rendered a rare service to me, and I am in her debt. Thus I absolve her of all acts committed in this, my principality.’
Elass gaped at him, aghast. ‘But my son-’
‘Has benefited from just such leniency on many an occasion, under your own justice. He chose to live by that sword. If you will maintain an arbitrary rule, learn to be ruled arbitrarily in turn.’ He held her incandescent gaze for some time, with no further sound but the echo of his voice in every ear. At last he turned those keen eyes on the brigand chief. ‘Dal Arche, you fought in the war, I’d guess.’
The brigand chief nodded curtly, his expression not inviting further questioning, and Felipe went on, ‘Your home is under the black and gold now, perhaps? Or maybe you’re no longer the same man that called such a place home. I hear much of you from my agents, and some from your own men.’ He nodded at Avaris. ‘But Salme Elass is correct in one thing: Rhael cannot be allowed to slide back into anarchy. I had hoped Siriell would tame it, but alas… Now I shall be cruel to you, Dal Arche, more so than you might expect. You would have your followers live beyond today?’
