an old orchard gone wild decades ago. Had the Mercers been scouring the sky above them, then this mob of brigands would have been discovered almost at once even under cover of night, for there were more than fifty of them, filling the space between the trees to bursting. The Salmae’s hunters were not here, however. They were further south, which could mean one of two things, depending on who was in control.
Either they’ve cut us off from our retreat into Rhael, Dal considered, or we’ve stolen a march on them. So far, the skirmishing between Dal’s people and the Salmae had lasted over three ten-days, with a dozen vicious hit-and- run engagements, ambushes and surprise attacks from the bandits punctuating a history in which the Salmae’s Mercers chased all over the Rhael-Elas Mar border, trying to pin them down. Their conflict to date had been so mobile that Dal reckoned neither side could be sure who had the advantage in numbers. Dal’s people were split into smaller groups, because it would have been impossible to feed them otherwise, and so, of necessity, the hunters had split up as well, to try and contain them. The only numbers that mattered at any given time were those who were in evidence here and now.
The Mercers were better equipped, Dal knew, even if their luckless levy of peasants was not. If Dal had met them toe to toe, fighting them with honour and dignity, then those iridescent suits of armour, their masterworked swords and man-length recurved bows would carry the day swiftly. Not only were his own followers just a rabble under arms, but they had no stomach for a hard fight either. They had not signed on to die for him, just to get rich and fill their bellies. The Mercers, on the other hand, were relentless, and their peasant troops were just as scared of Salmae retribution as they were of Dal’s arrows.
And yet we’re not losing. It was hard to claim whether they were actually winning, in this chaotic shifting battlefield, but the simple fact that the Salmae had been unable to tie them down or force them into a serious battle seemed a victory in itself. Dal had lived the last few years in and around Siriell’s Town, jostling for power with the other bandit chiefs and sporadically wooing Siriell herself, playing his part in the chaotic running of that renegade province, which had depended wholly on the relative strengths of the major players there. Throughout this time, he had known that the people north of Rhael considered him their enemy.
A fair proportion of the population of seven villages had now turned out to swell the ranks of his followers. Several had burned their own homes. The mere appearance of Dal’s people seemed to spark off a madness of new horizons, people who had known nothing but gruelling work and taxation suddenly seeing for the first time another way. For Dal, the experience was like being carried away by a river current, but carried towards a destination that had never been within reach before. He knew, from personal experience, that a peasant’s life was hard, and that the privations of the war had only made it harder, but the people of Elas Mar had been living on the wrong side of poverty for years now as the Salmae settled their war debts through tithe and appropriation, without deigning to suffer privation themselves.
It would not be true to say that the people here wanted revenge, but they did want freedom. It took a desperate kind of squinting to mistake rule by brigands for that, but these were desperate times.
The thought kept occurring to Dal Arche now: What if we win? Would he set himself up as a local prince, put on the tyrant’s shoes and simply continue the way of the world, armed with everything noble but a bloodline? And what would the Prince-Major do about that? Reports suggested he had refused to come to the Salmae’s aid, and certainly none of his people had been seen yet, but that might change quickly if Dal started getting too many airs.
Well, I’m about to push my luck. There was another village right ahead of them, and on the far horizon the moon picked out the crooked silhouette of Castle Leose. After avoiding the most recent attempt by the Salmae to entrap him, Dal had decided against leading his people back south. Instead, while his enemies hunted for him at the border of Rhael, he had gathered this band of desperadoes and taken them north, to within sight of the Salmae’s stronghold, albeit still the most distant sight possible.
‘He’s coming back,’ someone muttered, and Dal saw a figure hurrying – no, running – from the village outskirts towards the copse. It was his unofficial ambassador, a renegade Spider-kinden who called himself Avaris, and who had practised a variety of confidence tricks and crooked games up and down the Imperial border until he had alienated so many powerful people that he had been forced to flee into the Commonweal. He was a fast talker, though, and very protective of his own skin, which was why Dal had picked him.
‘Speak,’ he instructed as Avaris reached the cover of the trees.
‘They’re up in arms – but not for us,’ the Spider replied shortly. ‘They’ll have sent someone with news for the castle. I told you this was a bad idea.’
Dal did not reply, but took a moment to consider how he felt about this development. There was a plan for this sort of reception, of course, but recently the peasantry of Elas Mar had offered him a run of easy victories. His banditry had virtually been sleeping in its scabbard, but now he was put to draw it forth once again.
‘What do they think?’ he asked.
‘That the Salmae will protect them,’ Avaris reported. ‘I told you that, this close to the castle…’
‘I know,’ Dal cut him off, because he had seen all this before. Closer to a castle, the peasants were less discontented, the headmen hailing from families that had served thus for generations. They had grown to love the boot on their neck. The headman of Dal’s own village had been the same way, no doubt.
‘Pull back?’ Avaris prompted.
‘They’re well armed? Well defended?’
‘Spears and staves.’
Dal turned to address the rest of his followers, who had been following this exchange intently. ‘You may have had some illusions about what we’re here for,’ he told them, his voice just loud enough to be heard by them all. ‘Some of you have been telling stories, from the old times, about peasant heroes, about good deeds and just causes.’ He knew it was so. The conflict so far had sufficed to give their venture the illusion of righteousness. ‘You all remember the war. Many of you fought in it. There’s not a one of you that hasn’t known friend or family that’s ended up a corpse on some battlefield or other. Well, know this: the Wasp Empire killed off the old times. The Wasp Empire put paid to all that talk of heroes. Where were those heroes when the Wasps scythed us down in our hundreds?’ He heard his voice shake slightly, and brought his emotions to heel. ‘Our glorious nobility will tell each other that they were heroes, dying to defend their people, but for each one of them that fell, there was a carpet of our dead to cushion them. We’re no heroes but, for all that, they’ve shown us they’ve no right to lord it over us, and those that uphold their damned right to do so can burn.’
He watched their faces. He did not consider himself any great leader of men, but he was leader enough to keep hold of a group like this.
Without another word he turned away and strung his bow in one smooth motion. A moment later he was out of the trees, his wings flaring into being to coast him towards the village – and soon his bloody-handed retinue was following.
They coursed uphill towards the village outskirts, and Dal knew that if the headman had made swift preparations, then they would meet a fence of spear points at the summit. But there were no defenders, no attempt to stop them. Maybe they’re with us, after all?
Looking ahead towards the village’s heart he saw a confused gaggle of men, women and children. They were Grasshopper- and Dragonfly-kinden, most of them unarmed and many only partly dressed, blinking in the moonlight as their headman addressed them in moderate tones, not shouting or ordering. And Dal Arche saw the headman look across as the front-runners in the bandit charge pelted in amongst the houses, with torches and blades. The man’s face fell apart, that was the only way Dal could think about it. He was an old Dragonfly whose whole life must have been spent in this same village. When the war came, Dal would put money on it, the Salmae had instructed him on who to send off to fight, and told him to stay here safe with his family. Here was a man who trusted implicitly the traditional order that set him over his fellows, and under his betters. He knew that Leose would protect him, and did not have it in him to credit Avaris. He had dismissed the garrulous Spider-kinden as a mere trickster.
Run, thought Dal, even as he plucked back his bowstring, and some of the villagers were running. The mothers, the fathers, those who had the most immediate things to protect, they began breaking free of the headman’s spell, even as the old man continued to urge them to stay where they were. But not all of them were running; some were turning to fight. Others just stood staring, mesmerized by the certainty in the old man’s voice, as he kept croaking on at them despite the shock fragmenting his lined features.
Dal put his first arrow between the headman’s wide eyes and counted it as a mercy to the village as a whole, as more people started fleeing.
