Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [129]
‘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 Inaptitude. Tisamon had been a fair archer, but it was a skill he had never tried to teach her.
‘Skilled horsemen, 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