Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [162]
She realized that they were gone, all the brigands. They had fled into the woods rather than face her. The ground was littered with them, and with the dead of her own side as well. She was not even bloodied, though. She was not touched. Instead she was smiling, and perhaps it was that smile alone that had finally driven them away.
As she looked round, something miscarried within her. For a moment the fierce killing flames guttered.
Telse Orian lay cradled in the arms of one of his fellows, an arrow sunk so deeply in his neck that the point must surely be jutting out behind. He was not dead, not quite yet, but beyond the skill of any healer they had brought with them, and it was plain that moving him would be certain to bring his end that much the sooner.
He was looking at Tynisa, or at least his staring eyes were turned towards her. His mouth worked, bloody at the corners, but no sounds came out.
Tynisa gazed about with fresh eyes. Of the score who had set out, only she and six others remained, four of the armoured nobles and a couple of the most fortunate peasants. The two of them, lean spearmen clad in leather cuirasses and helms, stood close together and regarded Tynisa with fear and awe. They did not look so very different to the bandits, and it seemed to her, in that moment, entirely possible that some of the flesh that had fallen before her blade might not even have been the enemy’s.
What am I doing? She asked herself, looking again at Telse Orian. His eyes were still fixed . . . no, not at her exactly, but as though he saw something – or someone – at her shoulder.
She saw the light go out, the last spark of what had been Orian, who, out of all Alain’s peers, had shown her kindness. For a moment she felt that she should run, should flee this place while she was still free of . . .
Tynisa shook her head to clear it of such foolishness. ‘We must report back to Alain,’ she told the survivors, assuming command effortlessly. ‘We must report how the bandits are driven back.’
For a moment they stared at her blankly, trying to equate her triumphant tone with the scene around them.
Che woke up into perfect awareness in the pre-dawn greyness, staring up at the ceiling. The previous night’s images stirred in her mind, but most of all she remembered Tynisa, fighting with breath-taking elegance and grace, and not alone. Her every move had been shadowed by a twisted figure always at her back, one hand on her shoulder, corded with vines and racked with thorns. Tisamon had found his daughter, and Che had witnessed how he was moulding her. What part of the Mantis Weaponsmaster that was still left to haunt the land of the living had obviously decided to cling to the ancient values of his kinden: blood and death, fierce and uncompromising, with not a hair’s-breadth gap into which mercy or regret could pry. Che remembered Tisamon, and what she had heard of the man’s last days. From what she gathered, regrets had eaten him alive, unable to reconcile his humanity with the impossible and terrible ideals his people aspired to.
It was plain that his ghost did not intend to let his daughter go the same way, even if he had to cut out her humanity to do so. What will Tynisa become?
Her sister was suffering, and there was nobody else who could go to her aid, but Cheerwell Maker.
By the time dawn had claimed the east, she was ready. She had dressed, recovered those of her possessions that Thalric and Varmen had brought with them, and now sat waiting impatiently for the light to waken her companions.
First up was Gramo Galltree, whom she had met briefly the previous evening, before she abandoned the world for much-needed sleep.
He eyed her cautiously. ‘You seem recovered.’
With what she now knew, such small talk seemed an unconscionable waste of her time. ‘Will the prince see me?’ she asked flatly. ‘Alternatively,