Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [173]
‘You’re sure?’ he said.
Does he have to ask? ‘Set me down,’ she repeated. ‘I shall trail them, track them. Bring on your nobles and your levy as fast as you may, you shall find me there.’
His grin sent fire flashing through her, and then he was guiding Lycene down, far enough to avoid watching eyes but close enough for Tynisa to soon regain the enemy.
‘Good hunting,’ he said.
For a moment she wanted to tell him, For you, I do this for you, but he must know her by her actions, not by hollow words. Then she had slipped off the dragonfly’s back, while the insect hovered just clear of the ground, and a second later Alain was darting back for the skies and she was alone.
She entered the woods, slipping from shadow to shadow with her sword eager in her hand, like some trained beast that she had often hunted alongside. Her feet did not falter: some additional sense told her just where her quarry was, as though a guiding hand led her this way and that to pick up their trail. Before long she could hear them: a score of men and women doing their best to be quiet, and she skulked silently closer, the woods they relied on now betraying them by hiding her from them.
They were laden with sacks, and she saw a few handcarts, the spoils from the latest ruined village being hauled southwards as fast as could be. If they were intercepted by the Salmae’s forces, she knew they would abandon the loot without a second thought. They were still being called bandits by the angry nobility, but such pillaging seemed to have become secondary to them, as if pride of place in their plans went to resisting their lawful masters.
She was just a dozen feet now from the stragglers, and saw they had sentries out on either side of the main group, and doubtless scouts ahead, but nobody bothered looking back the way they had come.
How best to . . .? the thought began, but these days she seldom had to finish such a question before that inner voice – in the authoritative, confident tones of her father – provided the answer.
Kill their watchers, was the solution. Kill their scouts. Make them fear.
She picked up her pace, virtually tasting their blood in her mouth already, skirting the edge of the moving band but keeping them always in sight. Her first victim made himself obvious by standing still as the rest moved on. He stared into the greenery, narrow-eyed, but he was not peering at her. He was Dragonfly-kinden, dark hair stippled with grey and his face gaunt, holding a spear in two hands at waist height, and wearing a leather and chitin hauberk that was slightly too large for him. Dragonflies had good eyes, she knew, but she was Tynisa, daughter of Tisamon, and the shadows loved her.
He was moving on again, a few trees out from the main herd, spear levelled ahead of him, but he heard nothing, saw nothing, as she sidled closer. For a moment the sheer power of it all almost overwhelmed her, deadly as a knife, quiet as a ghost.
Her rapier’s needle point speared through his ear, grating a little as it sheared bone. As he dropped, she was gone and her blade with her, licking its lips and hungry for more.
Her first mark had not been discovered by the time she killed the second, this one a bony Grasshopper woman with a noble’s long-hafted sword resting on her shoulder. She was inconveniently tall for a slit throat, so Tynisa struck her from a crouch, inserting her blade under the ribs and into the heart. The woman died without a cry, her mouth gaping emptily, eyes already sightless as she hit the ground.
This time the victim was noticed in seconds, but Tynisa was already moving on. There were cries and exclamations. Names were called out. Then they spotted the absence of the Dragonfly man she had slain first, and the group milled, bunching closer. They seemed to have no clear leader.
She killed her third and fourth around the other side of the group, then moved on.
The fifth almost surprised her: a young