Blood of the Mantis

The crossbow bolt lanced his thigh, right up to the fletching, the tip of it piercing Sperra’s foot. They both cried out and then were both falling on top of the Queen, who had a sword half-drawn, her eyes wide with shock. Her two guards drew simultaneously, running forward, and the shutters above them slammed open. All in that same moment.

The two Fly-kinden who hurtled in from above were wrapped up in dark cloth. One held a long dagger, dropping down on to the Queen and her assailants; the other simply flung out his hand and one of the Ant guards reeled backwards with a blade in his throat.

Lyrus recocked and loosed the crossbow again and again. As the second guard moved in, he let the man reach down to haul Stenwold off the Queen, let the man jab at the Beetle with his sword, running a shallow line across his ribs, and then he shot the guard in the face. Lyrus himself would be the only remaining Sarnesh witness now, and he knew the guards had called for aid but had relayed crucially false facts about who was attacking. The Queen herself had not realized the source of the betrayal. The foreigners are attacking the Queen! Lyrus cried out into the ether. Protect the Queen from these foreign assassins!

Stenwold fell to the floor beside the dead guard, still unable to work out what was going on. Sperra was shouting something, crouching by the Queen, and then a Fly-kinden dropped on her, dagger raised. Even as Sperra saw him, and fell helplessly to the floor with her hands raised in feeble defence, Arianna had lunged forward, catching the Fly in the side with a blade Stenwold had not known she was carrying. The Fly assassin fell back, and she went with him, tumbling on to the floor as a crossbow bolt sped past them.

The crossbowman! Stenwold looked around wildly, before seeing a Sarnesh Ant armed with the weapon standing at the far end of the room. It was only the bolt in his thigh that convinced him the man was an enemy.

The main door was flung open, and more soldiers were pushing their way in, their swords drawn. The first man took a bolt in the chest, punching its way through his armour, and he fell back into the rest.

Stenwold found his hands tightening about the snapbow he had brought with him. Fighting the pain in his leg, he reached into his belt pouch, where he had some nailbow bolts intended for demonstrating the weapon. With trembling hands he now slotted one into the snapbow’s breach.

Sperra was covered in blood, he noticed, and a crossbow bolt had pierced the Queen’s body, just below her breast, and was quivering with the rhythm of her breathing. Sperra was trying desperately to get the woman’s armour off to reach the wound, then flinched back as a narrow blade flicked past her to dig itself into the floor.

Stenwold raised the snapbow and loosed. It was clear the Fly killer did not possess the same Art that Sperra did, because he did not see the bolt until it had plucked him from the air, spinning him end over end to crash off one wall and drop to the floor.

Arianna had meanwhile killed the other assassin, but now she was backing off frantically, with Sarnesh soldiers running towards her. Stenwold, hands already fumbling a second bolt into place, shouted for them to stop. The Spider had dropped her knife, had her empty hands raised, when the first soldier simply clubbed her down with the pommel of his sword. Another, tight-faced, ripped Sperra away from the Queen and himself knelt down beside the wounded woman.

Stenwold turned to see the crossbowman level his weapon at the Queen again. He wore the faint smile of a man who might not survive the moment, but who would still win the game.

Stenwold loosed just before the other did, seeing the bolt strike him not in the chest as he had aimed for, but in the shoulder, upsetting the man’s aim so that the crossbow quarrel went wide.

Someone grabbed Stenwold by the collar and hauled him roughly to his feet, racking him with pain. He looked up into the face of a Sarnesh soldier, and started to say that the crossbowman must be stopped.

He saw only a blur of movement as the man’s mailed fist struck him square on the nose, knocking him cold with professional ease.

Stenwold came to slowly and reluctantly. Each further part of his body he became aware of made him regret his recovery. His head hurt abominably, his nose especially, though the pain in his back he attributed to the bare wooden boards they had laid him on. The crossbow-wound in his leg was just a dull ache by comparison, though his ribs burnt from that seemingly trifling flesh wound.

On further discovery he found that the surface beneath him was a bed. It might simply have been the Ant-kinden idea of especial luxury, but this was more likely the kind of hospitality they extended to all of their prisoners. This room he was confined in was definitely a cell.