'Thalric…' Osgan's voice, hoarse with effort, came from behind him,
'Just keep moving.'
'Thalric – water's getting deeper.'
He did not stop, still plunging on, dragging himself forward in sudden bursts, then letting Osgan catch up. The man was right, though. Surely if they were heading into denser plantlife they must be reaching the river banks, the shallows. Then it came to him just where they were. This is a delta… the tide… Of course the water level would be rising. The tide was coming in, and that was why all the trees around them were on stilts. Soon their spidery roots would be submerged. Worse, the rising levels would not hinder their Skater-kinden pursuers, but it would drag Thalric and Osgan to a standstill. Can Osgan swim? Not with only one arm, was the answer to that. Time was running out.
Thalric came to rest, dragging Osgan down beside him. They were in the shadow of some tall ferns, as hidden as he could make them. As they crouched, the water came to their chests. We cannot just run. We need a plan. Osgan was breathing heavily, sucking at the air in great gasps. There was little more flight left in him. The wound and the heat and the man's habitual dissipation were killing him.
'I'm sorry I brought you to this,' Thalric said quietly.
Osgan lacked the breath to respond, just shaking his head in a denial that could have meant anything. He grasped at Thalric's arm abruptly, pointing something out.
Assassins, was Thalric's first thought. He hunched forward, putting a hand out ready to sting. Osgan continued pointing, jabbing a finger urgently. Thalric tried to follow the direction of it, seeing only more green, more ferns and rushes and canes, and…
There was a regularity to some of it, a distinctiveness to the angles. Something leapt inside him. Ahead of them was something that was not grown naturally, but built. But what? Where in the wastes are we? The question was swiftly followed by, It doesn't matter. We have no other compass point. Thalric lurched up, slinging an arm around Osgan to haul the man to his feet.
'Go,' he urged, and cast himself off into the water, his wings surging instinctively to half-carry him, with Osgan a weight at the end of his arm. It was all too slow, he realized at once. They were too exposed. He gave his wings their full rein, ignoring Osgan's protest as his unwounded arm was almost wrenched out of its socket. Between the trees, Thalric spotted crude huts, barely more than platforms raised above the water and roofed with leaves. He saw movement too, spreading out to either side of them. They had been noticed.
'Khanaphes!' Thalric shouted out. 'Khanaphes!' hoping it would be enough to save them.
An arrow danced past him from behind, a hurried shot surely. He did not turn, continued towing Osgan through the water, knowing only from the man's curses that he was still alive. He had a brief glimpse of a silvery-skinned Mantis woman with bowstring drawn back, the arrow loosed instantly. There was no sound from behind, but from her very expression Thalric knew she had found her target.
He dragged Osgan on to a mud bank. They were sprawled at the edge of the village, no more than a cluster of spindly shacks gathered about a mound of higher ground cleared of vegetation. Knowing that nothing he could do now would matter, Thalric collapsed onto his back, feeling his muscles burn in protest. Osgan was wheezing and choking beside him, shuddering like a dying thing, but somehow still alive. He had sprouted no new arrows since, and Thalric could only hope that the assassins had not survived their clash with the Marsh's own killers.
He sensed movement nearby and pushed himself up on to his elbow. The Mantis-kinden were approaching, arrows nocked to their bows and spears levelled. These Marsh people were smaller than the Lowlander kinden that Thalric was familiar with, but they had the same poise, the same angular grace. Their faces had the same insular hostility, too. He held up a closed fist to them. 'We are friends – we are guests of the city of Khanaphes.'
They had formed a ragged horseshoe around the two Wasps, leaving open the path leading to the village. One of them, a woman looking older than the rest, jabbed her head in that direction, and Thalric let out a great sigh and struggled to his knees.
'Come on,' he told Osgan, but the man would not move.
'Can't…' he whined. 'No further…'
Two of the Mantids were there instantly, catching him by the arms and lifting him up, ignoring his screams as the sudden movement tore at his wound. Thalric pushed one of them aside, moving to catch Osgan. Then he was very still.
Osgan swayed, still supported by one of the Mantids, almost clinging to him. His injured arm was held tight to his chest, the bindings newly bloody. Thalric felt the tiny pinpoint of sharp pain that had come to rest under his jaw, assuming at first it was a spearhead, then knowing it for an arrow-point. He took a good moment, in lieu of any fatal attempt at action, to study their rescuers.
These were not the shaven-headed servants who had been poling the fishing boats up and down the river to Amnon's tune. They were not clad as Khanaphir menials, merely a little hide and chitin and fish-scale to cover their modesty. Their long hair was pale, bound back with rings of bone and amber.
'We are not your enemies,' Thalric said carefully. In his mind the sands of the archer's strength were running out. She must soon either take the arrow away, or loose it. 'We mean you no harm. Return us to Khanaphes and you shall be rewarded.'
Osgan gave a bark of pain, dragged without warning towards the village. Thalric twitched, poised on the point of the arrow and knowing that there were enough of them to make an end of him whichever way he turned. Without warning the archer took a step away, the point still unwavering. Thalric followed Osgan's halting progress, conscious that every arrowhead and spear was aimed at him. Ahead, Osgan gave out a horrified cry.
The mound of earth that the village was strung around was not empty, not quite. They had erected something there, that Thalric had not registered before, his first glance letting the crude canework merge into the struts and poles of the surrounding village. He blinked, trying to identify what it was. Osgan was struggling now, shrieking for them to let him go, but three of them continued propelling him towards it effortlessly.
It's a statue, Thalric realized, a statue reworked to the locals' resources. Just as they had not a coin's-worth of metal in their possession, even their weapons being made of bone and wood, so there was no stone to their statue, just a lattice of canes lashed together into a shape that seemed abstract at first. Until he stood directly before it, and the shifting angles and planes of it suddenly made a picture.
It was a mantis, an openwork sketch of a mantis rendered in three dimensions, its killing arms raised high above them. The chamber of its body was large enough to fit a man, and Thalric knew this because the bones of the last occupant were still inside, buzzing with flies and dripping with a few lingering maggots. Osgan was still kicking vainly and crying out, and Thalric knew that somehow this thing, this idol, had become Tisamon in his mind, that what he was fighting against was more within his own head than outside it.
'What is this?' Thalric demanded, his throat suddenly dry. 'Do you kill the guests of the city so close to its walls?' The Khanaphes card was the only one he had to play, but he had put it on the table three times now without eliciting any interest. Now, at last, an old Mantis woman stepped between him and the idol. Uncomfortably close, she rested one forearm on his shoulder, so he felt her fighting spines dig slightly into his neck.