Warrior Women

by Paula Guran

  The Islander came into the torchlight, dragging his chain.

  Rax was disappointed. It was a man: stocky, in his forties, with a lined face and mocking smile. This is the wrong cell, she thought, or the Islander woman’s already dead—

  “Devenil,” Vanathri said, holding out his bound hands. The other man stepped forward and kissed him on the mouth with a lover’s kiss.

  “So here you are to rescue me. Again.” The older man smiled tightly. Behind his mockery there was pain. “Vanathri are impetuous, I know, Kel. But this is stupidity.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t come?” Kel Vanathri asked, looking younger than ever.

  “Did you come for me or for Shabelit’s heir? Vanathri’s not a rich island, and if ever I inherit Shabelit—though lord knows my mother may outlive us all—then I can see why you’d want to be Shabelit’s freemate.”

  “I’d stay with you even if I thought you’d never inherit—or if you weren’t heir at all. You should know that by now.”

  Cynicism marked Devenil’s face, but his voice was tired and uncertain. “Would you? Yes, I think you would.”

  “I should have managed this better.” Anger darkened Kel’s eyes. “I’m a fool, and I’ve paid for it. I’ve lost a mercenary company and my freedom. But a chance will come. We’re not dead yet.”

  Rax crept away from the spy-hole, leaving the torch to burn itself out.

  I should report it.

  Lost in thought, Rax made her way to the Axe Order’s building in the Tower complex. Devenil, that was the name: heir of Shabelit of the Hundred Isles. They can’t know, or they’d be asking a ransom for him. But they’ll know as soon as they start interrogating him, as soon as this purge is over.

  Anukazi keep them from me!

  She reached her own chambers, a bare brick-walled room divided by rice-paper screens. Through the window she could see across the flat roofs and ziggurats of the city. She pulled the thin linen shutters closed in order to keep flies and a degree of heat out. Then she shed her mail, bathed, and donned a silk robe.

  She sat on the pallet. A brush and paper lay on the low table, unfinished calligraphy spidering across the page. She wasn’t yet calm enough to write. She called the house slave and ordered rice and herb tea.

  The Islanders had reeked of dead meat. So they eat animal flesh, Rax thought with revulsion. The men couple with one another, and the women too, I suppose; and women are warriors, and men—but he’s a fighter, that Kel Vanathri.

  Seated cross-legged before the carved Keshanu mask that hung on the wall, she gazed at the abstract face and tried to achieve harmony. Patterns of light and shade entered her eyes. Her breathing slowed.

  She was free, then, of Rax. She could stand outside herself and see the tall strong-limbed woman whose skin was lined with exposure to wind and sun. With black hair, green eyes, red-brown skin, she was born of hot Keshanu in the Crystal Mountains . . .

  But then she thought of Kel Vanathri and Devenil, Shabelit’s heir.

  She tried to consider them dispassionately. The image that came to her was not Vanathri’s but Ukurri’s. Of an age with the young Islander, Ukurri was already First Axe of this Order, her commander, and sometime bedfriend. And she, a decade older, with experience gained on the barbarian frontier . . .

  You’ll never be First Axe, a voice said in her mind. No matter how good you are, how many successes you have, they won’t give you an Order because the men wouldn’t accept you as commander. You’re good, better than Ukurri, but you’re a woman.

  In Vanathri, Kel said, there are women-warriors; and in Zu and Orindol and Shamur, and all the Hundred Isles . . .

  She cursed Kel for disturbing her peace of mind.

  He’s young to end in the Tower. He, she thought, has courage, too; he crossed the sea, which is more than I’d do.

  Outside, the gongs sounded for evening prayer. She belted her hand-axe over her robe and put on her sandals, preparing to go down to the main hall.

  Keep low, Rax thought. There have been conspiracies and interrogations before. I’m loyal to the Tower. They’ll take Anukazi’s sons but I don’t think they’ll take Anukazi’s only daughter.

  She followed the disciplines of the Tower, attended weapons practice and theory classes and services for the preservation of Anukazi’s priests. She knew better than to ask about missing faces or empty places. Finally the atmosphere of tension eased: the purge was—for this time at least—finished.

  The dice were kind. Rax found herself on a winning streak for the first time in a long while. She was able to bribe extra rations for the Islanders without touching her own pay. When she heard that the Guard had begun interrogating the mercenaries, she went back to the Tower and paid for an undisturbed time in the cells.

  The torch burned bright. Kel had fallen against Devenil while he slept, and the older man sat with his back to the wall, supporting Kel. All the mockery was gone from his worn face.

  Rax was noisy with the lock, and when she had the door open, hostile stares greeted her.

  “What do you want?” Kel Vanathri demanded.

  Rax shook her head. The calmness that was a discipline of the Order deserted her. She couldn’t name the influence the Islanders had over her.

  “They’re starting the questioning soon,” she said.

  “Bring me a knife,” Kel said, “I won’t ask more, Bazuruki.” It was pointless to tell them that one day their rations would be drugged, that they would wake in the upper chambers—in the hands of the Anukazi Guard.

  “Say you’re only mercenaries, pirates, whatever,” she pleaded. “As for freemates, for the love of Anukazi himself, keep that quiet!”

  “There’s no love in your Orders?” Devenil asked skeptically.

  “I—” The Order denied love fanatically and practiced it covertly. Every Order had its pretty boys, vying for favor and carrying rumors. Looking now at Kel and Devenil, she thought no, it’s not the same thing at all.

  “What they forgive themselves, they hate in others.”

  “Take advice,” Kel Vanathri said, “stay out of here.” She knew they had plans to escape, or to invite a quick death.

  The thought bothered her more than it should. She slammed the door and walked away. In a little while they’d be dead.

  They’d be good companions in an Order, she thought. It’s a senseless waste . . .

  To kill Bazuruk’s enemies?

  No!

  What am I thinking? We’re caught between the northern barbarians and these damned islands, which, if they could ever unite, could crush Bazuruk. We can’t afford mercy, not even for those two. Ah, Anukazi! Why should I care?

  Rax couldn’t sleep that night. She rose and dressed—in mail, with her war-axe—and went down to the main hall. But even dice-games couldn’t ease her spirit.

  All the city slept. There were no lights in the squat buildings, no noise from the beast markets, no carts in the street. She went by way of the river wall and entered the Tower as the guards changed shift.

  Torches burned low in the guardroom.

  “Jailer—” Some instinct held her hand, when she reached to shake him awake. A thin thread of blood ran out from under his head, bowed on the table.

  Movement caught her eye, where the torch guttered. The axe slid into her hands. A scuffed noise came from down the passage. She tensed. The jailer had no knife or sword. They would be armed, then.

  Softly she said “Vanathri?”

  “Be silent.”

  “Devenil.” The strength of her relief was alarming. “Where’s Kel?”

  “Put down your axe!”

  She rested the spike on the floor, hands clasping the shaft. “Now I’ll tell you something. You’re not the first to kill a jailer and come this far. But can you fight your way out past every guard in Anukazi’s Tower?”

  “If we have to.” It was Kel Vanathri’s voice.

  “Wait.” She sensed movement. “Suppose you were taken out of here by a guard? There a
re riverboats. You might cross the sea to the Hundred Isles.”

  “And let you sound the alarm?” Kel said. “Put down the axe. I can throw a knife as well as any Bazuruki.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Islander. Take the jailer’s uniform.”

  They stepped forward into the light. Devenil nodded, watching her with a curious expression. “We’ll lock you in one of the cells, unless you prefer a glorious death—as Bazuruki do, I’ve heard.”

  “And how will you get past the gates? I’ll have to speak for you. Trust me,” Rax said. “Only be quick!”

  It was only then that she knew her long career with the Order of the Axe had ended in betrayal.

  A fishing boat was moored with sails still raised. The man aboard answered Rax’s hail from the dock.

  “Stay back,” she said to the Islanders. The man’s head came above the rail, and she drove her knife up under the soft part of his jaw. Blood spilled over her hands. She wrenched the blade loose, feeling it grate against bone, and shoved the body off the side. It sank quickly. She led the Islanders down the stone steps.

  “Now, Devenil, Shabelit’s heir,” she said, “take this young fool with you and get out of Bazuruk. The alarm’s out, I expect, but the tide’s in your favor. Go!”

  “They know who brought us out,” Kel Vanathri said. “You can’t stay.”

  “But my Order—”

  “You should have thought of that.” Devenil gave a sardonic grin. The early sun showed dirt, blood, the traces of long confinement; he looked a good ten years older than his age. His mocking face disturbed and attracted her. She felt he understood motives she herself didn’t recognize.

  “We owe a debt we’ll never pay you,” said Vanathri. His young face looked vulnerable. “But if you come with us to the Hundred Isles, we’ll try.”

  From the first moment I saw you, she thought. That lover’s kiss between you and Devenil . . . how could I leave you two innocents in the Tower? You remind me of—

  Yes. Is it that simple? He'd have been very like you, if he’d lived: my son Tarik.

  “I’ll come,” Rax said.

  The sun burned, and the sea shimmered. The stars hung like a mist of diamonds, and the night wind cut to the bone.

  Cotton-wool fog hugged the coast. The deep swells rolled like hills. They headed south, into ever-colder seas.

  Rax lay moaning in the coffin-sized cabin, sweating, heaving with every lurch and dip of the sea. Days passed. Kel and Devenil sailed, fished, fed her fresh water. Once she woke to see them lying together, Kel’s pale arm across Devenil’s scarred body.

  Solitude and loss and sickness frightened her. She slept with the war-axe tight in her grip. No Tower discipline, no skill learned in battle helped her now.

  On the tenth day, when they sighted the coast of Dhared, she barely stirred, and at noon, when they passed it and came to Vanathri itself, she was too weak to do more than stare. She saw a green land, chill under a gray sky and lashing rain, where slant-roofed buildings hugged a narrow harbor. They sailed into it and were recognized.

  Rax stood on the quay, swaying, seeing Kel and Devenil in each other’s arms—in broad daylight, she thought dizzily. Then they pulled her into their embrace. The gathering crowd of Vanathri Islanders cheered, and every bell in the town rang out.

  When she was well, they crossed the straits to Shabelit, and there Devenil took her before the Island lords and the head of the Council.

  “Lady Sephir,” he said to her, “here is our rescuer, Rax Keshanu of Bazuruk, axe-warrior of Anukazi’s Tower.” The chamber was full of brightly dressed men and women and children, she saw, appalled. The air stank of old cooking, new perfumes, and the sea. Rax pulled her stained surcoat over her mail and kept the axe close to her hand. Shabelitans jabbered and pointed while Kel Vanathri told what had happened in Bazuruk.

  “We do not welcome Bazuruki,” Sephir said, when she had heard his story, “but you have brought my son back to me and restored Kel to Vanathri. You are welcome, Rax Keshanu, in all the Hundred Isles!”

  The woman, white-haired, had Devenil’s face with more delicate lines. She stood as Rax bowed—the formal acknowledgment of a Bazuruki warrior—and embraced and kissed her.

  Rax froze, smelling the scent of a meat-eater.

  Amid the general applause, the Lady Sephir pronounced her an honorary captain of Shabelit. It was then, identifying the white scars on the old woman’s arms as ancient sword-cuts, that Rax realized she had met her first Shabelit woman-warrior.

  Cold spring turned to cool summer. Rax moved into rooms in Shabelit, a city founded on trade and almost as big as Anukazi.

  She lived with Islander customs as much as was possible for her but followed her version of Bazuruk’s discipline. One midsummer day Devenil found her in the practice courts using the war-axe.

  “Come up and talk,” he said, and she joined him on the seafort’s wall.

  “I see too little of you both lately,” Rax said as she pulled on a tunic against the Archipelago’s cold wind. “I suppose Kel’s back on Vanathri or another of your damned rocks.”

  “Kel offered you a place on his ship,” Devenil said. “Why don’t you take it?”

  “The sea, with that sickness?” she scowled.

  A brisk wind blew across the sea-fort, spattering her face with dampness. She watched the light on the straits.

  “If you wanted to come, sickness wouldn’t stop you.”

  “I’m a soldier,” she said at last. “You people . . . I didn’t expect anything like the Orders, but you’ve no standing army at all. You don’t understand. I’m a warrior. It’s what I do, and I do it better than most. You’re asking me to drop it and ship out as some kind of deck hand—”

  “A guard. You’d work on the ship, but so do Kel and I. Even Bazuruki aren’t killed by honest work.”

  “Damned Islanders,” she said.

  Devenil smiled. “You’re not the first person to perform a generous act and regret the consequences.”

  “I don’t regret what I did!”

  In her mind's eye, Rax saw her chambers in the Tower of Anukazi. The cool light, the shade, the fine carving of the Keshanu mask. Ever since I came to the islands, she thought, my mind’s been in a fog.

  “Let us pay our debt to you,” Devenil said. “Come with us on the Luck of Vanathri, if not for our sake, then for your own.”

  “You love him, don’t you?” The thought still amazed her.

  “I’ll do anything I can for him, including ordering you aboard the Luck if it eases his mind. I’m still Shabelit’s heir. I can do that.”

  I got you out of the Tower, she thought. How much more must I give?

  “You don’t order me. I’m Bazuruki.”

  “Not any more! You have to see that.”

  She sighed. Eventually she asked, “When do you sail? I’ll come if I can, Devenil, but don’t wait for me.”

  They waited anyway, but she never came.

  “You’ve got company,” Garad said. “At least I’d swear it’s you he’s looking at.”

  Rax glanced up from the dice. Sun and windburned from his months at sea, brown hair grown untidy, wrapped against the cold of a Shabelit winter night—Kel Vanathri.

  “Stay here,” she said, “we’ll continue our discussion later.” Garad smiled, shuttling the dice from hand to hand. “Don’t leave. I have your debt-slips—”

  She gave him a look that stopped his voice in his throat, then crossed to the doorway.

  “Rax!” Kel gripped her hands, then let them fall, puzzled by her lack of response. “The time it’s taken me to find you—”

  “Did I ask you to come looking?”

  “I came anyway. It’s a strange place to find a Bazuruk warrior. With mercenaries.”

  “Mercenaries and gamblers are no worse company than traders’ sons and lords’ heirs with nothing better on their minds than piracy.”

  Her message hit home. She sensed that he was on the edge of violence, an
d she grinned. He studied her closely.

  “You’re drunk,” he said, amazed.

  “Am I? It’s a custom we could do with in Bazuruk.”

  He frowned. “Devenil said you’d end in a place like this. I’m sorry he was right.”

  “Listen.” Rax laid one long finger on the center of his chest, leaning closer. The spirit-fumes blocked his meat-eater scent.

  “I’m a soldier by profession and choice. I had no quarrel with Bazuruk, except they wouldn’t make me First Axe, which I earned. I’ll practice my skills where I please. You were glad enough of them in Anukazi.”

  “You can’t live on old debts.” His anger was under tight control. “I see you have new ones. I’ll leave you to settle them, if you can.”

  She waited until he’d left the smoke-filled inn before she went back to the table.

  “That’s a rich trading house,” Garad said. “The Vanathri.”

  “Shut your lying mouth.” She fell into the seat, draining the mug of spirits.

  “Gratitude doesn’t last.”

  I’m trapped, Rax thought foggily. Money doesn’t last, honorary captaincy carries no pay—and I won’t beg from Kel or Devenil! How else, in Anukazi’s name, can I live? And to sneer at me for being with mercenaries . . .

  She missed the act of violence, the revulsion that, in the cold moment before battle, transmuted to recklessness; the empathy that made her imagine each blow, each wound. It was not skill nor craft, but art—an ache and an addiction.

  “I can find the people you need.” Garad interrupted her thoughts. “There are lords in the Cold Lands who’ll pay well for a mercenary company, but first you need money to equip them.”

  “And pay off my debts,” Rax said, grinning. “We’ll talk. Call to mind three or four men you can trust, and a good lockpick. I’ve a plan to pay off my debts and get all the gold I need to go to war.”

  The house was dark. Rax led them cautiously. Her hand clamped over the mouth of a guard, and her long knife cut his throat. She wiped her hands. Garad came forward with the lockpick. Their breath was white in the icy air. Rax took another drink from the flask to warm herself.