by Paula Guran
“What’s it to be, frontal assault? Shall we bother with swords, or will that only make it harder for the demons to rip us to shreds?” Valanor loomed over her.
Joenna hefted her axe and propped it on her shoulder. “Blue Lady, there’s got to be a way through this,” she muttered.
“Yeah,” cried a harsh voice, “kill the general!”
The half-breeds stilled as nearby archers drew their bows, searching for the joker. “Who said it?” called a sergeant. “Point him out, or we’ll open on the lot of you.”
“Not if we get you first,” snarled one of the half-orcs. They crowded together as the archers advanced. Beyond the bowmen, the mass of the army—sharpening swords and checking the buckles on their armor—paused to watch.
More arrows were nocked and bowstrings tightened; the soldiers behind stood at the ready as the half-orcs fingered their swords, weighing the odds. The half-orcs, with their agility and strength, could wreak considerable damage if they tore into the soldiers, but sorely outnumbered, all thirty would soon be slain.
Valanor kept himself still, addressing his comrades. “Think, would you! Better to die on the field than in this cave.”
The dark group swayed as if they weren’t so sure.
A crew pushed through the army, carrying the barrel of rotten meat they used to keep the scouts in line. Its stink preceded them, and the half-orcs recoiled, giving ground before the archers.
“Enough!” Joenna shouted. “Enough, we’ve got a job to do.” She glanced sharply toward the archer-sergeant, who offered a curt nod and swung his men away, providing an opening for the company to move out of the cavern. They gulped in the breeze across the caves, the fetid barrel brought behind as an encouragement, then they scrambled up the steep slope toward their death.
Above, the air reeked of fire and blood, and the unmistakable sickly stench of demons not far off. At her back, the half-orcs retched and gasped for breath. Thirty young men, the age of her own boy, marred by the hideous orc features. Their knuckles whitened on their sword-hilts just like any other men. “There’s got to be a way.”
Close by, Valanor snorted. “Don’t fool yourself, full-blood. We face one army or the other and you get the glory when we’re dead—twice as much for volunteering to serve with us. As appealing as it sounds, killing the general would only confuse the issue.”
“Aye, killing the general. Pity we can’t kill theirs.”
“You know how they fight, better than we do, I’ll warrant. They’re like insects, one leader dies and another takes its place with a damnable shriek. They don’t wear feathered hats to tell us who’s in charge.” He tossed his shaggy head, growling low in his throat.
As they started the long trudge up the slope, Joenna turned over in her mind the events of the previous day. She had cut down one demon, and another came, leaping up with that shriek. “But they can’t all fly,” she mumbled to herself.
“They’ve all got bloody wings, but can’t none of them fly more than a few feet straight up.”
“Those’re the ones that shriek, though,” she said, hesitating, looking to the field. Dawn’s light began to creep over the shapes of the dead. Somewhere across the field, the enemy hunched down, waiting. “The shriekers are the leaders, I think, not just one of them, but any one of them. We kill one, another takes his place and they fight on like nothing’s happened.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Valanor snapped. “And it doesn’t matter anyhow to a company of the dead.”
But the idea took form, and Joenna waved away his despair. “Do they smell different?”
“What?”
“The ones that can fly, do they smell different?”
“They all stink like a week-old murder.”
“Come on,” she tipped her head toward the battlefield, then faced her surly crew. “You lot stay a minute, and keep low. Come on,” she urged Valanor again.
With a shrug that rolled from one shoulder to the other, he followed, crouching among the rubble as they shifted their way through the corpses and scorched trees. In moments, they came to the site of yesterday’s stand, where Joenna slew the shrieking demon. “This one,” she pointed. “Does it smell different than the others?”
Losing his grin, Valanor glanced at the wreck of the demon, and his face in the vague light looked pale. She, too, looked down where the flood of fluids and intestines clogged the path. To her, the thing smelled much the same as a live one, it hadn’t had enough time to rot in the short hours they had been sleeping. Catching Valanor’s eye, she grimaced. “Sorry. Hard to imagine what it’s like for you, with that sensitive nose and all.”
His eyes narrowed and he bent over the demon’s head, then over that of her first victim. Immediately, he rose again, his throat working as if he fought down bile.
She set a hand on his arm. “Gods, I am sorry, mate.”
Snarling, he shook her away, then leaned in close, taking a sniff of her and baring his teeth. “You’re a lying, stinking bastard like the rest of them—woman.”
Joenna jerked back from him, catching her breath.
Valanor advanced and she dare not move again, dare not reveal them before they were ready. “Aye, this sack of stink smells different. Rotten, with a hint of evil a little sharper than the rest. He does, but so do you.” He shot out a long finger, the claw scratching her breastplate. “You smell like baby-making and kitchen-cooking and stitching on a pillow. Paugh! I thought yesterday there was something odd about you.” He tapped his blunt nose with a hooked nail. “Now I sense it, you bloody liar. What if I go back in and tell your captain? Or is he the reason you’re here? No, I’ll take it to the general—if he’d hear me—” a cackle passed his smirking lips. “Maybe that’d give us time to get out of here without all of us losing our necks.” He rose away from her, still hunched, and started to turn.
Lunging forward, Joenna caught his arm and yanked him down. Both landed hard on the slimy stones. Valanor knocked her away, sweeping the sword from his back, his teeth bared as he stooped over her. Joenna flipped up her axe, catching his blade and turning it, a new and unintended chink appearing through the stain of the haft.
Hooking her feet on a stone she yanked herself downward and out from under, ramming aside his sword with the flat of her axe. Despite his strength, the half-orc was a scout, not a soldier, and Joenna smiled.
With a heave, he flung her off again, propelling himself back toward the line.
Joenna dove, the axe ahead of her, catching his ankle and toppling him even as their archers took aim.
She pushed herself up beside him, proving her conquest to the rearguard as she faced him. “Watch yourself, you bloody bastard!”
His cauldron eyes glinted fire as his lips twisted. “Will I be the next notch on your axe, oh mighty woman? You do your captain proud.”
She lowered her weapon, arms shaking with the rush of fighting. Mastering herself, she whispered, “It’s not Gavin I’m fighting for, it’s my son. Don’t you see?” She wiped back her hair, matching his fierce expression with her own.
His face, inches from hers, looked more awry than ever, the heavy single brow furrowing in his disgust. “Oh, aye, nobility, honor, sacrifice. I know all about that from those accursed stories my mammy tossed aside. I think she died from the shame of it, or maybe from the sight of me, as if it were my fault the orcs took her, my fault what they did to her.” His fist rapped against his narrow chest as his voice moved into a hushed wail of unanswered pain.
Joenna snatched his fist, the hairy strength of it captured by her two small hands. “What they did to me,” she said. “To me.”
After a moment, Valanor let out a breath through flaring nostrils. He swallowed, his shaking fist twisting in her grasp, but not yet applying his strength to freedom.
“The orcs came to my house, too. I never saw a brute so awful, not until this war. That raiding party, they broke and beat and took what they would.” She gave a short, nasty laugh. “Look at me, Valanor.
I make a better man than a woman—I’m so ugly, no man would take me to wife. But I was good enough for orc-bedding, wasn’t I? My parents cast me out. And there I was with child—this gangly, screaming little baby.” Dropping his hand, she scrubbed tears from her face. “And I thought two things as ugly as us, we might as well love each other.” Her chin rapped against her breastplate as she wept, her ragged hair flopping around her face. Cursing herself, she fought the tears, drawing long breaths, snorting like an ass.
Nearby, Valanor remained silent except the quick rhythm of his breathing. After a long time, he said, “Loref. He was your son.”
“Aye.”
“He’s the reason you fight, the reason you’ve got those notches in your axe.”
More calmly, the tears trickling away at last. “Aye.”
“He was like me.” His voice became a hot breath across her damp face.
Joenna faced him fully. “Aye,” she said. “Like you.”
They sat in the growing light, surrounded by demon filth and Valanor stared at her from his dull-black eyes, so like her son’s. “You’ve got a plan, haven’t you? You’ve thought of something.”
“I don’t think it’ll save us, but it may cause confusion enough that the others can win. Valanor—” she took a deep breath and expelled it, along with the grief she could not afford “—it may be enough to show those bastards you’re not to be spat on.”
A grin started at the corners of his thin lips. “I doubt it.”
She sighed. “Me, too, but at least we’ll know we did our best. We’ll have to convince the company.”
“That we will.” He cocked his head at her. “What’s your name, Loref’s mother?”
“Joenna.”
“So, Joenna’s Charge.”
“Naw.” She touched the head of her axe. “Better to call it, Half-orc’s Revenge.”
The troop had few complaints—any plan was better than their orders—and they fanned out around Joenna and Valanor. Quickly, closely, they began their advance. They rippled over the stones and bodies like a shadow not yet dispelled by the feeble light of day. It felt like miles, jogging over the rough ground when the demons rose up, shrieking before them.
The vile wind of their voices slapped back the attackers, but the troop shifted and swirled around her. Instead of attacking, Valanor and Joenna threw themselves under the first swords. They dodged and sprinted and Valanor sniffed. Wherever he pointed, there they struck.
The company plunged in with them, knocking aside the demons as best they could, crying out to block the sound of demon shrieking. One demon leapt up, flapping, over and over, its voice howling out commands. Three of her orcs went down in the first strike and Joenna set her jaw against the dread.
Rather than driving straight on, Joenna’s force moved as if at random, following the whims of Valanor’s nose. The shrieking filled her ears and echoed inside her aching skull. Grimly she followed where the half-orc led.
Joenna’s axe defended him—cleaving the arm from one demon, slicing the leg of another—until he spotted a shrieker and they set-to and brought it down.
The half-orcs swirled around them, slaying the marked demons, themselves falling beneath the poison blades—hacked in two or crushed by taloned arms. The gray garb of the scouts vanished beneath a wash of red. The distant sound of horns announced the army’s advance; Joenna doubted if any of hers would be alive to see.
A great demon sprang up before them, outspread wings heaving to lift off as it shrieked. Its lashing tail caught Joenna broadside and she tumbled over the ground, sprawling with her axe underneath. “Blue Lady!” she cried, as the demon thudded down again.
The demon leapt away, a wail of pain escaping it. Demon blood spattered Joenna’s face as she rolled and snatched up her axe.
Bellowing, it snatched at Valanor, slapping aside his sword at the cost of its own claws. It lunged again at the half-orc scrambling across the ground.
Matching its bellow, Joenna buried her axe in the demon’s side. She slammed to earth as it spun around, and its sword bit into her shoulder.
The demon’s head filled her vision, its fangs dripping as it gaped over its prize. The head reared back for another shriek and dove toward her.
With her left hand, Joenna whipped free her knife and rammed it home into a smoldering eye.
Blood spurted, obscuring her own vision; the breath whoofed from her lungs as the demon collapsed on top of her.
For a long time, the world went silent. Joenna thanked the Lady for this reprieve, promising to visit Her temples the first chance she got. She struggled to drag air into her lungs past the steaming corpse that covered her.
Thunk! Thunk! The sound penetrated her fog, and Joenna cracked open her eyes. Thunk! The steady sound of an axe into wood. “Loref?” she croaked.
The weight bearing down on her fell aside and Valanor stood over her, axe in hand, shoving the severed demon from her chest.
Letting the axe-head rest beside hers, Valanor bent down. Agile, hairy fingers stroked the blood from her eyes. “Praise the Gods, you’re alive!”
“You, too,” she managed, sucking in great breaths. “Like to smothered me, that beast.” She moved as if she could rise, but Valanor plucked the wool from her ears.
“Listen!” He shouted.
“Can’t hear a damn thing.” Joenna slapped her ear with her right hand. The left hand only twitched numbly.
“No shrieking! They’re retreating from us, a bunch of half-breeds, before the damned army even got here!” His laughter sparkled with hope, echoing the horns drawing the army past. Valanor leaned in closer. “You’re wounded, Joenna. I’ll get you to the surgeons.” He bent to gather her up.
Slapping his hand she rattled, “Don’t. They’ll know.”
“Aye. They’ll send you home to get over all this, you fool woman.”
She shook her head. “How many?” she asked.
“How many what?”
“Demons I killed.”
Tilting back his head, Valanor considered. “Five.”
“Then I’m not through yet.” She shoved herself into a sitting position, his arm hovering near her. “Don’t haul me from here like a fragile woman. If you want to be useful, raise me up like a man.”
“But you’re wounded! Surely this battle is honor enough.”
Joenna shook her head again. “I’ve two more notches yet to carve, my friend.” Then she grinned up at him. “Valanor, hand me my axe.”
By the end of Elizabeth Bear’s story, I hope you will agree that it is not always the number of battles fought or the frequency of fighting that makes a warrior. To quote Sun Tzu: “The wise warrior avoids the battle.”
Love Among the Talus
Elizabeth Bear
You cannot really keep a princess in a tower. Not if she has no brothers and must learn statecraft and dancing and riding and poisons and potions and the passage of arms, so that she may eventually rule.
But you can do the next best thing.
In the land of the shining empire, in a small province north of the city of Messaline and beyond the great salt desert, a princess with a tip-tilted nose lived with her mother, Hoelun Khatun, the Dowager Queen. The princess—whose name, it happens, was Nilufer—stood tall and straight as an ivory pole, and if her shoulders were broad and out of fashion from the pull of her long oak-white bow, her dowry would no doubt compensate for any perceived lack of beauty. Her hair was straight and black, as smooth and cool as water, and even when she did not ride with her men-at-arms, she wore split, padded skirts and quilted, paneled robes of silk satin, all emerald and jade and black and crimson embroidered with gold and white chrysanthemums.
She needed no tower, for she was like unto a tower in her person, a fastness as sure as the mountains she bloomed beside, her cool reserve and mocking half-lidded glances the battlements of a glacial virginity.
Her province compassed foothills, and also those mountains (which were called the Steles of the Sky). And
while its farmlands were not naturally verdant, its mineral wealth was abundant. At the moderate elevations, ancient terraced slopes had been engineered into low-walled, boggy paddies dotted with unhappy oxen. Women toiled there, bent under straw hats, the fermenting vegetation and glossy leeches which adhered to their sinewy calves unheeded. Farther up, the fields gave way to slopes of scree. And at the bottoms of the sheer, rising faces of the mountains, opened the nurturing mouths of the mines.
The mines were not worked by men; the miners were talus, living boulders with great stone-wearing mouths. The talus consumed ore and plutonic and metamorphic rocks alike (the sandstones, slates, schists, and shales, they found to be generally bereft of flavor and nutrition, but they would gnaw through them to obtain better) and excreted sand and irregular ingots of refined metal.
The living rocks were gentle, stolid, unconcerned with human life, although casualties occurred sometimes among the human talus-herders when their vast insensate charges wholly or partially scoured over them. They were peaceful, though, as they grazed through stone, and their wardens would often lean against their rough sides, enjoying the soothing vibrations caused by the grinding of their gizzards, which were packed with the hardest of stones. Which is to say carborundum—rubies and sapphires—and sometimes diamonds, polished by ceaseless wear until they attained the sheen of tumbled jewels or river rock.
Of course, the talus had to be sacrificed to retrieve those, so it was done only in husbandry. Or times of economic hardship or unforeseen expense. Or to pay the tithe to the Khagan, the Khan of Khans might-he-live-forever, who had conquered Nilufer’s province and slain her father and brother when Nilufer was but a child in the womb.
There had been no peace before the Khagan. Now the warring provinces could war no longer, and the bandits were not free to root among the spoils like battle ravens. Under the peace of the Khanate and protection of the Khagan’s armies, the bandit lords were often almost controlled.