by Gail Dayton
She lay down where she was, her back against the fortification, and listened to the quiet sounds Torchay made as he settled close by. “Sleep well, friend.”
The silence that answered had her fearing she’d overstepped some unknown bounds, until at last he spoke, his voice even quieter than hers. “And you also…friend.”
“Stop! Wait, dammit—what kind of friend are you?” Stone bent over, hands on his knees, and tried to decide whether the contents of his stomach were going to come out. He knew he’d feel better if he could just shed his jacket in this infernal heat, but the padded gray nuisance was part of the uniform. They could unbutton it, but they couldn’t leave it off even in camp.
“I’m your only friend, thank you. No one else would put up with your rubbish.”
Stone tilted his head and peered up at Fox who had stopped after all and was waiting, swaying slightly in the offshore wind, his face strange and shadowy in the firelight coming from the nearby crossway between tents. Stone knew that face better than his own. Both of them named Warrior, of the highest caste Tibre had to offer, below only the Rulers themselves. Both of them vo’Tsekrish, of the king’s own city.
They had been partnered the day they left women’s quarters to begin warrior training, when they were six years old. They were now twenty-two. Or maybe twenty-three. Stone didn’t keep track of that sort of thing.
He and Fox had learned to read side by side from the same book. They had learned to fight back-to-back against the same teachers. They had even discovered the pleasures of women at the same time, though not with the same woman. Stone trusted Fox with his life.
But at the moment, he could cheerfully throttle him. “I thought you said you knew where women’s quarters were.”
“I didn’t say that. You did.” Fox grabbed a handful of Stone’s hair and pulled him more or less upright, leaning down until they stood eye to eye.
Stone envied him those few inches that made the lean necessary. “’S not fair,” he muttered. “I should be the taller. I’m lead in this pair.”
“You’re drunk.” Fox shoved and Stone staggered back several paces.
“Am not. If I was drunk, I’d have fallen. ’Sides, Stores won’t give us enough to get drunk. Just enough to get pleasantly snockered. Besides that, you’re drunk too.”
“Not drunk. Snockered.” Fox frowned. “Why d’you suppose that is?”
“Dunno.” Stone looked around for a place to sit. He didn’t recognize the tents—though why he thought he should since all something-thousand of them looked exactly alike, he didn’t know.
The tents were wide enough for a tall man to stretch out without getting his feet wet, long enough for six men to sleep side by side without quite touching, and high enough to stand up in if you didn’t mind ducking a bit. Or ducking a bit more if you were Fox. And they were set up in identical long rows with space between them for walking and mustering.
Stone didn’t recognize the warriors strolling about, either. Except for Fox. He recognized him. Worse luck. “Dunno why we’re snockered,” he said again, “’cept the First and Finest are always a little snockered when they go charging up through the breach. And ’cause they gave us the stuff and what else were we to do with it but drink it?”
“Maybe that’s why.” Fox set a small keg on its end and plopped down on it. “Give us these fancy red poufs of trousers so we’ll be sure to get shot at. Get us just snockered enough we’ll run like lunatics into that hellmouth, and call us a brilliant-sounding name like First and Finest so we won’t realize we’re something else entirely, like First and Foolishest.”
“No such word as foolishest,” Stone offered, nodding sagely. Or as sagely as he could, given that he was at least a quarter full of some truly vile liquor. “And you shouldn’t talk that way. It’ll get back to the Rulers. You do realize you’re sitting on a keg of black powder, don’t you?”
Carefully, Fox leaned to one side and peered down at his impromptu seat. “Damn me, so I am. Suppose it wouldn’t do to get myself blown to bits prematurely.”
“No. Won’t do at all.” Stone took his partner’s hand and hauled him to his feet. “D’you suppose we started drinking too early? They haven’t started the cannonade yet, have they?” He froze, trying to force thought through his slightly pickled brain, to hear what he ought to be hearing. “Have I gone deaf?”
Just then, the concentrated thunder of hundreds of cannon firing simultaneously at close range threatened to knock both men off none-too-steady feet.
“Did you hear that?” Fox said when the noise faded.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re not deaf.”
“Do you know where we are?” Again Stone tried to pick out landmarks.
“Haven’t a clue.”
“I don’t suppose you know where women’s quarters are from here.”
“Not a bit.”
Stone shoved his hair out of his face with both hands. “Why doesn’t your hair ever get in your way? It’s just like mine, yellow and curly. It should get in your way like mine.”
“I remember to get mine cut.” Fox produced a length of string, bunched Stone’s hair together on the top of his head and tied it off. “You look ridiculous. Like there’s a fountain sprouting from your head.”
“Don’t care. It’s out of my way. Thanks, brodir.”
“Anytime.” Fox paused, then pointed at the banner hanging above a nearby tent. “Isn’t that the vo’Haav banner?”
Stone turned, looked. The banner was hard to see in the firelight, but he thought he recognized a black bear on the yellow flag. “If a bear is vo’Haav’s emblem, then it is.”
“Our camp is always just to the east of theirs.”
“Don’t tell me you know where east is. The sun’s down. The moon’s not up yet.”
Fox pointed. “The city is east. Therefore east is that way. Our tent is also that way.”
Stone sighed, his chest heaving in his disappointment. “I really wanted a woman tonight.”
“One last time before we die.”
Anger flashing like sparks in dry grass, Stone swung, his fist plowing into his partner’s face, knocking him to his backside. Stone spat in the sand beside him, invoking the warrior’s god. “Don’t say that,” he ordered, fists clenched. “Maybe we’ll die, but maybe we won’t. It’s not up to us. You go into battle knowing you’ll die, Khralsh will give you what you want. Death is easy.”
Once more he reached down and pulled Fox to his feet. “You go into battle determined to live, maybe he lets you live. Life, that’s not so easy, not in battle. Either way, Khralsh decides. But if you ask for what you want, maybe he gives it.”
“And maybe he doesn’t.” Fox couldn’t meet Stone’s gaze.
“Maybe not.” Stone shook the wrist he gripped, jarring his partner’s whole body, willing him to understand, to believe. “But who guaranteed you life to begin with? Remember that Bureaucrat we saw get run down by the ale wagon? Or the Farmer who got gored by his bull? Everybody dies, Fox, sooner or later. Swear your life to Khralsh, let him look after it. You can’t.”
This time, Fox’s sharp brown gaze locked onto Stone’s. He envied Fox his eyes as well. Few others had the pale blue of Stone’s eyes. Their mentors had always shuddered and called them uncanny, witchy. But he didn’t mind uncanny now if it convinced Fox.
Slowly, Fox nodded. “All right. I’ll swear. With you at my shoulder I believe it.”
“Then swear. We swear together, we fight together, fight well, and surely Khralsh will let us live.”
“I swear. I swear myself to Khralsh. I ask for life, but my life in his hands whatever happens.” Fox spat in the sand, offering a body fluid precious to the warrior god.
Stone copied him. “And so I swear also. My life to Khralsh.”
They stood another moment, swaying faintly when the wind gusted through, setting tent walls to flapping.
“D’you suppose we ought to try to sleep?” Stone scratched his head, ca
reful not to disturb his new topknot.
The cannon crashed again, less in unison than before.
“In this noise?” Fox turned his partner and pushed him in the direction of their division. “You can try.”
“Why do you always have all the answers?”
“Because somebody has to, and you obviously don’t.”
Stone punched Fox in the shoulder hard enough to send him reeling to the far side of the tent street. “What is it I have then?”
“Lunatic courage.”
“You have courage. Plenty of it. I’ve seen it.”
“Ah, but I have the sensible sort of courage. Somebody has to be the crazy one, the one who’ll charge cannon with a misfired musket or volunteer for First and Finest. And that’s you.”
“You were right there charging and volunteering with me.”
“We’re paired. Where else am I supposed to be but at your back, making sure you don’t get your fool self killed.”
Stone thought long enough they passed two tents, trying to work his way to Fox’s meaning. The cannon’s booming, now a steady rumble as the big guns fired at will, seemed to shake the alcohol from his brain. “You’re pissed.” He stopped in the throughway. “Not drunk pissed. Angry pissed. Because I volunteered.”
“I’m not angry.” Fox took his arm and got him moving again. “I was. But I’m not anymore. You convinced me we’d live through this. And if we don’t, Khralsh will welcome us to his hall.”
“Yes.” Stone believed it. He couldn’t believe anything else. “Volunteering for First and Finest will get us noticed. It could get us promoted.”
Fox sighed. “Don’t you ever get tired?”
“Of what?”
“This.” Fox swept his arm in a half circle, indicating the camp around them, the cannon, the city with its broken walls. “Living in tents. Slogging through mud or heat or rain or all three to the next camp. Fighting. Bleeding. Healing up so we can do it all over again. Don’t you wish we could rest for a little while? Go home, soak in the baths, spend some time with a woman who has all her teeth?”
“I don’t know, I rather like the toothless one. The way she can wrap her mouth aro—”
Fox shoved him and Stone broke off, laughing. His laughter didn’t last long. They’d reached their own tent, shared with two other pairs, all elsewhere just now. They probably knew how to find the women’s tents.
Stone took advantage of their absence to speak frankly, half shouting over the cannon noise. “This is the way it is, Fox. We were born Warrior caste. We are the King’s Fist. His Sword and Shield. Where our king sends, we go. It’s no use wishing it was some other way, because it’s not, and it won’t ever be. You’ll shatter your soul trying to fight it.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right.” Fox pulled his musket from the stack and sat down to clean it once more. “I think too much.” He grinned at his partner. “The curse of a brilliant mind.”
Stone grinned back, relief flooding him. “Crazy and stupid. That’s what a good warrior ought to be. You should work on that.”
“I will. Damn me! The flint’s cracked already. I just replaced it this morning.” Grumbling, Fox set to putting the finicky firearm back into working order.
Stone pulled out a whetstone and his bayonet. In a charge like the one facing them, they’d only get one chance to fire their muskets. A sharp bayonet seemed more useful.
The boom of cannon fire set the walls of the women’s tents to trembling. All night the bombardment had continued, a constant underpinning to the activity within the tents. The activity had ceased with the departure of the men. The women slept haphazardly wherever they found a comfortable spot, twitching when the cannon roared, but sleeping nonetheless. All save one.
Aisse vo’Haav, assigned to the Warrior caste, crept carefully from the communal areas to the tiny partitioned section where the women washed, dressed and kept their few personal belongings. If anyone woke, she would have questions, and though Aisse had answers, she couldn’t afford the delay.
She took the moments necessary to stop at the shrine to Ulilianeth, healer, seductress, protector of women, the only goddess in a heaven full of gods. Aisse felt the need for her blessing before embarking on her path.
Ulilianeth had spoken to Aisse in this place, had shown her that things could be different, that she could live a life of her own choosing, free of everything that had made her existence into hell. In this place, women could say no. And Aisse intended to be one of them.
She pressed a kiss to Ulilianeth’s stone skirt, then scurried to her corner where she ripped off the hated gauzy dress. She scrubbed herself until her skin felt raw, but still she didn’t feel clean. Aisse pulled the brown linen tunic from beneath her box, where she’d hidden it the day she bought it from the local boy selling bread in the camp. She put it on, smoothing it down over her thighs. It left her legs bare from the knees down. Studying her exposed legs critically, Aisse decided they did not look much like boys’ legs, too round and golden. She had to disguise them.
A short while later, she’d made her coverlet into a fair approximation of the leggings she’d seen Adaran soldiers wearing. Hers were lumpy and threatened to slip down because she couldn’t tie the bindings tight enough, but they would have to do. She got out the scissors she’d “borrowed” from Piheko. She’d listened to Piheko bemoan their loss for days. Aisse would be sure to leave them where they could be easily found. In seconds, her waist-length mane of gold hair lay on the ground.
Her neck felt cool, tingly, strange. But she didn’t have time to marvel at it or the way her head threatened to float away. Aisse gathered up the shorn hair and shoved it in with the straw of a spare pallet, scuffed the remaining strands into the dirt, and laid the scissors in a gap beside Piheko’s box.
From her own, she retrieved the bag of supplies she’d been collecting—dried meat, hard cheese, biscuit, a cup, extra shoes—and knelt to peer beneath the tent wall. No one passed by. After endless hours, the cannonade was at last rising to its crescendo. The warriors would be mustering on the field before the city, preparing for the attack. No one would notice a boy slipping from the camp.
She made it past the cannon, past the endless stacks of stores, past the officers’ mounts and the cattle waiting their turn to be slaughtered for rations. She could see the line of trees that marked the southern edge of the Tibran camp.
“Here! You—boy!”
Aisse froze, hesitating seconds too long before realizing she should run. Her face would never pass for a boy’s at second glance. But the Farmer caste tending the beasts already had hold of her arm.
“What are you doing here, boy?” He yanked, snapping her arm painfully upward. “Spying? Off to tell your witches all our plans?”
She kept her face turned away, hoping her hacked-off hair would provide sufficient disguise.
“Look at me, boy!” He jerked her arm again.
Aisse shook her head, trying to pull away from him. He swore and backhanded her across the face. She couldn’t stop the reflexive high-pitched cry. A girl’s sound, not a boy’s.
The farmer grabbed her face with the hand not gripping her arm and forced it upward, until he could see her. “Achz and Arilo!” He called on the Farmer caste’s twin gods in his shock. “You’re female.”
He shook her, violently. “What in seven hells have you done? By all that’s holy…” His voice trembled with horror.
And it was true horror to a Tibran male to think anyone might wish to escape his caste, to think a woman might wish to live some other life. Women lived in the women’s quarters of whatever caste they were assigned, doing women’s work, available to any man of any caste who might wish to use her. Most Tibran women didn’t mind. It was the way life was. Aisse hated it.
She couldn’t lose her chance at freedom now, not when she was so close. “Let me go!”
Her elbow punched into the farmer’s stomach as she struggled. He grunted with the blow, so she did it again, ki
cking, scratching and biting in desperate silence.
“Witch.” He shook her hard enough to rattle her eyes in their sockets. The first blow of his fist stunned her and she collapsed, held upright only by his grip. He waited till she regained her senses before he hit her again, to be sure she felt every least bit of the punishment he had in store for her. He told her so.
Torchay pressed his naitan closer into the angle between wall and walkway, his body covering hers. Not that mere flesh and blood were much defense against the cannon’s iron balls, but at least if he failed her this time, he would surely die first. He put his lips next to her ear and shouted so he could be heard. “We should pull back. They’re targeting the walls now.”
“And the town.”
Since the bombardment started, she had argued against leaving the walls because the Tibran missiles sailed over their heads to crash into the shops and houses of Ukiny. Then, she had been right. They were safer on the walls. But no longer.
The captain turned her head. Torchay pulled back, allowing her to find his ear.
“It’s too late to pull back.” Her lips brushed his skin as she spoke. “Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t do it now. We’re safer staying put.”
Torchay gave up. She was likely right, as usual. And even if she wasn’t, she was the captain.
A cannonball smacked into the crenellations behind them, sending stones tumbling to the walkway. Hands molded to his captain’s head, he waited till the biggest debris settled, then lifted his head just enough to peer behind him. The other guards lay over their naitani in the space beyond his feet.
“Hamonn!” Torchay bellowed the man’s name, but doubted he could be heard over the cannon’s roar. He propped himself on elbows to see better, and thought something moved past the South naitan’s guard.
“Status?” his captain asked.
“Checking.” He nudged Hamonn with his foot. Rubble spilled from the man’s back, but the man himself did not move.
“Casualties, Sergeant?”