He ducked his head to her and turned his thick body to leave, but she spoke to him, uncharacteristically. She wasn’t even sure why. Maybe because the way he acted reminded her of Wilfred, in the way he seemed to duck his head to everyone and keep mostly to himself.
“You’re in Kestrel Squad, right?” she asked.
“Uh, y-y-yes. I am,” he stuttered. “M-m-mainet Wolter is my n-n-name.”
“Glad to meet you, Mainet. I’m Kate Courtenay.”
“Yes, I kn-kn-know.”
“Have you been in the Order long?”
“For just t-t-two y-y-years.”
“Oh, a veteran, then. I just arrived. It was my first battle.”
The man’s blue eyes stared out at her from under the shock of his red hair. It seemed as if he was waiting for something.
“Well, it was nice meeting you, Mainet. I’ll see you around. Congratulations on a good day of battle.”
“Y-y-yes,” he said. “You, too.”
He ducked his head again and skittered off toward the grand hall. Kate shook her head and headed to her room.
During the off days immediately after the battle, Kate often found herself climbing the stairs to the north tower to look out over the gate. It was quiet again after the attack, but she imagined she could feel the tension from the Reds making up the shield wall duty. Maybe it was her own anxiety making itself known.
It was a strange thing. Most of the time, she was like a fish among rabbits, impotently flopping around, needing water but not getting it. But when she was put into battle, it was like someone had thrown her into a crystal clear lake. She moved through it smoothly with perfect efficiency. It felt as if she was right where she belonged.
She didn’t understand it all. When not fighting, she was miserable and alone. The only interaction she really had was with Wilfred, and that was fairly rare. It was not the best of situations. The Blue was himself sort of an outcast, though at least he had the other Blues to rely on. She wasn’t sure what her future held. What was wrong with her? She actually looked forward to battle, the only time she seemed to be where she belonged.
She and her squad went on duty again and started their three-day rotations. The demons attacked more frequently, but not on the scale they had in Kate’s first battle. These were not all-day battles, but skirmishes that lasted an hour or a few. She was on duty for many of them, but others she watched from the wall or heard about when taking her meals.
Day, night, it didn’t really seem to matter to the demons. That seemed strange to Kate, figuring they would prefer the darkness, but maybe that was just an old legend that held no truth.
When her squad manned the shield wall, some of them occasionally nodded to her or even gave her a wave. She responded in kind, but there was never much conversation. She was content that at least they were trying to make her feel like she fit in. Some of them, anyway. Others were as aloof as always.
It made her wonder if it was normal or completely because she was a noble. Maybe it was because she was a woman. There wasn’t really anyone she could ask.
All the while, Sergeant Cholan watched over them, being a part of them, but not really—smiling, but not really. He didn’t speak to her much, but he didn’t speak to the others much, either, unless he was barking commands. It was strange all the way around.
The only time the weight of all the tension eased was when Kate fought. There was something about the shield strapped to her arm and the way the sword whistled in the air that made her feel at home. Maybe it was just all her years of training. Maybe it made her feel like she was back at her father’s estate.
Or it could be the control she felt when wielding her tools.
It almost seemed like the demons were testing them. The relatively short but intense battles started and stopped with no warning. Fresh troops were rotated in to allow those injured to heal. At any given time, a few of her squad mates were out to allow healing.
In all the battles she had taken part in, Kate had not yet been injured. Her training and her supreme skills kept her from being rotated out. Her chain mail sometimes had splinters of demon claw in it, and she occasionally got bruises from being battered around by the larger demons, but no claw or tooth reached her flesh.
On the other hand, she was death incarnate to any demon who came close to her blade. Whereas the monsters often rushed as a group to try to push the entire shield wall over, there was always a space in front of Kate. She cut them down so quickly, the demons had trouble keeping up and filling the holes she carved in their line.
This had an odd effect. The nods and waves became less frequent. The all-too-familiar looks returned. Some of her squad looked down their noses at her, as if they were the noble and she the commoner, and some glared at her, unknowingly showing their inner feelings.
“They’re jealous,” Wilfred told her one day as she was drinking the water he brought her during a battle. “You go out there every day and slaughter demons, never getting injured. You’re better than all of them. They envy you, and that causes them to be angry with you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Why would it anger them that I’m killing our enemies? It has to be something else. It’s because I’m a duke’s daughter. I’ve never lived that down.”
“It may have started out that way, but that’s not all of it. It’s jealousy, I tell you. Even more so because not only are you better at soldiering than they are, you don’t need to be here. You could be back at your father’s estates, with all the money you would ever need.”
Kate thought about that as she served for the next several weeks. Were all the soldiers so petty? The only one who hadn’t given her mean looks had been Mainet. He still ducked his head at her, but he didn’t wave or greet her. Not that he ever had.
She had to face it: she would never fit in. She hardened her heart. It was fine. She was still here for the Order’s mission. She was not here to make friends. The lump in her stomach ached, though. What was she doing wrong?
Time passed, and it was counted in battles and blood. Kate lost track of what day or month it was. It seemed as if she had been in the Order, and on the front line, for a year, though it couldn’t possibly have been that long. The days were still long and warm, so they must not have passed out of summer yet.
Kate’s squad still looked at her with derision, still excluded her from anything they did on their days off. She had stopped caring. She was there for one reason: to keep the line.
After a particularly rough week in which there had been small battles at least once per day, the morning started off looking as if they might get a break.
It was humid, but not that hot, and insects were out in droves. They made it uncomfortable, but at least the gates were quiet. There were no sounds other than the soldiers softly talking to each other and the buzz of the flying pests. No vibrations shook the ground, and nothing came from the gates to disturb them. Maybe they would have a day to rest.
Halfway through the day, it started to rain. It was a warm rain, showering the soldiers off and on. When the sky was clear, heat rose in shimmering waves from the soaked ground, like steam coming off a kettle. Then it rained again and soaked soldier and ground alike.
During one hard shower, the gates opened abruptly and demons started pouring out. The wall barely got in place in time to repel the first assault, and more of the Red went down than normal.
They rallied and the wall held firm, expanding and contracting as the demon hordes were either reduced or reinforced by more coming through the gates. Kate sighed as she cleaved another ugly head with her sword. So much for a rest day.
The battle raged on for a half hour before Kate got the sense that it would not be one of the shorter skirmishes. Their enemies kept coming, and in the slippery, muddy place they fought, a mistake was likely to cause someone’s death. More than one soldier in her view had a fatal slip.
As they fought on, Kestrel Squad seemed to falter. In fact, Kate’s whole platoon seemed to b
e folding in on itself. She moved side to side, helping to cover the spaces opening up around her and losing herself in the dance of combat. She let her body move as it willed, responding to subtle shifts in the demon line without having to think about it.
Kate finished off another demon in front of her, looked around, and was shocked to see that she was alone. The wall had reformed nearly twenty feet behind her, and she was standing in the midst of dozens of charging black bodies, all slavering for her blood.
Freed from worry about striking any other Order soldiers nearby, she let loose.
She swung the sharpened part of her shield at head level, slicing the neck of a demon trying to catch her with its claws. Spinning, she slashed at others, each swing carving claws or horns, arms or legs. With each slash, green blood flew and demons screamed in pain. She found a rhythm, spinning, dodging, and delivering death every time she moved.
Kate danced through the ranks of the demons, feeling freer than she had in a long time. She sliced another demon’s neck, spun, and kicked its head, tearing it off its body and flinging the body part into the waiting monsters. As she picked up speed, she became even more efficient.
She wasn’t sure how long her solo battle went on, but sometime during it, she started laughing. Despite the acid burn of the green demon blood that had splashed into her mouth, she laughed like she was insane and mowed down the enemy ranks until it registered in the back of her mind that she was close to another part of the shield wall.
Bashing one final demon with her shield and plunging her sword into its eye, she slipped into the shield wall and took her place among the squad—not her squad—that was there.
When she looked back, piles of demon carcasses marked where she had carved a line from the spot she had found herself alone to where she entered the wall again.
Soon after, the demons fled the field. The suddenness of the retreats still surprised Kate, but she was grateful. She hunched, hands on her knees and sword dangling from her grip, breathing hard.
It had been a good day.
The soldiers around her stared silently as if she were some kind of insect they had never seen. She understood she was not with her squad, but why were they staring like that? She shrugged, flicked the thick green goo off her sword, and walked back to the rest of Kestrel Squad.
Sergeant Cholan was there waiting for her.
“The captain wants to see you. Right now.”
Kate gulped. What was she in trouble for now?
19
Kate made her way down the stairs amid looks from other Reds who were probably wondering where she was going in the middle of her duty schedule. She paid them no mind. For the captain to call her to his office so abruptly, there must be something truly wrong.
Or maybe he was going to give her an award for valor. If she admitted it to herself, her performance on the battlefield was worthy of at least a congratulations, if not a commendation. The way she saw it, she single-handedly kept her platoon’s shield wall from breaking. That deserved at least a pat on the back, didn’t it?
The command for K Company was on the ground floor of her barracks. The entire city was set up like that, at least the strictly military parts of it. It was an efficient design, keeping the companies and platoons in close proximity to their commanders. Once someone learned the basic layout, it was easy to find a particular group in relation to the others.
A young woman in an orange uniform sat at the desk in front of the captain’s office. She was scratching on parchment and didn’t notice Kate when she walked up.
The woman’s pretty nose wrinkled and she sniffed, frowning. When she raised her eyes up to finally see Kate, she gave a little seated hop.
“Oh,” she said, putting her pen down. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I’m Kate Courtenay,” Kate said. “The captain called for me. I was told to report immediately. Sorry for my state.”
The woman swept a lock of chestnut hair over her shoulder and looked Kate up and down. Her expression didn’t change, but Kate could see in her eyes that she was unimpressed. It wasn’t Kate’s fault. Her uniform had green demon blood all over it, and her cloak was a kaleidoscope of green, red, and the brown of mud. She knew she probably smelled horrible.
“Well, nothing to be done,” the woman said, wrinkling her nose again as she caught another whiff of the odor Kate could no longer smell. “Go in. Captain Wills is expecting you, of course.”
The woman jumped up and opened the door, her eyes rolling just a little, probably because she didn’t want Kate’s grimy hands touching anything.
“Thank you,” Kate said politely. She couldn’t really blame the woman for her actions. Besides, she had more important things to think about than being insulted.
“Courtenay,” a nasally voice said as she stepped into the room. “It’s about damn time. What was the delay?”
This was not starting off well. “As soon as Sergeant Cholan told me to report to you, I hurried here, sir. I didn’t even take time to wash. My apologies for that, and for not getting here quickly enough.”
“Hmmm. No one likes a suck-up, Courtenay.”
Kate wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, so she didn’t respond. She stood at attention in front of the captain’s desk, waiting.
The captain’s grey eyes took her in, starting at her mud- and blood-covered boots and making a slow traverse up her chain-mail-clad form and ending at her matted hair, tied back but still soaked with muck.
Kate had never talked to Captain Cornac Wills before, but she had seen him around the city. He wasn’t tall, but neither was he short, around the same height as Kate. He looked soft, like he had been sitting behind a desk too much and not exercising enough. His sandy brown hair was cut like many of the officers’ hair, short with no particular style.
He pushed his chair back and shifted, allowing Kate to see the swell of his belly clearly. Yes, too much desk and not enough exercise.
“I occasionally watch the battles from the tower in the west wing. It helps me to know what my soldiers are doing.”
Kate still wasn’t sure if she should speak, so she didn’t. The man was going to make her stand there at attention for the whole tongue-lashing, it seemed. Things may be worse than she thought.
“This morning, I was watching the battle through my looking glass,” he said, holding a metal cylinder up as if to prove it existed. “I received it from the Supreme Commander himself, you know. A gift to show how much he appreciates my work in making K the smoothest running company in the Order.”
Kate knew for a fact that every captain was presented with a looking glass when he or she made rank. The man was trying to impress her, but he was doing nothing more than acting a fool.
“As I was saying, I was watching the battle through my looking glass.” The man actually held the item up again. He must have been very proud of it. “And what did I see?” He paused and looked into Kate’s eyes. After a moment, he raised his eyebrows.
Kate sighed inside. This was not going well. “You saw K company fighting demons? Sir.”
“Yes, quite. I saw my company fighting demons. It is, after all, what they are supposed to do, the lowly Red who inhabit the bottom rung of the command structure. But more specifically, I saw one Red doing something that, well, simply shocked me. Do you know what that was, Courtenay?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Kate said, though she had an idea.
The crack of the captain’s palm against his desk drew Kate’s eyes to the point of contact. Cornac Wills shook his hand, apparently feeling more pain than he expected.
“Do not play games with me, Courtenay. Your father’s influence will not help you here. You cannot do whatever you like, even if you do fancy yourself a duchess. You know as well as I that I’m talking about your arrogant and ostentatious actions during battle.
“You broke from the line, endangering the rest of your squad and platoon. You went off on your own, potentially upsetting the delicate strategies of your
betters, of those smarter and wiser than you. Simply put, you acted childishly, trying to be a hero and risking our entire organization. Those types of antics are the purview of the Black command.
“Luckily, the other Reds”—he seemed to infuse the word with scorn—“were able to recover so your antics did not succeed in giving the demons the foothold they might have otherwise been granted.”
Kate realized she was standing with her mouth open. Of all the things she thought to be scolded for, she never would have come up with this.
“Well, Courtenay? What say you? Do you have an explanation for your actions? A pathetic, contrived excuse, mayhap?”
She understood, closing her mouth with a click. If she tried to explain, he would take it as arguing, and things would just get worse from there. “No, sir.”
The captain muttered something to himself and scratched his belly with the blunt side of his pen.
“I see,” he said. He turned his attention back to the papers in front of him, motioning with the pen in his hand. “You are to turn in your sword, shield, and cloak to the supply sergeant. As of this moment, you are assigned to platoon thirty-three.”
“Sir?”
“Platoon thirty-three. You are reassigned. You may retain your current bunk, but you will need to go to Sergeant Gallin Shuris for duty assignment.”
“But, sir, platoon thirty-three is a Blue platoon.”
A sly smile crept onto the captain’s face. “Oh, I know what platoon thirty-three is, Courtenay. If you cannot be trusted to follow orders when you have a sword in your hand, perhaps it will be easier for you with a mop.
“Honestly, the Order today. Just a lot of children swinging swords. When will they realize that we can only win through intelligence and administration? And the Black, the best we could do would be to disband them completely. If only I was in charge, the things I would do…”
Order of the Fire Box Set Page 15