FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  As the sun rose, Sara peered out of an alley while standing in the shadows. She was assessing the situation. Even though she had already decided to join the guard, there was no reason to walk into the situation blind. It could be a trap with the captain of the Corcoran guard in league with the Red Lions. She wouldn’t know unless she saw enemy troops amongst the rank-and-file of the Corcorans.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she eyed the huge group of men and women that composed the Corcoran guard as they lined up to leave through the city gates. Most were mounted on warhorses. Some looked like they would walk though. Most of those walkers were very tall with long legs. The kind of legs that looked like wood splints and told her that they weren’t human. The thin legs that she suspected were thin tree roots, told her that she was looking at the fabled tree folk of old.

  Then her body tensed at the sound of a massive trumpet coming closer. Minutes went by as she waited for the Corcoran guard to start to move out. She thought it had been a signal, but not one person made the effort to pack their things and hurry along. Then she realized why. The ground began to thump with the sound of something massive moving closer. She looked down and saw the tiny pebbles around her feet thumping in alongside the sound. Then her eyes truly widened in amazement—atop massive beasts of gray skin rode more guards. The beasts had sinuous trunks and were hairless from their noses almost to the tips of their tails. Taking them in, she knew they were animal and not kith, inhuman creatures with mage powers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t just as rare as the sentient tree folk that lumbered alongside them. Her father had called them elephants. Sara looked at them and named them machines of war. They lifted their long trunks and loudly trumpeted in the wind, as if announcing their dominion over the earth that trembled beneath their feet. The sound didn’t so much as startle her. But what it did do was block the sound of feet approaching behind her.

  Before she knew it the tip of a sword was at the back of her neck and the blade was forcing her to walk into the sunlight.

  “Easy does it now, lass,” said a man with a deep voice.

  She tried to halt their forward movement, but he only pressed the blade harder into the soft skin just below her hairline. She was practiced in numerous ways to kill a man. With the stern grip on the weapon behind her, she feared he knew the easiest way to kill a soldier from behind as well. All he had to do was push his blade forward sharply and it would sever her spinal cord from her brain. Giving her an instantaneous but merciful death. The trouble was that she didn’t want to die. She had so much to live for. So much to fight for. Dying at the hands of the Red Lions was not at the top of her list.

  “Who are you?” she asked insistently. “Did the Red Lion guard send you?”

  A sharp laugh came from behind her. “Now why would those red pissers do that?”

  Her shoulders relaxed a little. “Only the Corcoran mercenaries call the reddies that.”

  “Well, you did happen to find the whole of Corcoran guard. Would you expect a watcher for our troops to be anyone else?” said the gruff voice in slight amusement.

  Sara took that as a sign that he might not want to kill her. But when she tried to step cautiously to the side, he corrected her just as quickly.

  “Be a good girl,” he said. “No tricks now.”

  Back stiff, Sara walked into the open area.

  When she had walked ten steps and a group of Corcoran mercenaries twenty feet away turned to eye her curiously, the man behind her said, “Now spin around slowly, girl, hands out from your sides.”

  She did as he asked and heard him comment, “That’s a nice set of blades you got there.”

  She smiled. She liked a person who could appreciate a fine weapon. She’d known when she’d first eyed the scimitar that it would be worth the trouble of keeping it.

  “Thank you. You worried I might use them on you?”

  She heard his grunt before he said, “When a girl carries a steel-forged blade and a knife of a well-known trainer, I would fear that indeed.”

  She bit her lip to halt a retort, somewhat impressed that he recognized the marksmanship of both her blade and her knife.

  “Now,” he said cautiously, “why don’t you tell me why you’re spying on my crew? No tall tales now. I can sniff them out.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was lying or telling the truth. She’d met mages with weirder powers.

  Before she could speak another voice rang out, and it was one she recognized. Captain Simon said, “This is Sara Fairchild, and she’s here to join your crew.”

  Sara spun to see the captain walking up to them both. She knew that she had to make this act good. She wanted into the guard, but she didn’t want on the front lines. She needed to find Hillan, not make a target of herself. There was only one way to make a mercenary despise you on the first day: act like a brat. An entitled brat would never have been accepted as one of their own. She was sure of it.

  “Is she, now?” said the man with an assessing eye.

  At the same time Sara spluttered, “I am not here to join his unit. I will test for my position in the first division.”

  Squaring her shoulders, she continued, “I know the mercenary code. Everyone who enters faces a test. A test of skill to determine where they shall rank and what unit they shall serve in. I do not belong in this man’s unit. I belong with the first division.”

  Turning to the now silent gentleman in front of her, she said, “No offense.”

  He gave her an amused look. “I’m not sure you could handle being in my crew even if I allowed it.”

  Sara stiffened. “I have no doubt I could beat every man and woman that serves under you with my eyes closed.”

  “Could you, now?” he replied with an interested look in his eyes.

  “I could,” confirmed Sara, patting her knife handle confidently.

  Then his eyes dulled as if that simple gesture had disappointed him. “Blades don’t make a warrior girl. Seems you’ve yet to learn that.”

  Before she could respond, laughter exploded all around her from the mercenaries loitering nearby. Sara gave them an angry look.

  Then the captain interjected while waving a fist for silence. Everyone shut up.

  To Sara, he said in a measured tone, “If you won’t take my commands, then why are you here?”

  Unease filtered through Sara. For the first time she wondered if her plan to find Mercenary Hillan was in jeopardy. She was on a mission to find her father’s last exploits, but she also refused to sacrifice her pride in her family and the training she had studied since childhood. There was a reason her father had been commander of the entire military operation and not just a cog in the wheel, as Captain Simon was. Her father had been equal to the mages and sat on the military advisory panel that had decided tactics for the mercenaries, imperial soldiers, and mages as a whole.

  But she also was aware that to save her father’s place in history, she needed to do more than fight well. She needed to solve this mystery. So she didn’t back down. Instead she blustered her way through like a headstrong woman with too much pride. She acted like a real mercenary would, or least how a prideful young warrior should—confident in their prowess and assertive of their place.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” Sara said. “I am here to join the Corcoran guard, but more than that, I want to be assigned to the first division. The first division are the fiercest and proudest of your men. They are on the frontlines and don’t hide behind the other divisions. I want to be in the first charge.”

  Simon smiled and then he said coldly, “That position is earned.”

  “I am no common mercenary, and I assure you I have earned it by…”

  “By doing what?” the captain interjected firmly. “By being born a Fairchild and a battle mage?”

  Sara felt her stomach turn. “There is nothing wrong with being a Fairchild.”

  “I agree,” replied the captain. “But there is everything wrong with being a young woman too confident in h
er skills to know she is at the bottom of the totem pole. No matter what family she was born to.”

  Sara felt a hot flush run up her spine. They had no idea what she had gone through to get here. Before her father’s death and now after her mother’s. The one thing she had never expected was a challenge to her fighting abilities.

  Well, expect the unexpected, she thought grimly. Isn’t that the motto of the mercenaries?

  The hot flush running up her spine, a mixture of anger and confusion, only grew when the gray-bearded man standing beside the captain said, “Your father had the same problem.”

  She turned to him. “Confidence?” The one word was spit out with rancor.

  “Pride,” he said. “And that was his downfall.”

  “You don’t know a thing about my father.”

  The gray-bearded man’s eyes turned cold. “On the contrary, I know everything. Seeing as I trained him from a wee lad.”

  Sara’s mouth dropped. Then she realized how wrong she had been. This had been the test, the test that all mercenaries who came before the Corcoran guard were subjected to, and she had failed.

  “Yes, girl,” said the man curtly. “I am Amadeus. I am Commander of the First Division.”

  “But,” Sara stammered, “why didn’t you say so?”

  “Because, child,” he said gruffly, “every man and woman who is a part of my unit began as one thing…a common mercenary. And you have a lot to learn before you can be that.”

  Amadeus turned on his heel and left.

  Sara stared at his retreating back before the captain’s clearing his throat had her turning toward him. She felt a mixture of pride and shame that her father’s instructor had seen her this way.

  “Sara Fairchild, you have been deemed unacceptable for a position in the first division. As such, I am offering you one last chance.”

  Victory bloomed in her mind.

  “A weapons prepper for the Third division.”

  Sara stiffened outwardly. But inwardly she cheered. She should feel anger, spite, and shame at the assignment. But it was just what she needed to slip around camp with armament supplies in hand as she searched for Hillan. Still, she felt as if she had let her father down by not getting the best position in the troops from the outset. She knew in her heart that she was here for one goal: to find one man and return to Sandrin in less than month. But it galled her to be considered unfit for the one thing she had trained her whole life for when she had been denied her pride of place as the recognized foremost fighter in Sandrin.

  The captain read her disappointment in her eyes. He thought it was because of the shame. She said nothing to deter him.

  “You are untried, unproven, and a liability until you’ve been through the forge,” said the captain of the Corcoran guard. “I offered you a job. This is it. Take it or leave it.”

  She couldn’t contest the captain’s words. The principle of it no longer mattered. The honor of her family no longer mattered. In fact, it was the thought of her dead mother and father that quickly sopped up the last of her pride. Pride hadn’t kept the Fairchild family alive, and she was no longer safe in Sandrin. She could only defeat her opponents for so long. She knew to truly win those fights she had to find out what they were seeking before they found it themselves.

  “I accept,” she said with a straight back and hard eyes.

  The captain nodded.

  Then he said, “You are a child. But you can be molded.”

  Sara’s jaw stiffened. She was fighting not to lash out.

  “Just hear me out,” said the captain with a biting tongue. “According to word around these parts, you are quite good with a blade. But being able to kill someone in an alley and kill them when ten men are running at you from the other side, your partner is dying at your feet, the battlefield is aflame, and there’s so much noise you can’t think is another thing entirely. I won’t have a green mercenary whose head isn’t on straight working my crew or my inner circle. For now that includes the first division, battle mage or no. You will earn your place or you can go back to whatever it was that you were doing now.”

  The captain gave a sharp whistle. An older, battle-scarred woman with short-cropped hair came trotting forward.

  “Karina, if she decides to stay, show her the ropes and integrate her into the third division.”

  As he turned and walked away, Karina snapped a sharp salute.

  She turned back to Sara and said sharply, “Well?”

  “I’m staying,” Sara said, fighting not to let weariness and dejection overcome her. For a journey to fight a war, her start was awfully depressing.

  Karina eyed her in speculation. “Fine. But get your butt in gear. I don’t take mopers or whiners in my division. And yes, I am Commander of the third division. We work hard, we’re not grunts and you will have your ass handed to you if I hear one whine come out of your mouth about your assignments. Am I clear, Mercenary Fairchild?”

  Sara nodded. “Crystal clear.”

  “Good,” Karina said with a sharp smile.

  “Now, I don’t take on green striplings lightly. You will do everything I say and do it promptly. You will train with your core from dawn to dusk. You will dig latrines and pitch tents. In short you will no longer be a Fairchild, an elite fighter among men, but a grunt who must earn her place.”

  Sara stared at her stonily.

  Then she shouted. “Can you do that?”

  She didn’t flinch. “I can.”

  “I didn’t hear you!” she roared.

  “I can!”

  Karina turned and gestured for a runner to come forth. “To you, I am Commander Karina. You’ll be joining the Corcoran third division as a weapons prepper, a probate-in-training, really, and from there we will see. Raze will take you to the archivist now.”

  Sara nodded in agreement.

  With that Sara Fairchild became the lowliest mercenary in the company of the Corcoran guard. Karina had to deal with a fight that broke out between five or six mercenaries before she had barely finished speaking.

  To Sara, Raze said with a snicker, “The old man’s over here. How’s it feel to be a common mercenary?”

  Sara gave him a side glance.

  “Yeah, we heard every word,” he said with another snicker.

  Her shoulders slumped as she looked around and saw several mercenaries eyeing her with glares on their faces. It was going to be a long training period, it seemed. She didn’t mind their ire. Her problem was that she couldn’t kill any of them, seeing as they were supposed to be on the same team.

  Raze left her standing in front of an old man that was so flustered he was pacing in a circle.

  Staring at the archivist, Sara waited.

  Finally the man finished scribbling a note that he handed off to a messenger boy, who dashed away as fast his legs could carry him. As Sara watched, his feet barely seemed to hit the ground.

  “By the gods, he’s fast.”

  “Yes, yes he is,” said the archivist, “Half-windrunner, that one.”

  Sara’s head snapped around. She desperately wanted to ask if he meant that literally. She’d never met a half-human, half-kith before. But even she knew that would be rude to ask, even if the boy wasn’t present. There weren’t many kith-human hybrids around for a reason. Unions between any species of kith and humans were forbidden. No one had told her why, but she suspected it had to do with a couple of mass murderers with kith ancestry in the past. At least that was what her father had hinted at when he had told her stories of olden times.

  “You the new recruit?”

  She nodded. “Mercenary Fairchild, sir.”

  He grunted. “You’ll need new pants, shirts, jerkins, and to be fitted for armor. But first I need to notify the Mercenary Guild you’re heading out with us.”

  He turned and whistled sharply.

  Another messenger boy quickly came forth. “Rams, you have that new male recruit’s notification letter for the guild?”

  Rams nodded eag
erly.

  “Good,” said the archivist as he wrote in a blur on the mobile desk he had in his arms. Ripping the sheet from the stick that held it in place, he handed it to Rams. “Give the guild official this as well and hurry back!”

  Rams jumped on a horse and galloped off.

  “Is he going with us?” Sara asked curiously.

  The man gave her a glance. “Only if he gets back in time. Why are you still here?”

  “Because I have a question,” she said firmly.

  “No time, get going!”

  “The sooner you answer, the sooner I leave,” she retorted.

  He gave her an irritated look. “Well, what is it? Spit it out.”

  “How long before we reach the battlefield?”

  The man grimaced. “Depends on which one you mean. There’s a small skirmish on the edge supposedly three days’ ride from here.”

  Yes, thought Sara. That’s the one.

  Then the archivist continued, oblivious to her thought process, “But the larger battle is in deep Kade territory at least three weeks’ march away.”

  She blinked in astonishment, thinking, which one will I find Hillan at?

  “And the Red Lion guard?” she asked hopefully.

  “What do you want with those ingrates?” he said sharply.

  She flinched. “I heard we were joining forces.”

  “You didn’t hear wrong,” he said harshly. “But that’s far up in the Kade territory. Won’t see no Red Lions for a while, and that’s a good thing!”

  “Right,” she said guiltily as her stomach plummeted. That was nowhere near as soon as she had planned.

  “Didn’t I say you needed new clothes? Get to the tailor!”

  She jumped, ready to do his bidding. He might have been old, but he had a voice like the crack of a whip through the air. You stopped what you were doing and did what you were told when he let loose.

  Trouble was, she had no idea where to go.

  It doesn’t matter, Sara decided internally. As long as it’s away from here.