“Damn, the lieutenant really saved our asses.” Sergeant Chou turned from the gate, ignoring the multiple impacts against the other side. “If they’d blown this sucker we’d have been in a running fight to the next level. Is he okay?”
Torin leaned away from the body.
“Fuck.” Haysole. The di’Taykan had a way with words.
Chou touched her shoulder. “Do you ... ?”
“I’ve got it.”
A carrier roared up from the port, its escort screaming in from both sides.
“That’s it Marines, we’re out of here!”
“Staff ...”
“Go on, I’m right behind you.”
They still had to make it up to the port but, holding the high ground as they did, it shouldn’t be a problem. She spread the body bag over Second Lieutenant Franks and sealed the edges as Lieutenant Garly’s platoon started spending their heavy ordnance. From the smell of things, they’d dropped something big and flammable onto the street behind the gate.
This wasn’t the kind of war people made songs about. The Confederation fought only because the Others fought and no one knew why the Others kept coming. Diplomacy resulted in dead diplomats. Backing away only encouraged them.
But perhaps a war without one single defining ideology was exactly the kind of war that needed an infinite number of smaller defining moments.
Torin smoothed out the bag with one bloody hand then sat back and keyed the charge.
Maybe, she thought as she slid the tiny metal canister that now held Lieutenant Franks into an inner pocket on her combat vest, maybe it was time they had a few songs ...
THE BLACK OSPREYS
by Michelle West
Michelle West is the author of several novels, including The Sacred Hunter duology and The Broken Crown, both published by DAW Books. She reviews books for the online column First Contacts and for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in dozens of anthologies, including Black Cats and Broken Mirrors, Alien Abductions, Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City, and Faerie Tales.
THE AVERDAN VALLEY at night: moon low and red, stars bright. Light enough to see by, no torches required, although they were lit and carried. The earth was broken, the scent of newly turned dirt almost overwhelming.
Commander Kalakar stood at the side of one of her oldest friends, Commander Allen, called the Eagle, and with reason. His eyes were bright in the darkness; bright and keen—but they were dark as well. He touched her shoulder, just that; no words necessary, and therefore none offered. Standing side by side in companionable silence, they could count the dead.
Not accurately, of course; that would come in the morning, and the days that followed. And she would be there, for all of it. Looking for her own House colors among the fallen, looking beyond the crest of sword and rod that signified loyalty to the kings, and the kings’ army.
“Ellora.”
She nodded quietly.
“The master bard has offered his services, if you require them.”
She wanted to say no; the dead couldn’t hear his song, after all. But she bit back the word, held it, transformed it into motion. A nod. Some things best left unsaid could be, for now. The living would remember that a master bard of Senniel College had been present upon the field. And the living—most of them—would care.
She didn’t give a damn.
Verrus Korama AKalakar joined her as Commander Allen took his leave. He was injured, but not incapacitated, and he carried pen, ink, the slate across which paper would be laid. For the names. For the names, most of which she wouldn’t remember, to her shame.
“We won,” he said softly. To remind her.
“We always do,” she replied. Heavy words. She let pride seep through them and fall away. “Where is Duarte?”
Korama closed his eyes.
In the South, over a dozen years past, they had come for war. The Empire in whose army Ellora AKalakar served hadn’t started it, but they responded to its call. She had crossed the stretch of water that knew no natural divide, in the large, long boats of the Empire of Essalieyan. At the head of the armies were three Commanders: Devran ABerrilya, Ellora AKalakar, and Bruce Allen. They were known as the Flight, three great birds of prey, Northern birds: Eagle, Hawk, and Falcon. She flexed those wings now, as if she could stretch pinions and return to the safety of perch and hood after a long hunt.
But she had unleashed the fourth: Ospreys, the Black Ospreys. It was to the captain of that disbanded unit that she now strode, stepping carefully over the remains of fallen horses, men, broken weapons—the detritus of success. The stench didn’t bother her; her nose had gone numb with exposure. The living had already been culled from these fields, this broken terrible place that was the aftermath of magic. Some would return, but in dignity.
Some, never.
So many Annagarians here. Once they had been her enemies, or the sons of her enemies. It made no difference now; they looked at her, numb, and the fact that she was a woman upon their fields, in the depths of their valleys, failed—at last—to register. Some men drank, and some sang; Northern words blended with Southern until she couldn’t separate them. Nor did she try.
She was an officer, after all. She had accepted that duty almost the day she had accepted the service of men; gods only knew what those men held sacred. She knew what she did. She had learned to cultivate tunnel vision with care.
Tonight, the tunnel was long and dark.
Primus Duarte AKalakar was alone. And not alone. Hovering there, at the edge of his grief, and enmeshed in their own, stood the men and women who had once served the Kings—served her—as Black Ospreys. They paid their respects, in as much as they knew how, to their fallen. Duarte, holding the body of Sentrus Alexis AKalakar, knelt in their center.
She had crossed this valley before to reach him. It had almost been easier then. The twelve years that separated that passage from this one were at once insurmountable and flimsy.
Duarte AKalakar looked up. Looked past Cook, past Fiara, past the listing banner of the Tyr upon the field. His grip tightened briefly. He did not want to let go. Could not, he realized, hold on. He had been called Primus for more years than he cared to count, and it all came to this, this moment. Loss. His fingers brushed hair from the face of a dead woman. His lips touched her forehead. Hard to believe she could be at peace now; she had never been at peace before.
“Duarte.”
He rose, carrying Alexis. Listing, like the banner, under her weight. He would miss her anger. It was the first thing she had offered him, when they had met in the South. He had been AKalakar. She had been Alexis.
Cook, seeing the Kalakar, offered his arms, and Duarte hesitated. He wanted to carry Alexis home.
But home, he realized bitterly, had always been in Averda. In the Dominion of Annagar, the land of their enemies, when the creation of the unit had first been sanctioned. He handed Alexis, with care, to Cook; Cook had always been the largest of the Ospreys, and against his broad and bloody chest, she looked small. Diminutive. She had always seemed that way to him when she slept—and only then. He paused. Put her long blade in slack hands. Cook shifted her body so that it lay against her chest.
Primus Duarte AKalakar stepped through the small barrier of the living, and went to meet the woman whose House Name he bore.
Duarte had not been born AKalakar. Nobody was. He had been offered the name when he had arrived in the office of Ellora AKalakar. She was not, then, the ruler of House Kalakar, but it was acknowledged that she was damn close. Her hair was a pale, thin gold, shorn so it rested in a wave above blue eyes; her face was round, her bones wide, her lips slightly pursed in annoyance.
She was surrounded by paper. If there was any order to the piles that littered the huge surface of her desk, it was an entirely intuitive order; he didn’t doubt that she could find what she wanted, but he did wonder if there was anything of value to be found there.
It was clear that she wondered the same thing.
“Duarte Sorrelson?”
He nodded. He was dressed in the robes of a different order, and from the tightening of her expression, it was not an order she favored. Then again, the magi did little to make themselves popular with anyone outside of the Order of Knowledge. He had made certain to wear the symbol of the mage-born across his chest; it hung there, quartered moon, each quarter graced by the iconic symbol of one of the four elements.
“AKalakar,” he replied. As she did not tell him to sit, he ignored the fine, empty chairs that girded the visitor side of that desk, biding time, as if it were a test.
She pulled one piece of paper from the wreckage, glanced at it, and let it fall. “You’ve come seeking employment.”
He nodded.
“You are a member in good standing of the Order of Knowledge.”
He hesitated for just a moment, and then said, with the barest hint of a frustrated smile, “The words good standing would probably be contested.”
To his surprise, she looked at him, really looked, as if he had said the first thing that made him worth looking at. “You don’t look like a mage,” she said at last.
He shrugged. “Lack of gravitas?”
“Lack of slouching. Lack of beard. Lack of hubris.” She stood then. “Understand that I am not looking for a House mage. We have enough of those.”
As it was not yet clear what she was looking for, Duarte chose to be respectful; he said nothing.
“You are aware that House Kalakar maintains a large House Guard?”
He nodded. It wasn’t exactly a secret.
“Do you have problems with the concept of military authority and military discipline?”
“Not the concept, no.”
She raised a pale brow. “Sit.”
He sat.
“You were trained with the warrior magi?”
He raised a brow. “The Order of Knowledge does not commonly discuss its constituent parts with those who are not members.”
She shrugged. Waiting for a different answer.
After a moment, he shrugged as well. “Yes.”
“You are not, I see, considered powerful for one mage-born.”
It was almost an insult. “No, I’m not.”
“And you were considered somewhat unorthodox in your approach to your studies within the Order.”
He nodded again. Assessing her, being assessed.
“The Kalakar House Guard is need of a mage.”
“I believe it has two.”
“It had two.”
“And now?”
“Now it is in need of at least one.” There was no humor at all in her smile. There was, however, a challenge. “How good is your Torra?”
“Almost flawless.”
“Good. That would be useful; mine is lacking.” She paused, and then added, “A number of my soldiers speak the language well enough for the type of diplomacy they’ll be involved in.”
“How long?”
Her smile stilled. “How long?”
“How long until the war is joined?”
She said, “You’re bright, for a mage.”
He waited.
“Two months.”
He nodded. “You have other applicants, no doubt. I’m interested in the post.”
“I have five applicants,” she replied. “I can second several, if necessary. You understand that you will be a part of the Kalakar House Guard, should you accept this post?”
He nodded.
“Familiarize yourself with our rules,” she told him. “There will be paperwork to sign. I will have it delivered to your domicile.” She paused, and then added, “Members of the Kalakar House Guard are offered—and expected to take—the House name.”
So, he thought, that was true. He tried not to look eager. It fooled neither of them.
Commander Kalakar met him in silence on the field. She did not ask about Alexis; she could see the answer in every shift of exposed muscle. His face. His hands.
But she offered him this much. “She was mine.”
He nodded bleakly, saying nothing. The sky was bright, and the possibilities of the future were, as they always were for the living, endless. The dead walked a different road, and short of following Alexis, it was a road closed to them both.
He was not yet tired of living.
But he understood the honor she obliquely offered Alexis AKalakar, and he hesitated. Once, there would have been none.
The border skirmishes that characterized diplomacy between the Southern Dominion and the Northern Empire had done little to prepare the armies of the Twin Kings for the savagery of the battle itself.
Months, months spent at sea and on dry land, hoarding food and guarding supply lines, had brought them to Averda, for it was in Averda, at last, that there was any purchase upon the heart of the Dominion’s gathered forces.
Whole units of enemy Annagarians had been destroyed to the last man, for they failed to understand an offered surrender. Whole armies had been offered up as carrion, and among the fallen, many of the Imperial officers and soldiers who had worn the kings’ colors with such early pride.
This was expected; war was war.
But the actions of the enemy within this war were almost beyond comprehension. Whole Imperial villages had been razed, their occupants destroyed, their bodies left in smoking ruins: men, women, and children all. The South employed slaves in almost all levels of life; they had not seen fit to take slaves from these villages. They had left death, and the death was ugly.
Not beyond imagining, for a mage.
But for the soldiers? The laws that prevented like deaths chaffed and strangled, and in the end, many of the Kings’ own were offered to the gallows for their actions of reprisal.
It was to the gallows that Duarte looked, as they were erected. But it was to the woman he owed his allegiance that he at last went.
“Give them to me,” he asked Commander AKalakar quietly. He forced deference into the words, and it was not entirely feigned. Having seen Ellora AKalakar at the head of the House Guards that were her pride, he had discovered that she could lead men anywhere, and they would follow. Because she was almost one of them.
She was writing. On the field, there were few things that were so necessary that they needed to be signed by a Commander. Among these were writs of execution. Each Commander was responsible for signing the warrants of those men whom, in the opinion of the military police, deserved death. It was considered a formality.
Duarte meant to test this supposition.
Exposure to Southern sun had darkened Ellora AKalakar’s skin and her complexion; exposure to Southern warfare had darkened other things. She looked up from this task, Verrus Korama a shadow by her side, as he always was.
“What do you mean?” She asked him, half bitter. “Will you serve as official executioner here?”
“Yes,” he said, stark word offered in the darkness of shadowed tent. There were stockades being built, but it would be days before they were finished, and the hewing of wood, the lifting, the fitting, would occupy the army for some time.
“Why?” She set the papers aside, staring at him.
“I’ve listened to the Annagarian prisoners,” he told her quietly. “You all have.”
She nodded.
“They are convinced that the Northern armies are too weak to wage war,” he continued softly. “The presence of women upon the field only strengthens this belief. We will slaughter the whole of the Dominion without shaking that certainty if we continue to fight on the terms that we have.”
“We are the kings’ army,” she told him firmly. But she lifted a hand, and after a moment, Verrus Korama chose to retreat.
“And how many of our own—how many of our civilians—will we sacrifice in the name of those kings? The kings are not here. But we are.”
“Tread carefully.”
“I am. But you are signing writs of execution for two women and one man, and I think, AKalakar,” he added, using the House name, a
nd not the military title, “that I can make better use of them.”
She said, softly, “What use? If I grant you this request, there will be some difficulty for me; Commander Devran ABerrilya is not noted for his tolerance of poor discipline.”
“A better use than gallows fodder, although it’ll end—for them—in the same way.” He was silent for some time. “We need a different way to wage war.”
“What different way?”
“Their way. We need to speak their language.” He did not flinch; he did not move. He did not fail to meet her eyes. “You cannot ask this of your regular units.”
“Ask what?”
A game. But he was adept with words. “That they become your personal monsters.”
Her pale brow rose. “I accept no monsters in my service, Duarte AKalakar. I accept men and women who accept my command.”
“They will,” he replied. Games, all games, these words. He knew what he had to do. Had come far enough in this war, and with this woman, that he was willing to do it. To be her sacrifice. “But they have already proven that they have the strength—or the lack of moral fiber—to do what I think must be done.”
“And that?”
“Change the face of the conversation.” As if war were just that, no more.
Verrus Korama returned when Duarte AKalakar left the tent. He stood in the same spot that he always occupied; to the left of her back, his hand upon his sword. His expression was smooth and neutral; he was her calm. She had none. The hand that was raised above the inkwell shook. She understood the anger that had driven these soldiers to their acts of desperation and rage; to rape, to disembowelment, to desecration of the not quite dead. To execute them, however, was the order of the kings. Distant kings.
“Well?” She asked, without turning. Without signing the documents.
“You know what Commander ABerrilya will say,” he said quietly.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Devran.”
She could feel the Verrus’ smile; it would be brief.
“Castration of prisoners of war is considered a capital offense.”
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