Women of War

by Alexander Potter

  And Kreegar? Passed on to the Halls of Mandaros, where judgment awaited him.

  All sound died; the wind seemed to hold its breath as he watched the twenty Ospreys who now lingered around him in a circle. If they chose to attack him, it was over.

  He could see indecision at play across many faces, some more familiar than others. If the gallows hadn’t held them back, death wouldn’t.

  The silence strengthened, thinned, grew oppressive.

  It was broken by Alexis, who turned to her companion. “Pay up,” she said, holding out a flat palm.

  Her companion was Auralis. “Pay up?”

  “You said six days. I said three.”

  “It was four. The way I see it, there are no winners.”

  “Then open your damn eyes. I was closer. You owe me.”

  Fiara laughed. “Don’t mess with him, ’Lexis.”

  “The hells. Pay up,” she added, sliding her dagger out of its sheath.

  “Sentrus,” Duarte said coldly.

  Everyone stared at him. He stared at Alexis. Her expression shifted instantly into a clean anger, but she jammed her dagger back into its sheath. She was fond of it; she didn’t want to lose it.

  Or have it embedded in her chest.

  “The rest of you, back to your tents.”

  Fiara whistled; she made a fist and pumped it once. “Sentrus,” she said, managing both syllables without a sneer.

  Alexis still faced Duarte. After a moment, she said, “Do I get a raise?”

  “My tent,” he said, still cold. “Now.”

  All studied casualness was gone the minute the witnesses were. Alexis faced him across his pathetic excuse for a desk. Field desks were terrible, unless you were a commander. It was a rank he would never attain. And he thanked the gods daily for that fact.

  “You’ve been here three weeks,” he told her quietly. He did not refer to her promotion. “I’ve had Dunbar confined three times; I’ve broken up eight fights. I’ve killed three men, including Kreegar.”

  She lifted a hand. “Permission to speak freely?” she said, with a trace of humor.

  His raised brow told her how much he appreciated the attempt. “Granted.”

  “Nine fights.”

  He thought, for a moment, that had he actually been a commander, the army would be a lot smaller. “Nine, then. Your point?”

  “Give us something else to fight. Soon.”

  “Sentrus—”

  “Alexis will do.”

  “I decide that.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever. You can add a stripe or a quarter circle to the arm. Or the armpit. It won’t make a damn bit of difference. No one trusts you. No one trusts each other. You have no idea if we ever will.”

  He nodded quietly.

  “But with people like us, there’s only one way to test it. We’re not theoreticians. We’re not even army. We’re just ... your cadets.” She said the word with a grimace. Lifted her hands, signaling, of all things, retreat. “We only learn one way, Primus. We don’t know what you want. We can guess. Some of us are pissed off about it; some don’t give a damn.”

  “What do you ‘guess’ we want?”

  “You want us to fight like the Annies fight. We’re ready to do that.” She paused, and then added, “But we’re not ready to sit, to wait, to be picked off because we’re stupid. Give us a fight.”

  He nodded quietly. “Sixty-seven men and women. You’re one sentrus. Who will the others be?”

  Her brows rose and then lowered, as if they were wings.

  “Not Fiara,” she said at last. “And if you repeat that, I’ll kill you.”

  “You’ll try.”

  “Even odds. I’ve seen you fight. But unlike Kreegar and half of the rest, I paid attention.”

  He nodded grimly. “Continue.”

  “Auralis, maybe. You’ll have to bust him down, but he’ll do.”

  “That’s two. I need at least five.”

  “Margie. She’s grim, but she’s got enough discipline to keep things in line unless all hell breaks loose. Stepson.”

  “Stepson? He’s a—”

  “Psychotic, yes. But fear works. He knows you’ll kill him if he blinks the wrong way; you’ve been itching to do it. That’s what, four of us? Put Cook up as well.”

  “Cook is—”

  “Bloody big.”

  Duarte hesitated for just a moment, and then he nodded again. “Don’t let the tent hit you on the way out.”

  She muttered something rude under her breath. It was a start.

  Ellora AKalakar liked maps.

  Which was good; she had to look at a lot of them, and some were of questionable accuracy. She made marks on them, pinned flags to them, removed flags from them, watched as whole river boundaries were redrawn. Birds were the scouts of choice for the Northern army, but a bird’s-eye view was not always accurate, and very, very few people could get information from conversations with birds. She found some amusement in watching them try.

  Then again, she found mages more or less amusing in general. They were obdurate, arrogant, overweening in their vanity; they fretted about things that she hadn’t worried about since the vagaries of youth had been shaken off with a vengeance. With the exception of the warrior magi, they were all considered elderly, although she privately thought much of that age was like carefully applied make-up; age and wisdom, or age and power, were often conflated among mages.

  That, and she liked their beards.

  Had she hated the magi, she would have found them amusing anyway, because Devran ABerrilya could not abide their presence for more than an hour at a time. He was not a man given to outburst; instead, he used silence like a blunt instrument. He was positively glacial on this particular day.

  It was the first time she had pinned a black flag to the map. She thought he might reach out to sweep it away, and apparently, so did Bruce Allen; the Eagle hovered between them, his shadow like outstretched pinions, while the mages talked among themselves.

  At length, however, they finished, and they turned their attention to the maps that held them all. The Terrean of Averda and the Terrean of Mancorvo were the most detailed portions of the map; there were only two passages into the Dominion, one through each. But Mancorvo’s pass went through the mountains; Averda’s did not.

  It was therefore in Averda that most of the battle was likely to be fought.

  “What will your Ospreys do?” Commander Allen asked quietly.

  “What they have to.”

  “And that?”

  She shrugged. “Change the face of the Northern army.”

  Devran’s face grew slightly pinched. “The face of the kings’ army does not require changing.”

  “We’ve had this argument,” Commander Allen said. He looked at Ellora, his gaze keen. “You’re sending them into the heart of the Annagarian front.”

  She nodded. “They’re few enough.”

  “They won’t make it,” Devran replied.

  Her turn to shrug. She did; it was artless. “They were carrion anyway. What do you care?”

  “They broke the kings’ laws.”

  “The Annies don’t care about the kings’ laws, and we’re not in the Empire.”

  “I said we’ve had this argument.”

  Devran rose. “Will you let her play these games?”

  “They’re not games,” she replied evenly.

  He ignored her. He often did. “Her men are barely part of the army; they serve her. I do not want our command structure to devolve into a personality contest.”

  “You command your army,” she told him. “I’ll command mine.”

  “You will answer to the kings.”

  No, she thought, but she didn’t bother to say it. She looked at the markers and pins. I’ll answer to their wives, their children, their parents. If they have any who give a damn.

  Sixty-six men and women were not a small force, unless held against the balance of the Imperial army. Primus Duarte AKalakar watched
them warily. Truth? He didn’t like them. They didn’t like him. He was counting on the fact that they hated the Annies more. He had tested this hatred a handful of times, culling their numbers; choosing, with deliberate care, the men who could best serve as examples by dying. He was not a torturer; he generally killed quickly. He did not kill officially.

  That would require paperwork and time, neither of which he had in abundance.

  No, he thought, as Alexis lifted two fingers in the silence of the occasional snapped branch. It would require distance. It would make him just another servant, albeit one with rank. This way, he was master, or no one was.

  It was close.

  With the Black Ospreys, it would always be close.

  By killing swiftly, and without any compunction, without any sign of hesitation or remorse, he made the game deadly. More, he made it clear that they were his.

  He waited a moment. Alexis lifted her left hand, and flattened her palm. He lifted his own, then, as if he were a conductor, and brought them together. She nodded, left her men, her fingers dancing wordless in the air.

  She had learned quickly. And she moved.

  He was almost captivated by the speed and silence of that graceful motion. His eyes were still on her when she reached his side, and she noticed; she noticed everything. Her brows rose in amusement, but her eyes were steady and unblinking when they came to rest upon the village. The valley contained it. Here, between the perch of too many trees, they could see the planted fields, and beyond them, the huts that were home to the Dominion’s slaves. Beyond those huts, a stone manor, the only such dwelling, and behind it, the tall structures that were, in theory, their target. Granaries. They were guarded; he could see horses moving in the distance. They were more easily counted then men. In fact, in Averda, they were counted and prized more highly than men.

  He did not look at his hands.

  Alexis did. And she smiled. They had traversed the forests with care, avoiding the mounted patrols and guard-posts that the Annies relied on. The Imperial army was a theory, now; the Ospreys were surrounded, in all directions, by the forces of the Tyr’agnate of Averda. Callesta.

  Learn to speak a different language, he thought.

  He glanced back once. Just once.

  The night would be filled with sounds of terror: laughter, screaming, the cries of the dying. Some of them would be his; most would not. Twisted fate, then, that the ones that would linger longest, in memory and nightmare, would be those that were not.

  But they were parchment, paper; they were the things upon which the first of the Northern messages would be left. Over the corpses of the dead—the many, and the helpless—the banner of the Ospreys would be the only moving thing by night’s end, and it would move by the grace of the Southern wind.

  Wind was the only thing the Southerners seemed to fear, and the wind carried the Black Ospreys.

  Ellora AKalakar looked up as Verrus Korama entered her quarters. He was quiet, which was not unusual; like Devran, his silences were often more telling than his speeches.

  He handed her a tube; she touched it. Beneath her hands, it warmed, waiting. She spoke a phrase, placed her thumb against the edge of tube that would either open or explode, and waited.

  This was Duarte’s work.

  Korama waited while the tubing fell away; waited while she uncurled the missive it contained. He even waited while she read it, his posture pitch-perfect, as if it were the only grace-note in a particularly grim second act.

  “Kallos has fallen,” she whispered. The paper fluttered to her desk. She did not touch it again.

  “There was resistance,” he said, when it became clear she wouldn’t.

  She understood what he offered, and refused to accept it. “There would be,” she replied, black humor edging all of the syllables. “Any bets?”

  He frowned. “Don’t,” he told her quietly.

  “Don’t?”

  “Don’t think like an Osprey. They have that luxury, AKalakar. You don’t.”

  Luxury. “Did anyone survive?”

  “In the village? Possibly. At night, it would be hard to be certain.”

  She didn’t ask about prisoners.

  She didn’t ask about anything. She had come to war, and with her, had brought the certain callousness that any officer must. She balanced on its edge.

  “Kalakar.”

  She had not looked away from Duarte.

  “The Ospreys were born here,” she said quietly.

  “And they were laid to rest in the North,” he replied, equally quiet. “We surrendered the colors there. We thought it wouldn’t matter.” His shrug was dismissive. “We were never a peacetime unit.”

  She looked at him, gave him that much. The darkness hid many scars.

  “This was a different war.”

  “A cleaner war.”

  “Duarte—”

  “Alexis will stay in the South.”

  And you?

  By the time they were sent to the third village, word had spread. The Northern armies were known, in the South, by the visage of the Osprey, and its wings were black.

  The prisoners that the rest of the army gathered—and admittedly, they were few enough—spoke of the Ospreys in bitter, implacable Torra. They spoke of little else, and the words were both curse and promise.

  You could have painted targets on their backs, Duarte thought, gazing at his unit. But they would have been small targets, and at that, in constant motion.

  The Annies thought they numbered in the hundreds. In the thousands. They thought the wind carried them. They thought the Lord of Night blessed them. Duarte was willing to admit that if there was a Lord of Night, they worked in his shadow.

  He thought about clipping their wings.

  But it was only thought. And if he didn’t join them in savagery, if he didn’t join them in murder, he gave them the opportunity to vent their rage, to plant the seeds of a different rage in their enemies. Anger made fools of all men.

  Even Duarte AKalakar.

  The villages around the granaries became focal points for the Tyr’s cavalry units. The valleys were not kind to horses; the Ospreys, who used them seldom, less so.

  They added horsekiller to the long list of epithets they wore as badges. They took their greatest losses in that enterprise. And they suffered the bitterest of their divisions there. Men, women, and children? They were seen as mirrors. Their deaths were markers, the oldest variant of an eye for an eye.

  But the horses were harder. Not for Duarte, and not for many of the Ospreys. Fiara, however, was livid. As if the horses were helpless, and the children were not.

  Alexis reined her in; it was close.

  Duarte felt the first hint of unease, then; he was prepared to kill Fiara—but he didn’t want to kill her. Wanted, in fact, the opposite. It was unexpected. Unaffordable.

  The Ospreys had lost and gained men; the gallows were empty, their shadows paler and more peaceful than the shadows the Ospreys cast. But each new Osprey that survived Duarte, that survived the insane and suicidal missions that Duarte himself chose, became AKalakar. The name meant something to them.

  But not, in the end, as much as the Black Osprey did.

  He hadn’t expected that.

  He didn’t expect, truth be told, that any of them would survive this enterprise, this terrible act of madness that their war had become. There were even moments—all of them silent—when he welcomed the thought.

  War made killers of men and women.

  His embraced them. They were his.

  Commander AKalakar waited.

  She watched the Primus as he crossed the plateau; watched the silence that enfolded him. He did not seem to be aware of it; he was aware of his armor, his steps, the path that led to her and from her.

  By his side, in the ragged surcoats that now meant almost everything to the Annies, the Ospreys walked across the camp as if they owned it. She could almost understand why Devran hated them; they were feared. They knew it.


  Primus Duarte gave a curt order to the woman who stood closest, and she, in turn, transmitted that order. Hard to imagine that men who could swagger in such a ragged line could also come to so abrupt a halt. But they did, and they watched Duarte recede as she watched him approach.

  She said, “You don’t look so much the mage.”

  His smile was slightly lopsided. His eyes were ringed dark, his hair flat against forehead and skull. Like the rest of the mages upon the field, he decried helms, and he never wore them.

  She couldn’t argue with success. “Primus.”

  He snapped a brisk salute. He was probably the only Black Osprey who could. “Commander.”

  “Report.”

  He did. She forced herself to listen. It wasn’t as hard as it might have been; there was fascination in his words, and because of it, they were fascinating. She could trace the spiral path of his flight, and it made her uneasy.

  He waited, and when the silence stretched, she realized he had finished speaking. And would never finish. The man who had come to House Kalakar seeking employment was almost entirely absent.

  “Duarte,” she said, without thought.

  He waited.

  “The Ospreys have been noted by the Tyr’agnati of both Mancorvo and Averda. The Tyr’agar himself has, for the first time in the course of this war, put a bounty on your heads.”

  He allowed himself to nod.

  “The Tyr’agar is in control of the field.” She paused, and then added, “He is not the equal of his generals.” She wanted to tell him that he could stop. Wanted to, and knew that it was a lie. He had what they wanted: the attention of the Tyr’agar. Now? They had to focus it, hone it, keep it.

  “Your men are the face of the army,” she whispered.

  And saw his reaction, clearly. Turned away.

  “You’re drinking.”

  Duarte looked up from the lip of the canteen. Alexis stood in the lee of what could charitably be called a tent. The months that had worn away at his reserve, draining what could equally charitably be called youth, had not touched or tarnished her. She moved like a cat. A hunting cat.