Women of War

by Alexander Potter

  Aside from the growing outrage of the quartermaster, Ellora heard few complaints. And she listened for them when she walked among her own. The House Guard spoke quietly of the Black Ospreys, but every now and then, they let the unit’s colors blend with their own.

  The black bird of prey was scattered across the front. The Ospreys chose to leave it when they left the scene of battle. It was their signature. And it was hers.

  Devran ABerrilya was in a sour mood. Although she knew it was petty, she was satisfied. Commander Allen was diffident and calm. The map spoke for them.

  “He’s shaken the confidence of the Tyr’agar,” the commander said. “The Tyr has moved two of his armies onto the plateau, and one into the valley.”

  “Valley’s no good for cavalry,” she said with a frown. “Better for magic.”

  “There isn’t a surfeit of magery from within the enemy’s rank.” He circled a large area of the map. “We can approach the army on two sides.”

  “When?”

  “Three days. Maybe four.”

  She nodded.

  “Commander AKalakar?”

  “Commander Allen.”

  “Good work.”

  “The dead don’t give a shit,” Auralis said, with a grunt. Fiara’s complaint was more succinct.

  “The commander does.”

  “Tell her to carry them.”

  Duarte’s expression was about as soft as stone. “She does,” he said. And surprised himself by believing it. No one else offered any argument, and this surprised him as well. The Ospreys had taken the time to bury their dead, when they had it. They no longer left the wounded to fend for themselves. Once or twice, Duarte himself had stepped in to cloak the retreat of those who dragged the fallen behind them; he could not hide the blood trail left for long, but it was always long enough.

  It took them an extra two days—two days’ worth of food—to reach the army base.

  The Kalakar was waiting for them.

  The House Guard, in full dress, was behind her.

  She ordered the House Guards forward, and they obeyed in silence, joining the Ospreys; the difference between the field and the camp evident in the state of their surcoats, the length of their stubble, the overall smell of a road that was carved by feet alone.

  The House Guards took the dead. They handled them with care, with a solemnity that even the Ospreys couldn’t have managed. Or so Duarte would have bet—which was probably why he didn’t.

  The dead served as a reminder to the living. They were accorded the full honors of the fallen, and if the medals that decorated them briefly meant nothing at all to their corpses, if they should have meant nothing to their comrades, they did.

  “We need the Ospreys,” Ellora said quietly.

  “Where?”

  “With the House Guards.”

  “With the army?”

  She nodded. He waited.

  “We need the colors,” she said, surrendering. “But you built them, Duarte. I would never have said they would become what they’ve become. I would have been willing to bet,” that word again, “that they’d give up the flag to the House Guard.”

  “They might.”

  She raised a pale brow. Her eyes were a shade of gray-blue, clear, far-seeing. “Ask them,” she said. “But ask carefully. Don’t be surprised at their answer.” She paused. “And don’t kill them for it, either.”

  “She wants what?”

  Duarte faced Alexis across about five feet of space. No desk to hide behind, no chair to sit in, no bed to lie on. The sun was high above them, and around them, in the loose, languid circle Commander ABerrilya so despised, the Ospreys waited.

  “The Tyr’agar has moved his armies into position,” Duarte said, speaking, as Ellora AKalakar had commanded, with caution. “This could be it.”

  “What could be what?”

  “The Annies aren’t well-organized. The Tyr’s armies are, but they’re not the only men on the field. We’ll have armies across the plateau and in the valleys, and the commanders think the Tyr’agnate, at least, will be present in the valley.”

  “And the Tyr’agar?”

  He shrugged. “Less clear. We’re not a large unit. We aren’t accustomed to working within the main body of any army. We’re not used to battlefield orders. The commander recognizes this.

  “But she wants our colors to fly on the field. I think,” he added, taking a risk, “that if it were up to her, it would be only our colors.”

  “And she’d take the colors without the unit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Auralis said, stretching. Duarte considered busting him to private before Alexis could. It had become a bit of a contest—one of many. “But then again, I wouldn’t mind mooning Commander ABerrilya.”

  The mention of his name always had an effect on the Ospreys. Usually it wasn’t useful. Today, it might be.

  “Realistically,” Duarte continued, “it’s the Osprey that bears weight. There probably isn’t a man in the Annie armies that won’t recognize it. And there probably isn’t a man in the armies that won’t make straight for it, either. Not a good bet.”

  “You’d let her do this?”

  He met Alexis cold, cold glare. “She isn’t standing the unit down,” he said at last.

  “But the House Guard aren’t Ospreys. We are.”

  “We’re sixty, give or take a few. They number in the hundreds, and within the third army, even that’s insignificant. But the Black Osprey isn’t.”

  “No.”

  “One sentrus.” He turned to face the others.

  Auralis shrugged. “I’m in, if you are.”

  Two. Cook nodded. Fiara spit. Margie smiled.

  “They’re ours,” Alexis said, meaning it. “Whatever that bird means, we made it. Where are you going, Primus?”

  “The commander is waiting,” he said, with gravity. “I’ll tender her our response.”

  Twelve years later, Duarte stood beside the woman who had taken her House, becoming the Kalakar in the process. Across the long, dark stretch of broken valley, trees riven and fallen over bodies that it would take days to recover, he could see the standard of the Tyr’agnate of Callesta. Ramiro kai di’Callesta stood beneath it.

  “Do you hate him?” Ellora asked. It wasn’t really a question.

  Enemies became allies, and allies, enemies, with the turn of time and circumstance. “No. What we did, we felt we had to do. And what he did showed his mettle, even then.”

  “He was younger. He lost his father in early fighting.”

  “He was no fool. Not then. Not now.”

  “No,” she said softly. Remembering. “He knew what the colors would mean to the Tyr’agar, and the armies of the South.” She was careful not to use the derogatory term Annie. But for the moment, it was difficult.

  Sixty men. Three standards. It was overkill. It was, in retrospect, an early target. It was also the only target worth striking in the South. Black Osprey. Northern Osprey.

  Northern army.

  They were to be positioned in the valley in two days’ time. Two days was a long time, for the Ospreys. Too long to listen to the military patrols. Too long to pretend that they had a hope of maintaining Imperial discipline. Duarte had them on training runs through the valleys’ height—the valleys that the Imperial army had claimed as their own. Beneath the heights, the fields lay, and behind them, the blackened ruins of villages that had been destroyed by either side. No food there; nothing of value.

  He reined them in; they let him. They really were birds of prey. His, he thought. But he thought, as well, of the Kalakar.

  She wanted the standard; he’d given her the unit. He wondered if she would surrender the latter to battle. The Black Ospreys had done what no unit had honorably done in the history of the Empire. What better way to lose it? To the Annies. To the real war.

  She could say a eulogy as she laid the colors to rest.

  Alexis touched his shoulder, and he turned
, catching her hand. Thinking of death, of her death. It hurt him in ways that he had never thought to express. Wordless, she kissed the side of his face. “Do you trust her?” she asked, her lips beside his ear. The reason, he realized, for her open display of affection.

  “She left the choice to us,” he replied. It wasn’t much of an answer.

  “She’d be rid of us,” Alexis continued.

  He put a finger over her moving lips. “Don’t go there,” he told her.

  “I’m not allowed to go where you go?”

  He realized that she might hit him, but took the risk anyway; he caught her and held her tightly, her chain shirt making marks across his chest.

  But they didn’t have time to reach the field before that battle started. Hubris, on their part, really. If they could go where the enemy was, the enemy could approach them in a like fashion.

  They had warning, but not much; they were in the place where the valley narrowed, and the trees along its twisting paths made poor haven for cavalry. The sound of horses were few, the snapping of branches, the sounds of any unit’s movement.

  But the banner that appeared from between trees that had grown apart, as if they were an open palm, was no Imperial banner. It was red, and across it, the sun in gold shone, eight distinct rays catching and scattering light. The standard of a Tyr’agnate.

  And the Tyr’agnate, much like the Ospreys, did not suffer his standard to be raised when he was not upon the field.

  Poor field, narrow field. And through it now, the war horses of Averda came, great, armed destriers. Crescent blades had been drawn in silence; Duarte had just enough time to wonder how long they had waited.

  He lifted his voice in a cry that had nothing to do with training; it was primal, but unmistakable: his own. He had magic; he used it, sent a flare straight up, where it burst in a gout of traveling flame, like a blossoming flower.

  The army was close; he knew it was close.

  But not so close as the Tyran of Averda’s ruling lord. Against men such as these, the Ospreys had only triumphed by planning, by stealth, by ambush.

  And the canny man who ruled these lands—who had lost so much to the Ospreys—had at last learned to speak their tongue. There was a precious irony in that. And death.

  Auralis drew both swords, roaring as he did. The dignity of rank deserted him, as did the months of training, discipline, the months of odd leadership that he had been forced to surrender and return to, like a child’s bouncing ball. Around him, the men and women who had started to panic froze; they knew what this meant, and the familiarity of it provided what Auralis himself no longer could: command. Authority.

  He had no fear.

  Instead, he laughed, wild and reckless, and he used the cover of trees to advantage against the horsed men who came with their swords. Had they polearms, it might have gone differently.

  But even without, Duarte could count, could add, and could certainly subtract. He turned to Alexis, an instinctive movement that had nothing—and everything—to do with the ambush. She was already gone. He wanted to grab her, to hold her, to hide them both. But it was wrong, and had she remained, she would have failed the Ospreys.

  She knew it, damn her.

  He used fire where fire could be used; he used the ability to hide where it could be used. Both strategic. This was not unlike an exercise, except in one regard: death was certain rather than a danger.

  He welcomed it, as Auralis had done, but for different reason. There were no slaves here, no women, no children, no old men. There were killers. Northern killers, Southern killers, with almost nothing to separate them.

  The Ospreys began their plummet.

  Ellora AKalakar saw the flare as it erupted in the sky. So did the rest of the army. As a body, the army moved slowly. Not so the commander. Verrus Korama was by her side in an instant.

  She pushed past him, but he caught her arm.

  Held her gaze.

  So many things, in it. Too many. She knew what he offered, and she hated herself for just a moment, because she saw, clearly, that after the war the Ospreys would be a liability. Had always known it.

  “I told them,” she said, tearing herself free. “They’re mine. Call up the House Guards—get them moving. Now.”

  His smile was its own reward; he was gone almost before she’d finished speaking. But not before she’d drawn her sword.

  Hold on, Duarte. Hold on.

  He didn’t count the fallen.

  He could barely count the living. Mages were seldom required to stand in the middle of the battle; they had other uses. Fiara was wounded, but the man who had wounded her was dead; she could not bring herself to kill the horse that she had injured.

  He could, and did.

  He sent fire skyward again; it was the last time he could afford to spend power in such a display. He had never bothered with horns; none of the Ospreys had. Theirs had been a language that was best used in silence. Now? Screaming. Death. Slaughter.

  “Alexis!”

  She was there. Gone. He drew his sword, and followed her, forcing himself to think. To use the talents that had been too meager for the warrior magi, in a different life. He called the Ospreys to him, pitching his voice in Weston. Aware that in so doing, he was also calling the enemy.

  But the Ospreys arrived first, and he saw that Cook carried both the standard and Margie. Only the standard would remain; he could see death clearly where Cook wouldn’t.

  There were trees on all sides; they were a narrow formation that would make the horses impossible to utilize. Men would have to dismount, to fight here.

  And they did.

  Minutes might have passed; he couldn’t say. He cursed the commander in silence, but only in silence; he saw that the Ospreys had planted their standard—his standard—in the damp, thick ground of the forest shade. They surrounded it as if it were the only thing that mattered.

  To the Annies, it was.

  They began to carve their way toward it. They didn’t have time to be vicious; where they could spare movement or motion, they were, but they were focused. On the standard. On the Ospreys who, twenty now, protected it with their lives.

  It had always been something worth killing for. When had it become something worth dying for?

  She hadn’t used the sword in years. Not this way. But she used it now, and by her side, her House Guard, silent and grim, used theirs. She had not waited to gather them all; she had taken only those who were already prepared to fight.

  They were prepared. The moment they glimpsed the standard of the Tyr’agnate, the moment realization dawned, they were hers, an extension of her rage and her anger. An extension of her pride. She lost them as she fought; the living stepped over the injured and the dead, moving inexorably down the flank of the eastern valley toward its center.

  Bowmen would come; they would come late.

  She paused for just a moment, and lifted her horn to her lips.

  Duarte heard it.

  He thought that loss of blood and loss of power must have addled his wits; that hope must have crazed them. The Annies didn’t like to fight women, but they had long since stopped thinking of Ospreys as women. Fiara stood bleeding and Alexis stood beside her; they were back to back, holding short swords. They might have fallen had Auralis not intervened; Duarte couldn’t.

  He had been left to guide them, his words reaching them over the din of clashing sword, the rush of sound. It was almost too much; his hand gripped the standard pole for balance, and the Black Osprey fluttered against his forehead.

  Three men fell; he could clearly count the Tyran that approached. They, too, were injured; their armor was rent, their swords notched and bloody. They hardly seemed like men at all.

  But neither had the Ospreys, in their early evening flights. Fire flared at their eye level, glinting off helms as they fell back. One more, he thought grimly. Just one, and he would be finished.

  But it didn’t come.

  Instead, seeping through the encroac
hing ranks of the Callestan Tyran, came surcoats and colors he recognized. Men, he thought. And a woman.

  Although she was yards away, a hundred yards, maybe, he could see her face. She was not a mage; she wore a helm. But her skin was pale, and her movements certain; her eyes were blue and clear. She was a commander; it was almost impossible that she could be here, and the forefront of her House Guards, face bleeding where Annies had tried to slow her down.

  But she kept coming, and as she did, he heard the Ospreys raise voice, saw them find a strength that had almost abandoned them. They called out her name, as if it were a battle cry and not a prayer.

  She had come for them; they were hers.

  And Duarte AKalakar surrendered them with a tired grace.

  Two thirds of the Ospreys were dead when the Callestans called their retreat. Scattered among them, dying, were Kalakar House Guards. Cook, bent among them, treated them all as if they were his. He looked once to see the standard, and he offered it the grim salute of a nod, no more.

  The commander of the third army made her way to Duarte AKalakar, and only when she reached him did she doff helm. Her face was a mess. It would heal, and given her medics and her resources, it would heal well—but he memorized the new wounds that cut across familiar silver scars; these had been taken, and given, for the Ospreys.

  She said, “You didn’t think I’d come.”

  It was a gentle accusation. As gentle an accusation as she was capable of making.

  He bowed head. She raised it, bending to lift his chin. “AKalakar,” she said. It was the title of all men—and women—present. “Take your standard. Take the men who can walk beside it. The third army is waiting for us.” She grimaced. “And probably not with a lot of patience.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “I would have spared you this,” he said at last.

  She said, “I know. But I’m Ellora AKalakar.” She lifted her head, and added, “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Sentrus Alexis AKalakar, and she’s waiting for you.”