by Laer Carroll
When both sides were ready for battle, this cooperation in readying to savage one another an absurdity to Heyalna, a herald from each side rode to the center of the field separating the two armies, a point about a hundred feet from each front line. A flagman who bore a staff vaunting the two countries flags accompanied each, blue for Loseliath and gold for Ketlow, flapping in an early morning breeze.
After a brief conference a group of knights from each army rode onto the field, each group in a line that formed up with (as the knights eyed each other across the field with calculation) exactly enough men in each line to match the other line.
The two lines stopped about fifty feet apart. The Ketlow herald said in a scornful voice loud enough to reach each army, "What?! Only boys just out of school? Are the old men of Loseliath too tremble-full to put themselves at risk?"
The older knights of Heyalna's last-night conference had dispersed themselves and stood by their horses to seem fewer than they were. One of them opened his mouth and turned to his horse as if to mount and reply. Sir Trask shook his head at the man and the knight pressed his lips together and resumed his stance.
"And where is this black corvus that calls itself Lady Death? Flapping its wings to flee the valiant Ketlow knights?"
Heyalna knew no one or no ten of the Ketlow knights wanted to face her. The Ketlow war leaders just wanted to be sure of where she was, something not obvious since there were other knights who wore black. But, as she had anticipated, she now had a chance to put some fear into the Ketlow warriors.
She swung onto Beauty, admiring the sheen of his sleek black hair. She patted him in affection, her hand allowed through his protective force field as no other bit of matter could today, and rode forward.
The sun on her face was warm, the breeze a cool sensuous caress. For a while her conscience was put to sleep by her martial fervor. The army across the field had unprovoked savaged the people under her care, many of whom she liked and respected a bit too much to be an efficient uplift agent. To kill the savagers, to punish them, would give her great pleasure.
She halted Beauty a horse's length forward of the line of Loseliath knights and to one side. There she placed her hands on the saddle before her, freed her feet from their stirrups, tilted forward to put all weight over her hands, and threw herself upward so that she landed with her black-shod feet balancing her atop her saddle. Her strength and skill made this seem casually easy, and it was. She needed no help from the force beams of the invisible shuttle floating a thousand feet above the battlefield.
Standing hipshot as steadily as if she stood on level ground she put one hand on a hip. Her huge black cloak loomed and swirled around her the way a shroud might, moved as if by a source-less wind rather than the mild breeze everyone else felt. Her hood was back and her white skin gleamed as if it were pearl or porcelain. Her sleek golden hair swirled in the same wind which engaged her cloak.
"Here I am, loudmouth human." A bit unfair, that stiletto dig. Her voice bugled out much louder than his, clear even to the far edge of the Ketlow army, a soprano with a bass hum beneath it, clearly not a sound a human throat could make.
The herald recovered quickly from his shock. "Yes, very like a carrion bird, waiting cowardly for good men to die!"
Heyalna put her other hand before her mouth and feigned a yawn. "Oh, please, I've already killed a thousand of you. I weary of the sport." The lie did not bother her. Knights typically boasted extravagantly of their prowess, and knew precisely how to discount the boasts of others. Likely every warrior there knew her score was perhaps a tenth what she claimed. Which admittedly was still quite impressive.
She dropped her weary yawn-covering hand. "Still, if you insist, I will kill a thousand more today. But for now, go on, puny humans. Play at war."
She dropped gracefully into her saddle and turned Beauty back toward her side's lines as the Loseliathi yelled catcalls and jeers at the enemy. Few of the Ketlow forces imitated them. All of Ketlow had heard of Lady Death, but that was very different from seeing her with their own eyes.
The two lines of opposing knights seemed to heed the same mysterious command. They surged into motion and the two heralds and flagmen hurried to distance themselves from them and from each other, heading back toward their own armies.
Heyalna reached the Loseliath lines and found her place near Sir Trask. They nodded to each other and she faced back the way she had come, turning her attention to the fighters actively engaged.
Critically the two of them examined the crash and screams of men and horses. Three men were already unhorsed, one of the Loseliathi lying still on the ground and two knights standing hacking at each other with swords.
In seconds more several other knights were unhorsed and still or fighting. Half those ahorse were engaged and the other half had penetrated their enemies' lines and were wheeling to dash back against their chosen targets.
Heyalna was watching the battle with her physical eyes and was watching the entire enemy force from a dozen spy eyes and the shuttle's instruments tied into her neural link. She was shifting her attention among viewpoints, well over a century of practice making this as easy as breathing.
One focus was a group of Ketlow knights sitting well behind their lines, unable to view the battle and seemingly not interested in it. Then at a signal from someone they mounted and readied their weapons.
"I hear them getting ready," Heyalna said to Trask. She pulled her cloak's hood forward and its front filled with grey mist. Two glowing red spots like eyes blinked into existence in the mist.
He had heard about this phenomenon but this was the first time he had seen it. He observed it with interest for a moment, then nodded and looked around them, catching the eyes of the experienced knights awaiting the enemy's treachery. They readied themselves, one of them having to curb his horse's prancing. They could not begin their own charge until the enemy had clearly broken the rules.
There was a stirring among the Ketlow foot soldiers well to the side of their center. Suddenly the soldiers surged toward their left or their right to open an alley through themselves. Out of it came a line of enemy knights at full gallop. The single line split into two diverging ones headed toward the forces shielding the prince and his highest army commanders.
Most of both opposing forces were caught by surprise and stared at the intruders. Each of them wore a sash of red crossed from one shoulder to their opposite side like a bandoleer.
Heyalna tightened her legs and leaned forward. Beauty launched himself from the Loseliath lines into the clear. At full gallop Heyalna threw herself to stand on her saddle, her legs slightly bent and moving to keep her body aloft.
"Treachery! Treachery!" she shouted, inhumanly loud. "Death to the outlaws! Death to the outlaws!"
She snatched the two spears upright in sockets on the left and the right of her saddle. Bringing their butts together she twisted the poles in opposite direction. They slid into sockets and locked, making a two-headed spear twice eight-feet long. Hands close together she clasped it over her head and began to spin it. In instants the spear became a blurry disk.
It made a sound, fwoo fwoo fwoo fwoo. In moments the spearheads went supersonic, trailing twin sonic booms behind them. The sound become FWOP-FWOP-FWOP-FWOP.
Heyalna checked her spinning disk, twisted and jerked on the two-headed spear, and held two separate spears again. She dropped from her trick-rider position to her seat on the saddle, stuck her feet into the stirrups, and settled herself securely.
Heyalna's path crossed the twin paths of the red-sashed knights. Beauty, guided through his own neural link to his master, danced between two enemy's horses riding almost tail to nose, then did the same on the twin path.
An instant before the first intersection Heyalna thrust as a sword fighter would and impaled one knight as if he were a fat trout. Instants later the other spear flicked out to impale a second.
Her enormous strength bore aloft two flopping knights, held halfway down the length
of each spear by a crossbar that had flicked out of each faux-wood spear.
Beauty curved toward the Ketlow line and he and his rider plunged to meet it. Heyalna twisted her body to one side and the other and first one dying man and then the other soared toward the enemy.
From her red "eyes" two lines of red speared the air, so bright the air's slight humidity made the lines glow red. They intersected at a point amid the Ketlow forces, seemingly guiding the first body to crash down there. The Ketlow fighters surged away from the spot, evading the body. It landed with a clang of armor and an awful plopping sound and bounced and rolled to a stop. Then the fiery lines flicked further into the Ketlow forces and a second instantly emptied spot received the second body.
Heyalna rode toward the two emptied spots and the troops near them surged away, leaving a path through the enemy lines. She rode into it toward a dozen or so red robed priests. She speared two before they escaped very far and the priests' own men cut down a third. She curved back and got two more. Then no more as the remainder were killed or fled, their robes stripped off to save themselves.
Beauty danced in place, turning in a circle, and Heyalna levitated up to stand on her saddle again. The red lines from Heyalna's hood flicked here there and elsewhere, sending the Ketlow warriors fleeing in every direction. In a minute a roar and a crash signaled the impact of the Loseliath army against the disintegrating Ketlow army.
Her need to fight was gone. She felt slightly sick about what she had done but still a bit euphoric.
She dropped down to sit in Beauty's saddle, dropped her spears, turned her face upward, and lifted her arms as if to plead. Over her neural link she sent a command.
As bright as the sun a great golden light expanded out from the invisible shuttlecraft. A great tone sounded high over the valley. The fighting below slowed then stopped as faces turned upward.
The light dimmed and diminished then vanished. But before it was totally gone a dazzlingly bright rainbow stabbed down.
When it faded Beauty was transformed. His saddle and accouterments were made of white leather, his hair turned a glossy cream like corn silk. Heyalna's spears were gone. In their place she held a long staff with a shepherd's crook at the end, the symbol of the Harvest Goddess. And she wore shining white healer's robes.
All motion ceased on the battlefield. Quiet descended--but only for moments. Moans, screams, gasps of the injured returned.
Heyalna fell off her horse and hurried to the nearest who needed her. The more ordinary healers of the two armies joined her.
<>
Hours later the healers' work was done, at least for a time. The casualties were many fewer and less severe than they might have been if Heyalna's "ascension" to an avatar of the Goddess of Harvest and Healing had not halted all fighting. Few of the Loseliathi wanted to butcher anyone after that momentous event, and few of the demoralized Ketlow wanted to fight on in the face of overwhelming force.
All but the leaders of the Ketlow army were offered and received parole from imprisonment on the condition that they surrender all but their belt knives and swear not to fight against Loseliath for the next ten years. This left them free to protect their country against all other enemies and within a week all had marched north to be redirected to Ketlow's other borders. There they received weapons from the common armories, some of them even the ones they had surrendered, which had quickly been sent north after being themselves ransomed.
Ordinarily ransom would have been extended to the Ketlow army leaders, but they were in disgrace for allowing the sneaking dishonorable behavior of their knights during the mêlée. Only the very top leaders had known about and agreed, or been forced to agree, to that behavior, but all shared its dishonor.
This view was most emphatically felt by Ketlow's own knights, who were even more furious with their own leaders for betraying them into dishonor than was almost any Loseliathi. Most of the younger Ketlow knights soon were offered and grimly agreed to a parole that put them in service to Loseliath for ten years on that country's borders with other countries, and they soon marched south, bearing their personal weapons, to that duty.
The Loseliath army reconstituted itself and marched north toward the Ketlow capital. None of the forces awaiting them could do more than slow them down. Nor were any of them willing, for they had all heard what had happened at the meeting of the two enemy armies.
This reluctance was reinforced by Heyalna's presence at the point of the Loseliath army. Her stark white garments and shepherd's crook and her imposing mount proclaimed her holy nature and few wanted to oppose her. More persuasive was the reflection that she had once changed from healer to fighter and might do so again. And not the bravest and stupidest of the Ketlow warriors wanted to meet Lady Death, even from behind from ambush.
Accompanying the Loseliath army and its high captives was a bier upon which lay the body of the Ketlow prince who had been the heir to the Ketlow throne. During Heyalna's attack on the red-robe priests he had died of what seemed to be an honorable suicide, retrieving his honor and avoiding having it questioned. Only Heyalna knew if he had known of his knights' betrayal and she said nothing. She did however provide a translucent garment that protected his body from decay and with her own hands had placed in his hands his own sword. This was taken as proof that his and Ketlow valor was preserved and respected by an authority Who could not be doubted.
Weeks later after many days travel and many more days of diplomatic discussion a great festival was held on the river meadows a few miles from the Ketlow capital city. There a treaty of mutual esteem and aid was celebrated, including the crowning of the most eligible son of the Ketlow king as the new king in his place, since the king had abdicated. Customarily it would have also included the betrothal of Ketlow's oldest unmarried princess to the Loseliath heir.
Heyalna however had forbidden this. She insisted that the two would be given a year of acquaintance of each other, half in one country and half in the other, after which the princess could honorably decline his offer of marriage, should he make the offer. There were stiff objections from near two-dozen people: priests, nobles, military, and merchants. They had wrangled loud and long with The Avatar to convince her to abandon her insistence.
Finally she stood up from the huge heavy table in a palace conference room and said "Enough!" She raised one fist high and it was suddenly wreathed about with a coiling black mist that seemed as if it were trying to escape from her invisible grasp. Down went her fist to crash into the middle of the table, shattering it in two. Then she stalked out, leaving behind her a table which was turning to brown wood splinters from the middle outward, all the while making a sound like an animal whimpering as it died.
The new marriage custom was shortly not only the custom but also the law of both lands.
<>
"That rainbow light and your change to an 'avatar' was hilarious." In the airy virtual lounge Choia at the same time seemed to be standing on the deck of a sailing ship at mid-day clad in a sarong with a sword hanging in a bandoleer over his shoulder. This did not reflect the actual situation. The uplift agent was on a ship, but he was "sleeping" in narrow bunk below-decks an hour before sunrise a quarter of a world away from Heyalna. He had remembered this time to assume his current shape.
"Saved a lot of lives, though." The blue cat-like centaur was in a tree this time.
It was several weeks later and most of the uplift agents and the diplomat to the ionic life forms was attending this chat. Lately Heyalna had missed several virtual get-togethers, busy as she was winding up her affairs so that she could leave the planet. This would be the last conference she would attend, and she had come to say good-bye to her friends of well over two decades, and had sent good-bye holo-messages to those who could not attend.
"I wish you could stay." The diplomat was wearing the fiery globe persona of those he "spoke" to at the edge of space. "But I understand why you can't."
"I'm not suited to Uplift. Not anymore."
/> "What are you going to do now?" said another agent, who wore a semblance to the actual decrepit-old-woman persona she wore in the jungle kingdoms of the south continent.
"I want to see my family. The children are all well grown and in their first or second careers. And then I'm taking a year or three to loaf. And then I'll start thinking about a new career."
About this her friends had many suggestions. She listened to them and even asked questions, but none of the suggestions seemed right. How could she possibly find honorable employment where she could let free her dark enjoyment of killing?
<>
Heyalna had another goodbye, but it was not to a human. Though that might not have seemed so to an observer who found her past midnight floating in the air outside the bedroom window of the Loseliath prince in the castle where he and she had guested in Ketlow in the several weeks since the wars-end ceremony.
The darkness a hundred feet above the dimly torch-lit courtyard was riven by harsh cold winds. Unpleasant as they would be to the primitive humans in this area they would have a pleasant consequence the next day. The winds were also very dry and they were taking up most of the aboveground wetness that had been dumped to earth in the last few days.
She knocked a little louder a second time on the wooden frame that held the glass windowpanes in place. This time she was rewarded by the bottom half of the window popping loose from its position and rising jerkily upward in its slots, accompanied by the curses of the Loseliath prince.
"What are you doing here? This late?" He had obviously seen her through the window and had enough time to get over his surprise. She recollected with amusement how few people on this planet would have recovered so quickly and expressed themselves so frankly.
He stuck his upper body through the window and pushed upward with his shoulders to get the window-half all the way up. He looked around her and down at her feet, seeming not at all surprised to see her standing on nothing.