The Warrior's Tale (The Far Kingdoms, Book 2) Read online

  My silence did nothing to stop Polillo’s probing. As I finished washing and dressed, she kept worrying at the subject, like a gutter lizard with a pig bone.

  "They’re sure to let us march with the men," Polillo insisted. "Isn’t that so, Corais?"

  Corais gave another of her elegant shrugs. It was the kind that answered questions that hadn’t been thought of yet. She was a small, slender woman, with beautiful dark features. Make no mistake, she was no weakling, speed and cunning was her game. I alone in the Guard could best her with a sword — and I’m not boasting when I say that in all my years as a soldier, I’ve yet to meet my better with a blade.

  "If we march, we march," I said. "If we don’t, we’ll accept whatever mission they give us. We must be ready — no matter what our orders."

  My outward attitude was a lie. Inside I was burning with more than the affects of too much wine. The Maranon Guard had rarely been hurled into distant combat. Although we’d proven ourselves many times in our long and honorable history by fighting last ditch stands at our city’s gates, the Magistrates and Evocators consistently refused our pleas to join our brother warriors in battle on foreign shores.

  We were a force of last resort, we were told. Our holy mission was to guard Orissa. But there was not a woman among us who did not know the real reason, and that was our sex; which made us lowly beings — pretty pet things that must be protected — in our leaders’ eyes.

  Polillo stamped her foot in a fury. "I’ll fight," she vowed. "And there’s not a man in this city who can stop me!"

  "You’ll do as you’re ordered," I snapped. "And if you wish to remain a legate, you’ll keep your views to yourself. I’ll not have the women riled up by a lot of hot talk."

  "Yes, Captain," Polillo said. But her head drooped and her full lips trembled as she said, "It’s just not fair." Almost like a seven-foot plus little girl.

  Corais patted her, soothing. "Why don’t we get in a little work with your ax?" she said. "We’ll write the names of the Council of Magistrates on the practice dummies and you can lop off their heads."

  Polillo wiped away a solitary tear and made a smile. She was a woman who was quick to anger — sometimes dangerously so — and wore her heart pinned to her tunic. But her saving grace was that her good humor was usually easy to restore.

  "You’re a good friend, Corais," she said. "You always know how to get me out of one of my moods."

  But as they started toward to the practice field, Polillo said: "Why don’t you talk to your brother, Captain? Maybe he can tweak a few Magistrate noses on our behalf."

  "I don’t like to use my family connections," I replied. "The Guard will have to stand . . . or fall . . . on its own."

  Polillo frowned, but Corais pulled her away. I finished dressing in solitude. I’d just enough time to make it to Amalric’s villa for the rites honoring my mother.

  I wore my ceremonial uniform: gleaming boots, a short white tunic, polished harness bearing my sword and dagger, a golden, waist-length cloak, a half-a-dozen slender gold rings on each wrist; and to top the outfit off, a wide, gold band encircled my head. I sprinkled on some orange blossom scent and got out my favorite earrings. They were also of gold: in the left ear I pinned a jeweled, miniature spear — fashioned after the one our Goddess carried; in the other, a replica of Maranonia’s torch — bejeweled as well.

  I made one final check in the mirror. As I stared into it, I found myself fingering the dangling torch — the symbol for our Goddess’s vigilant search for wisdom. Perhaps Polillo was right.

  Maybe I was letting my pride stand in the way of the honor my Guard deserved.

  Very well, then, I decided — I’d talk to Amalric. If anyone could kick those Magistrates’ fat asses into motion, it was my youngest brother.

  The city was in the grips of war fever as I rode through it. Although war had not been officially declared, there was no mistaking that hot emotion had already outreached ceremony. At the Evocators’ Palace on the hill, black smoke boiled from the chimneys of the conference rooms where our Magistrates huddled with the Evocators for wizardly advice.

  In the streets, people were buying goods at the market stalls at a furious pace — loading wagons and sacks with whatever they feared might soon be scarce. Young bravos dashed through the streets on horse and afoot, shouting war slogans and making silly boasts about what they intended to do when they met the enemy on the field.

  Pretty maids were ogling the boys from windows and doorways, and I didn’t doubt they’d be slipping off to meet them before the day was through. Taverns were doing a booming trade, as were the witches’ booths at the market, where many a crone was tossing bones, or peering into bloody animal organs for signs of what the future held.

  The armorers’ shops were a racket of hammers against metal, and I knew that deep in the bowels of Evocators’ Palace, the spell casters were hard at work coming up with the latest in magical weapons. Why our superiors were still talking, instead of doing, was beyond me.

  Like most soldiers, I am a fatalist — what will be, will be. I don’t like politicians much because they tend to obscure the intentions of the fates. They rail on as if there really were choices, when it would be better to keep your peace, and study what was sure to come.

  Show me a mountain pass, with a thing of value at the end of it, and I promise you that by and by troops with greedy intentions will march along that path. Point out a good ambush site — no matter how empty the wilderness — and I’ll give you a drunken corporal’s odds that if blood hasn’t already been spilled at that site, it’s only a matter of time before it will.

  In my mind the facts of the matter were the Lycanthians were our natural enemies and should be quickly dispatched to the afterlife. We were as different as day and night.

  Orissa was a merchant city, filled with life, laughter, and a love of the arts. We’re a river people, and like all river folk we’re dreamers. We see the worth of hard labor against a stiff current to achieve a thing, because we know how easy it’ll soon be to lie back and bask in the sun and let that same current carry us swiftly home.

  Lycanth, on the other hand, was a creature born on a hard coast from an unruly sea. Its citizens trusted no one and coveted all. They lived willingly under the yoke of two Archons, whose every word — no matter how evil — was strict law. The Lycanthians were dreamers as well, but they dreamed of conquests as they stirred in their sleep on that rocky coast. They dreamed of a vast kingdom, made up of our lands and beyond, where we would work as their happy slaves.

  Over the years we’d fought Lycanth many times — our talent as soldiers barely winning the day over their skills as seafaring warriors and willingness to accept the most appalling casualties in massed frontal charges. The last time we’d nearly hammered them into oblivion, but held back from a final obliterating blow. You may think that was wise, agreeing with the politicians who said a weakened Lycanth was better than no Lycanth at all; their presence kept other enemies from our borders.

  You may not be surprised that I disagreed. My reasons: (1) Their Archons began conspiring against us from the first day of their defeat; (2) Amalric and the late — unlamented by me — Janos Greycloak were stalked and harried at every turn during their expeditions to find the Far Kingdoms; (3) When Amalric and Janos discovered the land we now know as Irayas, they also uncovered a conspiracy by the Archons and Prince Raveline to betray Orissa and Raveline’s own brother, the King of Irayas.

  Is that enough for you? This bloodless thing who poses as my Scribe says no matter what the outcome, the original decision was humane, and therefore correct. Let me continue to number the facts that make up my case: (4) My brother returned from the Far Kingdoms with not only rich trading contracts, but tremendous magical knowledge which King Domas had agreed to share with us; (5) The Archons of Lycanth were immediately seized with envy and especially fear that with this new knowledge they would soon lose all hope of fulfilling their dreams of rising from the ashes to destroy us
; (6) They went immediately to work speeding up their secret rearming. Facts (7) and (8) are less debatable, and had happened very recently and at almost the same time.

  Secret patrols our leaders had been wise enough to post just beyond Lycanth’s limits — near the neck of the peninsula the city was built on — returned with a shocking report: Lycanth’s great wall stood again. It’d been built epochs earlier, even before the Lycanthians began their attempts in empire-building, and reinforced over the eons not only by slave work-gangs but by all the protective magics the Archons could cast.

  During that last war — which my father, Paphos Antero, had fought in — all Orissa’s Evocators combined to birth a great spell, and the wall was cast down in a single night. Now the wall stood once more; a barrier that served as mocking proof the Archons had done more than merely conspire with Prince Raveline — some of his black secrets must have been imparted to the Lycanthian rulers as well.

  That would’ve been enough in itself for war, but the Archons — and this is the last of my reasons — broke every peace agreement between the two cities, and sent out their fleet to harry our merchant ships and those of our allies. It was a deliberate act of war, although I prefer to think of it as no more than piracy and the Lycanthians no better than any other bandit clan.

  My Scribe is giving me a grudging nod. If that little rodent has conceded defeat, I feel safe in assuming your added agreement. When Lycanth last fell we should’ve razed their city, dispersed their people to the ends of the earth so the name Lycanth would be meaningless in a generation, and sowed salt in the ground their cursed city had been built on.

  Where was I? Oh, yes: the politicians were politicking, the Evocators were wizarding, the lads were boasting, the maids were flirting, and Orissa was girding for war. And I was off to my brother’s place to make peace with my dead mother.

  The whole family — except Amalric — had gathered before her garden shrine by the time I arrived. It was during the Holy Hour of Silence, so I got some angry looks from my three other brothers and sniffs of superiority from their wives. But they’re a mean-spirited lot and easy to ignore. Sometimes I doubt they’re truly Anteros, and believe my father must’ve made them on the cot of some stingy whore. So, when Omyere waved for me to join her, I was grateful to slip through the ranks of brothers, cousins and other chilly kin, to a seat by her side.

  Omyere leaned close to whisper: "Amalric is at the Palace. He should return soon."

  I nodded — it was no surprise my youngest brother would be at the heart of things. My mind buzzed with arguments I’d put to him later — but soon the silence of the others, and the peaceful scent and color of the garden, let all those busy thoughts slip away.

  My mother, Emilie, was a modest woman, who thought decorated shrines and altars were unseemly. I was just entering womanhood when she died, and my father was too grief-stricken to properly tend her needs for the afterlife. Amalric was still a toddler then, and although my other brothers — especially Porcemus, the oldest — were intent on building an elaborate temple-like thing in her honor, I fought fiercely on her behalf and won. Instead of the temple, a simple, stone shrine was set beneath a small rose tree. Instead of an elaborate simulacrum painting of her features — such as the one that graced the shrine to my dead brother, Halab — I demanded the stone remain blank. However, my mother had a love for the sound of gently running water, so I got an Evocator to cast a spell that made a small stream trickle continually down the face of the shrine, to run into a little pool now covered with fallen rose blossoms.

  As I gazed upon the shrine, I felt pride stir from more than twenty years past. It was my first real victory. I’d been a wild child, who loved to run up trees, hurl stones at birds and beat up little boys who called me a girl with sneering lips.

  Everyone constantly complained about the mischief I caused — except my father and mother. My father said I’d grow out of it and would soon be simpering about like any other pretty maid. My mother said nothing either way, but when I was in her company and did something ruffian-like, she only smiled and acted as if it was normal. She encouraged me to learn and made father get me a tutor just like boys of wealthy families. And when I confessed to her one hot fateful night — when we were all alone in her room and the air was thick with mother-daughter secrets — that above all things I wanted to be a soldier, she did not gasp in shock, or weep from imagined failure. Instead she told me there were many things she’d wanted to accomplish in her life, but because of her sex, had never had the chance.

  "Oh, why," I mourned in great youthful passion, "were we born women, mother? Why couldn’t we have been born men?"

  She expressed shock. "That’s not what I meant," she said. "I’ve never wished to grow a man’s parts. As far as I’ve been able to see, a penis does nothing but weaken the brain. No, my dear, don’t pray to be a man. Only pray to have the same freedoms as men, and if you get it, you will be content. I’ll tell you a secret. I think someday our time will come, and when it does, women are much more capable of looking after the world than any man I’ve ever met."

  "I can’t wait that long," I cried. "I’ll be old, and they don’t let old people be soldiers."

  My mother looked at me for long time, then nodded. "If that’s what you want," she said, "then that’s what you shall be."

  A week later my father hired a retired sergeant to teach me to fight. He never said a word to me about it, but only smiled when I complained of bruises after a hard day of getting drubbed by a wooden sword. A year later, that smile cut from ear to ear as I’d bested the sergeant in every skill, and he had to trade him for someone more adept. By the time my mother died I was better than any youth in the city — or, at least those willing to test themselves against a warrior girl. I was a young woman of sixteen when I entered the Maranon Guard. I’ve never looked back.

  The sweet strings of a lyre coaxed me out of my reverie. It was Omyere — who’d left my side unnoticed — and was now sitting on a stool by the shrine playing that wonderful instrument of hers. She looked at me across the others as she played, and began to sing a gentle song I knew was meant for me.

  I saw the soft fall of her red hair — as bright red as Amalric’s — and thought my brother a lucky man to find such a woman. I had a lover once, I thought, who’d touched me like Omyere must touch my brother. Not Tries — but Otara, she of the throaty laugh, soft arms, and fingers that could stroke the demons from my head. She was my lover for many years before she died and I suppose in many ways she’d replaced my mother.

  Forgive me, if I weep, Scribe. But do not smirk, as if to say that is the nature of a woman. If you dare do such a thing — or even think it — I’ll forget my vow and you’ll not leave this room to smirk at another. Otara is close to my heart, and when I swore I’d speak only the truth, I knew very well I’d have to reveal things that are against my nature to uncover. There may be more weeping before this book is done — so beware, lest some of the tears that fall become yours. Now, let me wipe my eyes and gather my thoughts . . .

  As Omyere sang, I mourned Otara — just as she’d meant. The song changed and I felt cleansed. The lyre took up a playful tune. It made me think of my mother’s laugh and I reflexively looked at the shrine. I watched the water running along the moss that clung to the stone and imagined the shape formed by moss, water and rose petal shadows to be my mother’s face.

  Then the image seemed to come alive and I saw my mother’s eyes open and her lips move. There was the heady scent of sandalwood — my mother’s favorite perfume. I felt a warm hand touch my neck and thought I heard a whisper — my mother’s voice. It was so low I couldn’t make out what she said, but I knew if I listened closer I could hear quite easily. I think I became afraid . . . Actually, I’m sure of it, for I suddenly thought — this is nonsense. It’s the hangover still at work. Your mother was an ordinary mortal, like yourself. Certainly not the kind to play at ghosts.

  I snatched my head back, and the whisper broke off. Th
e scent was gone and when I looked at the shrine, so was the face.

  Omyere had stopped playing. I saw her frown, and shake her head. I felt like I’d missed something important — and the loss was painful.

  Then all thoughts of loss, lovers and ghosts vanished in a thundering of hooves outside the villa’s walls.

  Amalric was back from the Evocators’ Palace.

  My brother returned with news that war had been declared. The remainder of my mother’s feast day collapsed in a babble of fright and excitement. Every citizen of Orissa was expected to gather at the Great Amphitheater that night to hear the public announcement, undoubtedly to be accompanied by various morale-boosting displays.

  Amalric soothed the company as best he could and kept his temper as they deluged him with stupid questions: how long did he think the war would last; what kind of financial suffering did the family face; what goods did he think would become scarce, so they could begin their hoarding now with an eye to black-marketeering in the future.

  Although Amalric is the youngest of my father’s children, he’s the unquestioned head of family. My father had wisely passed over my other brothers — all as weak and lazy as they were foolish — to bequeath his merchant empire to Amalric. Obviously, a lot of jealousy and hard feelings were stirred up, but my brother’s force of personality, plus his fame as the discoverer of the Far Kingdoms, kept the weasels cowed in their dens.

  Eventually, he caught my eye and motioned to meet him in his study. Then he shooed them all home with reminders to attend the great meeting. As I took a seat near his writing desk a few minutes later, I could see from the grim set of his mouth and high color of his skin, there was more news than just the declaration of war.

  "What are you hiding, brother, dear?" I asked. "Go ahead . . . tell me the worst."

  He laughed, but the sound was harsh. "I can’t ever keep anything from you, can I, big sister?"

  "It comes from long practice, my dear," I replied. "Before you became a grown man and such a — dare I say it — responsible sort, I caught you with lizards in your pockets, and a little later, doxies in your bed."