The Warrior's Tale Read online

  As the horns sounded and soldiers on both sides tiredly pounded their shields and croaked jeers at the enemy in what had become a routine prelude to battle, I led ten women away from the field, on a special mission given us by Jinnah - although he swore Gamelan had as much to do with it as he did, which I doubted.

  The diversion we were about to launch bordered on the suicidal. This was why I led the mission that day, with a hand-picked force that included my two top legates. I was determined to bring them all back alive or, if my hopes were dashed, at least I would have the thin comfort that I'd not given the duty to someone I might think less capable or experienced. Besides, no soldier is fit for command if she will not herself go where she proposes to send her charges.

  All of us had blackened our faces and any exposed skin with burnt cork and a spell of non-reflection had been cast on our blades. We wore no armour, since its weight could slow us enough to become a target. We wore only dark short tunics, caps and tight-fitting breeches.

  We darted from cover to cover, moving easily, by hand-signals, feeling as if we were all one flesh. Our first goal, which we reached without being observed from that curtain-wall that loomed closer and closer, was the ruin of an outer guard-tower that neither side could hold for long. We crouched beside its high wall and Polillo stirruped her hands. I thrust my foot into that brace and she catapulted me upward, to where timbering protruded from the wall that had floored the upper storey. I caught a broken beam in both hands, pulled myself onto its narrowness and flattened - trying not to send debris showering down on my companions. A sharp rock dug into my breast as I turned on my side and unhitched the long rope slung over one shoulder. I double-hitched it around the beam, dropped its end back down and a moment later Corais swarmed up. She had no trouble finding a steady perch; and while I belayed the rope for the others, she steadied them in the last few feet of their climb. The only sound we made during all this was the creak of our leather harness, the scrape of our boots, and the occasional dull thud of a rag-wrapped weapon.

  The last woman up was Polillo. I strained against her weight - she was easily twice the weight of any two of us - and a few agonizing seconds later she was on the shelf of rotting wood. She unslung the heavy leather bag that was her charge and dumped it on the stones. She grinned.

  'Now, for a little sip of Lycanthian blood,' she said. She patted the beaked axe at her side. 'Precious is hungry, poor thing.'

  'We are supposed to create a diversion, Legate,' I reminded her. 'Killing Lycanthians rates way down the ladder of our duties.'

  Polillo sulked, those lovely full lips of hers making a childish pout.

  Corais gave her a slap on the back to boost her suddenly sour mood. 'I'll catch one for you,' she promised, 'so you can break his little neck.' She made a snapping gesture with her two hands and clicked her small sharp teeth to approximate the sound of broken bone.

  Polillo started to boom laughter, then caught herself, with a guilty glance at the castle walls now very high and close beside. 'Oh, Corais, what would I do without your cheer?'

  'If that cheers you, my sweet, I'll catch two of them and really put the shine in your eyes.'

  I paid no attention to this pre-battle jawing, but peered carefully first at the sea-castle's main wall - I could see no signs that we'd been spotted - then back at the battlefield from whence we'd come. Our Evocators had mounted a small platform near the centre of our lines. On it I could see half a dozen of them, busy chanting and casting spells, with great and meaningful gestures. In their centre was Gamelan. Suddenly he flung up his hands. His shout, magically amplified, thundered across the field.

  From behind the castle walls I heard an equally loud roar from the brazenly magnified throats of the Archons. The air crackled with the roar and then shattered. Then came a chorus of howls so piercing we all ducked our heads, eyes forced shut and ears clamped to avoid the pain.

  As we realized we were behaving as foolishly as any raw recruit seeing the first flight of arrows arching towards ttie battle-line, knowing each is aimed directly at her heart, and recovered, the spectral part of the battle commenced. The morning sky was night and magical fires raged overhead and demon legions howled and clashed. On the ground, all-too-human men lurched forward.

  This was our cue - we slid through a narrow port, and now we were inside the ruin. I tossed our rope into what had been the guard-tower's central room and slid down. There was no far wall standing that'd keep us from being seen by an alert soldier atop the castle's curtain-wall. I shivered. This was closer than I'd ever been to this dreadful haunt. Here Amalric had been imprisoned, he and Janos Greycloak, first in an apartment high in the castle's battlements in an attempt to break them with magic; then deep underground in its dripping dungeons. I collected myself - my purpose, the purpose for us all, was to destroy this evil, from its huge, nitrous stones to the Archons who ruled from within. Mooning about, feeling evil emanations as if I were a market wife scared out of her girdle by a fortune-teller's cant, accomplished nothing.

  The ruined guard-tower had blocked our way to a narrow lava ledge that began a few dozen yards away and ran around the perimeter of the castle wall. The shelf was no more than a spear-length at its narrowest and twice that at its widest, or so my observations had suggested in the two days I'd spent reconnoitring the mission from afar. Do not think this shelf was in any way a weak point our army could exploit. To one side, as I've said, was the castle wall, going straight up with not a place to be seen to which we could spike or lash an assault ladder. On the other, it fell away, a vertical glass-like cliff two hundred feet or more to the harbour and bottled-up ships rotting at anchor below.

  I motioned and Corais and three others slipped away onto the ledge itself. I heard a muffled cry and the remaining six of us had our weapons bared - there must've been a sentry or even a roving patrol. Polillo dropped the sack and reached for her axe. I held her back with an angry frown - Corais would chance a shout if she needed us. Polillo muttered as we heard the clash of weapons and I knew her hot blood was rising. There was silence. A few breaths later Corais rushed into view and beckoned us forward. Polillo growled with jealousy seeing her bloody sword. Corais made a small smile, then shrugged. What could she do? Duty and all. I hissed at them - quit the by-play. Pay attention. Then we hitched up our harness and ran out onto the shelf, around the castle.

  We crept almost halfway around the castle before reaching the spot I'd picked for the diversio.n. Here the shelf widened briefly, room enough for perhaps half a company to assemble and then be crushed from above - since there'd be no way a full assault could be mounted from this position, nor any troops reinforced once the defenders on the walls realized their presence. But the shelf s width was not the reason I'd picked this place for the diversion: I thought I'd seen and a minor vision-enhancing spell had confirmed the sight, that gates had once been cut into the curtain-wall here, at a corner tower. I'd wondered for what purpose at the time and considered the thought once more. I thought I saw, just at the cliff-edge, a splintered stone foundation where a derrick might've been set a long time ago. Possibly this would have been a secret entry to deliver items to the Archons, hoisting them straight up the cliff" and hurrying them into hiding. I shuddered, not able to conceive anything so awful that the Archons would fear discovery by their completely subjugated people.

  After I'd seen these gates and told Polillo and Corais of their existence, fire had sparked in their eyes. Perhaps we could somehow break those gates down? Perhaps we could lead a party into the castle itself? I cut off such speculation. I knew the Archons and their military commanders were hardly fools and such a weak spot in their defences, even one as hard to reach as this, would've been sealed long before. Now, close to these gates, I saw I'd been right. They were cemented firmly closed, and the lightness of the mortar showed they'd been sealed for years. If it were possible to break down these gates, it'd take an enormous ram to do it - and how could such a device be transported to this cliff-edge? But t
he gates had inspired a bit of modification to Gamelan's diversion.

  Below us was the harbour mouth and I saw the catenary arch of the colossal chain that blocked it. Each of the chain's links was the size of a river yawl. The chain was green with age, dripped seaweed and slime. I had spent hours staring at that chain as I planned this mission, wondering if we could work our way along the shelf to where it ended against the castle walls, held by a huge staple. But I'd suspected the shelf petered out before reaching the chain and now my impression was confirmed. Even if we had been able to reach it, what good would that have done? However the chain was raised and lowered -I knew as much by magic as by levers, pulleys and human engineering - that was done from the tower on the far promontory, a tower as fiercely defended as the sea-castle itself.

  I brought myself back to the business at hand and felt ashamed. I was behaving as bloody-mindedly as any young subaltern, always with an eye out for that single stroke, that single charge that'd not only win a war but cover its architect with glory. Our duty today was more prosaic, since at most it would be an assist to the main attack now being mounted far behind us.

  Cold fingers eeled up my spine. I had the eerie feeling of being observed by unfriendly eyes. I let my own eyes scour the battlements above and saw nothing. But that feeling is something I've learned to prize highly, so I next scanned the walls themselves, looking for a window or even an arrow slit from which someone might observe us. But there was nothing.

  For a moment I wondered if this corner tower was where Amalric had been imprisoned - he'd said he had a clear view of the harbour and the chain from the window of his prison-apartment. No. These walls were blank; except for the barred gate, there was no feature to mar those smooth stones. Amalric's cell must've been at a different point. Still, the feeling of being watched persisted.

  I heard something then. It was a voice, but yet not a voice, and I thought it whispered a warning, although I couldn't make out any words, nor the speaker's sex. It was vaguely familiar, and I shivered, wondering in a mad moment if it might be Halab, my long-dead brother. Amalric had said Halab's ghost had come to his aid on the expeditions to the Far Kingdoms. Although I've found Amalric to be mostly a man of sense, at that time I personally believed his imagination had been stoked by that rascal Janos Greycloak. Either that, or they made an especially heady wine in the Far Kingdoms.

  I steeled myself and gave the signal. Polillo threw the sack over her shoulder and leaped forward. I ran behind her across the open ground. The big woman moved easily, toting a weight that would've foundered two strong men. We stopped on the ledge's widest point and my legate upended the sack. Out tumbled three massive crystal spheres, along with an odd mounting apparatus designed by our wizards in their weapons shops. It consisted of a three-foot cylinder-knobbed on one end - and a wheeled tripod base. The cylinder telescoped to twice its length, as did the legs. As I struggled to set it up, a beam of sunlight speared through the magical haze, bathing us in light. I cursed my clumsy fingers, knowing at any moment we could be spotted. But finally it was done and Polillo had the cylinders arranged into a triangle. At my signal Corais led the others out. They took the formation Gamelan had drilled into us for half the night.

  Polillo frowned, as distrusting of sorcery as I. An Evocator should've been assigned to perform these functions. Gamelan had urged Jinnah to let him go, but the general had refused - without explanation - not even allowing the presence of a junior and, therefore, more expendable wizard. Polillo unhitched her axe and spread her long legs into a comfortable striking stance. I pulled a small bag from my waist pouch and sprinkled grey dust on first one sphere, then the others. The dust was the ground bones of fallen warriors. Feeling more than a bit of a fool, I chanted the spell Gamelan had hammered into my head.

  We are few.

  We are many.

  We are bone.

  We are flesh.

  We are ten.

  We are one thousand.

  I stepped back and drew my sword. Then I threw back my head, opened my lungs and hurled the battle-cry of the Maranon Guard.

  My sisters echoed my challenge. Our voices ululated up and up until the keening pierced the roar of the battlefield we'd left. Then we waited - an army of ten, certain we were about to die. I saw figures running along the castle walls above us and braced for what would follow.

  Suddenly I felt a tingling all over my body. My hair rose, my nipples became hard as stones. The tingling turned to warmth and centred itself at my belly. It plunged into my womb where it gathered strength and flared into a hot fire. I howled with the joy and strength of that blaze and I heard my sisters joining in until our ten voices were that of a multitude. I felt I was no longer one warrior, but ten. That ten became ten times that number and I was one hundred women, with one hundred swords slashing the air in defiance. And about me were nine hundred warrior sisters raging at our enemy.

  Gamelan had promised we'd appear to our enemy as an army of a thousand that had suddenly leaped up from the very earth to confront them. I heard shouts of surprise come from the castle walls and knew he hadn't lied. Battle lust clutched at my throat and I wanted to order the attack, but sanity held sway over my magically charged imagination and instead I shouted to Corais. She and another woman raced to the wheeled apparatus and ran it forward. The knobbed end slammed into the gates and although I knew it was too small to leave even a mark, the sound it made was that of a mighty ram - and that is how it seemed to our enemies. A shimmer in the air gave me a glimpse of their view: the odd apparatus had become a huge war machine, towering above the two hundred women warriors who operated it, an engine easily big enough to shatter those gates and their reinforcing. The rest of us - eight hundred plus - were dressed in sparkling armour and we displayed all manner of weapons besides that great ram: axes and bows, lances and crossbows, grappling hooks and scaling ladders. We made a terrifying sight.

  The shouts of warning were many now, but I could see they offered no threat; panic was the commander of those walls. I heard Polillo laugh and mock their manhood. I laughed with her, imagining their balls shrivelling against their thighs. Soon the enemy would strip his defences from the front gates and rush back to oppose this new threat. Jinnah had held a great force in reserve that would then burst through those weakened defences and for the second time in Orissa's history the Archons' sea-castle would fall.

  I heard one of my soldiers cry in alarm. Huge black clouds rushed through the sky. They hovered above us, boiling and whirling. My marrow froze as ghostly laughter roiled from within them. The clouds parted and I saw a man's gigantic face. His eyes were the black of graves, his fleshy lips blood-red and his great beard a desolate forest. The lips peeled back to expose long filed teeth. The Archon laughed again and that laughter was so powerful it broke Gamelan's spell and my strength fled. I was swiftly diminished until I was not a hundred soldiers, but ten; then but one - and such a small one at that to dare the Archons of Lycanth.

  The Archon's lips compressed to form a word, and when he hissed it, his breath was foul, so cold it froze us in place. 'Antero,' he said. I thought I heard a note of surprise. His gaze became worms crawling out of black mud to sniff at me, leaving trails of slime on my soul. More laughter. 'A woman!’ His mockery was thunder. He drew in his breath - a howling in the air - and spit.

  His spittle rained from the cloud, drenching us in unimaginable filth. We were humbled and humiliated by that fetid storm. The face vanished into the cloud mass, which swirled furiously for a moment, then funnelled down and down into the sea-castle ... until it was gone.

  The ten of us stood on that naked shelf, helpless against our enemies. Before we died it was our turn to suffer jeers. The men on the walls shouted, mocking our sex; taunting us with threats of the obscene acts they'd perform on our corpses. But the jeers had an opposite effect - instead of fear, they roused anger.

  Polillo roared: 'Come down and fight, Lycanthian scum! I'll cut off your arms and legs and send your heads back to
your women with your balls stuffed down your throats.'

  She hurled her great axe upward. But she was so angry she loosed too soon and the axe fell short of the parapets - if any of the rest of us had tried a similar throw, we could not even have reached half the distance. The blade struck the blank stone with a crash - but instead of falling back, it stuck! I gaped - the axe had not penetrated the stone, but seemed to hang there in midair. Why didn't it fall?

  There was a knot of archers on the parapets and a thick flight of arrows rained. Training overtook fear and we dove for the ground, rolling over and over until we lay close along the castle wall itself. I sprawled next to Polillo, hugging the stone to make as difficult a target as possible. But the safety was illusory; soon the archers would crane over and pick us off, or other soldiers would fry us with boiling oil.

  I peered up and realized I was just beneath Polillo's axe. To my amazement I saw it wasn't stuck in a crevice or joining at all, but hung from the ledge of a shuttered, not even barred, window. I turned my head this way and that, examining what I had believed to be blank walls. Instead, I saw other windows pocking the face. As I puzzled over the trick that had made the walls seem blank from a distance, someone gave a cry of pain. Jolted, I saw one of my soldiers plucking an arrow from her thigh. Our doom was moments away. I saw those crystal spheres, still out in the open and an idea struck. I gave quick orders to Polillo. She nodded, her face lighting up.