Sarina's Barbarians

by E M White

  But he didn’t hide his words. He said, “Who among us, Princess, do you think is so afraid of a massacre?”

  5

  Akimi’s Favorite Time Of Night

  Akimi stood on a step stool to reach the tie at the back of Sarina’s neck.

  She pulled aside the princess’ thick blonde hair, drew the string slowly, and watched the dress fall. The skin of Sarina’s neck shoulders blossomed to Akimi as the dress slipped away.

  Akimi’s fingertips hesitated over her mistress’ back, her eyes dancing up and down the long, tanned length of her torso.

  The dress hung upon the princess’ hips. Sarina did a shimmy, and the dress fell to the ground. Her breasts shook with the movement.

  Akimi risked a peek and saw them wobble and settle into their fullness. She almost forgot to breathe.

  The princess, her back to Akimi, was now naked top to bottom.

  And Akimi swallowed hard when she glanced down at the princess’ body, so much endowment in so many ways.

  Being the tent maiden of a princess, she’d seen the luscious curves countless times, but…

  She put a small hand to her chest and made a tiny cough.

  Sarina stepped away. “Akimi, put that dress as far away as possible. Latrines’ll do.”

  Akimi smiled. She’d put it away where it belonged. Despite her mistress’ moods. That was her duty.

  Sarina’s sleeping tent was, as always, strung alongside her command tent, sharing a side flap and a cutaway. Unlike the command tent, her sleeper was hardly ornamented more than Markus or Vadric’s tents. Armor and weapons first. Then some extra clothes, not much. A small chest of personal effects after that. And a cot for sleeping. In Sarina’s case, it was an extra wide, extra reinforced cot, crafted affectionately by Captains Markus and Vadric—both undoubtedly riled at breaking the standard issue bed beneath her naked body…repeatedly.

  The constant mobility of the military march and campaigning didn’t allow for the trimmings of royalty. Except for the thirty candles. The young princess said they helped her plan for war. Or love. Or she just had a thing for candles. Akimi didn’t really mind the extra work they required.

  Onäs was next door now, in Sarina’s command tent. Pacing. Waiting for an audience with his new mistress, talking to himself but not, it seemed to Akimi, to be enjoying it much.

  Akimi ached to help smooth things over before one of these hotheads, the champion or the princess, said something regrettable. She asked, “How long do you plan on making him wait?”

  By now Sarina was back in her tunic, sliding trousers over her robust thighs and jumping once to pull them over her bare bottom. Everyone in the ranks slept in their fighting tunic. “You think it’s been long enough?”

  “He failed you in the arena, and he knows it. I believe he’s already sorry for it.”

  Akimi stepped down from her stool and began arranging Sarina’s armor for a weekly scour and cleaning. Chain mail had a nasty way of accumulating crud even without the furor of battle.

  “He’s not failed me. You heard Vadric skewer him?”

  Akimi smiled thinly and shook her head.

  Sarina laughed. But she whispered as she retold it. “Vadric says to him, Can’t you just kill someone because you’re supposed to? So Onäs stiffens up, you’ve seen him do it, and tells him—” Sarina tried to do the elven accent “—If I didn’t kill the spider, it’s because everyone was telling me I should. Which got Vadric and Markus rolling all over themselves. These guys, they’re just not used to Onäs-types.”

  Akimi lifted her delicate chin to the tall, commanding silhouette pacing long, slow strides along the other side of the partition. He could have been eavesdropping, who knew? “What do you think of types like Onäs?”

  Sarina shrugged. She kept her answer to herself. She said instead, “Maybe I should have fought in my own place today. In the arena.”

  “You wouldn’t have gotten past the ogre.”

  “The hell I wouldn’t have. Maybe not with all that…finesse. But I’d have got the job done.”

  Akimi wasn’t so sure.

  “As you say, Your Highness.”

  “I’d have made sure all three gladiators were dead as moorwraiths. Then I wouldn’t be in this mess, would I?”

  “Undoubtedly not, Your Highness.”

  “Damn. Onäs didn’t know there were…rules. None of us knew about Ratface’s gotta-kill-to-make-the-deal rules.” Sarina wriggled her nose from across the tent at Akimi, who was often told that she took it all too seriously. “Want to know something, Akimi.”

  “M’lady?”

  Akimi squinted and nodded, shirking her chores to watch Sarina stretch out on her wide cot, her bare big toe swinging along the tent rug.

  “You know I mean it when I say it, if we end up having to raid Bolzhiem, I’m going to start with Ratface’s house. But here’s the trick. How do you raid a town, make it look like somebody else did it, and not kill too many people? That’s the trick.”

  “Now we’re afraid of killing too many people?”

  Sarina laughed to the top of the tent. “Not you and Captain Markus, it would seem.”

  Sarina came up on an elbow, bunched most of her hair and tossed it behind her. Then she added, more to herself than to Akimi, “Should have be me in the arena today.”

  “Your father would have you back in his longhouse before first frost.”

  The small brazier in the middle of the tent, more for light and tradition than heat, crackled and flared.

  An ember ended up on the rug. Sarina reached and whacked it with a flop of her boot.

  The tent walls began to shudder as a breeze pickup up outside.

  “You know what they don’t tell you when they’re teaching you how to lead?”

  The wind outside increased again. The flaps of tents all around were kicking up a serious racket.

  Akimi sped around the tent, snuffing the multitude of candles. “Please. Tell me.”

  Sarina pinched the candles next to her bed. “That power makes you more vulnerable. Being in command of an army, all the responsibility, all the ways to fail.”

  Akimi didn’t say anything.

  It was common knowledge around the campfire that if there was one thing Her Highness did not enjoy, it was feeling vulnerable.

  Without the candles, there was little light left. Onäs had sensed the wind too and snuffed the candles in the command tent, saving Akimi the trouble. His silhouette was more defined now in the single light of the central brazier.

  The flap separating the two tents opened slightly. From the tattooed hand emerging cautiously, red in the coal fire, Akimi could see it was Onäs.

  Probably had enough of waiting and was about to make things worse.

  Sarina could see his face. Akimi couldn’t.

  Sarina’s brow dropped. “Onäs, what’s the look for?” She was already sitting up.

  Onäs’ voice wasn’t dramatic at all as Akimi suspected it to be. He said, “Visitors.”

  “Visitors?”

  “Three of them. Imperial. Be happy to send them away if you please.”

  Sarina was already up, pulling her boots to her knees. “Not a chance!”

  Her face brightened considerably. She said to Akimi, “You saw Gracus Radicus in the stands today at the arena?”

  “They don’t wear black to be missed.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Gorgeous as usual, I’m afraid. Take your sword, that’ll help keep his hands to himself.”

  Sarina almost laughed, her mood suddenly elevated. “I’m not worried about that. What if he’s carrying a message? From Quintus?”

  She looked at the sword Akimi was holding out. She frowned and, acquiescing to her tent maiden, grabbed the sword, center-scabbard.

  She didn’t wait for Onäs to let her pass, shoving past instead, still making her point with him. That was all the audience he was going to get tonight.

  Just the two of them remaining, Akimi met the
gaze of the elf in the vent of the tent flap. He was so full-blooded and so tall and, she sighed…so full-blooded. Was she jealous of that? He tried his best not to look perturbed at having his wait be for nothing.

  But Akimi knew people better.

  Elves.

  Orcs.

  Humans.

  Some things transcended race.

  Someone like this, a male who acted from passion rather than from the expectations of others, like in the coliseum today, it was refreshing to see.

  Akimi knew that Sarina liked those kinds of men. As long as they didn’t end up banished by her first.

  The tent continued to buck and snap in the wind.

  Akimi said to him in her soft, quiet voice, “Hello? You’re her champion.”

  He stood up straight and winced. “Does she totally hate me after today?”

  Akimi decided not to inform him how the princess couldn’t keep from staring at his silhouette upon her tent wall for the last twenty minutes.

  “While it’s still your job, you better go keep her safe.”

  6

  Gracus Extends An Offer

  Outside in long, spiraling tails of torchlight, the approaching storm had sucked up an impressive amount of earth from the surrounding lands as it built up strength. The air was murky with it. Like a swift fog.

  Except it dug at the eyes and caused Sarina’s throat to clinch the moment she strode out from her command tent, scabbard in hand.

  There were three of them. Gracus Radicus stood in the middle. His black horsehair crest bent to the wind. The other two bore no crest but maintained their hands atop the decorated pummels of their gladii.

  “Good evening, Princess.”

  “Gracus. Always a pleasure.”

  They should have been shouting over the gale, Sarina noted. But they weren’t.

  ‘Old friends’ was not exactly how she would have put it.

  By then Onäs was at her back, following her outside through the flap of the command tent. His long slate-gray braid swung horizontally in the wind.

  Both Markus and Vadric were stomping from the darkness now, in their furs and trousers, leaning against the obscuring dust storm.

  The Imperial guards tried their best not to squint, not to be offended by the abrasive gusts. Sarina thought they looked more the fool for their severity.

  Gracus inspected Onäs over Sarina’s shoulder, knowing he was the newcomer to Sarina’s entourage, knowing what a display he put on in the coliseum earlier. Then he looked left and right toward the two captains, not rushing it.

  Being outmuscled didn’t bother Gracus Radicus in the least. Which is what happens when you have the clout of the nine-hundred-year-old Sacred Empire at your back.

  Gracus dragged out his words, always one for dramatic presentation, “Quintus Petrus…sends his greeting…”

  For nearly a millennium, the Sacred Empire cast its shadow over the entirety of Auzurix, the vast landmass that stretched almost a thousand leagues from the western Savage Reaches to the eastern Elven Empire, six hundred leagues from Augustus, the southern birthplace of the Sacred Empire, to the northern Orcan Highlands—all of which surrounded the mountainous middle country, the land of Sarina’s people, the various tribes precariously allied under her father.

  The fact that the entire land had over time come to be called by the Imperial name ‘Auzurix’ was a testament to the Sacred Empire’s influence. It had by now woven itself into the lives of a million non-humans—their aggressive trade, their prolonged wars, their unsteady governments.

  But political, violent upheaval churned all of Auzurix these last forty years. Even the Sacred Empire’s precious influence.

  Internal backstabbing within the overstretched Empire had exhausted the legendary military machine, leaving the Empire’s borders porous.

  The savage races, countless in their variety, came now from the west, killing indiscriminately for new lands to claim.

  Orcs raided southward, as they’d done since time began.

  Even the elves, who’d sat isolated in their oversea realm since the dwarfs vanished and skies burned their navies, had begun to see their bravest retread overgrown frontier roads.

  Above all, something more horrid and loathsome had come to Auzurix, not even old enough to become myth.

  It spread like a disease, contaminating the waters and fouling the lands, driving all the masses of life away—the Vile Influx. Its towering stronghold, a fortress, had already been built upon the bones of converts far to the north.

  According to Sarina’s father, it would be those who came together who would survive all of this. Emissaries whisked back and forth over borders. Armies were blended, then ripped apart. All the while, villages everywhere burned.

  Markus stepped up into the light, presenting his broad profile to the Imperial officer.

  “What’s the old boyfriend here got to say that’s so important?”

  Sarina shot Markus a blank stare.

  “The Empire requires use of your services once again, Princess Sarina of the Allied Tribes,” Gracus said through the gusts of scouring soil, raising his voice only as much as he had to. The whipping torchlight cast fickle shades across his cheeks.

  Sarina and her consorts had received two commissions already to wage battle along the borders of the Empire. They fought not as mercenaries but as ‘temporary allies’—which is how she’d instructed Akimi to word it in wearisome reports back to her father and his expectant allies.

  Unfortunately, during those two commissions, there’d been quite a bit of collateral damage. Settlements, livestock, and taxable land—more than the Empire thought acceptable.

  That said, Sarina had yet to taste defeat as a commander of her combined army. She thought she was getting the hang of it quite well.

  Gracus said, “A few scouts from the Reaches say a karnog is leading an army of abhorrent races, toward protectorates of the Empire. One town, in particular, is called Tias. It is under Imperial protection and only maintains a meager garrison of its own. It must be defended. Your army, however small,” he coughed to himself, “is closest to Tias right now.”

  Leaning into the wind, his ebony lorica snapping upon his shoulders, surrounded by Sarina’s famished soldiers who’d been marched beyond their element, Gracus must’ve known Sarina would never refuse the offer.

  She had too much to prove. She had too much to gain. Sarina could read his mind as a smile flitted across his young, ambitious face. She’d known Gracus’ face intimately in the past. Enough to know that he must’ve also been thinking, She has too much to lose.

  Sarina glanced to Markus and Vadric. She reached back and pulled up Onäs to her side. She said to Gracus, “Remind us, will you? Isn’t it right, under the Imperial standard, protectorates must sell us grain and provisions at market value?”

  Gracus almost laughed, knowing right where she was going. “Protectorates must sell to commissioners at reduced values. Mutton, pork, and poultry even if it’s their last. Defense of the Imperial interests, of course.”

  Sarina peeked at the pleasure spreading across the faces of her consorts. Even Onäs, who pretended to be above things like pleasure, titled his head at this. Zacharius was out there in the darkness, watching however he did, she knew him well enough. He’d be smiling too.

  Princess Sarina delighted at keeping her men in good spirits. And fed. It kept her in charge of them. She said, “You’ve met this burgomaster?”

  Gracus frowned. “Please.”

  Sarina looked north, into the darkness. “Tias, huh? Small garrison. Army of abhorrent races on the march. What else do I need to know, Gracus? Before this night whips us all down the plain.”

  “It’s nothing you and your…gang of barbarians can’t handle. If anything, hold the invaders until reinforcements arrive. How’s that?”

  Sarina paused to peer into Gracus’ hazel eyes at that. She used to be able to read him better. She titled her head and frowned at him. “What else, Gracus?”
<
br />   “The usual. You’ve served under Governor Quintus Petrus’ banner before. A successful commission, a defeated enemy of the Empire will further broker your father’s relationship with the Empire.”

  Sarina had heard this speech twice before.

  Gracus went on, “You may not fail, Sarina.” He looked at Onäs over her shoulder, and again at Markus and Vadric flanking him, all of them moving in closer. He stuck out his chest. “The Empire never again employs those who fail. Nor may you abandon your commission. Once it is accepted, if you quit your commission, you will become traitors and enemies of the Senate. And you will be hunted down as such.”

  “Thank you, Gracus. I know the sermon.”

  “There’s a lot of ceremony and repetition in the Empire, Sarina. Perhaps you should get used to it.”

  Sarina was eager. She was about to have a lot of work to do. The kind of things that made her and her military-minded consorts quite happy.

  “Tell us who the Empire wants murder and mayhem rained down upon, Gracus. The Fourth Army of the Allied Tribes accepts Quintus Petrus’ offer.”

  Gracus Radicus’ eyes followed her long golden hair, whipping about like a long streamer, like the golden, wind-battered flames of the torches outside her command tent. Gracus had seen this noble-born beauty unleash havoc upon her enemies. He’d seen the bloody result of men who mistakenly thought her too pretty to wield power. Hell, he’d seen her plenty with her clothes off though it must have felt like long ago. Now small drops of rain struck the side of his face, which suddenly grew quite serious in the torchlight.

  “His name,” he said, “is Magnus Sinn.”

  Big Markus

  7

  Going All In

  Onäs Grimblade was impressed by Princess Sarina’s strides. Long and quick. Sturdy legs for a female. A young human female, at that.

  As they trekked along a slight rain-soaked rise that overlooked her army preparing hastily to fall into column, he would steal glances at the muscles in her strong thighs. They would pump up and down the muddy, slippery variations of terrain.