by Billy Wong
Rose handed it to him, her heart pounding in her chest. She could guess he was about to do something she wasn't going to like, but hoped he wouldn't... He began to wave her sword around like a toy. "Give it back," she said.
"Take it," he challenged her as he stepped back, menacing her with her own sword.
Great. He wasn't even bothering to play fair. Rose skipped back a step as the blade flashed through the air, barely missing her face. "What are you doing?"
"Silly girlie. Bet you can't touch me."
He made another halfhearted slash, and she leaned out of the way. Before he could strike again, she stepped into his reach and punched him in the nose. Cartilage shattered under the blow, and Rose snatched the sword away as he fell to the ground. "That count?"
He only whimpered in response, but a well-built man who had been sitting calmly at the bar commented, "You're good. So you want to be a mercenary, huh?"
"Yes..." She knew she had no idea what she was getting herself into, but it didn't matter; her parents did.
The handsome stranger with the chestnut hair and neatly trimmed beard stood up and clasped her hand. "Welcome to the Blood Vines. May the gods forgive you." After a moment, Rose realized that last line must have been their motto. It scared the hell out of her.
#
She fought in her first skirmish against local bandits within two days, and felt no qualms doing it. While Rose had been afraid of having to fight and kill undeserving foes in her work, bandits were not among those she reserved sympathy for, and she was glad she only had to kill them for now. Her work earned what was a sizable profit to her eyes, which she mailed back to her mother except for a small sum of living expenses she kept for herself. She learned too to drink as men in her profession did, to make life easier to bear.
Rose didn't even attempt to get to know her new comrades, trying to think of this arrangement as only the most temporary of conditions. There was no need for her to grow attached to companions who might die at any time—like her friends in RIEL. She kept silent most of the time, though it went against her nature to remain aloof. But as she spent every day in their company, she couldn't help beginning to get familiar with at least some of them.
Their leader, Michael, was a cold and silent sort, much like herself at this time. The obese merc, Sally, was a braggart and could have been considered a womanizer if he had any success at it. Timmy, a boy about her own age who was the youngest of the men, talked to her the most and about all manner of topics, though generally things she found uninteresting and mundane. Old Jerry was always tired, a heavy drinker, and had too much of a temper for her to dare approaching. And to Rose's surprise, there was one other woman in their company of thirty. Her name was Alicia, the Crimson Boar, and she was... different.
Alicia had a chubby face and long curly hair as red as a sow's bristles, stood a bit taller than Rose, and was even wider though only in the middle. She could outdrink and outwrestle any man in their group, and wielded a huge axe that could cut a horse in half. She seemed to be romantically involved with Michael, at least from what Rose heard of their conversations, and acted almost as a leader of the company in her own right. Her confidence astounded Rose; she always spoke her mind and more often than not got her way, her favorite pose being to fold her arms over her ample chest with a haughty smirk on her face.
On a day when neither of them had much to do, Rose sat by Alicia at the bar they were visiting and asked, "So why are we called the Blood Vines, anyway?"
She continued to chew her mouthful of bread for a few seconds before answering. "Something the old Master had about climbing walls." For some reason, the founder of the Vines had insisted on calling himself "Master" and the title had stuck. So Michael was everybody's Master. "Supposedly, he used to love raiding fortified locations. Made him feel strong, I guess." Then, she resumed chewing.
"You weren't there?"
"I'm pretty new here. I only joined up when I met Michael. He's great fun to be around."
Rose wouldn't have thought so, and doubly so for the spontaneous Alicia, but people had all sorts of tastes. "So what happened to him?"
"He got taken by my charms, so he let me join. I haven't disappointed him yet."
She blinked, confused for a moment. "I meant the founder," she clarified, "not Michael."
"Oh, he died. He was climbing up a siege ladder when someone dropped a big rock on him. His head got crushed into mushcake, and he fell right next to his son—Michael—as he was starting to climb. So then Michael took over for him, and not a single enemy survived that day."
"Gods... that must have been hard to take."
Alicia shrugged. "It happens when your whole family's a bunch of warriors. That's why I'm glad I'm the only one in mine, not that I have much of a family anymore."
"How old was he?"
Alicia threw back a full cup of mead. "Michael was seventeen. His father was forty-one."
Rose felt new sympathy towards their stoic leader, but also wondered at the casualness with which Alicia told the tale. Was she so used to bloodshed that she'd been inured to the horror? "How did you get into this business?"
"I was bored. My life didn't do anything for me, so I left it behind. I'm much more suited to this. It's what I'm good at."
Her reasoning sounded so much like Rose's own, it was scary. Would she, too, end up as cold? But maybe cold wasn't the right word, because Alicia laughed then and joked, "It's also a great way to meet the kind of men I like."
Rose couldn't help laughing with her. She hadn't been looking, but had to admit she too was attracted to the big, strong warrior type. She would have preferred a man able to carry his weight—and lift hers, Rose being the big girl she was. "Hey, Alicia... want to go to the Stew Contest tomorrow?"
"Nah. There's no weapons or warriors for me there."
"Okay."
The next day, Alicia showed up when Rose was halfway through her third bowl of stew, and she shook her head as the warrioress joined her at her table.
When it was all over and their bellies, Alicia's pudgy one included, were filled nearly to the bursting point, the redhead asked, "Next year, if we're around here, can I use your stew recipe to join?"
Rose stared at her. "No. It's my family recipe. But anyway, why? I didn't win."
"Maybe different judges next time, or just different tastes. Can't know if you don't try. Otherwise, why would anybody who didn't win come back for a second or tenth time?"
"I know. But not with my recipe, especially not if we're both competing."
"What does that matter? Maybe it'll taste differently following someone else's bowl, aftertastes and all."
It wasn't exactly customary to give away one's family recipe, but Rose was getting tired of arguing. "Fine, fine. I'll tell you if you don't tell anyone else, all right?"
"Sure. I promise."
#
Though she still rarely talked to most of her comrades, Rose grew more comfortable in her life as a mercenary, and through her correspondence with Lise learned happily that her father had begun to recover from his sickness. But he was still weak, and Lise insisted that Rose stay and continue to work, allowing him time to rest. She wrought much pain and death, but pushed it all to the back of her mind, reassuring herself everything she did was in the name of good. As long the Blood Vines continued to be hired by lords to fight bandits who plagued their territory, she could get away with that.
Her moral reasoning was soon revealed to Alicia in their daily conversation, and the woman would give her no rest from half-serious taunting about the needlessness of ethics in their profession. It quickly grew annoying, but complaining didn't help, and Rose wasn't about to pick a fight with the Master's love interest. She still needed this job. But before their next mission, Alicia took her aside and said, "You might want to quit before we leave this time."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"We're not fighting bandits anymore. We're going after a town next."
"A town? Where?"
&nbs
p; "East of here. Count Lennox of Nienne claims that one of the villages under his jurisdiction is refusing to comply with his tax laws, and he's hired several mercenary companies to deal with the uprising. One of them's us."
Rose frowned. "But then we're just enforcing the law. Nothing's wrong with that, is it?"
"There'll be other companies there, and there's women in town. I don't think you'd like to watch."
She understood now, and was surprised by Alicia's forthrightness. But she remembered her promise against inaction of months past, and asked, "What, and you're just going to stand by and let such things happen? You're a woman, too!"
"I'm a woman, but I'm not them. These things aren't uncommon, and it's not my place to say they should stop. Kings have tried, and it never ends."
"It ends one place at a time. Can't you help me?" Rose couldn't bear the thought of letting this happen, now that she knew it would.
"I can't risk it. I've spent too long becoming part of this world to risk it all for your sake."
"My sake? No, the sake of what's right."
Alicia's eyes showed a hint of sadness. "I can't help you. Just go home. You've done enough here."
"You can't just go with the flow, you've got to fight for what you believe in! Or else everything that's bad will stay that way."
"Go with the flow? You don't know anything, Rose. Just because we're women, doesn't mean we're somehow unique in hating rape and other vile deeds. I know many a male sellsword who abhors all that as passionately as I do, if not more. Some have loved ones who were so victimized. But what are we to do? Fight everyone who insists on it? We wouldn't survive that way."
"We shouldn't allow such warriors to join us in the first place."
"If we don't, they'll just form their own bands. There'll be others there, remember. Us Blood Vines, we're actually pretty tame as evil goes. But we don't exist to fight it, either."
"No," Rose spat contemptuously, "you just fight for money."
"We're mercenaries."
Shaking her head, she insisted, "Yes, but you should always fight for what's right."
"How old are you again, Rose?"
"F-fifteen."
"You'll learn, if you survive. Just leave us, if you can't take this. I won't fault you. I was weak too, once."
Now that made her mad. Rose could admit to having been weak, but she wasn't showing weakness now. She'd gone through and survived far too much to be dismissed for her age. "I'm coming."
Alicia just looked at her for a while. "Don't do anything stupid," she finally said, and walked away.
Stupid, huh? Rose was going to do whatever she needed to for the sake of right, whether some woman with an underdeveloped sense of morality thought it was stupid or not.
#
As the companies converged on the rebellious village of Praith, Rose could already see she had a daunting task ahead of her. There must have been over two hundred mercenaries not counting the Blood Vines, and she would have quite a bit of trouble making sure nobody took advantage of the helpless victims they found in town. That is, if she didn't get killed in a fight with some merc unwilling to forego his intended mischief.
She tried to sneak away before the battle to talk to the leaders of the other companies, but Alicia realized what she was up to and said, "Don't. They won't appreciate your preaching."
Now basic standards of moral conduct were considered preaching? Rose knew Alicia wasn't quite as bad as that, but then maybe she was worse, for knowing what was wrong and letting it be anyway. Still, the woman wasn't going to let her go, and that was that. They stormed into the village, smashing the meager resistance put up by the defenders without much trouble, and then the post-victory celebrations began.
The looting and destruction of property were but the least of the mercs' deprecations, the worst of which nothing Rose had seen could have prepared her for. She saw a young woman dragged off to be raped while bleeding to death from a half severed leg, her husband who sat clutching his bowels in the doorway of their home still reaching out towards his love. Just two houses down from where he slowly died, a gang of laughing men raped a mother and her two daughters in sight of each other. Across the street, the screams of a helpless old couple could be heard as looters slaughtered them for no reason but that they could. Everywhere, the innocent died to feed the desires of the wicked.
Overwhelmed by all the atrocities she witnessed, Rose's resolve to intervene was forgotten, and she only looked on numbly as evil asserted its hold on the world. "Stop," she cried again and again as she wandered about seeking vainly to escape the waking nightmare, but the fiends only spared her passing glances before returning to their villainy. So what if she thought they were wrong? They didn't care. She was only a stupid girl.
But then she saw a small girl, perhaps four or five years of age, run in front of her wounded mother in an attempt to forestall her imminent rape. The woman was already dying, pinned as Rose had once been to a wall with a sword through her body, but the child seemed not to know or care. She ran forward and clawed at the rapist's shirt, screaming and crying all the way. The merc raised a dagger and plunged it down into the back of her neck, and she fell lifeless to the ground. Transfixed as she was, the mother wailed, tried to pull herself free to reach her slain child, and slumped forward on the blade, dead.
Her shock draining away and replaced by a rage like nothing she'd ever felt, Rose stepped forward and struck with her sword. The murderer fell, his head cloven in half.
"What are you doing?!" another merc asked. This was the man who'd inflicted the death-wound on the child's mother.
"Killing you," Rose replied, and thrust her sword into his lower belly. Leaving him to die slow, she went to find new victims.
Her sword bit through metal, flesh, and bone again and again, stilling everyone she found committing the acts she despised. Choosing her victims this way, she felt no guilt at all, and fought better than she ever had—though she often didn't even need to fight, simply killing from behind with no warning for the men's imminent demise. They didn't deserve it.
Soon, others began to try and stop her, and she didn't care; she killed them too, treating them the same as the monsters they meant to save. Making her way from door to door, she lost count of the number she slaughtered, but there wasn't an infinite supply. When she was done, she walked over to Alicia covered in blood, her sword notched and pitted from hacking into armor and bone so many times. Only now did she notice the sting of her wounds, many a cut and bruise underneath her rent mail. Her fury hadn't lent itself well to cautious fighting.
Her rage fading enough for her to talk, she said, "I told you I could make a difference."
"You're insane," the other woman replied, hands on her hips and a smile on her face. "Interesting way to weed out the competition."
Michael approached them, glaring at Rose. "What have you done? You've made an enemy out of every company here!"
"Yeah, and? They're all too scared to fight me anyway."
"We came here to quell a rebellion, not destroy our allies."
"All the ones I killed had it coming." She looked at Alicia, pleading with her eyes for help.
"That's true," Alicia agreed. "They weren't very nice."
Michael looked at her. "You've never cared."
She shrugged. "No, but maybe I should have. What if I got wounded badly enough so I couldn't fight back—not that it would happen—would you let me get raped?"
"No. But you're important to me."
"All these people are probably important to someone," Rose interjected. "Besides, we came here to enforce the law, not break it ourselves. Do you really think Count Lennox would like this sort of crap happening here?"
"Actually," a voice said to her shock, "that's why he hired the likes of you mercenaries. Well, not you personally." She turned, and standing behind her was a man dressed in the uniform of a county soldier. The lines of his thin face were taut with fear. A dissenter among the ranks? "Count Lennox is evil in
carnate, and will do anything to enforce his will. You must leave at once, or he will destroy you for your defiance."
#
Leaving the town, Rose found herself the subject of many a confused or frightened stare from the people she'd tried to save. But some of them showed their gratitude as well, a smile or a wave to the woman who had betrayed her brutal allies.
Michael confronted her later that night. Walking over as she ate with Alicia at the fireside, he said, "You're dismissed from the Blood Vines. I expect you not to travel with us back to Seil tomorrow morning."
Harsh, but not unexpected. "All right. I don't think I'd make much of a mercenary in the long run, anyway."
"You did a brave thing today. I wish I didn't have to let you go."
"It's okay. I'm tired of fighting, and killing. Thanks for the money."
"You earned it. You were one hell of a fighter."
Rose chuckled. "I get that a lot. Sorry I had to do what was right."
He grinned slightly and walked away. But she knew that if they ever met again, it would more likely be as enemies than anything else.
"So now you leave us?" Alicia asked.
"I have to. I'm going to take this Lennox down."
"That'll be quite a task."
Rose nodded and quipped, "You'll be hearing about it in song if I succeed."
"I hope I do. Good luck, Rose. Stay alive."
"Thanks, Alicia. You too."
She left in the morning, ready to put evil in its place. Unfortunately, she wasn't sure yet how she could do that. Lennox had a reputation as a strong warrior, and she was unsure if she could take him in a fight even if they were alone—and he would surely have many servants with him at home. Just going there and killing him was probably out. Talking to him really wasn't likely to help. And there weren't any local authorities legally capable of doing much to him. Rose would have to go to Gustrone, the capital of all Kayland, and see King Benedict himself if she wanted something done.
Chapter 5
Rose had barely begun her trek to Gustrone when she heard hurried footsteps approaching from behind. She could already guess what was going on. The scrape of a sword clearing its scabbard confirmed her suspicions and she spun, drawing her own blade to ward off the deadly blow. The strength of her parry jerked her attacker off balance, and he yelped in fear. His partner followed him in, a battleaxe flashing before him, and lost an arm and then a head to her heavy blows.
