The Executioness

by Buckell, Tobias S.

  I’d killed their friend by surprise. They, on the other hand, would not die quickly.

  I looked for some way to get out of this fight. “I was in the caravan. I did not ask to be attacked.”

  “It is too late,” the Paikan on the right said.

  My fingers loosened on the axe, getting ready for either man to attack me. The Paikans raised their spears, both of them out of reach of my axe, and they got ready to thrust them at me. But just as they stepped forward, crossbow bolts ripped out of the grass and smacked through their armor.

  With grunts, they dropped to the pebble beach, armor crashing against the stone, spears clattering with them.

  Five crossbowmen stepped out onto the pebbles. One of them was a short man with sweaty, raggedy hair limp over his forehead, dressed in a green robe. He slung the large wooden crossbow over his shoulder. “You are a brave woman, facing two Paikans on your own,” he said with a laugh. “You may thank us for the favor we did you later.”

  I stared at the corpses.

  “Three,” I said to the man. I pointed to the dead one almost at his feet, and he pushed a torch in the body’s direction to examine it.

  “Well, well, well,” he said.

  “And you did me no damn favor,” I continued. I didn’t like the sound of ‘thank me later.’ I wanted to make sure they would think a little further before making assumptions about me. “The caravan still burns, the Paikans still ravage the land as they please. Nothing is changed.”

  The man looked thoughtful. “So you are from the caravan?”

  “Yes.” I still stood apart from them, hoping that they would move on without me. I had it in my head that I would start walking west in the hopes of getting to Paika, somehow.

  Though, as Jal had said, it was hard to get into the city. Without the caravaner’s help, I wasn’t sure how I would do it, but I would have to think of something.

  The man in the green robes looked back at me, then gestured at the bloodied axe. “There is more than one man’s blood on there.”

  “More than one man attacked me back at the caravan.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Did you see how many war elephants charged?”

  “I saw at least twelve from the Roadmaster’s wagon,” I said.

  “Twelve!” said one of the other men. “I told you, we were sold bad information. They will rip through us like paper.”

  The green-robed man looked down at the stones. “We will need to recruit more men.” His voice sounded bitter as he turned and looked out into the trees. “We will not try to take Paika this year, then.”

  “You’re Jiva,” I realized.

  “I am Jiva,” the man said. “My commanders here were about to go and scout the Paikan forces out there with our own eyes. We were hoping to avoid clashing with it until closer to Paika, but it seems they know we’re out here.”

  One of the men behind Jiva spoke up. “What she says about the elephants is the same the other caravaners who escaped into the woods say. It’s not worth the risk.”

  Jiva looked annoyed. “I know. I know. We’ll return to camp.”

  “You have other caravaners at your camp?” I asked.

  “A few survivors our scouts started finding in the woods,” Jiva said. “That is what prompted us to come take a look.”

  I stared at him for a while, thinking about how to get to Paika. About the elephants. About what it would take to regain my children. Then I spoke without thinking. “If you are not going to use your army anytime soon, would you mind if I borrowed it to do what you wish to wait on?” I asked.

  Jiva’s commanders spluttered with laughter. But Jiva did not. His dark eyes narrowed, and anger surfaced. “Who are you to mock me?”

  I rested my axe over my shoulder, hanging my arm over the shaft to balance it. “I am the Executioness.”

  One of the commanders stopped laughing. “You do exist!” he said.

  Jiva glanced at him. “What idiocy are you talking about?”

  “The refugees who came to us several weeks ago talk about an axe woman who faced forty Paikans on her own, defending Lesser Khaim from the Culling, until she fell from a sleeping spell they cast on her.”

  “Paikans don’t use magic,” Jiva said. “And if she is really the Executioness, she wasn’t exactly killing them by the gross here, was she?”

  I cleared my throat. “You interrupted me.”

  “Come with us and go back to your home, like the rest of us,” Jiva said. “We will give you some water and food, what we can spare. The Alacaners will be excited to see you. Be glad you live.”

  “I am not glad I live,” I shouted at him. “I do not share your cowardice! The Paikans stole my family from me. They burned my home to the ground. I have nothing left. Nothing but the hope of getting to Paika.”

  Jiva glowered. “I am here for the same reason. To fight back against the cullings. They took a daughter of mine, and I want my vengeance. But to call me a coward, well, it seems that you are eager to get yourself killed tonight.”

  “And you aren’t?” I looked at the commanders around him. “The Paikans are looking for you, aren’t they? My caravan was not the thing they came to destroy, was it? We were just a bonus. If you break apart to hide, it will be easier for them to take their time and seek out your parts.”

  Jiva’s commanders looked at each other. “She is right. Once we split up, they can take their time to hunt us down one by one, like dogs.”

  “We have little in the way of supplies,” Jiva said. “And, judging by the force that attacked your caravan, which is two hundred or so strong, with twelve war elephants you say, we are outmanned. Fighting men are in short supply throughout the lands, thanks to the culling. We don’t have many horses for cavalry. The fight is over.”

  I shook my head. “The fight isn’t over, you are just not able to see how best to bring it to them.”

  “You think you are a better commander than me?”

  “No,” I said. “I know nothing about armies or supply trains. But I do see the things that men do not.”

  Jiva, at first furious, now snapped his fingers. “Then, tell me what you see that I do not, woman, and I’ll judge your words.”

  I had caught him, like a fish, and had his interest. “You think about their numbers, and whether you can compare yours to theirs, like two boys seeing who can piss the furthest.”

  As I had intended, the warlord jerked back from my words as if slapped. “Listen, axe-bitch…”

  I spoke with a low voice, completely forcing him to stop in order to hear what I was saying. His commanders leaned forward. “The Paikans control the road. You can skulk in the woods like this, avoiding confrontation. Or you get an army so vast there is no hope for the Paikans at all.”

  “Since we have no vast army, but a couple hundred men, you think we should remain here, starving and hidden?” Jiva asked.

  “No, starving accomplishes nothing,” I said. “But with only two hundred men, you are not of much use. No, what I propose is you let me help you build an army so vast, so large, the Paikans will have no choice but to fold. They might not even choose to fight.”

  And, I thought, we would win the battle before even setting foot on the field.

  Jiva folded his arms and laughed at me. “And where shall I find that army, Executioness? Shall I pull it out of my ass? Will you magic all the trees in this forest to suddenly take up my cause?”

  I did not say anything, or change my expression, but waited, until one of the commanders repeated Jiva’s question, “where will you find this army?”

  “The lands are short of young men, due to the culling. But they are not short of angry, venomous mothers like me, whose families have been destroyed, and their towns scattered. And yet they live. They were the backbone of the caravan, before it was destroyed today. They haggle and trade in towns all up and down the coast. No doubt they even helped supply your army at times. There is your army, Jiva: an army of Executionesses, ready to throw themselves
at the walls of Paika, like I am. No less thirsty for blood, no less able to be led into battle. No less able to kill when armed well.”

  Jiva unfolded his arms. “They will not fight as well as a man.”

  “Face me with your sword then, and find out how well a woman can fight,” I said.

  Jiva eyed my axe. Then he pointed at one of his commanders.

  The man stepped forward, and his sword flashed out, faster than I had expected, but I shoved it aside with the axe clumsily.

  On the second swing, I caught the blade in the curve of the axe’s blade, and then spun the axe handle about to crack the man under the chin while his sword was still held away. I leapt back from his next slice, and smiled to see the blood and cracked teeth in his mouth.

  He growled then, and began slashing quickly at me. I backed up further and further into the water as I kept the long blade away, almost tripping over my skirts in the mud that oozed under me.

  We grunted, striking and clanging steel together. He was stronger, he was faster, and he would take me down.

  But I refused him an easy kill.

  By the end, we both stood in hip-deep water, panting, sizing each other up, when Jiva finally stood up from where he’d been squatting. “Good enough,” he said. “Good enough. What will we arm this new army with?”

  “Arquebuses where you can afford it,” I said over my shoulder, still eyeing the commander before me. “Axes where you cannot.”

  “An arquebus is an expensive weapon for vain lords and the rich caravan. Do I look made of gold?” But I could hear in his voice that I had won. That he was taking me seriously.

  “It took me a week to learn to shoot the arquebus. You’d have an army in that time.”

  “Anything else you want of me, besides what little fortune my army has amassed, then?”

  With my axe still in front of me, I looked over at him. “Yes, I have another demand. We need a woman, called Anezka, from the caravan, if your scouts can find her among the survivors who are fleeing. She will be our link to getting us the supplies we need, and a new army.”

  Jiva clapped his hands. “It will be done, if she is alive and can be found. Now both of you, come in from the water, we need to return to camp and rest. Tomorrow we need to get further into the woods.”

  I held my axe in one hand, and held out my other to my opponent.

  He spat a tooth out, and then grinned and took it.

  Part Four

  It did not happen as quickly as I wanted. But, it happened nonetheless.

  First, with Anezka by my side, we recruited tallywomen from the remains of the caravan, and hagglers from the nearby villages. They melted off into the chill of the Northern forests with us, where the Paikans had to get off their horses and brave the bramble and tight brush.

  Forges in half-destroyed towns built arquebus barrels, and woodsmen in the remains of once-great cities crafted stocks. Women all over began to carry axes, no matter where they went, or what hour of day it was.

  And the Paikans did not know, for women taught other women how to fight with an axe or reload their arquebuses, and those women taught others. And what men paid close attention to what women did together?

  Too few.

  And those few that paid too much attention, found an axe buried in their skull.

  Anezka’s old caravan contacts kept food and supplies moving throughout old forest trails to us. Destroyed by the lack of trade and cullings, many were all too happy to help us in revenge for the caravan’s destruction and antipathy to Paika. They even brought word of purges in Khaim, strange stories about the streets running with blood and the air above them glowing blue.

  Jiva slunk into a gloom after the first months. “An army of widows,” he complained. “We will be laughed at and destroyed.”

  “So take us on raids,” I told him. “Kill anyone friendly to Paikans, burn their temples. But we will keep the women in hoods, so that we don’t reveal ourselves just yet. You will see how strong they are in real battle.”

  Jiva resisted at first, but eventually took fifty women, armed with axes. Fifty men and fifty women fell upon one of the larger towns near Paika, overwhelming the thirty or so Paikans guarding the temples there. I watched the turrets of their temple topple into the flames with grim satisfaction, and then galloped with my sisters and brothers back into the protection of the northern forests.

  And that was the last time Jiva spoke of weakness. His men stopped huddling off in the corner of the camp, feeling outnumbered. They passed among the women, and ate and joked with us.

  “And now we have an army,” Anezka muttered to me, when she saw that happen. I’d started to forget my previous life. My new life was weeks and weeks of drills, transporting the parts of arquebuses, and walking through dangerous forests.

  “But do we have enough?”

  “We have as many as we dare recruit. Any more, my supply routes fail, or we go broke. We have a month of supplies, money, and goodwill left,” Anezka said.

  She had a long scar on her cheek. Given to her when the caravan was destroyed.

  It had been easy to recruit her. She’d gone from smiling caravaner to bloodthirsty soldier. Anything that would destroy Paika, or end with a Paikan’s death, she enjoyed.

  She carried a dagger now. Along with her axe and a heavy blunderbuss on her back carved with images of death and destruction along the stock and barrel. She even wore a silvered image of Tankan holding a spear around her neck, on a leather thong. It was not the halls of the merchantmen that Anezka hoped to spend eternity in, now, but the halls of a warrior god.

  “Then I guess we’re going to have to convince Jiva it’s time to march,” I said, and grabbed Anezka’s forearm. “And that it’s time to tear Paika down.”

  We swept south at first, and then westward. Jiva’s men took the frontguard and fought any resistance. But there was little of that as we quickly advanced along the same spice road I’d travelled some six months ago. Just Paikan scouting parties, who usually galloped back up the road to take their reports to the city.

  The road, I noticed, was more overgrown, more thick with bramble along the sides. But even that began to lessen. The woods and trees faded into hilly grasses and small farmsteads, recently abandoned.

  We trudged like a normal army for the plains of Paika.

  When we turned the last curve of the spice road, I gasped. The fields of Paika spread out before us, but they’d been emptied of what crops the laborers could harvest. Everyone living there had moved back behind the protective walls of the city. Miles to the south, the sloping valley went out to the ocean, which was a distant glimmer. To the north were hills and mountains.

  What a city it was!

  The stone walls made a giant U before the mountain, and there were several smaller rings of walls higher up the slope of the city.

  And then the rows and rows of streets and houses and windows and parapets that clung to the slope seemed to go on and on, only petering out when the hillside became so steep as to make building impossible.

  Jiva laughed as he watched me from a horse that walked slowly along with us. “Do you think it still so possible to take the city?” he said.

  “The battle was already won before we arrived,” I said. Those walls would not fall easily, though.

  “Maybe, maybe,” Jiva said, and spurred his horse on.

  “He’s a bit excited,” Anezka observed.

  “A boy before battle,” I replied.

  We trickled through the empty farms and markets until we came to a stop on the edge of the fields just outside the thick walls.

  An armored Paikan with a flag of negotiation flapping from a pole held in his saddle waited for us.

  One of Jiva’s commanders rode out to meet him.

  When he came back, the commanders waved me over. Jiva threw a piece of parchment my way.

  I looked down at it. I couldn’t read: the words made no sense to a butcher from Lesser Khaim. So I looked back up at Jiva. “What is
it?”

  “The Hierarch of Paika wants to talk to you,” Jiva said.

  “Me?”

  The bitterness on Jiva’s face deepened. “I think he believes the Executioness to be the mind behind the army. The word has spread before us that the great Executioness marches with us. The lady who destroyed an entire Paikan army herself, after they razed Lesser Khaim.”

  I ignored the sarcasm in his voice. “I know nothing about tactics or negotiations,” I said. “How can I speak for us?”

  “Oh, but it does make sense,” Jiva said. “That this army is yours as well as mine, there is a grain of truth to that. So go. Talk to their great leader, see what he demands or wants, then come back to us. If they keep you in there, have no fear, we will come soon after to rescue you.”

  I pulled Anezka over to me. “You have been in the city once before, will you come with me?”

  She looked at the flag over the Paikan. “Will they honor the flag?”

  “I can’t promise it,” I told her.

  She mulled it over. “I’ll come. I want to see their leader’s face, I want to see if he realizes that he’ll see his city taken by us.”

  I smiled at her. “We’ll each have our victories soon, Anezka. Come.”

  We borrowed horses, and rode out across the field behind the Paikan negotiator toward the gates of Paika, where even more soldiers waited for us.

  The steel doors shut once we were through, startling the horses with a loud rattle of chain as a giant weight fell down along the wall, the chains holding it yanking at pulleys and more chains that slammed the inch thick steel doors shut. The Paikans led us through the cobbled streets, past fearful farmers camped with their livestock in what had once been markets, but were now shelters as they waited for the battles to begin.

  We followed the Paikans up the steep, cramped streets, where we could hardly see the sky due to the two and three story buildings leaning in over us.

  It reminded me slightly of Lesser Khaim, and I shivered as the horse’s shoes echoed loudly around us.