Young Warriors

by Tamora Pierce

  Our station was—had been—small, of little importance in the grand scheme of English rule. But downriver lay Agra and Cawnpore, great cities with large cantonments. Surely Mr. Humbolt would travel to one of those strongholds?

  I turned away from the ruined bungalow and began to walk toward the main road, the highway that ran past our station and led to the greater world beyond. As I set my feet upon its sun-hardened dirt, I knew my journey would be arduous and long. But I did not care; I was strong, and time did not matter. Only justice for the dead would end my journey.

  But my journey was easier than I had feared, made so by the very conflict that had set my feet upon the path to death. For all that season the Devil’s Wind blew across the burning land—and carried me with it. Carried me implacably to my prey.

  No one took any notice of me as I walked the road. It seemed that the jadu’s magic veiled me from the savage life around me; I walked inviolate as a purdah-nishin behind her curtain. I might have been a shadow falling across the hard-packed earth. A shadow, or a ghost.

  Only when I came at last to an English cantonment far up Sher Shah’s Road, far from the blood and fire and death, did I become tangible once more, my reality reflected in alien eyes.

  “Good God, I don’t know how she did it. To walk all the way from Kalipur to Guljore—a mere child—safely through those devils—” The colonel’s voice caught as if upon a sob; I had not known an Englishman could weep.

  “Hush, my dear; you’ll wake her. She needs her rest, poor thing.” The colonel’s lady spoke low and soft, yet with a firmness that commanded obedience even from her husband. “Tomorrow will be time enough to ask questions.”

  I listened, and smiled, and knew I had no more to fear from them than I had from the dangers of the road. Men see what they wish to see. The jadu’s voice seemed to whisper through the dim room like a serpent. The English wished to see a miracle, and so when I walked into the colonel’s bungalow and proclaimed myself Estella Humbolt, that was who I became in English eyes.

  I looked deeply into those wondering, grateful eyes and saw no doubt there. No doubt at all.

  The English could not treat Estella Humbolt too well; all the ladies vied to care for me, to give me dresses and bonnets, stockings and hair-ribbons. The men regarded me as a portent of victory, a banner to flaunt before mutinous India as proof of English courage. Estella’s survival granted them hope.

  And the English needed hope during those hot black days, for little news reached them, and all of it was bad until I walked into their lives. Too many lay dead, too many still remained in peril. So to see young Estella Humbolt walk untouched out of the hell India had become lifted English hearts; restored English faith in themselves, and in their English god.

  Nothing was too good for Estella Humbolt. I was the darling of the station, as if I were their one and only daughter.

  I found their care touching, their defiant calm admirable. Their concern for me was useful as well; I had only to ask to have my wishes granted. I had the sense to express only moderate desires, suitable to a young English girl.

  What could be more suitable, after all, than a daughter’s ardent longing to see her father again?

  Information was hard to come by, but I heard something of Gerald Humbolt’s new life when a messenger slipped into the cantonment upon the summer’s hottest day. He had traveled all the long road from Calcutta, bringing orders for the colonel: Stay and hold, forbid passage to any mutineers who sought to ravage westward. The colonel frowned and muttered low and fierce, like an angry tiger, “Stay and hold our position? Bah! Nonsense! A child could hold this fort— why, Estella here could hold it!”

  He patted my shoulder and I reached up and clasped his hand, like a trusting child. “Could and shall, if you order it, sir.” I sounded more like a plucky English girl than Estella herself would have.

  The colonel’s scowl eased. “You see? That’s the stuff England’s made of!” Then he introduced me to the messenger from Calcutta, proudly displaying me as if I were the regiment’s luck-stone.

  Upon hearing the name Estella Humbolt, the messenger said, “Humbolt—not Gerald Humbolt’s daughter?” His voice rose with an odd excitement, an emotion explained by his next words. “Estella Humbolt, alive—what news to take back. Your father thinks you dead.”

  “I know,” I said. “All the others are.” I glanced down, veiling my eyes, feigning a struggle against tears. I knew what they would say now—brave little girl; how you have suffered! Just as I knew what they would say if I told the whole truth, that Gerald Humbolt had murdered his family and his servants—poor thing; su fering has addled her wits.

  “Is—is my father well?” I asked, and was assured that Gerald Humbolt was not only alive, but very well indeed, having reached Calcutta unscathed. Of course he mourned the vile slaying of his wife and his daughter by mutineers— but the fact that he now controls his daughter’s fortune consoles him, I finished silently.

  “But the news that his daughter is alive will console him.”

  After a moment, I lifted my head and saw the colonel and his lady and the man from Calcutta all smiling wistfully at me. “Have you a message you would like me to take to your father?” the courier asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Tell him that I am here. Tell him that his daughter awaits him.”

  And I waited all through the long, hot span of time the Wind blew red death down the plains. Meerut, Delhi; Agra and Lucknow. Jhansi. Cawnpore. Doomed cities; skulls strung upon the Dark Goddess’s necklace. But no wind blows forever, and She Who Dances Death is a harsh mistress. Those who offer life to her must do so with a pure heart. Hatred and bloodlust have no place in her service.

  Her favor withdrawn, the Devil’s Wind blew itself out, leaving behind only silence and death, and the seeds of vengeance. And when that Wind no longer blew, Gerald Humbolt traveled the length of India as if the Devil drove him, drawn by the news that Estella lived as a moth is drawn to lamp-flame.

  He rode up the drive when the sun soared high and few others were abroad; only the mad or the desperate ventured forth under the deadly noonday sun. Gerald Humbolt could not afford to wait for the reunion with his daughter. He would wish to know at once what she had seen and heard last May—and what she had said, and to whom.

  I watched him ride up, and smiled and rose to my feet. I had prepared for our meeting with great care. I wore a white muslin frock, its skirt billowing over three petticoats; half-boots of bronze leather clad my feet, and blue ribbons tied back my hair. A vision of the perfect English girl, wide-eyed, innocent, trusting; a girl who lovingly awaited her loving father.

  I could feel his eyes upon me as he stared, trying to decide whether he faced danger. I smiled upon him, my eyes clear as rain-water, and called out to him.

  “Father—oh, it is you, it really is!” Behind me I sensed the presence of the colonel’s lady, coming to greet her guest, to watch his reunion with his daughter.

  Before me, Gerald Humbolt had dismounted; now he walked towards me, forcing himself to smile. A poor effort, showing his teeth in what might as well have been a snarl.

  “Estella.” He stopped in front of me; he looked ill, his face a sickly, pallid mask. “No. It can’t be. You—”

  “Did you think your daughter dead?” Since I stood upon the verandah steps, I could look him in the face, deep into his angry, frightened eyes. “Aren’t you glad to see me, Father?” Then, as I leaned forward, I suddenly knew what to do; understood the power granted me by the jadu’s magic. The power to create justice for my dead.

  Smiling, I kissed him upon the cheek—and as I straightened, I let Estella’s shadow slip away. Let him see me.

  His eyes widened and his breath seemed to choke him; he forced words past his lips. “You—you cannot be Estella. It’s a trick. She—”

  “Is not dead, while I live. And I am here.”

  On the verandah behind us, I knew the colonel’s lady waited, granting us privacy for the reunion of
father and the daughter so miraculously restored to him. And I knew Gerald Humbolt would not reveal my masquerade, lest he betray himself as well. So when he spoke again, it was in a harsh low voice that carried to my ears alone.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Why, I stand in place of your daughter. And what should a dutiful daughter want of a good father?” I moved closer. “I want what you owe your daughter. I want what you owe your daughter’s mother. And, Humbolt-sahib—I want what you owe me.”

  As I spoke those last words, I set my hand upon his chest, where his heart beat hard beneath muscle and bone. “This is what you owe us, Humbolt-sahib. Life.”

  As he stared at me, I summoned the lives he had stolen, drew them from his own beating heart. At first I felt the pounding of his blood as a constant rhythm, like a wild drum. And I felt that rhythm falter, and fade. And then, with a final shudder, cease altogether.

  By the time the colonel’s lady ran down the steps, crying out for the servants to come help, Gerald Humbolt was dead.

  I looked upon what I had done, and felt only a kind of flat, weary gratitude. My task was completed; the dead had been released to rejoin the Wheel. They were no longer trapped, no longer ghosts forced to haunt the places of the dead.

  I knelt beside the body that once had held the soul of Humbolt-sahib. In his last desperate struggle against the power that drained his life, the veins in his throat had opened; blood had poured from his mouth, flooded the front of his coat and shirt. The blood was warm and stained my fingertips.

  This was my power, to summon life. What else does a woman do, after all, but rule life, and death, and all that lies between? The jadu had given me no power I did not already possess. Her magic had only granted me the wisdom to know my own.

  The colonel’s lady put her arms around me, telling me I must be brave. I did not answer; I looked at my bloody hands, and knew what I now must do. The life I had borrowed was not mine to live. That I had known when I bartered upon the riverbank for my past and the jadu ’s future.

  The witch had kept her side of the bargain; now I must keep mine.

  That night I waited until the moon rose high and the night lay silent. And when all slept and the house dreamed, I slipped out of the English bed and pulled off the English nightgown—and with the English nightgown, I shed Estella from me as a snake sheds its dead skin. She had no further need of me, nor I of her. It was time to let her go.

  I unbound my hair from its two braids and shook it loose until its strands rippled like a veil about my naked body. Then I looked into the mirror and saw what others would see, when they looked upon me now. A native. A wild woman.

  A jadu.

  I blew out the night-candle upon the dressing table. And then I walked out of the bungalow, across the verandah and through the faded garden, to find a road that would lead me to a riverbank where a little reed hut waited.

  Waited for the jadu and her blood-red hands.

  INDIA EDGHILL

  A WRITER OF historical novels (Queenmaker and Wisdom’s Daughter), murder mysteries (File M for Murder) , and fantasy short stories, India Edghill has been interested in books since childhood, as everyone in the family for the past three generations has been an avid reader. Her father was a history buff and passed on his love of history to her. The natural result is that she owns far too many books on way too many subjects, including nearly a thousand on her favorite topic, the history of India. Her day job—librarian—doesn’t help cut down on the books any. India lives in the mid–Hudson Valley in New York.

  THE BOY WHO CRIED “DRAGON!”

  Mike Resnick

  YOU’VE ALL HEARD the story about the boy who cried “Wolf!”

  Teachers and parents have been using it to teach children a lesson for centuries now. It’s become a part of our culture. Everybody knows about the boy who cried “Wolf!”, just as everyone knows about the Three Blind Mice, and the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike, and the night Michael Jordan burned the Celtics for 63 points in a playoff game.

  But would you like to know the real story?

  It began a long, long time ago, in a mythical land to the north and west which, for lack of a better term, we shall call The Mythical Land To The North And West. Now, this Land was the home of exceptionally brave warriors and beautiful damsels (and occasionally they were the same person, since beautiful damsels were pretty assertive back then). Each young boy and girl was taught all the arts of warfare, and was soon adept with sword, mace, lance, bow and arrow, dagger, and the off-putting snide remark. They were schooled in horsemanship, camouflage, and military strategy. They learned eye-gouging, ear-biting, kidney-punching, and— since they were destined to become knights and ladies— gentility.

  So successful was their training that before long enemy armies were afraid to attack them. Within the borders of the Land justice was so swift that there was not a single criminal left. It would have been a very peaceful and idyllic kingdom indeed—except for the dragons.

  You see, the Land was surrounded by hundreds of huge, red-eyed, razor-toothed, fire-breathing dragons, covered with thick scaly skin and armed with vicious-looking claws, and just as fifty years ago a Maasai warrior became a man by slaying a lion with his spear, and today you are hailed as an adult when you can break through Microsoft’s firewall, back in the days we are talking about, a boy or girl would be recognized as a young man or woman only after slaying a dragon.

  Okay, you’ve got enough background now, so it’s time to introduce Sir Meldrake of the Shining Armor. Well, that’s the way he envisioned himself, and that’s the name he planned to take once he had slain a dragon and found someone who could actually make a suit of shining armor, but for the moment he was just plain Melvin—tall, gangly, a little underweight, shy around damsels, and more worried about pimples than mortal wounds received in glorious battle. His number had come up in the draft, and it was his turn to sally forth and slay a dragon.

  He climbed into his older brother’s hand-me-down armor, took out the garbage, kissed his mother good-bye (but only after he made sure none of his friends were watching and snickering), climbed aboard the family horse, and—armed with lance, sword, mace, and a desire to show Mary Lu Penworthy that he was everything she said he wasn’t—he set off to slay a dragon, bring back both ears and the tail (or whatever it was one brought back to prove he had been victorious), and become a knight rather than a skinny teenaged boy who couldn’t get a date for the prom.

  Soon the city was far behind him, and before long he had crossed the border of the Land itself, and was now in unknown territory. He hummed a little song of battle to keep his spirits up, but he was tone-deaf and his humming annoyed his horse, so finally he fell silent, scanning the harsh, rocky landscape for dragons. He found himself wishing he had paid a little more attention in biology class, so he would know what dragons ate when they weren’t eating people, and where they slept (if indeed they slept at all), and especially what kind of terrain they liked to hide in when preparing to ambush young men who suddenly wished they were back home in bed, looking at naughty illuminated manuscripts beneath the covers.

  At night he found a cozy cave and, lighting a fire to keep warm and ward off anything that might want to annoy him— like, for example, a pride of dragons (or did they come in flocks, or perhaps gaggles?)—he sang himself to sleep, which kept his spirits up but almost drove his horse to distraction.

  When morning came he peeked out of the cave, just to be certain that nothing lay in wait for him. Then he peeked again, to be doubly certain. Then he thought about Mary Lu Penworthy and decided that the mole on her chin that had seemed charming only two days ago was really rather ugly in the cold light of day, and hardly worth slaying a dragon for. The same could be said for her eyes (not blue enough), her lips (not rosy-red enough), and her nose (which seemed to exist solely to keep her eyes from bumping into each other).

  One by one he considered every young lady of his acquaintance. This o
ne was too tall, that one too short, this one too loud, that one too quiet, and to his surprise he decided that none of them was really worth risking his life in mortal combat with a dragon. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t come up with a single reason to seek out a dragon. It was a silly custom, and when he returned to the Land, which he planned to do the moment his horse calmed down and stopped looking at him as if he might burst into song again, he would seek out the Council of Elders and suggest that in the future the rite of passage to adulthood should consist of slaying a chipmunk. They were certainly more numerous, and what purpose was served by slaying a dragon anyway?

  His mind made up, Melvin climbed atop his steed and turned him for home—and found his way barred by a huge dragon, twenty feet high at the shoulder, with little beady eyes, thin streams of smoke flowing out of his nostrils, claws the size of butcher knives, and a serious case of halitosis.

  “Why have you come to my kingdom?” demanded the dragon.

  “I didn’t know dragons could talk,” said Melvin, surprised.

  “I don’t mean to be impertinent,” said the dragon, “but I could probably fill a very thick book with what you don’t know about dragons.”

  “Yes, I suppose you could,” admitted Melvin. He didn’t quite know what to say next, so he finally blurted, “By the way, my name is Sir Meldrake of the Shining Armor.”

  “Are you quite sure?” asked the dragon. “No offense, but you look rather rusty to me.”

  “My own armor’s in the shop getting dry-cleaned,” said Melvin, starting to feel rather silly.

  “Oh. Well, that explains it,” said the dragon charitably. “And since we’re doing introductions, my name is Horace. Spelled H-O-R-A-C-E, and not to be mistaken for Horus the Egyptian god.”

  “That’s a strange name for a dragon,” said Melvin.

  “Just how many dragons do you know on a first-name basis?” asked Horace.

  “Counting you, one,” admitted Melvin. “Just out of curiosity, how many men have you encountered?”