Sword Masters

by Selina Rosen

  She looked at the creek. The water ran clean again. She was clean and her weapon was clean. In a few weeks the village would be repaired and from the outside no one would guess that a great slaughter had taken place there. But the hearts of every one of them who survived this day would remember. Not a one of them would ever be quite the same as they had been when the Amalite horde decided to descend on a village of helpless farmers and ranchers.

  Many of those children, the ones that lived, would grow up as she had; parentless, with visions of death in their heads. They would learn to hate before they had even really learned to love, and they would never feel safe again.

  And this cycle would never end till the last Amalite priest was laid to rest beside the last Amalite soldier.

  She had been gone too long. There was work to do, and if she was to give out orders she must also share in the work. She got up and started the long walk back. Now the body started to ache at the work it had done.

  No one respected a leader who never got their hands dirty, who put themselves up on a pedestal above others. If Persius wanted the real respect and admiration of his countrymen, he would crawl out of his carriage and start carting around dead bodies. He would help dig graves.

  Riding into battle in a suit of armor no arrow could pierce, surrounded by men sworn to die before they let a hand fall on him, might look a grand gesture to a fool, but any person worth his salt could see through it. It was a show put on to boost moral. Nothing more and nothing less. Persius would sit on a horse twice as good as any of theirs. He would be surrounded by the best fighters in the kingdom. Then he would ride onto the battlefield where he could be seen by the most people, and he would bark out a few orders from the safety of his gauntlet of men. The troops would be heartened, and then he would quickly ride off the field before the real battle started. He would get in his carriage and go home to await the outcome.

  The troops' moral might be boosted for a day, maybe even a week, but no more. But if he would get out and dig the latrine, then they would take heart. If he would shit in the latrine instead of in a china pot that someone else had to dump for him, then the men would believe he was one of them. They would feel good about fighting for the kingdom.

  Grand gestures didn't win Tarius's respect, not the way small ones did. She looked at the beaded necklace around her throat and then quickly tucked it into her armor. Not to hide it, but so that it would be safe. She thought of Jena. She had missed her the moment she'd left her line of sight.

  She tried not to think of all the many things that could go wrong with her relationship with Jena. She fantasized that she told Jena everything, and that Jena didn't care. That she said she had always known.

  Too soon, she was back at the village and back to work. Tragon joined her. He hadn't bathed as she had, and yet he was relatively blood free. She hadn't seen him throughout the battle, but she guessed from the too clean look of him that he had hung back. She liked Tragon, but was all too aware of his many faults. She knew she couldn't count on him to watch her back. Harris, yes, but not Tragon. Tragon would always put his own life over any others.

  Which was just one of many reasons he never would have made a good mate for Jena. When guilt poured into her brain like rain on her head she would have to remember this fact.

  Harris ran up to work with her, and she realized he was almost as bloody as she had been. "There's a creek," she nodded with her head in the general direction. "Go and clean up; you'll feel better."

  Harris nodded quietly and was obviously releaved to be able to get away for awhile.

  "Listen up and pass the word on," Tarius yelled. "If you feel you need to wash, there is a creek on the other side of the village. Wash up, but be quick about it! I want the dead out of the village by nightfall." Tragon started to leave with several others, and Tarius caught hold of his arm. "You're hardly dirty at all, my brother."

  "Is that a crime, Tarius?" Tragon asked with a smile.

  "Depends on why," Tarius hissed. "Certainly you're not dirty enough to need a wash down. Help me with the bodies."

  An angry retort died on Tragon's lips. He knew why he wasn't bloody, and so did Tarius. Yes, he had hung back, but what did it matter? Tarius was a one-woman slaughtering machine. Why should he risk life or limb when all he had to do was get out of Tarius's way and go in to finish off the ones she hadn't quite killed? There was no crime in playing it safe, and with Tarius taking all the risks, well, it just wasn't necessary for him to do so to make a name for himself. Especially since Harris seemed more than willing to take his place on the front line.

  And if Tarius died . . . Well, Tragon would be there to comfort her widow.

  Of course it would be better if she died towards the end of the war instead of the beginning. Better if she could protect him as long as possible.

  Tragon answered Tarius in a lowered voice, eyes on the ground. "I'm sorry, Tarius. I'm . . . I'm ashamed to say that I was scared. I had never seen anything like that before. By all rights, we should be on our internship, handling disputes between villagers and minor skirmishes. I froze for a minute; I was scared nearly to death."

  Tarius was a woman, and she had the compassion of a woman in most cases. Tragon hoped to appeal to the woman Tarius pretended not to be. He wasn't entirely successful.

  "There's nothing wrong with being afraid, Tragon. We have all known fear. The only dishonor comes from what you do with your fear." She grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. "Abandon me again, Tragon, and you had best pray that you never need me at your back, because I will not be there."

  Tragon nodded silently. They went back to work moving bodies.

  * * *

  Tarius gently dressed the wound on Harris's arm. It was deep, but not bad enough to need sewing. He'd cleaned up as they all had, but his youthful features had lost the look of innocence that had lit up his face only a few short hours ago.

  "You all right?" Tarius asked.

  Harris nodded silently.

  "You can tell me, you know," Tarius said finishing the last knot in the dressing. "Your arm will heal. You do know that, don't you?"

  "I know . . . but . . . The Amalites! It's as if . . . I don't know how to put it. It's as if they don't feel our pain. As if they kill us as easily as they would slaughter sheep," Harris said. "These people held no weapons. They couldn't defend themselves. What good does it do the Amalites to kill them?"

  "My father told me many truths, but there was one that stood out beyond all the rest. He said, 'Of two things take heed. A man who believes he is right, and proving that man wrong.' They need no other reasons."

  Harris nodded, although he wasn't exactly sure what Tarius meant. They were alone at their tent. The other soldiers, even Tragon, were talking to each other and reliving the day's events. Naturally, each one was making himself sound better than the one before. Harris had tried to fit in, to get into their groups and talk, but they moved quickly away. In fact he noticed that they treated him almost exactly as they treated Tarius. He figured he was in good company, but no one liked to be shunned, and he didn't really understand it. Tarius was the hero of the day, and yet they avoided him as if he had plague.

  "Why don't they like us?" Harris asked in a quiet voice. For the first time that day he sounded like the mere youth that he was.

  Tarius looked across the camp at where Tragon talked easily with a group of the men. "I know how you feel. Let's tell it as it truly is but keep it between ourselves. Tragon was a coward today. Yet he is accepted and we are not. All because we were born different." Tarius lay down on the ground close to the fire, and she stared across the flames at Harris. "We have to earn every shred of respect we get because in their own way they are no better than the Amalites. They also despise people that aren't like them. I'm out-country, and I have strange ways they don't understand or respect. You are a cripple, yet you and I are better fighters than any of them. In their heads, we should be barely competent, so the fact that we are better than them mo
cks their beliefs, mocks their training."

  "You are better, Tarius, but not me. I'm not better than they are! I couldn't be . . ."

  "Do you doubt my judgment, Harris?"

  Harris laughed. Tarius was his mentor, but he was also his only true friend, and Tarius did not intimidate Harris. "I doubt your eyesight. Anyone can see that my skill does not match that of any Swordmaster . . ."

  "Do you think a title makes you a better fighter?" Tarius looked at him and smiled. "Their titles make them quit trying, quit improving. You are constantly improving, constantly working at improving."

  "But I can't run or jump like them . . ."

  "You have learned to fight. You don't need to be able to run as fast or jump as high because you, my friend, have learned how to stand your ground and fight," Tarius assured him. "Now I'll hear no more talk of them being better. They are not better fighters than you, and they are certainly not better men."

  Harris blushed red with embarrassment at Tarius's praise.

  "Come, let Tragon and those idiots stay up talking and drink themselves sick. When the morning comes and we break camp to start out again, they'll wish they had as few friends as we do."

  When they were settled into their tent, swords by their sides, Harris found that he was more tired than he thought he was. His muscles ached, and the wound started to throb but wasn't really painful. He yawned.

  "Tarius?"

  "Yes?"

  "Do you miss her?" Harris asked.

  "Yes. I miss Jena very much," Tarius said, feeling in that moment as if her heart were being ripped from her chest.

  "I know you miss her. I didn't mean Jena. I meant . . . I meant your mother," Harris asked in a hushed whisper. "I was very little when my mother died, too. I still miss her. Is that wrong?"

  "No, it's not wrong. I still miss my mother, and I always will. But that dreadful hole that was ripped in my soul when the Amalite bastards killed her was filled completely when I fell in love with Jena, when she fell in love with me. When you fall in love, you'll feel whole again as well."

  "Maybe, but where will I find a girl like Jena?" Harris was only half teasing. Jena had been like a sister to him, but that didn't mean that he hadn't had a crush on her. He didn't think he could be happy with any fine lady who never took her shoes off or wrestled. He told Tarius as much.

  "Go to sleep you rogue. You only make me miss her more," Tarius said.

  * * *

  Harris fell to sleep almost the moment he relaxed, but sleep did not come as easily to Tarius. She tossed and turned and was still awake when Tragon came back to the tent hours later. He smelled like bad rum and smoke, and from the way he fell into his bedroll she guessed he was drunk. He more passed out than fell to sleep. Doubtless, the villagers had treated the soldiers to some of their liquor stores. She supposed as captain she should have ordered them to sleep at a decent hour and rationed or even disallowed the alcohol all together. However then they'd all hate her even more. So let them drink themselves into a coma and stay up all night. She decided to start out at a quick pace in the morning and taper off towards midday.

  She fell asleep thinking of Jena and woke in the morning with a deep longing that she couldn't shake. As expected, half the camp had a hangover, and it took them a little longer to get on the road. This was her excuse for double pacing the horses. Every once in awhile you could hear one of them retching, and she was glad to be riding in front. Tragon was a delightful shade of green, and after the first hour he succumbed. He reined his horse to a stop, jumped down, ran into the woods and started retching. The king's carriage called for the procession to stop, and Tarius was called back to the carriage.

  "We're moving a bit slowly aren't we?" Persius asked.

  "I . . . I'm trying to keep us at a medium pace, but several of the men—including my own partner—have fallen very ill," Tarius said.

  Persius smiled knowingly. "Too much drink?"

  "Aye, Sire," Tarius said.

  "You should have ordered them to be moderate and to turn in early," Persius said disapprovingly. "It's your job to keep them in line, Tarius. Don't be afraid to give them orders."

  "I thought perhaps that if they lived through this, there would be no need for any orders concerning drinking or long nights," Tarius said. "If I'm wrong, I will make it an order."

  Persius nodded approvingly.

  They rode on.

  "You're a Kartik bastard," Tragon said to Tarius when he had endured yet another hour at a double time.

  "Aye, but I'm a sober Kartik bastard," Tarius laughed.

  "Serves you right for snubbing us," Harris added.

  "Don't you start in on me, you insolent child!" Tragon groaned and leaned into his horse's neck.

  "You'll get no sympathy from me. You have done this to yourself," Tarius said. "Perhaps you and your boyfriends will use a little more temperance in the future."

  Tragon realized something then. "You don't drink, do you, you awful bastard?"

  "No," Tarius said. "If you were me, would you drink?"

  Tragon thought about it and decided that, no, he would not. If you were Tarius, and you got drunk, you might accidentally say or do something that would tell the world that you were a girl. Worse yet, you might get mad, turn into a beast, and rip some poor drunk's face off.

  "No, I suppose I wouldn't," Tragon said.

  Harris silently wondered why.

  Chapter 7

  It took them the better part of two months to get to the front, mostly because they kept running into troops of Amalites. None of their scouts had reported activity so far in, so they'd had no idea how close the country was to being entirely overrun by the Amalites.

  Persius was appalled. They had told him it was bad on the front, but they hadn't said a damn thing about the bastards being spread throughout the countryside. By the time they got to the front they had killed over a thousand Amalites, and had lost over one hundred of their own men. Tarius had replaced them with men from the villages they passed through, taking men who wanted to fight and were big enough and strong enough to handle themselves in battle. Tarius assigned one of the newcomers to one of the better swordsmen in the company to train. He outfitted them with the armor and weapons of the men they were replacing. At first there had been a great outcry from the men. It was customary to bury these things with the fallen soldier.

  Persius himself had called Tarius to one side when he had first tried to implement this practice and explained the tradition to him.

  "Sire, with all due respect, the Amalites are over-running your country," Tarius said. "My own sword was built by the hand of my dead father. In its handle is a finger which once graced my very hand. Yet should I fall in battle, I would not want my blade to be retired with me. Dead men can't swing steel, and they have no need for armor. Surely my brothers who have fallen would have felt the same way as I do. We are in danger of losing to the Amalites, in which case the whole world will likely be wiped out by them. Let us not let silly customs stop us from wining this war."

  Persius then gave the exact same speech, using his own sword—also left to him by his father—as an example. From then on, the men had no problem stripping a dead comrade of his armor and giving it to the first willing man who could wear it.

  They handed the spoils gleaned from the Amalites they killed out to the villages they encountered, thus arming still more men. Tarius gave each village a quick lesson in how to use a sword, how to use a club, how to use an ax, how to use a staff. She gave them instructions on how to keep watches, and what to watch for. Then they went on till they came to the next village. It slowed them down, but not too much, and meant that they left an armed and battle-ready countryside behind them and none of the enemy at their backs. Since it was Tarius's own way to come in from behind her opponent as well as in front, she expected the Amalites to try to do the same and she didn't want to find herself walled between two groups of Amalites with no way to retreat.

  Persius noticed that the atta
cks came closer together with every day that they got closer to the front. More and more the attacks were not launched against hapless villages, but were aimed against the king and his entourage. No doubt word had gotten back to the Amalites that the King of Jethrik himself was coming to join the battle with over a thousand well-trained men.

  Nothing could have prepared Persius for the actuality of the front. The heavy spring rains had turned everything to mud, and then a long dry spell had baked it dry. Where his men were camped and all across no-man's land, not a blade of grass stood. Even the trees seemed to be in distress. Trenches in the open served as latrines, and the flies and the stench were unbearable. Far in the distance he could see the smoke from the Amalites' campfires.

  He got out of his carriage against the advice of council and immediately stepped in a big pile of horseshit. He shook it off his boot and walked up to meet Tarius. All around him the men who had been holding the king's ground set up a great roar, applauding his arrival and bowing to his presence. Persius nodded and waved as he walked up to Tarius who dismounted as he approached.

  The stench of death wafted up towards them, and even Tarius was unable to conceal his disgust.

  "Well, Sir Tarius, you have not steered me wrong yet. What by the gods do we do now?" Persius asked in a whispered panic.

  Tarius looked around surveying all at once the condition of the camp, the condition of the men, and their strategic location to the enemy. He took in a deep breath and shrugged.

  "The men are tired and weak from hunger and disease. We are completely in the open here without any cover. The smell is hideous, and in itself would kill morale. I say we wait for cover of darkness and retreat."

  "Retreat!" Persius screamed. "Are you mad! To give up more land to . . ."

  "Hear me out. We won't go far—just up to where we can't be seen—back into the woods where it is cleaner. We dig proper latrines and put a good meal in these men's bellies. Then before light we snuff out all our fires. When the Amalites awake in the morning, it will look like we have run off, but we'll be on horseback waiting for them. They will send in scouts of course, and we will quietly kill them and wait. Soon they will believe they have us on the run and come after us with every available man. We will meet them there in the woods with everything we have," Tarius said. "By nightfall we will be able to make camp where they are now."