Women of War (17 page)

Not beyond imagining, for a mage.

But for the soldiers? The laws that prevented like deaths chaffed and strangled, and in the end, many of the Kings' own were offered to the gallows for their actions of reprisal.

It was to the gallows that Duarte looked, as they were erected. But it was to the woman he owed his allegiance that he at last went.

 

“Give them to me,” he asked Commander AKalakar quietly. He forced deference into the words, and it was not entirely feigned. Having seen Ellora AKalakar at the head of the House Guards that were her pride, he had discovered that she could lead men anywhere, and they would follow. Because she was
almost
one of them.

She was writing. On the field, there were few things that were so necessary that they needed to be signed by a Commander. Among these were writs of execution. Each Commander was responsible for signing the warrants of those men whom, in the opinion of the military police, deserved death. It was considered a formality.

Duarte meant to test this supposition.

Exposure to Southern sun had darkened Ellora AKalakar's skin and her complexion; exposure to Southern warfare had darkened other things. She looked up from this task, Verrus Korama a shadow by her side, as he always was.

“What do you mean?” She asked him, half bitter. “Will you serve as official executioner here?”

“Yes,” he said, stark word offered in the darkness of shadowed tent. There were stockades being built, but it would be days before they were finished, and the hewing of wood, the lifting, the fitting, would occupy the army for some time.

“Why?” She set the papers aside, staring at him.

“I've listened to the Annagarian prisoners,” he told her quietly. “You all have.”

She nodded.

“They are convinced that the Northern armies are too weak to wage war,” he continued softly. “The presence of women upon the field only strengthens this belief. We will slaughter the whole of the Dominion without shaking that certainty if we continue to fight on the terms that we have.”

“We are the kings' army,” she told him firmly. But she lifted a hand, and after a moment, Verrus Korama chose to retreat.

“And how many of our own—how many of our civilians—will we sacrifice in the name of those kings? The kings are
not here.
But we are.”

“Tread carefully.”

“I am. But you are signing writs of execution for two women and one man, and I think, AKalakar,” he added, using the House name, and not the military title, “that I can make better use of them.”

She said, softly, “What use? If I grant you this request, there will be some difficulty for me; Commander Devran ABerrilya is not noted for his tolerance of poor discipline.”

“A better use than gallows fodder, although it'll end—for them—in the same way.” He was silent for some time. “We need a different way to wage war.”

“What different way?”

“Their way. We need to speak their language.” He did not flinch; he did not move. He did not fail to meet her eyes. “You cannot ask this of your regular units.”

“Ask what?”

A game. But he was adept with words. “That they become your personal monsters.”

Her pale brow rose. “I accept no monsters in my service, Duarte AKalakar. I accept men and women who accept
my
command.”

“They will,” he replied. Games, all games, these words. He knew what he had to do. Had come far enough in this war, and with this woman, that he was willing to do it. To be her sacrifice. “But they have already proven that they have the strength—or the lack of moral fiber—to do what I think must be done.”

“And that?”

“Change the face of the conversation.” As if war were just that, no more.

 

Verrus Korama returned when Duarte AKalakar left the tent. He stood in the same spot that he always occupied; to the left of her back, his hand upon his sword. His expression was smooth and neutral; he was her calm. She had none. The hand that was raised above the inkwell shook. She understood the anger that had driven these soldiers to their acts of desperation and rage; to rape, to disembowelment, to desecration of the not quite dead. To execute them, however, was the order of the kings. Distant kings.

“Well?” She asked, without turning. Without signing the documents.

“You know what Commander ABerrilya will say,” he said quietly.

“I don't give a rat's ass about Devran.”

She could feel the Verrus' smile; it would be brief.

“Castration of prisoners of war is considered a capital offense.”

She said nothing, waiting.

“But I believe that Commander Allen might listen if you choose to make your request. These executions will not be popular with the men.”

“Will we win this war?” She asked him. Because she could. Doubt, in the silence of her own space, was her own business.

“Not without loss. Perhaps not without the loss that Duarte AKalakar envisions.”

“You must know what he intends.” Because she did. And she had never been a woman who ascribed to the theory that the ends justified the means. Pragmatism warred with something else, and she knew that it might win. That it would be costly. How costly? Ah, that was the question. “If we lose,” she said, to herself, exposing all, “then all we will be are—”

“Monsters.” She knew a moment of anger, then. But she had always been a pragmatic woman. An intuitive one. She understood everything that Duarte AKalakar offered her, and she had never expected that offer to come—if it came at all—from a mage.

“Call the Duarte AKalakar back to my tent,” she told him quietly.

 

Primus Duarte AKalakar faced the Kalakar, arms shorn of the weight of the dead in a way that he would never be. “This was her home,” he said at last. His words were bitter, but his voice was soft.

After a moment, she nodded. “Yes. This was. She was never at home in the peace of Averalaan. Not after the war.”

Because this was honest, because they were two officers alone, Duarte relented slightly. “Not before the war, either. She came looking for death. She didn't much care whether it was her own.”

“Only the first time,” the older woman whispered.

Because this, too, was true, he said nothing.

“I made you a promise.”

He nodded, remembering it.

 

Alexis Barton. The first name on the list of three. Fiara Glenn. Auralis, no family name given. It was to Alexis that he had gone first, and perhaps, had he chosen a different person, things would have unfolded in a different way.

But he hadn't.

He had crossed the grounds trampled to mud by the boots of Imperial soldiers. Had listened to their whispers, their curses, their Weston phrases of anger. Even their songs, delivered in anger like a prayer to the god of war. Which god, which war, no longer seemed to matter. This, he expected.

But Alexis? He could never have expected
her.

She was knife thin; the ocean passage had been unkind. Her skin was dark and red; it appeared that the sun had been unkind as well. But her face, like the face of a bird of prey, was bright-eyed, unhooded, and she met his gaze with contempt and defiance. She knew that the gallows were being built, alongside the stockade; could see the wooden beams, some too new in his opinion, as they were raised by ropes and battered into standing shape. She could even see the graves that they'd be granted: traitors' graves, in foreign soil.

Her hair was dark and lanky. What food she had been afforded remained, rotting in the sun; she had taken the water, no more. She had been stripped of rank—private, he thought—and the colors of the unit that she had come with. He knew the unit, or rather, could look it up; it was written beside her name.

As was her crime.

“Alexis Barton,” he said, as if he were calling roll. Her eyes narrowed. She'd been stripped of regulation weapons as well: short sword, daggers. He doubted she had the strength to pull a bow. But even without these, she was dangerous.

“That's my name,” she said, when it became clear he was waiting for an answer.

“You stand accused of breaking the edicts of the kings.”

She shrugged. “The Annies don't read enough Weston to know the edicts.”

“No. You understand that the civil treatment of prisoners is one of the things that differentiates us from the enemy?”

She spit. “Not the only thing.” Her back was to the pen; she faced him, her knees beginning to bend.

He lifted a hand, and fire flared in a bright ring around her feet. It was a warning. It was the only warning she would get. But her brows rose, and she chuckled. “They sent a mage?” She whistled. Low whistle.

“You are not a member of the Kalakar House Guards,” he told her grimly. “But you
are
a member of the army under her command. Your behavior here reflects upon her. Do you understand this?”

Her reply made clear that she did, and that it didn't matter. He almost smiled. But the humor would be lost on this Alexis.

“You served the kings,” he replied calmly.

“Look where it got me.”

“Could you do it again?”

She stilled. She always stilled when she heard something worth listening to. “Any time.”

“Your sentence will be held in abeyance, should you choose to serve,” he told her quietly.

She looked at him as if he'd either sprouted another head or had started talking in Torra, the Annie tongue. “Abeyance? Big word.”

“But not one with which you are unfamiliar.”

She shrugged. “I'm familiar with a lot of words.”

“I am Primus Duarte AKalakar,” he told her quietly. “And if you choose to accept my offer, you will be a private in my company. You will wear
my
colors, and the only law you will serve is
my
law.”

“And what law is that?”

“War's law,” he replied grimly. “And the Kalakar's.”

“What about the kings?”

“They're not here.”

“Then who do you serve?”

“Commander AKalakar,” he replied. “Choose.”

She shrugged. It was her way of saying yes. He knew it, and would come to know it better, in time. “If you do not prove useful, the gallows will still be your home.”

She reached out and grabbed his hand. He almost burned her, but something held him back. “This isn't our war,” she said, voice low. “It's
theirs.
They called it. They made the rules.”

“Yes,” he replied, tightening his hand; replying to her unexpected grip.

Fiara Glenn had been more difficult. Her rage was harder to contain, and he had endured fifteen minutes of it before he cut her short. The offer he made was curt; he was under no illusion. Those that made their way to the gallows could not
all
be of use. Some, the gallows would claim. He could not be certain that she wouldn't be one of them, and he chose—carefully—not to care.

But when she found out that Alexis was his first private, she folded suddenly, the fire swallowed as she tried to remember basic discipline. He knew, then, that they were either friends or co-conspirators. Wasn't certain if this was a good sign or not.

And that left only Auralis. The man who would one day be known as the Bronze Osprey, with his bitter anger, his dark past, his desire for death. Duarte had seen men like him before; men who weren't truly aware that the death they wanted was their own.

Auralis had almost found it, and if he wasn't at peace with it—and he wasn't—he was almost unprepared to have it snatched away. He hadn't spoken a word. Confronted by, confounded by, Duarte AKalakar, he had simply nodded, as if he had expected no less.

“Where is Auralis?” the Kalakar asked, as Duarte sifted his way through memory, walking slowly.

“I don't know. With Kiriel.”

The Kalakar said nothing. The memory through which he walked, she now walked, and it was just as tortuous a passage.

 

By the end of the week, he had ten men and women in his service. They came from different units, and they were wary, ugly, angry. Only Cook was peaceful, although he had not yet earned that name; he was Jules from the Free Town of Morgan, and if he had a family name, he wasn't sharing.

Of the men, Cook had taken most easily to army life. His place upon the gallows had been secured by a berserk and terrible rage, one that took him in fits, and left him shaking, almost unaware of his surroundings. Shorn of this rage—as he so often was—he became an odd peace-broker. His size guaranteed his safety, but only barely. His fists did most of his talking otherwise, but without the rage to drive him, he never hit first. He almost always hit last. Cook was unique. He was humble in his acceptance of the offer of service over death.