Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

It seemed to Martha that this man intended to say something – another tribesman had come up the ladder behind him – but the Queen stepped out in two long strides and stuck her assag's blade into the man's belly. He looked amazed, turned as if to walk away… then seemed to melt down to the deck.

"First blood," said the Queen – and the second Kipchak came howling.

Martha was sure Master Butter killed that one, though she didn't see it. She was sure because she'd heard the sudden thrum of a sword-blade whipped through air, and the man's shout stop. Then two… and a third horseman came running from the starboard ladder and her ax met one before she even thought about it. She stuck the other with her dagger and didn't know what happened to him, because the third man was on her, shoving, and swinging a sword.

She was surprised he wasn't stronger than she was – and perhaps he was surprised, too, since he guarded against the ax but forgot the dagger. Master Butter had been right about the knife.

Something hit her left side, and Martha thought she was hurt – more Kipchaks were coming up both ladders – but she glanced over and it was the Queen, wrestling, cutting a man's throat. He hit Martha, trying to dodge away, and left warm stuff on her neck and shoulder. Blood. Don't slip… don't slip! Two more men came and ran into her, tried to knock her down, struggling to get sword-points in.

Then she used the ax – second time she'd used it. She'd lost her temper. Another man – or one of those two, maybe, was still standing in front of her. His jaw was hacked and hanging down so his tongue was out in squirting blood. Martha supposed she'd done it. A very strong man edged past a mantelet, cut her hard at her right hip, and drove her, drove her back into a scorpion. This man was much stronger than she was. She smelled his breath, fresh as a child's, as he grappled with her, working to get his sword's edge across her throat. Martha crouched suddenly, so he'd think she'd fallen down – then stuck her dagger hard as she could into his nuts, and wrenched, wrenched at the blade with all her might to draw it up into his belly. The dagger blade was caught – then sliced its way free and ran up into him.

The man made a terrible noise, and she was able to pull away from him. He'd been very strong. Martha was standing against the curve of a scorpion's bow; couldn't remember how she got there. She hacked her ax's spike into another man's shoulder as he struck at her – used that to haul him off-balance – then turned the ax's handle to chop its blade into his eyes, and was surprised at how easily she'd done it. He made a mewing sound, like a kitten, and stumbled away. Blinded, he bumped into a mantelet's edge.

Someone limped across and thrust a spear into the blind man's back, so he screamed and fell down. Martha smelled shit, and supposed it was from him. She saw it was the Queen who'd done it. Her beautiful helmet was off – its lacing broken – and strands of her long hair, red and gray and red again with blood, were down past her shoulders.

Martha looked around as if she were waking up, and saw no more horsemen coming at them, though several – they had the oddest slanting eyes – still stood down the narrow way, at the head of the ladders. There were six… seven men lying still on the deck, one man sitting up, and two men crawling. The wind was making bright red puddles stream and run along the deck. The blood crinkled, freezing as it ran.

There were noises from below… shouts and cheering. Martha saw things thrown high in the air from the main deck. She thought they were hats, then saw they were heads.

"So far, so good," Master Butter said – a copybook phrase so perfect it sounded just made up. He was leaning on his long sword's point, his short-sword in his left hand. Three of the men lay before him, two piled across each other, looking like killed animals with their furs rumpled and soaked with blood. "Well enough, so far, since it seems we're only an afterthought, up here."

Martha saw they'd all had been pushed back against the scorpions' rigs and timbers. The Kipchaks had forced them back there, fighting.

There was stinging in Martha's left arm. She looked down and saw the mail sleeve had been sliced open, and her forearm, too. She didn't remember that happening at all. Blood was running dripping, and she could see a piece of polished bone deep in there… It looked dreadful, but only stung her as if wasps were at it, didn't hurt as much as her hip. But that hand hung empty and white, and her dagger was gone.

"Floating Jesus." The Queen tugged her long scarf off, bound it around Martha's arm, and knotted it tight.

The few Kipchaks at the ladders only stood watching. It seemed to Martha they were all – the tribesmen, too – very tired already, though only sudden time had passed.

Then, one of the horsemen shouted something to the others, and they came running – so the Queen had to snatch her second assag from where it stood on the deck, her other apparently lost, stuck in some man's bones…

Everything seemed to go slowly and strangely, so Martha felt she almost knew the name of the next man who attacked her – slashing, slashing – he became so closely familiar, his face almost a friend's, though twisted with effort, fear, and rage. She guarded and struck with her ax, missing her left arm and her dagger. Then that man went away or was down, which was just as well, since she was feeling sick. A fever's dream-sickness, it felt like. Tribesmen were standing by the ladders, blood on their furs.

She heard the Queen say, "Probably better on their horses. Cree would have chopped these people to pieces."

"No doubt." Master Butter, at the Queen's other side, sounded out of breath. "Embarrassing… but I've been taken in the belly, dear. I thought the son of a bitch was dead… Martha?"

"Yes?" Martha saw Master Butter was standing hunched as an old man.

"My… last lesson. Man worth killing once… is worth killing twice."

"Yes," Martha said, "I will."

She heard Master Butter catch his breath and say, "And how do you, my dear?"

"Still standing, Edward." The Queen sounded oddly pleased, though Martha saw she was trembling, and had been cut hard across the side of her face. Strands of her long hair, come down, were stiff with freezing blood. " – Still standing, though bleeding like a pig… and my knee cut by some fucker so it flops." She turned to look at Martha, and smiled. "Dear girl?"

"I'm with you." Martha looked down to be sure she still held her ax. "I'm with you." Then, though feeling so sick, she footed a corpse away for room to fight as the Kipchaks shouted and came again, now more of them pouring up the ladderways from left and right, all steel and fur, frost trailing from their mouths like smoke.

Martha called, "Ralph," as if her sergeant might come to her, his armor green as spring leaves.

"Good?… Sufficient?"

The Khan Toghrul, lying at cushioned ease in his camp yurt by lamplight, scattered a few more grains of feed down the front of his yellow over-robe, and watched a small blue-and-white pigeon strut on his chest, pecking. He felt the little steps the bird took as it fed.

Apparently sufficient feed for this bird of best luck – a pigeon to live, from now on, a life of reward and no message flights where birds of prey might strike it down, the Sky's winter storms freeze it in flight. A lucky bird, a bird that had brought luck, the news of a baby boy. A boy… and an end to uneasiness in certain Uighur and Russian chieftains. Men who, so mistakenly, thought the succession their business.

But politics – wonderful Warm-time word – the usual political triumph didn't occasion joy. Not the joy that had a Khan lying cooing to a pigeon, sprinkling pinches of seed for it on his breast. A boy – Bajazet, for the old Khan – and reported healthy as his mother was healthy. There was no pretending the wife's life wasn't dear as the child's, or nearly. This fondness for her a weakness, no question, and as a weakness, best admitted to.