L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

“Good morning, Saryn. Have you heard anything more about the Suthyans?”

“They were all headed northwest, but I have scouts following them. We can’t be sure for several days where they’re going…except that it’s away from Westwind.”

“The envoy did not seem overly impressed with the skill of the guards,” said Ryba.

“I don’t think he knows much about arms,” replied Saryn. “The undercaptain understood, but I doubt that any of the senior officers will listen to him.”

“In a society where position is granted by birth and gender, junior officers who come up through the ranks are ignored almost as much as women.” Ryba’s laugh was both low and harsh. “In all of Candar, Westwind is the only land where women and ability are recognized.”

But you feel almost the same way about men as the Suthyans, Lornians, and Gallosians do about women. Is that really any better? Saryn knew better than to voice that thought.

“What do you think about the timing of the envoy’s visit?” pressed Ryba.

“It was early in the year.”

“Exactly. That suggests that someone has planned something.”

“There’s no sign of the Suthyans bringing up more armsmen.”

“They won’t. They prefer to have others fight for them, whenever possible.”

“That does suggest that they’re working with the Gallosians.” Saryn paused but for a moment. “I thought that it might be a good idea if I took a squad farther east to look into matters.”

“If you hadn’t suggested it, I would have,” replied Ryba. “Arthanos has no love of Westwind, and he might even have been the one to put the Suthyans up to their treachery.”

“In hopes of weakening Westwind before he musters forces for an attack on us?”

“That’s a foregone conclusion. When were you planning on leaving?”

“I’d thought we’d leave on threeday.”

“You might be better making it tomorrow.”

That alone told Saryn that Ryba was more than casually concerned. “Yes, ser.”

“After we warm up, I need to spar. So do you.”

That was also true, Saryn knew.

For early spring on the Roof of the World, the day was warm enough for Saryn to shed her riding jacket as she accompanied first company’s second squad down through the pass to the north and east of the high valley through which the traders had come. Despite the clear sky and the direct whitish sunlight beating down through the greenish blue sky, snow was still drifted into piles in the shade under the massive evergreens on each side of the road. Saryn still found herself amused at what she now considered a “road.” The only proper roads in the Westhorns were those around Westwind, stone-paved and generally level, although the guards had, over the past several years, paved certain sections of the packed-dirt ways around the Roof of the World, just to keep them from washing out, as well as building several short stone-and-earth bridges.

Rocky steep cliffs rose away from the stream and the narrow road, barely wide enough for two mounts abreast, or one cart or small wagon. In places, Saryn saw glints of ice. Even so, an alpine muskrat scurried from the near-freezing water into a concealed burrow.

“Do you think the scouts actually saw brigands?” asked Murkassa, the squad leader.

“They saw armed men,” replied Saryn. “Either brigands or armsmen from Gallos. There were just two riders, and there weren’t any tracks that suggested a larger group.”

“I’d lay a wager on scouts for armsmen. Brigands would know that few men, even those with coins and weapons, travel the Westhorns in spring.”

“And not women and weapons?” asked Saryn with a laugh.

“We’re still the only women with weapons. We’ll be the only ones for a long, long time.”

“Even with Westwind as an example?”

“People don’t change. Even my mother couldn’t believe I’d leave,” said Murkassa. “My father beat her every time he didn’t like what she fixed for dinner, but she wouldn’t leave.”

“You left,” Saryn pointed out.

“I was frightened.” Murkassa laughed. “When I realized that I was frightened all the time, I decided to leave and make my way to the Westhorns.” She paused. “Most women have never heard of Westwind, except when men talk about us as worse than the white demons.”

“I can see why you left your family, but why did you come to Westwind?”

“There was nowhere else to go.” Murkassa shrugged. “Anywhere else would have been like where I grew up, and worse, because no one at all would have cared.”

“You don’t miss men?”

“I don’t miss men like my father and my brothers. I would that there had been more like the engineer, or Relyn, or Daryn, but having no men is better than having those that I knew.” Murkassa smiled. “Besides, you angels will provide. You always have.”

Saryn wasn’t so certain about that, especially in finding suitable men, those who were not either hopeless or hopelessly arrogant.

At that moment, ahead of the squad, Saryn saw one of the outriders rein up, while the other turned and began to trot back up the road toward the rest of the squad.

“Commander! Bodies on the road!”

“Arms ready!” ordered Murkassa.

“Ride down to the edge of the pass. Hold up there until I can see what we might face.” Saryn couldn’t sense any living brigands or weapons, but there might be some beyond the outriders, farther east than her sensing skills could reach.

“Yes, ser.”

Saryn urged her mount forward at a quick trot. There wasn’t any point to moving faster on the uneven downhill section of the road, with its winter-twisted humps and ruts. She rode almost two hundred yards before the road began to flatten, and the rocky edges of the pass walls began to widen out into the small and largely wooded semivalley that lay beyond the pass.

The outrider, a freckled young redhead, waited for Saryn, her mount turned so that she could watch both the squad and the other outrider who had reined up ahead.

“There are two on the road.” The young guard pointed. “You can see the cart poles, but the cart horse or donkey is gone. Like as not anything of value went, too.”

Saryn still could not sense anything…except the faint reddish white residue of death that lay over the small grassy area to the south of the road. With the light wind out of the south, all she could smell were road dust, trees, and the soggy vegetation that bordered the stream to the north of the road. “You ride with me. We’ll take our time.”

Alert as she was, all Saryn could see or sense as she neared the second outrider and the cleared area by the overturned cart were the two Westwind guards. Still…there was something in the woods, but too small to be a brigand, hiding under a spreading evergreen bush.

The two guards, their blades out, flanked Saryn as they rode slowly forward. Saryn reined up short of the oiled and weathered wooden cart, overturned in all likelihood to see if anything of value had been hidden beneath it. Her eyes ran across the carnage. Two men, both graying slightly, had been cut down within yards of the cart, but they’d died fighting, from the slashes and the blood. One had his temple smashed in. Their garments had been disarrayed, and a belt wallet lay half-open on the road between the bodies and the cart.

Easing her mount around the cart and onto the softer grassy ground to the south, Saryn reined up again. There had been three women, one much older and white-haired. She’d tried to flee and been run down by a rider and struck from behind. The other two, one of whom looked barely out of girlhood, had been stripped from the waist down, and used by the brigands before their throats had been cut.