Joel Shepherd - Tracato

“I hear you have a serrin lover,” he said. “I wonder if he looks anything like this?” He upended the sack and a severed head fell on the rough grass at Sasha’s feet. The hair was silver tingeing toward pale blue and tied with several long braids. The eyes, and features, were serrin. Sasha’s heart nearly stopped. For an instant, she saw the head as Errollyn’s. Then, as Alythia’s, as it had lain at her feet in her Tracato cell. “This one was a scout, moving by night. We caught him, and I assure you, he did not die quickly. That is what we do to demon spawn and their friends in these lands.” He paused for effect. “And to their whores.”

Sasha drew her sword and cut off Sir Eskwith’s head. The body toppled, fountaining blood. The head rolled to join the serrin’s at Sasha’s feet. “Is that a fact?” she said.

She advanced on Eskwith’s companions as they fumbled for their swords in shock, holding her blade low, the fourth en’alan commencement, a wrist cocked behind one hip and inviting the obvious attack. One knight swung at her, and she swayed aside and took his hand off in the follow through. Swung back fast to deflect the second knight’s attack, the second motion of which became a new strike that took off the handless man’s head. She spun about the falling body to impale the third in the shoulder in mid-backswing, ducking away from the second as he came at her, spinning her blade through easy wrist twirls.

“Run away or yield!” she could hear Jaryd yelling from nearby. “I’m warning you, run away or yield, or you’re dead!” He was not yelling at her, she knew very well. There were two healthy ones left, and the wounded one. They were powerful, but their chain mail and heavy swords made them slow.

One advanced on Sasha as she skipped backward on the grass. She invited his feint, swaying one way and then the other, only bringing her sword into play at the last moment to take his forearm as he lunged, then reverse into a cut up under the armpit, severing weak armour and most of the shoulder.

The last had been coming after her, but now stopped, looking scared. His companion, with a stab wound through one shoulder, was wavering on his feet, clutching the bloody slice through his mail. The man whose shoulder she’d severed was noisily dying amid great spurts of blood.

“Best let them yield, Sasha,” Jaryd warned her, still from a respectful distance. Her comrades were all watching, making no attempt to intervene on her behalf. They knew she wasn’t the one needing help. “I know this one man here, he assisted on the wedding. He’s not a bad man, Sasha.”

Sasha looked at him blandly. “Why should that matter?”

Jaryd looked back, warily, hand to his sword. Duke Carlito stood nearby, with wide-eyed disbelief. And Great Lord Faras, his dark eyes gleaming with admiration.

“Do you yield?” Jaryd asked the surviving two men. “There is no shame in it. She is the greatest swordsman in Lenayin.”

“No,” said Lord Faras, loudly. “She is the Synnich. You should bow before her, and be proud that your friends have had the honour to taste her blade.”

“What did they say?” Koenyg asked his sister as she stood before him in the royal tent. Beyond the canvas walls, there were crowds. Royal Guards stood at the entrance, leaving the heir and his sister to privacy.

“The leader threw a severed serrin head at my feet,” said Sasha. Her eyes seemed almost dull, devoid of feeling. Koenyg had never seen her like this before. It unnerved him, in a way that countless boasting, chest-thumping Lenay warriors had never managed before. “It was a threat, to my head, and to the heads of those I care for. He called me a whore to the serrin.”

“Did you feel yourself personally threatened?”

“Only my honour,” said Sasha. “In Lenayin, men die for less.”

“Did you give warning?”

“It was a threat. The codes say an accusation must be tested in honourable combat, but a threat may warrant an immediate reply. There were five of them.”

“You had support,” Koenyg replied.

“Not immediately to hand. I was not favoured by numbers. They threatened me five-against-one. It was dishonourable, and they deserved to die.”

“That’s brutal, Sasha,” Koenyg said. “Even for you.” Sasha’s eyes registered nothing. “I’d have expected such an interpretation of the codes from Lord Krayliss, or maybe Lord Heryd.”

Sasha met his stare for the first time. The old temper was still there, burning deep. Somehow, Koenyg found that comforting. “Lenayin did not march to Larosa to be buggered by swinging dicks in chain mail,” Sasha said loudly. “Are we an equal partner in this marriage, or do they get liberties? First they ask us to kneel. Do they next ask us to bend over?”

Koenyg shook his head in faint disbelief. “Don’t attempt to excuse each of your personal tantrums as a grand act of patriotism. You’re a mess, Sasha. You and I have rarely agreed, but I admit I did find some affection for the lively girl who rode horses and skinned her knees. That girl loved life, and often laughed. The girl I see now loves only death, and she never smiles.”

“She was a fool,” Sasha said bitterly. “She did not understand the world. She knows better now, and she knows that freedom must be fought for, or lost.”

“And for whose freedom do you fight?”

“The freedom for Lenays to be Lenays!”

“Or the freedom to kill people you don’t like,” Koenyg suggested. Sasha folded her arms, and looked aside.

“If you wish to punish me,” she said shortly, “then do so. I’ve better things to do than listen to lectures.”

“I’m not going to punish you, Sasha. You’ve caused a mess, but it has its uses. I did warn our Larosan allies that they should tread carefully upon Lenay honour, and that lords should not presume to rub their lessers’ noses in the mud, as they do amongst their own kind. I also warned them to accept that half of our army are not even Verenthanes, and not to provoke that half with the fact. But first they make a mess with the Shereldin Star, and now this. Best that they learn their place, with us.”

He took a waterskin from its hanging peg upon the tent’s central pole, and poured them each a cup.

Sasha took a sip, her eyes upon him, and frowning. She’d expected him to be angry, clearly.

“Sasha, you’re an idiot. You’ve never understood my motivations. You’re like all these stupid Goeren-yai gossipers. You think I’m putting Lenayin in the pockets of lowlands Verenthanes. No, Sasha.” He leaned forward. “I am a Lenay patriot. I wish to make Lenayin strong. This war shall secure our strength, forging ties to the most powerful lowlands kingdoms, and proving our worth to all. It shall unite our peoples, as nothing else has managed before. And if you cutting the heads off a few lowlanders helps them to learn respect and fear of us, then so much the better. A little fear can be a good thing, Sasha. I do not mind that you frighten them, and I do not wish for any of us to kneel.”

He smiled at her grimly. Sasha looked a little dazed. Perhaps she had not expected him to be honest.

“I saw Alythia’s head,” she said quietly. “When he tossed that head from the sack, I saw Alythia’s head instead. I just killed him. I mean…I just killed him.”

She looked shaken. Gods, Koenyg thought, she did the strangest things to him sometimes. There was a time when he’d hated her for being Krystoff’s collaborator, for causing father and the kingdom such trouble, and for being so selfish. But she had much to admire about her too, like bravery, skill and leadership. Her presence here united the most troublesome factions of the Lenay Army firmly beneath his command-the eastern Goeren-yai, the ones who had followed her on her northern rebellion, and had never liked this war. If she followed him, then they would too. And now, it was clear that she’d truly loved Alythia, whatever their earlier differences. Sasha did not hold grudges, Sofy had insisted to him once. Sasha could change her mind about people. Perhaps there was yet hope for them, as siblings.