Ilse Witch

5

The flat-faced, burly line sergeant had been drinking at the bar in the back room of the company blacksmith’s for over an hour before he got up the nerve to walk over to Little Red. She was sitting alone at a table in the rear, clouded by shadow and the kind of studied disinterest in her surroundings that made it clear she was not to be approached. The line sergeant might have recognized as much five tankards of ale earlier, when his judgment was still clear enough to warn him against foolish behavior. But his anger at the way that she had humiliated him the night before, coupled with false bravado fueled by the quantity of his drink, finally won out.

He squared himself away in front of her, a big man, using his size as an implied threat.

“You and me got something to settle, Little Red,” he declared loudly.

Heads turned. A few soldiers rose and quietly moved for the doors leading out. The blacksmith’s wife, who tended bar for her husband in the midday, glanced over with a frown. Outside, in the sweltering heat of the forge, iron clanged on iron, and hot metal thrust into water hissed and steamed.

Rue Meridian did not look up. She kept her gaze steady and direct, staring off into space, her hands cupped loosely around her tankard of ale. She was there because she wanted to be alone. She should have been flying, but her heart wasn’t in it anymore and her thoughts were constantly on the coast and home.

“You listening to me?” he snapped.

She could smell the line sergeant, his breath, unwashed body and hair, soiled uniform. She wondered if he noticed how foul he had become while living in the field, but guessed he hadn’t.

“You think you’re something, don’t you?” Perhaps because of her silence, he was growing braver. He shifted his weight closer. “You look at me when I talk to you, Rover girl!”

She sighed. “Isn’t it enough that I have to listen to you and smell you? Do I have to look at you, too? That seems like a lot to ask of me.”

For a moment he just stared at her, vaguely confused. Then he knocked the tankard of ale from between her hands and drew his short sword. “You cheated me, Little Red! No one does that! I want my money back!”

She leaned back in her chair, her gaze lifting. She gave him a cursory glance and looked away again. “I didn’t cheat you, Sergeant.” She smiled pleasantly. “I didn’t have to. You were so bad that it wasn’t necessary. When you get better, which you might one day manage to do, then I might have to cheat you.”

His bearded face clouded with fresh anger. “Give me back my money!”

Like magic, a throwing knife appeared in her hand. At once, he backed away.

“I spent it, all of it, every last cent. There wasn’t that much to begin with.” She looked at him once more. “What’s your problem, Sergeant? You’ve been drinking at the bar for the last hour, so you’re not broke.”

He worked his mouth as if he was having trouble getting words out. “Just give me my money.”

Last night she had bested him in a knife-throwing contest, although that would be using the word contest rather loosely since he was the worst knife thrower she could remember competing against. The cost to him had been his pride and his purse, and evidently it was a price he had not been prepared to pay.

“Get away from me,” she said wearily.

“You’re nothing, Little Red!” he exploded. “Just a cheating little witch!”

She thought momentarily about killing him, but she didn’t feel like dealing with the consequences of doing so, so she abandoned the idea. “You want a rematch, Sergeant?” she asked instead. “One throw. You win, I give you back your money. I win, you buy me a fresh tankard of ale and leave me in peace. Done?”

He studied her suspiciously, as if trying to determine what the catch was. She waited him out patiently, watching his eyes, the throwing knife balanced loosely in her palm.

“Done,” he agreed finally.

She rose, loose and easy in her dark Rover clothing, decorative bright scarves and sashes wrapped about her waist and shoulders, the ends trailing down in silken streamers, her long red hair shimmering in the lamplight. Rue Meridian was a beautiful woman by any standard, and more than a few men had been attracted to her when she had first joined the Federation army. But the number had dwindled after the first two who had tried unsuccessfully to force their affections on her had spent weeks in the hospital recovering from their wounds. Men still found her attractive, but they were more careful now about how they approached her. There was nothing “little” about Little Red. She was tall and broad-shouldered, lean and fit. She was called Little Red in deference to Big Red, her half brother, Redden Alt Mer. They had the same red hair and rangy frame, the same green eyes, the same quick smile and explosive temper. They had the same mother, as well, but different fathers. In theirs, as in many Rover clans, the men came and went while the women remained.

The line sergeant was casting about for a target. Last night, they had used a black circle the size of a thumbnail drawn on a support beam. They had thrown their knives in turn, two throws each. The sergeant had missed the mark both times; she had not. The sergeant complained, but paid up, cowed perhaps by the presence of so many other Rovers and fellow soldiers. There had been no mention of cheating then, no mention of getting his money back. He must have been stewing about it all night.

“There,” he said, pointing at the same black circle on the beam, stepping to the same line they had drawn on the board flooring the night before.

“Here, here,” the smith’s wife complained at once. “You busted up a whole row of glasses throwing past the beam last night. Your aim’s as poor as your judgment, Blenud Trock! You throw your knives somewhere else this time!”

The sergeant glared at her. “You’ll get your money when I get mine!”

Trock. It was the first time Rue Meridian had heard his name spoken. “Let’s move over here, Sergeant,” she suggested.

She led him away from the bar and deeper into the room. The makeshift building was backed into a hill, and a stain from runoff had darkened the rear wall in a distinctive V. Just above and to the right, water droplets hung from a beam, falling every now and then onto the floor.

She stopped twenty feet away and drew a line with her toe in the dust and grime. Not the cleanest establishment she had ever frequented, but not the dirtiest either. These sorts of places came and went with the movement of the army. This one had endured because the army hadn’t gone anywhere in some time. It was illegal, but it was left alone because the soldiers required some sort of escape out in the middle of nowhere, miles from any city.

She brushed back her fiery hair and looked at the sergeant.

“We’ll stand together at the line. Once set, when the next drop of water falls from that beam, we throw at the V. Closest and quickest to the crease wins.”

“Huh!” he grunted, taking his place. He muttered something else, but she couldn’t hear. Throwing knife in hand, he set his stance. “Ready,” he said.

She took a deep, slow breath and let her arms hang loose at her sides, the throwing knife resting comfortably in the palm of her right hand, the blade cool and smooth against the skin of her wrist and forearm. A small crowd had gathered behind them, soldiers from the front on leave and off duty, anxious for a little fresh entertainment. She was aware of others drifting in from outside, but the room remained oddly hushed. She grew languid and vaguely ethereal, as if her mind had separated from her body. Her eyes remained fixed, however, on the beam with its water droplets suspended in a long row, tiny pinpricks of reflective light against the shadows.

When the droplet of water finally fell, her arm whipped up in a dark blur and the throwing knife streaked out of her hand so fast that it was buried in the exact center of the Vbefore the line sergeant had completed his throwing motion. The sergeant’s knife was wide of the mark by six inches.

There was a smattering of applause and a few cheers from the spectators. Rue Meridian retrieved her knife and walked over to the bar to collect on her wager. The smith’s wife already had the tankard of ale on the counter. “This one’s yours, Sergeant Trock,” she said in a loud voice, giving Rue a broad smile. “Pay up before you leave.”

The line sergeant stalked over to the wall and pulled his heavy throwing knife free. For a moment he held it balanced in his hand as he gave Rue Meridian a venomous look. Then he sheathed the knife beneath his tunic and swaggered over to where she stood. “I’m not paying,” he announced, planting himself at her side.

“Up to you,” she replied, sipping at the ale.

“If you don’t, you won’t be coming back in here again,” the smith’s wife advised pointedly. “Stop being so troublesome.”

“I’m not paying because you cheated!” he snapped, his response directed at Rue. “You threw before the water drop left the beam. It was plain as day.”

There was a general murmur of dissent and a shaking of heads from the assembled, but no one called him on it. Emboldened, he leaned close enough that she could feel the heat of his breath and smell its stink. “You know what your problem is, Little Red? You need someone to teach you some manners. Then you wouldn’t be so stuck—”

The rest of what he was going to say caught in his throat as he felt the tip of her throwing knife pressed against the soft underside of his bearded chin.

“You should think carefully before you speak again, Sergeant,” she hissed. “You’ve already said enough to persuade me that it might be just as well if I cut your throat and have done with it.”

The room had gone silent. No one was moving, not even the smith’s wife, who stood watching with a dishrag in one hand and her mouth open.

The line sergeant gasped as Rue Meridian pressed upward with the knife tip, lifting his chin a little higher. The knife had appeared so suddenly that his hands still hung loose at his sides and his weapons remained sheathed. “I didn’t mean—”

“You didn’t mean,” she cut him short, “that I needed to learn new manners, am I right?”

“Yes.” He swallowed thickly.

“You didn’t mean that someone as crude and stupid as yourself could teach them to me in any case, right?”

“Yes.”

“You wish to tell me that you are sorry for saying I cheated and for spoiling my midday contemplation of things far away and dear to me, right?”

“Yes, yes!”

She backed him away, the knife tip still pressed against his neck. When he was standing clear of the bar, she reached down with her free hand and stripped him of his weapons. Then she shoved him backwards into a chair.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, her own knife disappearing into her dark clothing. “I don’t want you paying for my drink, wager or no. I want you sitting quietly right where you are until I decide you can leave. If I see you move a muscle, I’ll pretend the V of your crotch is the Von the back wall and try my luck with a fresh throw.”

The big man’s eyes dropped involuntarily and then lifted. The rage reflected in his eyes was tempered only by his fear. He believed she would do what she said.

She was reaching for her tankard of ale when the door to the smith’s shop burst open and Furl Hawken lumbered into view. Everyone in the room turned to look, and he slowed at once, aware of the unnatural silence, his eyes darting right and left.

Then he caught sight of her. “Little Red, something’s come up. We have to go.”

She stayed where she was, taking the tankard of ale in hand, lifting it to her lips, and drinking down the contents as if she had all the time in the world. Everyone watched in silence. No one moved. When she was finished, she set the tankard on the counter and walked over to the line sergeant. She bent close, as if daring him to do something about it. When he didn’t, she said softly, “If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

She dropped a coin on the counter as she passed the smith’s wife, giving her a wink as she did so. Then she was through the door and surrounded by the clamor and fire of the forge, Furl Hawken at her back as he followed her out.

They moved swiftly through the maze of anvils, furnaces, and scrap heaps to the cluster of makeshift buildings beyond—kitchen, armory, surgery, command center, stables, supply depots, and the like, all bustling with activity in the midday heat. The sky was cloudless and blue, the sun a ball of white fire burning down on the dusty heights and the encamped army. Rue Meridian shook her head. It was the first daylight she had seen since yesterday, and it made her head pound.

“Is Big Red upset with me?” she asked as they moved away from the buildings and into the tented encampment, where she slowed her walk.

“Big Red is in irons and looking at twenty years’ hard labor or worse,” her companion growled, moving closer, keeping his voice low. “We had some company on our outing this morning, a couple of Federation officers. One went over the side during an attack, an accident, but he’s just as dead. The ranking officer was furious. He was even madder when your brother refused to go after a couple of disabled Free-born ships, knock ’em out of the sky instead of letting them descend. When we set down again, he had Big Red arrested and taken away, promising him that he would soon be experiencing an abrupt career change.”

She shook her head. “Nothing we can do about it, is there? I mean, nothing that involves words and official procedure?”

Furl Hawken grunted. “We’re Rovers, Little Red. What do you think?”

She put her hand on his massive shoulder. “I think I’m sick of this place, these people, this war, the whole business. I think we need a change of employment. What do we care about any of this? It was only the money that brought us here in the first place, and we have more than enough of that to last us for a while.”

Furl Hawken shook his head. “Can’t ever have enough money, Little Red.”

“True,” she admitted.

“Besides, it’s not so bad here.” His voice took on a wistful tone. “I’ve kind of gotten used to it. Grows on you, all this flatness and space, dust and grit—”

She shoved him playfully. “Don’t you play that game with me! You hate it here as much as I do!”

His bluff face broke into a wide grin. “Well, maybe so.”

“Time to go home, Hawk,” she declared firmly. “Gather up the men, equipment, our pay, supplies, horses for everyone, and meet me on the south ridge in one hour.” She shoved him anew, laughing. “Go on, you great blowhard!”

She waited until he was on his way, then turned toward the stockade where Federation convicts and miscreants were housed, chained in the open or in barred wooden boxes that on a hot day could cook the brain. Just thinking of her brother in one of those set her teeth on edge. The Federation’s attitude toward Rovers hadn’t changed a whit in the three years of their service. Rovers were mercenaries, and mercenaries were a necessary evil. It didn’t matter how faithfully they served. It didn’t matter how many of them died in the Federation cause. It didn’t matter that they had proved themselves the better flyers and, for the most part, the better fighters. In the eyes of most Southlanders, Rovers were inferior solely because of who they were, and nothing of their abilities or accomplishments could ever change that.

Of course, Rovers were at the bottom of almost everyone’s list because they were nomadic. If you lacked homelands, a central government, and an army, you lacked power. Without power, you had difficulty commanding respect. Rovers had survived in the same way for two thousand years, in mobile encampments and by clans. Rovers believed the land belonged to everyone, but especially to those who traveled it. The land was their mother, and they shared the Elven concept that it should be protected and nurtured. As a consequence, the Elves were the most tolerant and allowed the Rovers to make their way through the forests of the Westland, functioning as traders inland and sailors along the coast.

Elsewhere, they were less welcome and lived in constant danger of being driven out or worse. Except when they were taken on as mercenaries to fight in wars that never had much of anything to do with them.

Rue Meridian and her brother, along with several dozen others, had come east from the area around the coastal village of March Brume to serve the Federation in this one. The money was good and the risks acceptable. The Free-born weren’t much better than the Federation at handling airships. There were regular battles, but they were viewed by the Rovers largely as exercises in trying to stay out of the way of incompetents.

Still, she concluded, it had grown boring, and it was time to move on. Especially now. She had been looking for an excuse to make a break for weeks, but her brother had insisted on sticking out the term of their enlistment. She shook her head. As if the Federation deserved their loyalty while treating them as subhuman. Now this. Clapping Big Red in irons over something as silly as ignoring an order from an officer of the Federation who ought to have known better than to try to give one. On an airship, the Captain’s word was law. It was just another excuse to try to bring the Rovers into line, to put their collective necks under the Federation boot. Stupid, stupid people, she seethed. It would be interesting to see how successful they were with their airships once they lost the Rover crews who manned them.

She kicked at the dusty trail as she wound her way through the encampment, ignoring the inevitable catcalls and whistles, shouts and crude invitations, giving a wave or an unmistakable gesture where appropriate. She checked her weapons—slender rapier, brace of throwing knives strapped about her waist, dirk hidden in her boot, and sling looped through her shoulder strap and hanging down her back amid the scarves. Any one of them would be enough for this effort.

She could already smell the sea, the salt-laden pungency of the air, the raw damp of wooden docks and timbers, the fish-soaked reek of coastal shores, and the smoke from fireplaces lit at sunset to drive out the night’s chill from homes and ale houses. Inland smells were of dust and dryness, of hard-packed earth and torrential rainwater that flooded and seeped away in a matter of hours. Three years of grit and dehydration, of men and animals who smelled alike, and of never seeing the blue of the ocean were enough.

Detouring momentarily at a campsite she recognized, she begged a meal off one of the cooks she was friendly with, wrapped it in paper, and took it with her. Big Red would be hungry.

Striding down through the outer stretches of the encampment, she approached the flat wooden walls of the stockade as if she were out for a midday stroll.

“Hey, Little Red,” one of the two guards standing watch at the gates greeted cheerfully. “Come to see your brother?”

“Come to get him out,” she replied, smiling.

The other guard grunted. “Huh, that’ll take some doing.”

“Oh, not all that much,” she said. “Stockade commander in?”

“Having lunch or an afternoon snooze, take your choice.” The first guard chuckled. “What’s that you’re carrying?”

“Lunch for Big Red. Can I see him?”

“Sure. We put him in the shade by the back wall, under the catwalk overhang. Might as well make him as comfortable as we can while this business gets settled, though I don’t like his chances from the look of that officer that hauled him in. Mean face on that one.” He shook his head. “Sorry about this, Little Red. We like your brother.”

“Oh, you like him, but not me?”

The guard flushed. “You know what I mean. Here, hand over your weapons, let me check your food package, and then you can go in and see him.”

She handed over her belt with the knives and rapier, then unhooked the sling. She kept the dirk in her boot. Compliance got you only so far in this world. She smiled cheerfully and passed through the gates.

She found her brother sitting under the overhang against the back wall, right where the guards had told her she would. He watched her approach without moving, weighted down in irons that were clamped to his wrists, ankles, and waist and chained to iron rings bolted tightly to the walls. Guards patrolled the catwalks and stood idly in the roofed shade of watchtowers at the stockade’s corners. No one seemed much interested in expending any energy.

She squatted in front of her brother and cocked a critical eyebrow. “You don’t look so good, big brother.”

Redden Alt Mer cocked an eyebrow back at her. “I thought you were sick in bed.”

“I was sick at heart,” she advised. “But I’m feeling much better now that we’re about to experience a change of scenery. I think we’ve given the Federation army just about all of our time it deserves.”

He brushed at a fly buzzing past his face, and the chains clanked furiously. “You won’t get an argument out of me. My future as a mercenary doesn’t look promising.”

She glanced around. The stockade was filled with the sounds of men grumbling and cursing, of chains clanking, and of booted feet passing on the catwalk overhead. The air was dry and hot and still, and the smell of unwashed bodies, sweat, and excrement permeated everything.

She adjusted her stance to sit cross-legged before him, setting the food package on the ground between them. “How about something to eat?”

She unwrapped the food, and her brother began to devour it hungrily. “This is good,” he told her. “But what are we doing, exactly? I thought you might have thought of a way to get me out of here.”

She brushed back her thick red hair and smirked. “You mean you haven’t figured that out for yourself? You got yourself in, didn’t you?”

“No, I had help with that.” He chewed thoughtfully on a piece of bread. “Do you have anything to drink?”

She reached inside her robes and produced a flask. He took it from her and drank deeply. “Ale,” he announced approvingly. “What’s going on? Is this my last meal?”

She picked at a cut of roast pheasant. “Let’s hope not.”

“So?”

“So we’re killing time until Hawk gets things ready for our departure.” She took the flask back from him and drank. “Besides, we may not have time to eat again once we set out. I don’t expect we’ll be stopping until after dark.”

He nodded. “I suppose not. So you do have a plan.”

She grinned. “What do you think?”

They finished the meal, drank the rest of the ale, and sat quietly until Rue Meridian was satisfied that enough time had passed for Furl Hawken to be ready and waiting. Then she rose, brushed herself off, gathered up the remains of their feast, and walked toward the shack that served as the stockade commander’s office. On the way, she dropped their leftovers in the stockade compost heap. You did what you could to care for Mother Earth, even here.

She walked into the commander’s office without knocking, closing the door behind her. The commander was leaning back in his chair against the wall behind his desk, dozing. He was a red-faced, corpulent man, his face and hands scarred and worn. Without slowing, she walked around the desk, the dirk in her hand, and hit him as hard as she could behind the ear. He slumped to the floor without a sound.

Racks of keys lined the wall. She selected the set with her brother’s name tagged to the peg and walked back to the door. When she caught sight of a guard passing across the compound, she called him over. “The commander wants to see my brother. Bring him over, please.”

The guard, used to obeying orders from almost everyone, didn’t question her. He took the keys and set off. A few minutes later he was back, herding Big Red at a slow shuffle, the wrist and ankle irons still attached. She stood aside to let them enter, closed the door, and flattened the guard with a blow to the neck.

Her brother glanced at her. “Very efficient. Do you plan to dispatch the entire garrison this way?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” She worked the keys into the wrist and ankle locks, and the chains dropped away. He rubbed his wrists appreciatively and looked around for a weapon. “Never mind that,” she said, gesturing impatiently.

She took a sheet of paper from the commander’s desk, one embossed with the Federation insignia, and wrote a brief note on it with a quill pen and ink. When she was finished, she eyed it critically, then nodded. “Good enough. You’re a free man. Let’s go.”

She slipped the dirk back in her boot, and they walked out of the command shack and across the yard toward the gates. Her brother’s eyes shifted about nervously. Prisoners and guards alike were watching them. “Are you sure about this?”

She laughed and shoved him playfully. “Just watch.”

When they reached the gates, the two guards she had given her weapons to on entering were waiting. She waved the insignia-embossed paper at them. “What did I tell you?” she asked brightly, handing the paper to the first guard.

“Let me have a look at that,” he replied suspiciously, squinting hard at the paper.

“You can see for yourself,” she declared, pointing at the writing. “He’s released to my custody until all this gets straightened out. I told you it wouldn’t be that hard.”

The second guard moved closer to the first, peering over his shoulder. Neither seemed entirely certain what to do.

“Don’t you understand?” she pressed, crowding them now, jamming her finger at the paper. “The army can’t afford to keep its best airship pilot locked up in the stockade with a war going on. Not because of one Federation officer who thinks it’s a good idea. Come on! Give me back my weapons! You’ve looked at the order long enough! What’s the matter, can’t you read?”

She glared at them now. Neither guard said a word.

“Do you want me to wake up the commander again? He was mad enough the first time.”

“Okay, okay,” the first guard said hastily, shoving the piece of paper at her.

He handed back her knives, rapier, and sling and shooed them out the gates and back into the encampment. They walked in silence for several dozen paces before Redden Alt Mer said, “I don’t believe it.”

She shrugged. “They can’t read. Even if they could, it wouldn’t matter. No one could make out what I wrote. When they’re asked about it, they’ll claim I had a release order signed by the commander. Who’s to say I didn’t? This is the army, big brother. Soldiers don’t admit to anything that might get them in trouble. They’ll fuss for a day or two and then decide they’re well rid of us.”

Her brother rubbed his arms to restore the circulation and glanced at the cloudless sky. “Three years in this forsaken place. Money or no, that’s a long time.” He sighed wearily and slapped his thighs. “I hate leaving Black Moclips, though. I hate that.”

She nodded. “I know. I thought about taking her. But stealing her would be hard, Big Red. Too many people keeping watch.”

“We’ll get another ship,” he declared, brushing the matter aside, a bit of the old spring returning to his step. “Somewhere.”

They walked through the camp’s south fringe to where the passes led downward out of the heights toward the city of Dechtera and the grasslands west. Once across the Rappahalladran and the plains beyond, they were home.

Ahead, Furl Hawken stood waiting in a draw with a dozen more Rovers and the horses and supplies.

“Hawk!” Redden Alt Mer called, and gave him a wave. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the fading outline of the camp. “Well, it was fun for a time. Not as much fun as we’ll have where we’re going, of course, wherever that turns out to be, but it had its moments.”

Rue Meridian smirked. “My brother, the eternal optimist.” She brushed stray strands of her long hair from her face. “Let’s hope this time you’re right.”

Ten minutes later, they had left the Federation army behind and were riding west for the coast of the Blue Divide.