The Blinding Knife

Chapter 28

The next day, the girls in Blackguard scrubs class were split off from the boys and brought into another training area. As in many of the training areas, one wall was covered in weapons, but here the weapons were bows of various sorts, from short horse bows to the great yew longbows from Crater Lake, to the composite bows of Blood Forest that packed as much power as those yew bows into a much smaller frame. Crossbows of a dozen sorts completed the armory. There were numerous targets in the area where the girls were walking. Several female Blackguards were at the front, standing with arms folded, waiting for the girls to approach. As Adrasteia followed the other nine girls, she studied the women. Though their body types ranged from the squat thick Samite to the willowy Cordelia, they all had something that Adrasteia wanted badly: they were confident, at ease in their bodies, with the world and their place in it. Somehow, that made even the plain look luminous.

Not sure what else to do, the girls lined up before their teachers.

Petite, curvy Essel spoke. “There is a legend about warrior women of old on Seers Island. They were peerless archers, but-” She picked a bow off the wall, drew a practice arrow from a quiver over her shoulder, and aimed between Adrasteia and Mina.

At first all Adrasteia felt was alarm. The target wasn’t very far away from her, and she had no idea what the Blackguards were trying to teach. It could well be How to Take an Arrow and Keep Fighting.

“Anyone see a problem?” Essel asked.

Aside from you pointing an arrow at me?

“Your breast’s in the way,” Mina said. Teia felt a surge of jealousy-first, that Mina wasn’t fazed by having an arrow nearly pointed in her face, too, and had been able to answer, and second, that Mina had probably thought of it because she had breasts, too. Unlike Teia, whom Kip had thought was a boy.

But Essel had obviously been chosen to give this talk exactly for her large bosom. She grinned and took tension off the bowstring. “Ah, you’ve trained with the bow?” she asked Mina.

Mina nodded, suddenly shy. “Yes, my lady. It was, um, fine until one day when I was thirteen and I near tore my…” She trailed off, blushing. “My father hadn’t thought to teach me to bind my chest. I think it made him feel more awkward than me.”

“Well, those warrior women of legend were called the Amazoi. Literally, the Breastless, so perhaps you can think of their solution to the problem,” Essel said.

Eyebrows shot up, though at least a couple of the girls seemed to already know the story.

“Of course, they only actually cut off their right breast-or their left if they were left-handed-and perhaps they didn’t make the flat women join them. But the Breastless makes a better name than the Women Who Cut Off One Breast, Sometimes, If Their Breasts Were Big Enough to Interfere with Archery.”

The girls giggled.

“The story isn’t true, of course,” Essel said. “It endures, probably, because men are fascinated with breasts, and men are fascinated with women who don’t have to take their shit, and because women are fascinated with women who don’t have to take men’s shit. I personally can’t imagine a woman dumb enough to cut off what she could bind with a strip of cloth.”

Again, more grins.

“Regardless, the bow is the symbol of the women of the Blackguard. That much is known to all, but what follows is not to be shared with any man-even if you fail out, even after you retire. Men think the bow is our symbol because a bow is used to kill from distance, because women aren’t as strong as men. Some say the bow is a coward’s weapon. Some say as Orholam made women better at drafting, so men are better at fighting. They say that because men are more muscular, in this, women should defer.”

Essel stopped, and Teia and all the others waited, expecting her to say something withering. Instead, Essel shook her head slowly. “They may be right. Generally. Thing is, I don’t care. To be a Blackguard is to be the exception to the rules. Put me in a room with fifty men off the street, and I’m the best fighter there. Put me in a room with fifty soldiers from any army in the world, and I’m the best fighter there. But if Commander Ironfist fell in battle, big as he is, most of the men in the Blackguard would still be able to carry him off the field. Alone. I couldn’t. Samite here, she could. I’ve seen her.”

So what’s the lesson? Teia wanted to ask. She could tell from the sidelong glances that the other girls were thinking the same thing.

“The bow is our symbol because the bow represents the sacrifices we have to make to be Blackguards-and the sacrifices we don’t have to make. You could cut off your breast if you wanted to be an archer. Or you can bind it. Your choice. Both have their drawbacks. It’s an annoyance that none but the fattest of men have to deal with. Fine. That’s how things are. I see it. I accept it. I deal with it. I don’t expect a man to consider the world as if he had breasts-though a good leader might. Mina, if your father could have seen past his own embarrassment, he would have been able to give you simple advice that would have spared you pain. He didn’t. That’s fine. We all have limitations, and we all see our own needs first.

“There are things about combat that are harder for women, and there are some few things that are easier. We’ll talk about those, and we’ll train you in what sacrifices you need to make and what you don’t. These sacrifices are not the fault of men, they are the fault of the bow. What it is to be a Blackguard, what it is to be an elite warrior, what it is to be a powerful woman, is all the same: it is to stare unflinching at what is, and then move what is toward what you will.”

Samite stepped forward. “Let’s be blunt and practical. The Blackguard will make the minimum possible accommodation for any warrior. You have horrible cramps during your moon blood? You can switch guard shifts without asking your commander. Men are not allowed to do that. But you will make up the shifts you miss, and your sisters will expect you to be more willing to switch with them when their turn comes. In the barracks, women have a separate room-though the door between the rooms usually stays open. We have separate baths and toilets. But in the field, if your commander says battlefield rules, you bathe and change and piss where the men do, and anyone who gives you trouble gets punished severely. We’re never allowed to have relations with other Blackguards, man or woman. You want to get married, one of you retires first. You’re caught sleeping together, both of you are bounced out, ostracized, and fined equal to what replacing you costs the Blackguard. You are to think of the men as your brothers-your little brothers. You take care of them, they take care of you, but they don’t get any say over your life. You spend your money and your time off how you want. You drink as much as you want. You bed who you want. Obviously, not all choices are equally wise, and sometimes the men get their roles as brothers confused and think they can tell you what to do in your off time. We will stand together with you and correct them. Mostly, they understand the rules and do their best.

“Out in the world, things can be different. Where village toughs or bullies might try to start a fight with a Blackguard man for status-because win or lose, a bully wins respect from his fellows simply for daring to fight a Blackguard-that won’t happen to you. Even if a bully beats you, to his fellows, he’s only beat a woman. And if he loses, he loses everything. You may, however, get groped or spit on or slighted. We’ll talk about how you deal with that, and you’ll find there are no fiercer defenders than your brothers.

“There are privileges for the sacrifices we make, sometimes privileges in their own right, and sometimes privileges that merely negate the privileges of others. Essel, you want to share about the governor’s ball?”

Essel grinned at the memory. “We escorted the White to a ball at the Atashian embassy-so the grounds are technically Atashian soil. The ambassador thought that gave him rights. He liked me. In fact, I liked him. I was on break and he found me. He kissed me-which wasn’t unpleasant, but it was unprofessional. I felt it would reflect badly on the Blackguard if we were found. So I told him so. He thought I was being coy. I told him I wasn’t. But he got aggressive. He kissed me again. I told him I wouldn’t warn him a third time. He put his hands on me in a way I found objectionable. So I broke his fingers. Most of them.”

Teia didn’t know what impressed her the most: that Essel could break the man’s fingers so easily, that she would dare to do so, or that she was so nonchalant about it.

Continuing, Essel said, “When he recovered, he went to the White, furious. Demanded redress. He told some ridiculous story. The White didn’t even ask for my side. She asked, ‘Essel, did you act improperly?’ I said no, and she told him that he was going to be lucky if she didn’t decide to have him expelled from Big Jasper.”

Samite said, “If anything, the Prism is even harsher with those who interfere with us. We occupy an odd position. In some ways, we’re mere slaves who must be ready to die for those above us in an instant, deserving or not. In other ways, not even ambassadors, not even the Prism himself can interfere with us.

“Now,” Samite continued, “after Essel has just spent time warning you about generalities and how they often don’t apply, I’m going to use some. Because some generalities are true often enough that we have to worry about them. So here’s one: men will physically fight for status. Women, generally, are more clever. The why of it doesn’t matter: learned, innate, cultural, who cares? You see the chest-bumping, the name-calling, performing for their fellows, what they’re really doing is getting the juices flowing. That interval isn’t always long, but it’s long enough for men to trigger the battle juice. That’s the terror or excitation that leads people to fight or run. It can be useful in small doses or debilitating in large ones. Any of you have brothers, or boys you’ve fought with?”

Six of the ten raised their hands.

“Have you ever had a fight with them-verbal or physical-and then they leave and come back a little later, and they’re completely done fighting and you’re just fully getting into it? They look like they’ve been ambushed, because they’ve come completely off the mountain already, and you’ve just gotten to the top?”

“Think of it like lovemaking,” Essel said. She was a bawdy one. “Breathe in a man’s ear and tell him to take his trousers off, and he’s ready to go before you draw your next breath. A woman’s body takes longer.”

Some of the girls giggled nervously.

“Men can switch on very, very fast. They also switch off from that battle readiness very, very fast. Sure, they’ll be left trembling, sometimes puking from it, but it’s on and then it’s off. Women don’t do that. We peak slower. Now, maybe there are exceptions, maybe. But as fighters, we tend to think that everyone reacts the way we do, because our own experience is all we have. In this case, it’s not true for us. Men will be ready to fight, then finished, within heartbeats. This is good and bad.

“A man, deeply surprised, will have only his first instinctive response be as controlled and crisp as it is when he trains. Then that torrent of emotion is on him. We spend thousands of hours training that first instinctive response, and further, we train to control the torrent of emotion so that it raises us to a heightened level of awareness without making us stupid.”

“So the positive, for us Archers: surprise me, and my first reaction will be the same as my male counterpart’s. I can still, of course, get terrified, or locked into a loop of indecision. But if I’m not, my second, third, and tenth moves will also be controlled. My hands will not shake. I will be able to make precision movements that a man cannot. But I won’t have the heightened strength or sensations until perhaps a minute later-often too late.

“Where a man needs to train to control that rush, we need to train to make it closer. If we have to climb a mountain more slowly to get to the same height to get all the positives, we need to start climbing sooner. That is, when I go into a situation that I know may be hazardous, I need to prepare myself. I need to start climbing. The men may joke to break the tension. Let them. I don’t join in. Maybe they think I’m humorless because I don’t. Fine. That’s a trade I’m willing to make.”

Teia and the rest of the girls walked away from training that day somewhat dazed, definitely overwhelmed. What Teia realized was that the women were deeply appealing because they were honest and powerful. And those two things were wed inextricably together. They said, I am the best in the world at what I do, and I cannot do everything. Those two statements, held together, gave them the security to face any challenge. If her own strengths couldn’t surmount an obstacle, her team’s strengths could-and she was unembarrassed about asking for help where she needed it because she knew that what she brought to the team would be equally valuable in some other situation.

The Archers were uncompromising and unapologetic and yet in total balance. They respected each other and they respected themselves. Some of the Blackguards, Teia knew, had come from slave stock, others had come from noble blood. Some were blues, some were yellows or greens or reds. Some were bichromes, some were tall, some were skinny, some were as muscular as Commander Ironfist. They were different from each other-but the Blackguards looked at those differences and asked where they were useful, not who they made better than whom. Being a Blackguard was the central fact of their identity. All else came behind that.

For a girl who was a slave and a color-blind drafter of a useless color, that was like the impossible dream, dangled in front of her nose. She’d been ordered to join the Blackguard by her owner, she’d been trained for it for years at the direction of others and for the profit of others-but now she wanted it for herself, for her own reasons. And she wanted it with all her heart.