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  MAUDRAS SLEW ME

  One of Montaube’s men.

  Only the fighter’s seventh sense warned Jaisel. It sent her ducking, darting, her sword arm sweeping up—and a great blow smashed against the blade, singing through her arm into her breast and shoulder. A great invisible blow.

  The thought boiled in her—How can I fight what I cannot see? And the second inevitable thought: I have always fought that way, combat with abstracts. And in that extraordinary instant, wheeling to avoid the slashing lethal blows of a murderous nonentity, Jaisel realized that though she could not see, she could sense.

  Perhaps twenty further hackings hailed against her sword, chipped the stones around. Her arm was almost numbed, but organized and obedient as a war machine, kept up its parries, feints, deflectings, thrusts. And then, eyes nearly closed, seeing better through instinct with a hair’s breadth, dancing-with-death accuracy, she paid out her blade the length of her arm, her body hurtling behind it, and felt tissue part on either side of the steel. And immediately there followed a brain-slicing shriek, more like breath forced from a bladder than the protest of a dying throat.

  The way was open. She sensed this too, and shot forward, doubled over, blade swirling with precaution. A fresh doorway, the gate into the guard, yawning unbarred, and across this gate, to be leaped, a glow, a reeking skeleton, the elegant chiseling in the stone floor on this occasion:

  MAUDRAS SLEW ME

  “Maudras!” Jaisel shouted as she leaped.

  She was in the wide hollow of the castle guard. In the huge black, which tingled and burned and flashed with colors thrown by her own racing blood against the discs of her eyes.

  Then the darkness screamed, an awful shattering of notes, which brought on an avalanche, a cacophony, as if the roof fell. It took her an extra heartbeat to understand, to fling herself from the path of charging destruction no less potent for being natural. As the guard wall met her spine, the screaming nightmare, Renier’s horse, exploded by her and out into the court beyond the floor.

  She lay quiet, taking air, and something stirred against her arm. She wrenched away and raised her sword, but Montaube’s ultimate glowing soldier was there, draped on the base of what looked to be a pillar trunk. A lamp, he shone for her as the circulatory flashes died from the interior of her eyes. So she saw Renier of Towers sprawled not a foot from her.

  The corpse (Maudras Slew Me inscribed on the pillar) appeared to glow brighter to enable her to see the mark on Renier’s forehead, like the bruise caused by some glancing bolt. A trickle of blood where formerly wine had trickled. The lids shivering, the chest rising and falling shallowly.

  She leaned to him and whispered: “You live then. Your luck’s kinder than I reckoned. To be stunned rather than slaughtered. And Maudras’ magic waiting for you to get up again. Not liking to kill when you would not know it. Preferring to make a meal of killing you, unfair and unsquare.”

  Then, without preface, terror swamped the hollow pillared guard of Maudras’ castle.

  A hundred, ten hundred, whirling slivers of steel carved the nothingness. From the blind vault, blades swooped, seared, wailed. Jaisel was netted in a sea of death. Waves of death broke over her, gushed aside, were negated by vaster waves. She sprang from one edge and reached another. The slashing was like the beaks of birds, scoring hands, cheeks; scratches as yet, but pecking, diligent. While, in its turn, her sword sank miles deep in substances like mud, like powder. Subhuman voices squalled. Unseen shapes tottered. But the rain of bites, of pecks, of scratches, whirled her this way, that way, against pillars, broken stones, downward, upward. And she was in terror. Fought in terror. Terror lent her miraculous skills, feats, a crazy flailing will to survive, and a high wild cry which again and again she smote the darkness with, along with dagger and sword.

  Till abruptly she could no longer fight. Her limbs melted and terror melted with them into a worse state of abject exhaustion, acceptance, resignation. Her spirit sank, she sank, the sword sank from one hand, the dagger from the other. Drowning, she thought stubbornly: Die fighting at least. But she did not have the strength left her.

  Not until that moment did she grow aware of the cessation of blows, the silence.

  She had stumbled against, was partly leaning on, some upright block of stone that had been in her way when she dropped. Dully, her mind struggled with a paradox that would not quite resolve. She had been battling shadows, which had slain others instantly, but had not slain Jaisel. Surely what she supposed was a game had gone on too long for a game. While in earnest, now she was finished, the mechanism for butchery in this castle might slay her, yet did not. And swimming wonder surfaced scornfully: Am I charmed?

  There was a light. Not the phosphorus of Montaube’s soldiers. It was a light the color the wretched country had been by day, a sallow snow-blue glaze, dirty silver on the columns, coming up like a Sabbat moon from out of nowhere.

  Jaisel stared into the light, and perceived a face floating in it. No doubt. It must be the countenance of burned Maudras, the last malicious dregs of his spirit on holiday from hell to effect menace. More skull than man. Eye sockets faintly gleaming, mouth taut as if in agony.

  With loathing and aversion, and with horror, the skull regarded her. It seemed, perversely, to instruct her to shift her gaze downward, to the stone block where she leaned powerlessly.

  And something in the face ridiculously amused her, made her shake with laughter, shudder with it, so that she knew before she looked.

  The light was snuffed a second later.

  Then the castle began, in rumbling stages, to collapse on every side. Matter of factly, she went to Renier and lay over his unconscious body to protect him from the cascading granite.

  He was not grateful as she bathed his forehead at the chill pool equidistant between the ruin and the camp of Towers.

  Nearby, the horse licked the grudging turf. The mist had fled, and a rose-crimson sun was blooming on the horizon. A hundred yards off, the camp gave evidence of enormous turmoil. Renier swore at her.

  “Am I to credit that a strumpet nullified the sorcery of Maudras? Don’t feed me that stew.”

  “You suffer it too hardly. As ever,” said Jaisel, honed to patience by the events of the night. “Any woman might have achieved this thing. But women warriors are uncommon.”

  “There is one too many, indeed.”

  Jaisel stood. She started to walk away. Renier called after her huskily:

  “Wait. Say to me again what was written in the stone.”

  Her back to him, she halted. Concisely, wryly smiling, she said: “ ‘I, Maudras, to this castle do allot my everlasting bane, that no man shall ever approach its walls without hurt, nor enter it and live long. Nor, to the world’s ending, shall it be taken by any man.’ ”

  Renier snarled.

  She did not respond to that, but walked on.

  Presently he caught up to her, and striding at her side, said: “How many other prophecies could be undone, do you judge, Lady Insolence, that dismiss women in such fashion?”

  “As many as there are stars in heaven,” she said.

  Brooding, but no longer arguing, he escorted her into the camp.

  In Ash: A Secret History—a truly epic and unflinchingly gritty novel—Mary Gentle created Ash, a woman warrior with intelligence, strength, and guts—along with weaknesses and flaws. In this short work, we meet Rax. Among her people, Rax must fight to be what she is: a warrior. She finds acceptance, but acceptance does not necessarily bring happiness.

  Anukazi’s Daughter

  Mary Gentle

  “Our information was correct,” Ukurri said, pointing. The ship was just visible, its prow appearing out of the dawn haze, already in the calm water of the bay. “Let them come ashore. Attack as soon as the light’s good.”

  “Prisoners?” Rax asked.

  He grinned at her. “Try to keep one or two alive. They might have things to tell us. These Islanders are weak-willed.” Low chuckles came from the mo
unted company that formed Bazuruk’s first Order of the Axe.

  “Ready yourselves,” he ordered.

  Rax knotted the war-horse’s reins on the saddle. She breathed deeply, excitement cold in her gut. Her palms were damp. She wiped them on the black surcoat, feeling cold links of mail underneath, and adjusted the buckles on her leg and arm greaves. The shaft of the war-axe was familiar under her hand. The shield hung ready at her side.

  The ship nosed close inshore. Sea foam went from gray to white. A cold wind blew. Here great shelves of rock jutted out into the sea, channels worn between them by the waves, so that at low tide a ship could put into what was a natural quay.

  There were thirty men—no more—she estimated. Our numbers are equal, then.

  “There!” She saw the flash of light from the cliffs at the far end of the bay: a signal-mirror in the hands of the Third Axe, telling them that the other half of the company was in position.

  “Now!” Ukurri shouted.

  Her heels dug into the horse’s flanks. For a few strides she was out in the open, ahead of them all. The rocks echoed. Sparks struck from flying hooves. Rax, cold clear through, hefted the great axe. Ukurri and Azu-anuk and Lilazu rode with her, and the rest of the Order behind, but she spurred forward and outdistanced them all.

  The war-mount cleared a channel where crimson weed hung delicate and fragile in clear water. She heard cries, shouts; she saw the men half ashore from the ship and heard the thunder of the riders from the far end of the bay. She rose up in the saddle sweating, cold as death under her mail, excitement drying her lips—and caught a spear-thrust on her shield. She struck. The great blade sheared up under the man’s helmet. The jaw, ear, half the skull ripping away.

  Another struck at her, jabbing with a barbed spear. Her blow, which seemed only to brush him, spilled a crimson trail.

  On the backstroke she put the axe’s spike through another man’s eye socket and left him screaming. The horse reared, came down, crushing with iron hooves. Smooth rock became treacherous, slick with blood. The sun hit her eyes. Her face was wet, and her black surcoat had turned rust-colored with blood—not hers. An Islander fled. She leaned dangerously far out of the saddle to slice through his leather jerkin and left him face down on the rock. She smelled burning and heard flames crackle. A dozen of the Order were at the ship. The pitch that caulked its seams burned fiercely. A man screamed. She saw Ukurri strike, hurling the man back into the blaze. Flames were invisible in the sunlight; only the shimmering air betrayed them.

  “Bazuruk!” She heard the war call behind her.

  She wheeled, lifted the axe—it was heavy, and her arm was stiff—and saw Lilazu fighting on one of the narrow rock spurs. His horse shifted uneasily. It was no help now to be mounted. Two Islanders had him pinned against the water’s edge.

  Her thrown hand-axe took one in the back. Rax struck with the flat of the axe, sending the other man full-length into the shallow pool. Lilazu acknowledged Rax’s aid with a raised hand, guiding his horse delicately onto solid rock, then galloping off toward the last knot of fighting.

  Rax leaned down from the saddle, using the spike of the axe to hook the stunned man ashore.

  The crackling of the flames was loud. Surf beat on the rocks. Gulls cried. The air smelled of dank weed, of burning, of blood. Rax’s hands were red, her arms streaked with blood that dried and cracked. She hauled the Islander over her saddle, clicking to the weary horse, and rode over to where Ukurri watched the burning ship. The early sun was already hot. A warming relaxation spread through her. If she had not been exhausted, she would have sung.

  “Rax Keshanu!” Ukurri slapped her leg and pulled the Islander down from her saddle. “A live one . . . and not half-killed. Good! That’s four.”

  She was grinning amiably at nothing in particular: she recognized the after-battle euphoria. “Shall I bring him with me?” she asked.

  Ukurri hesitated. Rax’s light mood faded.

  “Do you think I’m stupid enough to let him escape?”

  “Women have soft hearts,” Ukurri said and then laughed as Rax held up her bloody hands. “But not in the Order of the Axe, no—though we’ve only you to judge by. Bring him with us to the Tower, then.”

  The others were rifling the dead, leaving the bodies unburied on the rocks. If the stink offended any of the nearby settlements, they’d send a burial party. If not, enemy bones would bleach in the cove, and the storm tides would carry them home to Shabelit and the Hundred Isles.

  At their first camp, she tended the unconscious Islander’s head wound. He was young, no more than twenty, she judged: Ukurri’s age, ten summers younger than Rax. He had pale skin, red-brown hair, and green eyes in a face marred by plague-scars.

  She felt an indefinable pang: not of desire or pity, but somehow familiar. If I’d seen him, I couldn’t have killed him, she realized. Anukazi! What’s the matter with me?

  She had fought before, taken prisoners for ransom; none had ever disturbed her the way this Islander boy did.

  The Order headed north, resting in the heat of noon, crossing the humid, insect-ridden flats of the Shantar marshes. Rax guarded the Islander closely. After the first day his rage and grief—displayed beyond what a Bazuruki considered proper subsided into quiet. She thought that meant loss of spirit until she caught him cutting himself and the other survivors free with a stolen knife. After that she watched him constantly.

  “I didn’t think he had the wits to try it,” she admitted to Ukurri, as they rode on north.

  “You served on the barbarian frontier, the Crystal Mountains. They’re cunning in the cold south,” he said. “The Islanders are the worst of all. That one’s a Vanathri—you can tell by the cropped hair. The others are mercenaries, from the Cold Lands, I’d guess.”

  Rax shrugged. “It’s not our concern. They’ll discover the truth in the Tower.”

  That night she took a water flask for the Islander. He regarded her with disgust.

  “Bazuruki killer,” he said.

  She pulled off her helmet, letting the coarse black hair fall free. She grinned, feral, content.

  “Yes,” she said, “I am a woman and a warrior.”

  She realized that he wasn’t shocked or even surprised. That sent her back to Ukurri with oblique questions, and he told her that in the Hundred Isles a woman was barred from no profession, not even that of warrior.

  On the third day they rode through rice fields to the river estuary and came to the city.

  “That’s Anukazi?” The Islander rode beside her on a remount, bound securely. “A great city, Rax . . . ”

  “Wherever you heard my name, keep it out of your mouth.” She almost regretted her harshness. Her curiosity was stirred. “Why did you come here—one ship’s company against all Bazuruk?”

  “You have my freemate there.” His voice was rough. “I would have fought my way to the city—but I used mercenaries. It is no surprise that I was betrayed.”

  The Order rode down the brick-paved way that led to the South Gate. Ox-carts drew aside. Insects whirred in the dustclouds. The heat made Rax thirsty. As the shadow of Anukazi’s squat square buildings fell across her, she became aware that her joy at returning was less than usual.

  “You have women-warriors in your islands, then, Vanathri?”

  “If you can recognize a Vanathri, you know we don’t bind ourselves with useless laws.” His body tensed as they rode down the wide streets. “Though it seems your laws aren’t as strict as I’d heard.”

  “You don’t think so?” Her bitterness was never far below the surface. Her long fight to be accepted in an Order had been successful, but the struggle robbed her of half her satisfaction. At last she said, “I’ve spent most of my life in the northern mountains. All I know of the Archipelago is rumors.”

  “That can be remedied.”

  He was talking to keep his fears at bay, she guessed. He didn’t look at her. She studied his familiar features. What does he see when he looks at me? Rax
wondered.

  She listened while he spoke of the Shabelit Archipelago, which began in the sandbars off Bazuruk’s coast and ended as far south as the Cold Lands. He talked about the Hundred Isles, where life was trade and where half a hundred petty lordlings engaged their private quarrels, with no Tower to bind them into one nation . . .

  “Rax,” Ukurri called, as they entered the Tower walls, “take that one down to the cells with the mercenaries before you go off duty.”

  She acknowledged his order curtly. While the rest of the Order dismounted at the stables, she made her way with the prisoners to the dungeons. The underground shadow was cool.

  “You’ve got another Islander in here,” she told the jailer, keeping charge of the Vanathri man. “Put them in together. They might talk.”

  Brick walls were scarred with nitre. Pitch-torches flared, blackening the ceiling. The jailer searched down the entry scroll.

  “Three-five-six,” he announced. “Let him sweat. They won’t get to him for a while.”

  “Why not?”

  “A conspiracy was discovered against the Firsts of the Orders.” He glanced fearfully at her. “The guards are interrogating everyone in the Tower and executing traitors.”

  “Anukazi save the Tower from harm,” Rax said, and the man echoed her fervently. “Give me the keys, I’ll take this one down for you.”

  Shadows leapt as they descended the long stairways. Rax held the torch high, searching for the right cell.

  “I’ll send a physician to look at you.”

  “No.” He was hostile.

  “You’re young,” she said, “but you’re not stupid. If you’ve no friends, you won’t live long here, Vanathri. These cells are plague-pits.”

  “I’ll do without Bazuruk’s help.”

  She fitted the key in the lock, thrust the torch in a wall-socket, and pulled the heavy door open. There was only one other Islander listed—a Shabelitan—so this must be his freemate. It would be interesting to see a warrior-woman, Rax thought.