I asked that, while fearing the worst.
“I’m not after your body,” Jal muttered. “The coin and the prisoner your inspired friends gave me for your safety is enough. Or we would have left you asleep by the side of the road weeks ago. But you are right: no one in the caravan lies around. Well, unless they’re in a bramble sleep. I will move you to another wagon, and you will work. Everyone in the caravan helps the caravan. That is our way.”
I was relieved. “In Lesser Khaim I—”
Jal held up a hand to stop me. “Our needs are different from a town’s. I don’t care what you used to do. The caravan is a new life for you, until we reach Paika. Anezka says we need cooks in the lagging wagons to the rear. Or firewood scroungers. We need hagglers and movers with the trading teams, inventory managers to make sure nothing is being stolen—”
Now it was my time to interrupt. I thought about my fight with the raiders, and about the future I was now thrown into. I was in a strange new land and, as Jal said, starting a new life.
I pointed at the wagon ahead of the fire crew. “Those men, with the arquebuses. Let me join them. I want to learn how to use those weapons. In Khaim there are just a handful of those weapons, in the careful guard of the Jolly Mayor. And here you have a team armed with them, it is very impressive.”
Jal made a face. “Impressive? The majisters of Jhandpara would call down rocks from the skies and fly over their enemies to rain fire on them. That was impressive. These things are just loud tubes.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, no, I suppose you are right. The arquebus would be an interesting weapon for a lady . . .” and I could see the word “executioner” lurk behind his lips, but then falter as I stared coolly at him. “. . . for you to wield,” he corrected himself.
I looked at the road curving off into my future, filled with ruts and ropes of bramble. “Jal. The caravan goes all the way to Paika, then back to Mimastiva. You trade with them?”
“Of course. I am a man of trade,” the roadmaster said, slapping the tattoos on his forearms. “I work with anyone willing to pay a fair price for my goods, and leave me to the spice road. But my allegiance is to no single city. Most of us abandon such loyalties after years on the road, as cities rise and fall, come and go. Many of the families on the caravan have always been in the caravan, and will never rest until they reach the halls of Sisinak, if Borzai wills it and your life’s trades have been judged honest. It is only there they will rest in the oasis markets, where the goods are never scarce, and the gold in your purse refills every night.” Jal chuckled.
“So you are no friend of the Paikans.”
“I am no one’s friend, I am a trader,” Jal said. “If you doubt me, go see the Paikan chained away in our wagon. He will remain there until we get to his city and I negotiate a good price for his freedom.”
“I may well do that,” I said.
Jal raised his hands and clapped them together. “So. You want to use an arquebus. I will humor you. Bojdan! Come here.”
One of the warriors looked back at us, set his arquebus down, then swung over the shields to drop to the road. He waited for the roadmaster’s wagon to approach, then climbed easily up onto the deck by us. “Yes?”
He was tall, with curled hair and a thick mustache. A massive scimitar hung on his left hip.
“This is Tana, the lady executioner. She will work with you to protect the caravan.”
Bojdan looked me up, then down. “She is a woman,” he said.
“Your powers of observation are astounding, Bojdan. It’s a damned shame you aren’t in charge of accounts, or haggling. Yes, she’s a woman, it is plain for you and me to see. She is the woman who took on four Paikan soldiers by herself. Can you say the same?”
Again Bojdan regarded me. “Whatever you want, Roadmaster.”
“You’re correct, Bojdan. It is whatever I want. Take her back to a wagon with space to sleep, and teach her what she needs to know. And get out of my sight, by all the damned halls, get out of my sight.”
Bojdan smiled. This was banter for them, the bluster that men exchanged. He turned around. “Let’s go, Tana.”
Jal cleared his throat. “Oh, and tell Anezka that Tana will not be joining them at the rear of the caravan to help out. She will be disappointed, I’m sure, but she is a capable manager, and will carry on.”
I looked back at Jal. “Thank you.”
“Good luck . . .” and he seemed to think about something, then smiled and said, “Executioness.”
I shook my head and went back to fetch my things.
When Bojdan later saw my axe with the black stains in the handle, he nodded and smiled widely.
The muscular warrior and I stood, our backs to scrub, rock, and bramble, and waited for the caravan to pass us by.
“Do you know anything about the raiders?” I asked.
“The Paikans?” Bojdan spat. “Dogs. All of them.”
I liked the large man better for the reaction. “They took my family.”
“They all but own the coast and more ever north. Though I thought they would avoid the Blue City, what with your Majister Scacz and all we hear about him. Ask Jal sometime about the Paikans, he’ll piss himself complaining about the extortions they rip from him to ‘allow’ him to keep trafficking the spice road.”
“If anything they’ve increased their raids,” I told him. “They burned my home.”
“They call what they do the Culling. They believe it is their holy duty. You’re lucky to live: they go after young women and children. Eliminate the breed cows, they say.”
I stared at him. “How do you know all this?”
“Their preachers are all over Mimastiva these days,” Bojdan said. “Things will get worse in the east, now.”
“Why do they do it?” I asked. What bizarre blasphemy did they preach?
“They blame us for the bramble,” Bojdan said, and pointed at a small wagon with a single auroch pulling it. “The surviving Paikan of the four you faced is in that wagon. . . .”
I cut him off. “I keep saying this and no one listens to me: I didn’t face all four of them. It was just one, and he knocked me to the ground easily. They hobbled me and left me.”
Bojdan nodded as we watched the wagon pass. For a moment, I thought about swinging aboard and using my axe to kill the man inside. But Bojdan saw the thought crossing my face, and he smiled. “Don’t think about sneaking off in the night to come and kill him. Jal will know it was you, and you wouldn’t want to experience his anger if he were to lose his ransom.”
Better not to endanger my chance of getting to Paika, I thought. As the wagon passed on, I saw a glimpse of a figure sitting behind iron bars, his back to the world. I didn’t recognize him as one of the two Paikans I’d seen.
“How long until we get to Paika?” I asked.
“Five weeks. Maybe six. The caravan is slow.” Bojdan folded his arms. “We’ll find you a place to sleep and get your axe sharpened up. And then I guess I’m the one stuck training you so that the next time you decide to take on a group of Paikans, you might at least kill one of them.”
For the first two days Bojdan set me to walking alongside the caravan to get my feet back under me. We passed through more scrub and rock on the cliffs, and during those two days began to move downhill, even closer to the ocean as the land sloped. We passed coves of sand nestled in between the scallops of coast. My ankle was somewhat tender, and at night, I’d walk back to the wagon near the very end of the caravan and curse the pain.
But by the third day it was a dull ache, and Bojdan let me up into the guard wagon as we eased past a tiny fishing village perched over the ocean. Fishermen in rags raced up foothills, loudly hawking dried fish hanging from poles on their backs.
I noticed none of the other men on the guard wagon would look me in the eye. I could feel that they resented my being there.
We stood higher than all the caravan here, and I could see the five other guard wagons sca
ttered throughout the snakelike convoy behind us.
“We used to have scouts running out ahead, beside, and lagging behind,” Bojdan told me. “But Jal cannot afford it anymore. So we must be more vigilant than ever.”
As he said that, he looked around at the villagers to our side that pressed close to the wagons, shouting and trying to barter as the caravan stolidly moved on.
I pointed at the gilded, brassworked arquebus Bojdan had over his shoulder. “But what about that? Isn’t it a good weapon?”
“All weapons are good, if used properly,” Bojdan said. He handed me the device. “It is loud, and almost anyone can use it, with some training. It sends bandits scurrying well enough.”
It was heavy and clumsy in my hands. I looked down the long barrel, its surface etched with thin, serpentine dragons. “I want to learn how to use this properly. . . .”
He smiled.
I learned how to pour the powder, light the matchlock, and raise the arquebus to the side of the shieldwall to balance the ever-heavy barrel.
Powder was expensive, so Bojdan drilled me for the day without it. Over and over again I mimed putting in powder, putting in shot, tamping, then setting the gun on the ledge and aiming. I did it until my shoulders were sore.
“Look past the barrel,” Bojdan urged, “to your target. That tree right over there. They are not accurate like a crossbow, or arrows, but you should still make the effort to aim.”
This time the gun was loaded. The acrid burning match, pinched between the serpentine lock, had been pulled back and was ready to strike. All I had to do was pull the trigger, and the burning fuse would descend into the pan.
“Okay, fire it,” Bojdan said.
I did, and the world exploded in light and smoke. “Sons of whores!” I shouted, startled, and when the smoke cleared I saw a mess of shredded leaves and some broken branches far to the right of where I had aimed. And my shoulder hurt.
Bojdan’s men laughed at me. “It’s got a kick, yeah?”
But Bojdan didn’t laugh. “Clean it, get a new one in, try again. Same tree!”
I reloaded rapidly, but not quick enough. The tree was almost obscured by the roadmaster’s wagon by the time I set the barrel on the shieldwall.
Bojdan grabbed it. “That was not bad, but not quick enough. So let’s not shoot our employer with stray shot today. Shoot that tree.”
I aimed at our sides again, and this time I was expecting the unholy roar of the weapon. Smoke burned my face, and tears stung my eyes, but pieces of shot had fanned out and hit the tree I’d aimed at.
“Good,” Bojdan said.
And then it was back to walking alongside the caravan for me.
In the second week, after more drills, Bojdan decided I could handle the arquebus well enough. We had left the coastal cliffs long behind us, and wound our way through soft plains near the ocean’s edge. Trees, and farther inland, woods, began to hem the road we traveled on, not just bramble and brush. “You know as much as us about the arquebus,” he said. “Now it’s time to think about close quarters. I will teach you to use your axe.”
For this we left the caravan, once I’d retrieved the executioner’s axe. We walked out into the woods as the wagons slowly rumbled past. Bojdan came with his scimitar, which was always at his side, and a small round shield he’d taken from the wagon’s wall.
He looked me up and down. “You may think that because you are a woman you are not a match for my men in the caravan. But if a one-hundred-pound warrior came to me, I would not turn him away merely because my men weigh twice what he does. I would, however, have to understand how best to use him. He is a tool. Some tools are large and heavy, useful for clubbing and smashing things. Some are thin daggers, useful for stabbing quickly.”
This was the longest thing I’d heard him say, and it sounded carefully thought out, like a speech. “Did you think of how you would say this all last night, as you sat sentry?” I asked him.
“Shut up. There are hard lands we will pass through, and we will be attacked, and you will protect the caravan.” He pulled his shirt apart to show scars on his chest, then pushed his sleeves up to show a wicked scar that cut deep into his upper arm, biting into the muscle there. “Whether you be a trained warrior, or an old lady, the skill of fighting lies not in what you can pick up, but in how much flesh you carve, and how well you will carve it, Tana. No one cares whether the person who does this is large, small, woman, or man. Even the best die suddenly on the battlefield. Death is death.”
That was a true thing. But I held the axe out in my two hands. “You want me to use this axe, not a sword? Or a scimitar like you?”
Bojdan tapped the hilt of his blade. “Do you have a sword? Have you suddenly come into money, and can afford to buy one from someone here in the caravan?”
“No,” I muttered.
“Then,” he said, “it will be the axe, because it is what you have. I have held it, while you were sleeping. It is well balanced. It is light, and easy to wield. Hold it two handed, just like when chopping wood. And remember, you hold a unique weapon.”
He moved my hand up a little, and then the other down. “A unique weapon?” I asked.
“Most men hold their shield with the left hand. With your axe, it is easy to switch it to a left handed strike, easier than learning to use a sword with your left. And you have a swing that comes easy to their unprotected side.” He held his shield up to demonstrate. “Swing slowly.”
Like chopping at a tree from the left, I did, and I could see what he meant. He had to move aside to get the shield in front of him. “I’m making you move around,” I said.
“You’re controlling the fight. From the first swing. There are other things you can do with the axe. For example, you can swing it past them and yank back, getting their neck with the downward facing edge of the axe’s point. You can stab at them with the upward point of the blade. Spike them with the side away from the blade shaped so conveniently just like a spearpoint. Use the axe as a hook, to sweep them off their feet.”
There was more. And halfway through the slowly shown moves, I stopped. “You know a great deal about fighting with axes.”
Bojdan paused. “It’s a peasant’s weapon . . . and my first.”
“Why do so few use it then?” I asked. “Everyone has one.”
Bojdan thought about it, as if for the first time. “It’s not the weapon of a warrior, but of the low peoples. It’s for chopping trees and bramble, not flesh. That is what fighters say. Did the guards in Khaim work for their meals, or do nothing but soldier?”
“No,” I shook my head. “They only soldiered.”
He grinned, and warmed to the subject. “So whether mercenaries or trained soldiers, it’s the people who hold weapons who choose what they use the most. And they are not the same people who farm. So the axe isn’t seen as a battle weapon.”
I understood. “And that is good for me.”
“Maybe.” Bojdan shrugged. “There are many unusual weapons on the field. People who spend their lives smitten by particular weapons bring their preferred lover to the field of play. But it is not those small things that determine a battle. That is decided by things that take place long before foes meet.”
I perked up. Bojdan commanded the fighting men of the caravan. It sounded like he had seen more combat than just scaring off bandits. “Like what?”
“It is how many soldiers are raised,” he said. “Your axe will do you no good against a well-aimed arrow. But an archer would have trouble escaping the jab of a sword. And so on. It is the mix of weapons and people, and how many they wield. It is how fresh they are. How healthy. Valor and intention are good for the heat of a battle, but if you are vastly outnumbered, there is only so much bravery can do.”
I hefted the axe and thought about it. Bravery while charging the four Paikans had only gotten me beaten and left on the ground. “You need to win the battle before your first stroke.”
Bojdan grinned. “Yes. And speaking of str
okes, right there is a sapling we can take back for firewood for the cooks. Remember, chop from your left, the tree’s right, to get past its shield.”
“What shield?” I asked.
Bojdan walked past me even as I said that and strapped his shield to a branch that jutted out enough to be used as a temporary arm.
“Get to it!” he ordered.
And I took on the small tree as if it were a raider, swinging past the shield and biting the axe into the meat of the sapling’s bark over and over again, until it toppled forward and Bojdan yanked me out of the way.
“Never get so focused that you forget what else is around you,” he said, as the tree struck the ground beside us.
For four weeks we continued. Slow-moving practices against each other, and fast ones when I faced more trees. Bojdan carved a blunt axe out of wood for me and swaddled it with cloth, and then he made a light wooden scimitar padded just the same for himself.
With these we dueled in the ever-thickening woods beside the caravan. The road began to slowly move back away from the coast, into the foothills. The ever-present smell of salt faded away, and we stopped passing seaside villages.
Few towns existed here in the thick overgrowth, due to bramble. Only a few solitary homesteads fought back, alone, becoming trapped by the increasing thicket and bramble just miles north of the road.
Occasionally dim figures watched us go past from the shadows. Our guards fingered their arquebuses, but nothing happened.
For a big man Bojdan moved damnably fast, constantly bruising my ribs and shoulders as we practiced, even slamming the padded scimitar down on my neck with swipes of his practice weapon.
Every time he hit me he’d tonelessly mutter, “Dead.”
But by the fourth week, he stopped saying that and moved on to: “Maimed.”