"Then Darian's daughter has married a woman," Hellibolt said conversationally.
Once again, Persius began to wonder why he had even bothered to carry the old charlatan along with him. True, the troops were always more at ease when they believed a soothsayer was with them predicting the way they should go, but Hellibolt seemed to get crazier by the minute. Tarius had just won them a major victory. He had been totally unconcerned about being covered in blood. He was the brightest thinker Persius had ever known, and this old fool thought Tarius was a
woman
! He didn't want any more fuel added to the thoughts that already ran through his mind concerning the lad.
"You are a crazy old man," Persius said.
Hellibolt laughed. "You make a woman who is also a creature of the night the chief of your army. You knight it and take its council, and you call
me
crazy."
"Enough, old man, I'll not have you soil the reputation of such a fine fighter. Such a fine
man
," Persius started.
"I'm not trying to soil
her
reputation," Hellibolt interjected.
Persius glared at him.
If Tarius were a woman . . .
He shook the thought from his head. "Do not interrupt me, and never again speak aloud your evil accusation. To think a woman could fight better than any man in the kingdom is absurd. Keep your idiocy to yourself, or I'll have you beheaded."
Hellibolt shrugged. "As you wish. I will never again talk about Tarius's lineage or gender."
"Take care you do not, old man," Persius spat.
* * *
Tarius followed the creek up a good long way. She sat on a rock and held her hands to keep them from shaking. After looking carefully around, she took off her leather, and after checking one more time she climbed into the creek. The day was warm and the water even in the shade was refreshingly crisp but not cold. The water ran red with blood, but not one drop of it was hers. She hadn't gotten so much as a scratch. She pulled her leather into the water and washed it. Then she got out of the water and pulled it on wet. Even if she had brought other clothes with her, she still would have had to wear the wet leather because it would shrink if she wasn't wearing it to keep it stretched to the right size. Of course this way, even with her undergarments, it would chafe her skin raw in the seams. She cleaned her sword and her sheath, then she sat down on a rock and used leaves to dry her blade. Her hands still trembled, and her mind raced back to the battle, playing back the moments that had happened too fast to be comprehended and processed at the time. It took longer to recall it all than it had taken to do it.
She was a little shocked. All this time she had thought that killing a bunch of Amalites would make her feel better about what they had done to her parents. To her people. She had thought that revenge would lift the anger away from her like a veil. But killing them hadn't changed the way she felt about being forced to live a lie, or how she felt about losing her parents. It didn't erase the vision etched in her mind of her Pack being slaughtered.
She realized only now that this was a pain that could never go away. That no amount of killing, no amount of revenge, was going to remove the images. The memories of having the sword drawn across her throat, of being left for dead in a stack of bodies, the unforgettable stench of death. These were her legacy, a part of her. To lose it would be like cutting away a limb. They were part of her, as much a part of her as being Katabull. They had shaped her to the person she was as much as being female and loving women had done.
It was a horrible past, a past she wouldn't wish on anyone, but it was hers. It belonged to her, and it was the one thing no one could take away.
She looked at the creek. The water ran clean again. She was clean and her weapon was clean. In a few weeks the village would be repaired and from the outside no one would guess that a great slaughter had taken place there. But the hearts of every one of them who survived this day would remember. Not a one of them would ever be quite the same as they had been when the Amalite horde decided to descend on a village of helpless farmers and ranchers.
Many of those children, the ones that lived, would grow up as she had; parentless, with visions of death in their heads. They would learn to hate before they had even really learned to love, and they would never feel safe again.
And this cycle would never end till the last Amalite priest was laid to rest beside the last Amalite soldier.
She had been gone too long. There was work to do, and if she was to give out orders she must also share in the work. She got up and started the long walk back. Now the body started to ache at the work it had done.
No one respected a leader who never got their hands dirty, who put themselves up on a pedestal above others. If Persius wanted the real respect and admiration of his countrymen, he would crawl out of his carriage and start carting around dead bodies. He would help dig graves.
Riding into battle in a suit of armor no arrow could pierce, surrounded by men sworn to die before they let a hand fall on him, might look a grand gesture to a fool, but any person worth his salt could see through it. It was a show put on to boost moral. Nothing more and nothing less. Persius would sit on a horse twice as good as any of theirs. He would be surrounded by the best fighters in the kingdom. Then he would ride onto the battlefield where he could be seen by the most people, and he would bark out a few orders from the safety of his gauntlet of men. The troops would be heartened, and then he would quickly ride off the field before the real battle started. He would get in his carriage and go home to await the outcome.
The troops' moral might be boosted for a day, maybe even a week, but no more. But if he would get out and dig the latrine, then they would take heart. If he would shit in the latrine instead of in a china pot that someone else had to dump for him, then the men would believe he was one of them. They would feel good about fighting for the kingdom.
Grand gestures didn't win Tarius's respect, not the way small ones did. She looked at the beaded necklace around her throat and then quickly tucked it into her armor. Not to hide it, but so that it would be safe. She thought of Jena. She had missed her the moment she'd left her line of sight.
She tried not to think of all the many things that could go wrong with her relationship with Jena. She fantasized that she told Jena everything, and that Jena didn't care. That she said she had always known.
Too soon, she was back at the village and back to work. Tragon joined her. He hadn't bathed as she had, and yet he was relatively blood free. She hadn't seen him throughout the battle, but she guessed from the too clean look of him that he had hung back. She liked Tragon, but was all too aware of his many faults. She knew she couldn't count on him to watch her back. Harris, yes, but not Tragon. Tragon would always put his own life over any others.
Which was just one of many reasons he never would have made a good mate for Jena. When guilt poured into her brain like rain on her head she would have to remember this fact.
Harris ran up to work with her, and she realized he was almost as bloody as she had been. "There's a creek," she nodded with her head in the general direction. "Go and clean up; you'll feel better."
Harris nodded quietly and was obviously releaved to be able to get away for awhile.
"Listen up and pass the word on," Tarius yelled. "If you feel you need to wash, there is a creek on the other side of the village. Wash up, but be quick about it! I want the dead out of the village by nightfall." Tragon started to leave with several others, and Tarius caught hold of his arm. "You're hardly dirty at all, my brother."
"Is that a crime, Tarius?" Tragon asked with a smile.
"Depends on why," Tarius hissed. "Certainly you're not dirty enough to need a wash down. Help me with the bodies."
An angry retort died on Tragon's lips. He knew why he wasn't bloody, and so did Tarius. Yes, he had hung back, but what did it matter? Tarius was a one-woman slaughtering machine. Why should he risk life or limb when all he had to do was get out of Tarius's way and go in to finish off the ones she hadn't quite killed? There was no crime in playing it safe, and with Tarius taking all the risks, well, it just wasn't necessary for him to do so to make a name for himself. Especially since Harris seemed more than willing to take his place on the front line.
And if Tarius died . . . Well, Tragon would be there to comfort her widow.
Of course it would be better if she died towards the end of the war instead of the beginning. Better if she could protect him as long as possible.
Tragon answered Tarius in a lowered voice, eyes on the ground. "I'm sorry, Tarius. I'm . . . I'm ashamed to say that I was scared. I had never seen anything like that before. By all rights, we should be on our internship, handling disputes between villagers and minor skirmishes. I froze for a minute; I was scared nearly to death."
Tarius was a woman, and she had the compassion of a woman in most cases. Tragon hoped to appeal to the woman Tarius pretended not to be. He wasn't entirely successful.
"There's nothing wrong with being afraid, Tragon. We have all known fear. The only dishonor comes from what you do with your fear." She grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. "Abandon me again, Tragon, and you had best pray that you never need me at your back, because I will not be there."
Tragon nodded silently. They went back to work moving bodies.
* * *
Tarius gently dressed the wound on Harris's arm. It was deep, but not bad enough to need sewing. He'd cleaned up as they all had, but his youthful features had lost the look of innocence that had lit up his face only a few short hours ago.
"You all right?" Tarius asked.
Harris nodded silently.
"You can tell me, you know," Tarius said finishing the last knot in the dressing. "Your arm will heal. You do know that, don't you?"
"I know . . . but . . . The Amalites! It's as if . . . I don't know how to put it. It's as if they don't feel our pain. As if they kill us as easily as they would slaughter sheep," Harris said. "These people held no weapons. They couldn't defend themselves. What good does it do the Amalites to kill them?"
"My father told me many truths, but there was one that stood out beyond all the rest. He said, 'Of two things take heed. A man who believes he is right, and proving that man wrong.' They need no other reasons."
Harris nodded, although he wasn't exactly sure what Tarius meant. They were alone at their tent. The other soldiers, even Tragon, were talking to each other and reliving the day's events. Naturally, each one was making himself sound better than the one before. Harris had tried to fit in, to get into their groups and talk, but they moved quickly away. In fact he noticed that they treated him almost exactly as they treated Tarius. He figured he was in good company, but no one liked to be shunned, and he didn't really understand it. Tarius was the hero of the day, and yet they avoided him as if he had plague.
"Why don't they like us?" Harris asked in a quiet voice. For the first time that day he sounded like the mere youth that he was.
Tarius looked across the camp at where Tragon talked easily with a group of the men. "I know how you feel. Let's tell it as it truly is but keep it between ourselves. Tragon was a coward today. Yet he is accepted and we are not. All because we were born different." Tarius lay down on the ground close to the fire, and she stared across the flames at Harris. "We have to earn every shred of respect we get because in their own way they are no better than the Amalites. They also despise people that aren't like them. I'm out-country, and I have strange ways they don't understand or respect. You are a cripple, yet you and I are better fighters than any of them. In their heads, we should be barely competent, so the fact that we are better than them mocks their beliefs, mocks their training."
"You are better, Tarius, but not me. I'm not better than they are! I couldn't be . . ."
"Do you doubt my judgment, Harris?"
Harris laughed. Tarius was his mentor, but he was also his only true friend, and Tarius did not intimidate Harris. "I doubt your eyesight. Anyone can see that my skill does not match that of any Swordmaster . . ."
"Do you think a title makes you a better fighter?" Tarius looked at him and smiled. "Their titles make them quit trying, quit improving. You are constantly improving, constantly working at improving."
"But I can't run or jump like them . . ."
"You have learned to fight. You don't need to be able to run as fast or jump as high because you, my friend, have learned how to stand your ground and fight," Tarius assured him. "Now I'll hear no more talk of them being better. They are not better fighters than you, and they are certainly not better men."
Harris blushed red with embarrassment at Tarius's praise.
"Come, let Tragon and those idiots stay up talking and drink themselves sick. When the morning comes and we break camp to start out again, they'll wish they had as few friends as we do."
When they were settled into their tent, swords by their sides, Harris found that he was more tired than he thought he was. His muscles ached, and the wound started to throb but wasn't really painful. He yawned.
"Tarius?"
"Yes?"
"Do you miss her?" Harris asked.
"Yes. I miss Jena very much," Tarius said, feeling in that moment as if her heart were being ripped from her chest.
"I know you miss
her
. I didn't mean Jena. I meant . . . I meant your mother," Harris asked in a hushed whisper. "I was very little when my mother died, too. I still miss her. Is that wrong?"
"No, it's not wrong. I still miss my mother, and I always will. But that dreadful hole that was ripped in my soul when the Amalite bastards killed her was filled completely when I fell in love with Jena, when she fell in love with me. When you fall in love, you'll feel whole again as well."
"Maybe, but where will I find a girl like Jena?" Harris was only half teasing. Jena had been like a sister to him, but that didn't mean that he hadn't had a crush on her. He didn't think he could be happy with any fine lady who never took her shoes off or wrestled. He told Tarius as much.