Maps

The days alone in the chartrooms were bearable. It was rare for anyone to interrupt her studies, and Freya found the images endlessly fascinating. Some places she knew better than others; some battle sites were more notable or more recent, and always the memories came back on the flood.

Blood and death.

And exhilaration.

Life; and blood that swam with light and heat. When your heart drove you so hard you swelled and grew huge and unbreakable; there was nothing you could not do, or see, or believe. A sword arm was fluid fire, legs iron bands, shoulders were wings, and lungs burst with the need to laugh and scream. In battle you glowed from within. In the heat of a fight you were a god.

She looked down at her map and raised the flame to brighten the cold stone gloom. There was no life here.

The large hanging in Paske's chamber was a composite and not one she could often study. Section by section, square by square, it had been produced and reproduced, and she worked on the template for each separate area. She had a small key to work with, just a handful of likenesses and with them, their words. Most of them she had already learned to recognize.

When she found a landmark missing she could mark it in, carefully. But when she remembered an important fact that needed a notation, or when the tiny images she transcribed needed words of explanation, she had to take it down along the corridor to where a cabal of clerks huddled in flickering light, scratching away at parchment. Arrogance in an officer was to be endured; smugness in these glowworms was galling.

Before her now, the massive cliffs of Rodo Vendre showed pale and wide against the green background, and Freya chewed at her lip, moving her finger in slow circles over an area an hour's march to the south. Several seasons past her scouting party had been pinned in the lee of a heavily forested hillock, ambushed from the tree cover and trapped when their attempted retreat brought them against a deep coombe bog. They were death to men on horseback; icy silted meres covered from edge to edge in turfy green, but acid black below. Even if a soldier was saved from drowning, the dark water poisoned their lungs, and in the mountain air, to be soaked and have no fire was just as deadly.

They had lost three of their eight men that day. Urte, mounted and arrow-struck, had hit the bog at full gallop. She had vanished beneath the mantle in an explosion of kicks and shrieks. Another, who had no name Freya could recall, had fallen as the company dropped, spread wide, and turned back in a crouching dash for the cover of the trees. Back toward the enemy.

Freya grinned, no longer seeing the chart at her fingers. She was light and fast and sure. With Dragan a few hard strides behind, she had slipped through the sabine copses that trailed into the forest shade, oblivious to scrapes and scratches. One part of her mind counted flights from above, noted origins, sized up her opposition. Another part slipped ahead, picking shade from deeper shade, cover from peril, on the route toward their nest. Without any thought, she slipped the quiver and light bow from her shoulder; amid thorns and branches it was only a hindrance, and she drew the short blade from her back. It was in her hand where it belonged as she hunted.

Tethered horses on the path ahead forced her to move from the flank. The archers' camp was well hidden, but protected by an outcrop of rock only from the front. Rising into a run before panicky horses could sound an alarm, she burst from the shadows, leaping over a low bracken bank, and whooping as the sharp golden light of her blade shone red.

She heard without seeing the screech and clash of swords behind her head, and she ducked and spun. Opening the space for Dragan's reach and range, she turned in and around behind him as he forced his way into the confusion of defenders. Others were joining them, jumping into the middle of the fray from all points.

If the enemy had been smarter or older, if they'd had more experience, they may have had watchers in position above the camp, ready to move in as back up under attack. But these men were young, their defense frantic slashing, their lives forfeit from the start.

So they'd fallen; all of them; dead. And all in the time it would take to throw up your arms and scream thanks for the victory, and curses for the gods, at a clear mountain sky.

She rubbed gently at the paint. The bog should be noted; it could cost men their lives. Slowly she traced the low profile of the map, its carefully applied colors forming layers of revision.

She could do this, of course she could. What were they but worms?

They looked up as one when she stood at their door, seven pasty dough-faces reflecting the lamplight, their eyes dark myopic holes. Some turned back to their scratching, some grinned. Kulle, the least offensive of them, silently moved his document aside to make way for the map that needed annotation. "Here," Freya said softly. "These hills are shown correctly, but it should be noted how densely wooded they are. They are just forward of the front; they should be watched. This area is a coombe bog, deep enough to drown horses." Her finger moved over the map, but she stole suspicious glances at the men around her.

She met one grinning face, as it expostulated, "That where you hid your family?"

A small titter spread around the room and a second, braver clerk quipped, "No, that's where she won the war for us. Single handed, too. She drowned a whole battalion there, didn't you, Oernen?"

Oernen was the name Dragan had given her when he learned she had no family name. And more, he had taught her to sign it in a wide sweeping hand. The eagle, a great predator of the heights as she was, and this insect had no place for the word on his tongue.

On the bench in front of him, a small sharp blade for trimming the styluses glinted in the broken light. In a moment she could drop his tongue into his hand, where he could better learn to hold it. Before she could move he added, "Come on, tell us tales of your glories. Who did you kill there, a monster? A devil? A thousand?"

Freya stepped closer and he hadn't the sense to back away. "No," she smiled, close. "It was children. Only children." If she had cut a sliver from his cheek or chopped down on a finger joint, the look on his face could not have been more satisfying. Spreading his sheaf of scrolls across the desk, she lifted the ink pot and slowly and carefully emptied the red-brown wash over all his precious words.

* * * * *

Paske sat behind his desk, slapping his cane against his hand. He tap, tap, tapped it in an irritating imitation of a time waster while Freya stared past him at the arras. She let her thoughts wander slowly along the curved line that marked the journey to the city of Koldem. She had time. She still had fifty-five days.

Now she could see errors in the likeness. In reality, the city she remembered was not so neatly laid, and the symbols for the palace and the temple were wrongly shown together against the northern wall. She shook her head, the slightest movement, acknowledging how little it mattered if the western portions of the map were wrong.

On the day troops needed accurate information on the layout of their cities, the front line would have moved across the mountainous borders, swept by the citadel and its sister far to the north, moved on past the great forests of the central plains and all the wide tracts of farmland. In fact, if the war had moved to the cities' gates, there would be nothing left of the empire to save but the palace.

Tap, tap, tap.

She watched the shine slide up and down the length of the cane as it rose and fell. The wood was pale, its grain open. Soft wood. A smile twitched at her lip and she bit down on it and straightened her shoulders. It was apt, she thought, when it so resembled his cock. And he really loved it, never let it out of his hand.

At least it was not a truncheon, and he was not a sheriff. When she'd been no more than four, she'd hidden for weeks with an arm bone cracked by the sheriff's kosh. Huddled in shadows she'd waited in silence, with bruises down the side of her head, a closed up eye and a split lip. The little ones were always easiest to catch, and even the fast ones like her could be bowled over and belted before they could scrabble back onto their feet. Street shit; best beaten to death.

Tap, tap, tap.

"There's no pleasing you, is there?"

She closed her eyes, listened to her own breath, listened for a pulse, and then opened them again. "Sir." There was no life here.

"I let you hide in the safety of my walls. I even kept you from the ridicule of the men." He paused, perhaps to accept her gratitude, perhaps to listen to the echoes dying in the cold hard corners. "I don't think there are many among the other ranks who would even know you are hiding here."

No. The other ranks were away from the safety of stone out on the other side of the mountains. By now they would be fully engaged on the front giving their lives for the glory and prosperity of the empire. "No, sir."

"And yet you waste my time. You waste everybody's time. It will take a month to transcribe the documents you destroyed. Should I add a month to your conscription?"

The words hit her like a blow, and she struggled to keep her face calm. Fear burned in her chest, and the skin of her throat and cheeks prickled. If he thought for a moment he had scared her, he'd have won a victory greater than the sum of all the empire's striving. "No sir."

"No." He stood and moved around the desk like a predator, and her heartbeat lurched into a gallop. His tread fell slowly, heavily and the skin of her arm, down her side, and up the back of her neck began to bristle. She could feel him behind her just as surely as if he was a naked flame.

"No," he repeated from close behind her. "Tell me, what are you saving yourself for?" His fingertips skimmed over her hair, the touch so light she was uncertain whether she'd actually felt it, or simply imagined more than his breath at her shoulder.

Her back straightened slowly, the hard muscle of her upper arms clenching and drawing up fists. On the desk in front of her lay an ornate knife, much as the clerk's had been, but made of silver and embossed bone. It was within easy reach and she turned slightly, moving her left shoulder closer to him and her right hand a little closer to the knife.

"Sir?" she hissed, letting her tone speak warnings her rank forbade.

"When you are released, what then? You will be safe, your life spared." He shifted back to her right, his lips and hot words brushed her ear. "What possible use could you be?"

Paske stepped back sharply as her left elbow jabbed the air where he had been. The cane smashed down hard on her injured shoulder, and the trimming knife, already held, skidded from her numb fingers.

Freya cried out in pain and fury as he thrust down again on the length of his cane, forcing her legs to bend. His knee jabbed up into her kidneys hard enough to knock out another grunt of pain, and he bent over her to smile, and whispered, "There is no pleasing you. You need to learn some manners. You've been living out there like an animal for far too long."

He walked away, long strides carrying him back to his chair, and Freya doubled over, clutching the injury that roared like fire down into her chest. Her right arm was numb, the fingers of her right hand flared with pins and needles. Using the edge of his desk, she pushed herself back to a stand, riding waves of pain and dizziness that threatened to drop her into darkness.

"From tomorrow, you have new duties." He smiled, fresh, as if they'd had no more than a morning tête-à-tête. "You will scrub the mess hall floor, end to end, between every food service. Beginning tomorrow, of course, our new intake will arrive. You will have more than enough to keep you busy, then, won't you?

"Oh, but wait. I have one thing more for you. A surprise." While she steadied herself on the edge of the desk, he flicked through a pile of documents.

"Here now." He handed her a square of parchment neatly inscribed with small intricately interlaced words, painted in gold. It shook in her hand and she made no pretense of studying the script. "That's right, how insensitive of me; you can't read that, can you. It's an invitation. For our great war hero. There are guests coming out from Talsiga to view the new intake, and they want to see the stuff of legend. That's you." He could contain his joy no longer and he laughed, tipping back in his seat as his eyes sparkled with enjoyment. "Be sure to wear something elegant, won't you."

Editing, with thanks to Essie Holton.

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