A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 08

Tashka put her hands to her face, she brushed them over her cropped short hair. Her wide blue eyes stared in horror at the man before her. "No!" she cried. "You have done it! You have told him! Sweet Hell! you have told my General that I am your daughter and Vadya will know I am a woman and he will throw me out of the troop!"

"Angels, what a fuss," her father said. "Whatever did you expect? that for the rest of your life you would be able to run loose with soldiers getting up to I know not what disgusting behaviour? Just look at you. I was hoping that a few days training you into dresses might cure you but I swear, it is an impossible task."

"What in Hell ...!" Tashka stared at him from wild eyes. "Lord Esha - you told him I am an officer in Sixth H'las, is it not?"

van Sietter looked disdainfully at her. "I told him that you were serving under a false name in some army somewhere," he answered. "I was of course unaware that it was his army and that your troop, Sixth H'las is it? is actually commanded by his son ..."

"Liar! You know it well!"

"Will you stop this hysterical behaviour! Sit down and listen to me, wench. I said sit down!"

Tashka's immediate impulse was to scream No! but she wanted to get the whole story out of her father - or as much of it as she could get him to tell. Also his icy blue gaze had a real power over her. She had spent the first years of her life in the mountain fortress of her uncle as a hostage. She had realised all along there must be a reason that her uncle van V'ta had been invited to Clair's and her home with a well armed troop. Her father had always been tempted to let her fall into her uncle's hands to be assassinated in the North and then the scandal of her military way of life, wholly inappropriate for a Lady of the high nobility, would be buried in the H'velst Mountains.

She crouched down silent on the edge of her chair.

"Now then," van Sietter drawled the words out, leaning back in his chair and placing his hands together in front of his cool fair face. "I do not think for a moment that young el Gaiel will take you to his bride," he paused. Tashka thought of Vadya el Gaiel, of his merry brown eyes and his wide generous mouth, of his warm voice talking about a book or strategies or a morning ride. She thought of teasing him about all the lovelies of the high nobility his father might have put up to him: every one a proper behaved Lady, even that vixen slut Maive el Staten whose well-endowed chest her beloved Commander had been lured off to. Her blue eyes clouded with tears. She blinked them savagely back. "However, van H'las has gone to try to persuade him to the match."

"Hell!" Tashka moaned, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. "What will he not say about me now!"

"I promised van H'las to make a more acceptable Lady of you," van Sietter went on. "Although once he realised you are actually his son's junior officer, I expected ..." he fell silent, Tashka looked quickly up at him. In an unguarded moment when he thought she was immersed in misery the old snake had allowed a look of puzzlement to appear on his face.

"You hoped Vadya would be so insulted that it would come to war!" she shot out at him. "Hell! Oh Hell!" she moaned. "You have ruined my life! I always longed to go and train with Vadya, after losing my career once how happy I was to serve as his Captain and you must come and ruin it for me all over again!"

van Sietter swung an icy glare at her. "You have some notion, oh my daughter," he said coldly, "that you are of importance in this world. Do not imagine I would go to all this trouble to cross you. I do this for Sietter and you must accept it for Sietter's sake. We must have this tie with H'las for the sake of the cloth trade in Arventa and to get the food prices lower for the people."

"What do you care for the cloth trade or the people?" Tashka said listlessly, lying back in her chair with her hand over her eyes. She felt as if a tight band was over her eyes because she refused to be made to cry by this selfish snake of a parent. "You are not like van H'las. The el Gaiels care about their people, that is why Lord Esha and Vadya have not slipped the knot of this betrothal and cast it in your face in terms that might allow you to stir them up to declare war."

"What nonsense is this!" van Sietter's eyes pinched up, his nose seemed to become thin and white with temper. "I will not tolerate you crossing me again. An' you give me trouble over this betrothal, you will go with el F'lara to V'ta. Is it not enough that you ran away from that betrothal with el Jien van Vail? It will not happen again! Gossip about my family could ruin my career ..."

"What do I care about your Angel-damned career?" Tashka snarled, springing out of her chair and standing glaring at him, her hurt blue eyes wide and blazing. Imp sprang up and barked, van Sietter looked at him and Tashka turned a fierce glare at him, snapping: "To station, sirrah!" Imp sank down on the floor, looking with puzzled scared eyes at Tashka. "Have you ever given a copper coin's curse for my career? The brightest rising star in your army, my brother officers have all gone on to become Commanders but it is barely tolerated that I should be a junior officer in an enemy troop! My Commander, Stariel, even came to beg you allow me to go to the Generals' strategic staff. He knew I am a woman but he loved my strategic skills so much that he came back out of retirement to ask it of you. You let him think you would allow it! He rode all the way to Vail where I was with Pava, an old man, and he came himself to me to say: Go to your father, he has promised it me that he will consider a position for you in the Generals' staff. Lucky for me that I knew it could not be so, there must be something in the breeze. The next I knew I had a scrawled note from Pava who had been told to go home to his parents, telling me to put Ninth on battle alert and on no account set foot out of the encampment. When he came back at all speed it was to tell me I was to be forced to the altar, bestowed without being allowed to speak a word because I am the younger child, on Pava himself, my own Captain! Commander-Sir Stariel never lifted his head again for the shame of what he brought on me."

"Insolent dog," van Sietter commented with an icy sneer. "What right did he think he had to tell van Sietter how to manage a younger child of the el Maiens."

"He was my Commander, he had sworn I would be his honour and care and he loved me!" Tashka cried. van Sietter lifted his cold grey eyes in an expression of scorn. "And it was for your career that you fought mam's people in V'ta. I know how that war put the arms merchants in your pocket. I have seen the treaty: a war every five years and arms half-price for you."

"And so you wish to stay out of V'ta, you will listen to me!" van Sietter was at last roused to some emotional response. "What is this talk of a treaty with arms merchants? As if an el Maien van Sietter would stoop to deal with riff-raff of trade! So you speak of this again, I will have the tongue from your slack mouth!"

"I hope your Vilandian bitch stabs you one night!" Tashka snarled. "I hope your soldiers rape you as some have tried to rape me. I hope the King hears of your treaties and hangs you for a traitor as I have risked hanging for a spy!"

"Get out!" van Sietter shrieked.

"With pleasure, my Lord," Tashka swept an insulting low bow and snapped her fingers at her heel for Imp to follow her. She tried to be calm but her voice trembled and her face was pale and she could not forbear to slam the door behind her.

She ran round the veranda on heavy booted feet to Clair's room, threw open the door and flung herself on some cushions on his floor. She clenched up her fists and her jaw, moaning through her clenched jaw. Imp scrambled after her and stood with two paws on the cushions, whining in puzzlement. She turned her head to him and then dragged him into her embrace, burying her aching eyes in his wiry coat.

When Clair came into the room she was lying over the heap of colourful cushions, staring at the beams above her head with strained eyes, the muscles of her face tense, Imp curled close to her side. An old rope hung down from the beam above her, she and Clair used to climb up it to sit dangling their legs from the beam eating apples they kept in a secret cache there.

"What is it?" Clair asked, his voice fearful, coming over to lie down on the cushions beside her and put his arms around her. "What has he done now?"

Tashka turned her slanted blue eyes to him and spoke through her clenched jaw. "He has betrothed me to el Gaiel van H'las, my own Commander," she said through gritted teeth.

"Angels!" Clair winced and screwed his face up, "that scum! but Tashka, little brother, el Gaiel will not marry one of his junior officers. He will laugh when they suggest it."

"I know," Tashka moaned. Her face suddenly looked as if at last she might start to cry, her slanted eyes creased and her rose-petal mouth pouted up against her tears, "but he will never have me back to the troop now. They will persuade him to take the betrothal for a year, for the sake of trade and the poor who else must go hungry. He will agree to it only so he can ride here and spit in my face! Oh Clair, in Port Paviat that butterfly-wits Pava let it slip that I am van Sietter but Vadya forgave it me! I thought I would die if I had to leave him just because I am the child of that old snake but he came and ... and he hugged me and forgave me. He said he would ask his father if I might stay in Sixth H'las, he said it might even be a ... a useful tie with Sietter. Oh-h, when he hugged me I longed to press close to him and show him how I felt for it, I mean just his forgiveness, but I had to try and turn my shoulder into his chest so he would not guess. And then we went out that night ... No, Clair! How can I live now? I loved it so. He is the finest Commander in Trossia, he has watched over my mistakes and corrected me so gently I hardly knew it - you know how hard I take it if I think the Quarter is not perfectly in order. Who will watch over Mada's mistakes now, who will make Hanya and Volka be friends? Oh no, who will sit with Vadya and make the strategies and go for a ride with him and hear him talk about the stupid women he will go and get lured in by, or comfort him if he thinks of Mada Stanies, my fellow Captain and his childhood friend whom we lost in that duel over a barmaid. He will never want to see me but once more - to spit in my face, and I love him so!"

"Hush," Clair said softly, rubbing a gentle hand over Tashka's short cropped hair. "You have said to me he is a good and generous man, fair-minded. He will forgive it you, he will know it is not you who has done this stupid thing. Pava will get you a Vail troop since I cannot yet give you a Sietter one. Then when I am the sworn Lord, you may come and be General here." He stroked the back of his hand down Tashka's cheek, her strained eyes still stared blankly at the beam above them in the roof. "Vadya el Gaiel will not take it out on you that van Sietter has tricked him."

"You have not seen him angry," Tashka answered in a small voice. "I have only seen him so once, with a man we caught spying in the troop. He hung him from a tree. Sweet Hell! I shivered for a week, to think I was van Sietter in his troop; I would wake suddenly in the night from a bad dream of his face so cold and heartless! That was when I was still only a new officer in the troop, since then I came to know him so well and to love him so much. You know, my heart really hurts. You would not think it would physically hurt your heart, to lose a friend?" She raised puzzled despairing blue eyes to him, he looked at her with a question in his smile.

"Perhaps," he suggested, "van H'las will persuade el Gaiel to the match and he may come round to be your husband and friend?"

"How can you talk such nonsense!" Tashka cried. "I am his junior officer!"

"But you would not give him grief if he took someone on the side," Clair suggested in an apparently careless tone.

Tashka sat up in the cushions and glared at him from angry blue eyes. "I should not tolerate any such arrangement!" she said indignantly. "Vadya is a great deal too honourable for tricks of that kind. How dare you talk as if he had such slack morals."

"My dear," Clair said drily, an enquiring twinkle still in his grey eye. "Slack morals are the way of it with political marriages."

Tashka blushed to remember that Clair had gone through so many one-day-one-nights that even he had lost count of them. "Well," she said grumpily. "I can tell it you now that Vadya el Gaiel will not marry his junior officer. And then, we know where it is that I will be going." She put a hand on Clair's arm and looked into Clair's slanted grey eyes with her own slanted blue eyes wide.

"No!" Clair exclaimed. "I'll not allow it, how can you think I would let it happen?" He put his arms out as if he would physically protect Tashka from being dragged from his arms.

"What can we do," Tashka demanded. "He has brought First Sietter, you know how they are about the sworn Lord; they have to be. van V'ta has got First V'ta here and they have come fully armed, I could see the disposition of the troop was as if they were in an embattled encampment."

"There are always accidents," Clair lowered his voice as he said it.

"No! Clair, last time they caught the man and ham-strung him! And we have never been able to do a thing for him in case they proved that it was us behind it."

"Hear me," Clair knelt suddenly up, gripping Tashka's arms and looking intently into her face as he said the habitual military phrase. "He will not send you to V'ta, I swear it. We must keep a battle-eye out ourselves. If van H'las looks likely to slip the knot, you could go to Soomara. Maive would be glad to help us, er, to help you. Since you have kept her little brother, your Lieutenant, kindly under your eye. If van H'las push the match, el Gaiel will surely allow you to stay here in Sietter with me. It will not be so bad, will it? I cannot match el Gaiel's strategic skills but I can give you a practice duel now and then?"

Tashka made a grumpy pout, leaning her elbows on her dusty booted knees and putting her head in her hands. "What will you do with me, make me Captain of the Castle Guard?" she demanded with a chilling sneer that made it suddenly apparent that she was indeed the daughter of el Maien van Sietter.

Clair laughed. "Even he will not live forever," he said. "One day he will be gone and the whole army will swear to my fingers. I will make you General at last."

Tashka's lip curled. "The structure of the command in Sietter," she began.

"Alright!" Clair cried, his slanted eyes curling with his laughter. "Give me peace about the structure of the command in the Sietter army! You can change it when I am Lord van Sietter, you can take the whole army and strip the strategic staff and make it exactly how you please. Have the army, have the region, have any thing but do not break your heart for one silly little H'las Quarter. You have many friends: Pava, and the Angels - Caja and Loisir who command Seventh and Fourth, that slut Vaie who has Tenth Sietter these days; el Farin van Graiel, el Vaie van Soomara and el Darien van Trattai are training in Sixth H'las, is it not? and I'll swear they would do any thing for you, just like the Angels who would always take the beatings while you got away free, you monkey. What does one Commander matter?"

Tashka's head suddenly drooped and at last the slow tears rolled out of her eyes. Clair looked at her beautiful slanted eyes dripping with tears as rare as sapphires, and as precious to him, although he never would give way to her tears because everyone-else indulged them so and spoilt her. He put his arm gently around her shoulders.

"Vadya will be more angry than a pale Angel," Tashka sobbed. "He will never forgive me, however his father decides it: slip the knot or force him to the altar with me. Nor will he be happy with Pava and you, who saddled him with a woman in soldier's clothes."

Clair wiped the heel of his hand under her eyes and soaked up those precious tears in the embroidered cuff of his shirt. "Pooh," he said gently. "Your eyes, my brain and Pava's tongue could charm the Angels into bed, let alone a cross Commander into a better mood." He grinned at Tashka, nudging her head with his own head, she shook her head. Her tears ceased and she seemed easier for having shed them. She looked away towards Clair's door, her eyes full of a strange yearning. Clair reached out to hug her. He had trained her so hard that she even hesitated before allowing the small swell of breasts constrained in her bodice to press to him. She let him hold her briefly in his embrace then sat up in his arms and sniffed, saying she had better get herself into a bath. Clair looked at her sorrowful face.

"Are you afraid?" he asked, in a very gentle voice. "Afraid to take a man in marriage? Is that why you think el Gaiel will be angry? You are afraid to take him in marriage?"

"Afraid of what?" Tashka said, looking curiously at him.

"Of ... of a man in your bed?"

Tashka burst out laughing, her slanted blue eyes creased suddenly up in a sexy wink. "What do you take me for?" she cried. "I have been a soldier out in the field, do you think the chance to take a man into my bed has passed me by?"

Clair looked angry and sat up saying: "What in Hell ...! Who was it? I will kill him!"

"That will be why I have never told you a name," Tashka said with a wicked salacious grin. "Do you think I cannot take care of my own honour? I have defended my own honour. You know enough of my fighting skills to know that anyone I have chosen of my own free will to enjoy my body with could not have forced my favours. Why do you talk such nonsense? Have I offered to throw my glove in the face of any of your lovers? I would be pushed to deal with all the long long list in one short lifetime!"

Clair scowled then grinned and shook his head. "Well," he said, "it is ... different. Alright! It is no different. I hope he ... or she, was ... kind to you? It must be an he if you defended your honour, I suppose. Did you have cause to defend your honour? Not serious enough for a glove, I hope?" He looked at her in loving anxiety.

"Why do you think there was only one?" Tashka retorted. "Shut it about my private business, Clair. There is nothing in it for you." She brushed her scarred knuckles gently with her other hand.

"What of el Gaiel," Clair suggested, "since you love him so much it makes your heart hurt to think of being without him. You have never thought of him in that way?"

"'Course not!" Tashka cried, her tear-stained cheeks flushing with annoyance. "You are as bad as Pava! Vadya el Gaiel is my senior officer, I would be crossing my vow to his banner - yuk! I love him much better than that!" She bunched her scarred right fist up and glared at her brother but he only burst out laughing and seized her fist in a strong lean hand, saying, "do not be spoiling my face again over el Gaiel van H'las whose hands are so skilled ... on the horses' reins!" Tashka wrenched her fist from his hand and she and Imp set on him with cushions, barking and shouting and beating him over the head while he covered his head with his arms, protesting and grinning in the most irritating way.