A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 09

He gave a sudden snort of laughter then glared into her narrowed blue eyes. She looked just like she did when they argued about manoeuvres. They sat side by side in the straw, he turned his eyes away from her blue eyes which had sometimes in the past been soft and warm on him and then he had felt unable to press her to answer questions about her private family life.

He said grudgingly: "I have never tried to wear a dress and I would not like it if I were asked to do so. Tell me how you came to be this creature that you are."

She made a pout to hear herself described in such terms by Vadya, who had called her his best officer and friend.

"When I was in V'ta," she said, "as a child, they tried to kill me. So dadi, I mean Fiotr - my mam's Guard of Honour ... Well you must have heard the gossip; he was not just a servant to mam. He is the one whom van Sietter says was my father in blood. I know not, except that he loved me a great deal better than van Sietter does," she glowered to one side. "Angels! mam must have had the entire rank of Sietter officers at her feet and she had to go and take the favours of her own bloody Guard of Honour. Although I give it to her, he was sweet at heart and Clair will not hear a word against him. He taught me to fight and put me in boy's clothes so I could run when they tried to catch and kill me. That was how it was in those vile mountains, if they tricked mam away from me they would try to kill me to wipe out the stain on the family honour because she had to go and lie with her own bloody Guard of Honour. When mam was ill it was getting worse, they were just waiting. Once she was dead they could take out dadi and there would be no one to watch over me. One night dadi came for me, we left the fortress by the wicket gate.

"We ran through the mountains for that night and the next day. He told me to go on, to Sietter and to Clair. He turned back. I never saw him more. I was lucky, I fell in with some merchants and they were kind to me, they brought me here, to Clair, they realised van Sietter would only give me back to van V'ta."

Vadya stared into the motes of dust dancing in the beam of sunshine ahead of him. He thought of how he had played happily in the warm love of his parents, learning to sail in Port H'las harbour, yawning at his desk in school. She had been fighting for her life. She was brought to her brother and in the strangeness of their parentless lives they must have become the closest of childhood companions. She continued to talk in an even husky voice, as if it were nothing, a normal childhood.

"I have been with Clair ever since, even when he went to Fourth as a Lieutenant I ran away to be with him. I was only fourteen, and a girl! at first Commander-Sir Stariel said I could not stay but while Clair was arguing with him about it - breach of discipline but he was the future sworn Lord - I planned out a raid on the provisions tent with two-three of the other Lieutenants using a reverse Palair net and trident strategy. One of the Sietter Knights, Clathan, used to let us visit him and he taught us strategy when he realised I had a taste for it. When he saw what I had done, Stariel said I could stay. I was there under Pava with Stariel's son and Nain whom you met and Dar Vaie, we were the rising stars, they called us the Angels. Stariel gave me my own room in his apartments in the winter quarters in Luthian. In summer I slept in the Lieutenants' tent with Clair and when I was properly commissioned Pava took me into his tent instead of putting me with the other Lieutenants so there was always someone with a bloody eye over the bloody honour of the sworn Lord's younger bloody child."

This was more like the life he had led: joining the army with his best friend, the two of them bored by the ceremony and pomp of First H'las. It was Mada Stanies who had thought of asking for Captaincies in a troop out in the field. Tashka had been commissioned in an active field troop since her early teens. Then she was put in the midst of a group of minds so like her own, the Angels. It must have been exhilarating; making up the strategies with brother officers whose intelligence inspired you to higher and higher flights of thinking. She would have been the mischievous one who thought up pranks and lured the others into raids on the provisions tents. There would have been clipping rides out in the hills, running races with the troop's messengers and practice duels. And real duels. Parties too. She and her friends would not have been like he and Mada, hanging round the drinks table, ignorant of women and tongue-tied with shyness. The Angels, out with their Captain el Jien van Vail and Captain-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter, probably other officer-aristocrats; there would have been women and men flinging themselves at the whole set of them. But he knew her to the core now. At her core there was no interest in women or men, there was only the code of honour. He knew she would not have cared about anyone dangling their favours before her exquisite eyes. She would have revelled in the military strategy they were so focussed on in Sietter and the occasional duel she probably fought. She would have been happy in the intense friendship of brother officers sworn to be for each other through Hell and through life. Her brother would have made it clear, too, that he would give the glove if any man came near her. Even his close friend - a scum of little honour - had only managed to sneak into her bed through a disgusting trick.

He wondered if she had danced. She had been to a couple of parties with him in Port H'las but he had never seen her dance.

"When war was declared they made me go to Vail with Pava. I begged and cried to go with the others but Clair said I was too young. Afterwards I meant to go back to Fourth, only they had to strip Fourth out, after what they had been through at Shier Bridge." The soldier in him turned to her, his brows raised in question. She lifted her eyes and smiled but her blue eyes were stricken with mourning. "Oh yes, they went through Hell and back, following my brother's banner. He went to Hell and stayed there.

"First I had to go and fetch him home from where he was trying to kill himself in the back hills at that rotten little place of Hanya Vashin's where he buried Hanya. I had to leave him here in the care of my sister by marriage, whom he hated and treated like filth. I had to go and fetch the other Angels and Fourth and take them back to Arventa; they were in pieces in the mud up there. When I tried to get one of them to be the acting Commander so I could go back to Clair, he would just sit and put his head in his hands and cry. Oh, it was lovely! cursing and chivvying them along the Maier Pass to Arventa, having lost a Captain and ten Lieutenants, nearly everyone nursing serious injury, the men weeping, the officers like bloody cart-horses. I had to give them every order three times before they could listen and act on it. I could never allow them any loving kindness for what they had been through because if I did they fell apart. At night I put the Angels in one tent together, as they used to be when we were Lieutenants. But I had to sleep alone, there was no Pava to say: My baby Lieutenant, do not give it your mind. Put your bedding roll by mine then and if you wake in the night wills't hear me snoring and can kick me before goest back to sleep." She lisped Pava's accent exactly. "The whole way I was wondering if my brother was still alive, if they had been able to keep him away from the central tower or his own weapons."

She put her head briefly in her hands, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. After three years as her Commander he knew how superb an officer she was but he felt a new admiration for her. She was so young at that time, still only a Lieutenant. She had gone into the aftermath of the bloody carnage that must have been Shier Bridge to bring together those finely balanced young minds so familiar to her from happier times. She had got that great mass of men and horses, like a beast with its back broken by the weight of that terrible victory, to collect themselves and move in an orderly fashion back through the hills, across the plain, along the river, slowly trudging away leaving their dearly beloved fallen dead behind.

"You would think I would be glad that Clair had not let me go to war," she said, lifting her head to stare at the sunbeam falling through the roof. "But oh how I wished I had been there with them. I wished I were like them, staggering in the mud, their hearts bleeding for the fallen bodies of our comrades. I wished I did not have to be only in my mind, heartless: to witness the empty space by my brother's side where Hanya was no longer standing; to witness his madness, and in his madness his cruelty to that flower of honour and beauty, his Lady wife el Jien van Sietter; to witness the mindless routine into which those Angels of high strategy my brother officers were sunk. They were so wounded in their minds that all they could do was carry out over and over the daily orders left them by my brother whom they loved beyond death and who had not even died. They could not even mourn him and pass on but he was lost to them. How I wished I were as helpless in the mud as they, and that some other fool had to come and lead me with them back to the Generals who had told them to hold the Maier Pass at all cost."

He understood how it had happened. Caught by what in itself was a masterly strategy by Fifth and Ninth H'las, the Fourth Sietter officers were not solid working soldiers who saw their battles as everyday business, the cost to be considered and a retreat seen as the best means of saving men and arms to fight another day. The officers of Fourth were all of them rising stars, death or glory young things, the Angels. They had come up with a brilliant strategic defence of what was only one access route to the key pass through the hills. They had thrown themselves and their men into it, so many of them had died and those who remained suffered the dreadful glory of victory. It was typical of the structure of the command in Sietter that they had allowed this high-flying group of young officers to collect together without considering what might be the result if there were no experienced older soldier to put the brakes on their flights of imaginative strategic thinking.

Tashka leant back against the partition with her head tilted back and her eyes staring blankly up. "After that little pleasure trip I had to come back here at all speed and spend three months more stopping my brother from killing himself. I had to persuade my sister by marriage - whom I had learned to love with all my heart - not to give him the go-by and run away. I knew that would have been the best for her but fighting with her seemed to give him something to live for, the only way to save him was to sacrifice her. She had been laid out on the altar already, bestowed by her pig of a brother in his interests not hers. Then, the damned dog! he ran off to court, leaving her here while he fell into anyone's bed who lifted a sheet for him. She gave him everything! a woman as splendid as the sun. He gave her the go-by for sixty-six yards of tawdry trimming and bits of stuffing. I could have killed him myself just then!

"They had separated the other Angels and put them into different troops. I was in two minds whether to ask for a Captain's sword by the side of that sweet slut Vaie." Vadya was enraged to feel the familiar jolt of jealousy which he could now recognise for what it was. He had always felt it when she mentioned some other officer she was friendly with, even Pava el Jien. His judgement had been seriously distorted by his lust for the kisses from her which he had never allowed himself to imagine. "Vaie is a man-lover so Clair does not fret if I am out with him," she continued. He felt a disgusting relief to hear that at least one of her brother officers - her brother officers, fellow baby Lieutenants for sweet Hell's sake! - would not be after her favours, "or whether I should wait for Fourth to be reformed. Pava wrote me, he knew I was ... tired. He wrote to say, oh darling sugarplum, my little baby Lieutenant, come and have an holiday with me and Ninth, we will have sweet fun campaigning in Soomara, I will buy you all the chocolates in the region, my sweetheart, my Angel." Vadya could not help laughing, the imitation of Pava was so exact. "He only wanted to go and look on Maive with eyes, of course, silly pigeon.

"I was well glad to go to my sweet old Captain in Vail after the time that I had had. We were preparing for our journey when that vile scum van Sietter tried to betroth us! He got round el Jien van Vail - Pava's father, who was fretting because Pava was hanging round Maive el Vaie's skirts. van Sietter knows nothing of the military, he thought Pava might be fond enough of me to take me in spite of my ... my bloody military brilliance! Angels! the bloody Generals in Turaine begged him to do it in order to get me into their offices but of course Pava had to give them the No. He has to think of the succession. The idea! that I would lie with my senior officer. When he put it to them in those terms the Generals had to back him and get his parents to slip the knot.

"van Sietter did it because my old Commander had gone to ask him to get the Generals' strategic staff here to give me my Captain's sword. Stariel had always imagined I would stand the Lord General by Clair's side as the sworn Lord. He was a man of the highest military honour and could not conceive that van Sietter would think it any thing but a blessing from the Angels to have a child who could be a General but ... because of what mam did van Sietter thinks there will be some scandal over a daughter in the military. He thinks I would run off with any bloody soldier from the file or whoever!" Tashka's split pink lip curled in scorn, she said, "ow," with a wince of pain. "Pava said for a joke, better go and hide in an H'las troop and I begged him to send me to you, I had always wanted ... I hoped I had got peace from them all, at last, in Sixth H'las where I got such good field experience. I never really understood, with the Angels, how enjoyable the day to day business of managing the men and provisions could be. The chain of command in H'las is so ... and under you ... but I always knew a day would come that you would go to the Generals' staff and I would be unable to refuse my banner longer. I would have to confess that I am el Maien van Sietter and come back here to skulk in the castle, practising fighting with the Castle Guard and losing all the skills I have gained. I am sorry for it that it should come about like this."

He sat in the straw by her side, leaning his arms on his dusty booted knees and staring away into the sunbeam falling into the stall. As her Commander he felt it in his heart that his young officer, one of the tip-top rising stars of the Sietter army, should have struggled so hard in her career. His sympathy was overlaid by the thin layer of his rage that he was being pushed to marry her, the two angers mixed so that he could not quite tell what it was he felt.

She was looking mournfully aside. Vadya looked at the graceful curve of the back of her cropped head. He wondered what it would be like to have the military skills that he had and for his own father to do everything to prevent him developing them. Then he wondered what she would have been like if she had been that creature he had thought of as her sister: the honourable Lady Anastelle el Maien van Sietter, but that dream had long gone. He made an expressive face of repulsion. He reached out, meaning to give her a sympathetic hug. Suddenly he remembered how he had hugged her in Paviat; she had turned her shoulder to his chest. He realised it had been so that he would not feel the curve of breasts she hid with a bodice that flattened instead of displaying them. In a fit of rage, he made a grab at her shoulder instead. He pulled her back against him and Tashka's heavy muscular frame fell against his chest, knocking him onto the straw-covered floor. She held him off with strong arms, saying: "What is it? Are you looking on me with eyes now that you know I am a woman?" in an annoyed voice.

"I was looking on you before I found out you are a woman," Vadya admitted.

"Is it so?" she enquired, raising one eyebrow at him. "You must have been puzzled, turning man-lover after even going with Maive el Staten."

He flushed up with embarrassment then he lifted his head and said, "kiss me."

Her mouth twisted up and she winced again at the pain in her split lip. He felt completely ashamed of himself, asking this brilliant rising star of the Sietter army, his own junior officer, supposed to be his honour for the Angels' sake, for a kiss. Then he felt dully angry at having to feel ashamed for asking his own betrothed for a kiss. She looked nothing like he had ever imagined his betrothed might look, she just looked like the fine young soldier and friend who had fought for him so loyally and he burned for her kiss. He leaned closer to her, pressing against her hands, she turned her head aside but she let him brush her temple with his lips.

Then she suddenly said: "Damned Angels!" and tried to get away from him. He gripped her in his embrace. She struggled in his arms, they fought briefly, wrestling as they had so often wrestled for fun and exercise in the troop. Now, Vadya was aware of the way she avoided pressing her chest to him, how clever she was at keeping his hands away from between her legs. He was struggling to get a hand on her breast or slide his fingers between her thighs - which was an illegal wrestling move whatever - when she suddenly screamed: "Angel of Mercy!" and he was so shocked that he let her go. They stared at each other. Tashka's blue eyes were wide. Vadya's eyes fell before hers.

"I never said that in my life before!"

"Maien," he pleaded. "I would not hurt you."

"I would have killed you, had you gone further." Her narrow eyes stared into his, he looked away.

"Maien," he repeated. "I would not hurt you."

"What were you about, just now?" she demanded, standing up and moving beyond his reach. There was straw all over her elegant dark blue silk suit and in her short cropped hair. Some of the pearls had been wrenched from the puff of her right sleeve and hung dangling by threads. She rested back on one leg and stared at him with hard blue eyes, her fingers clenched in the curved elaborate hand-guard of her rapier. The blood was still red on the cut in her lip, staining the white lace of her collar. Her narrowed eyes looked down at him as if he were a trooper who had been caught stealing from the provisions tent, as if he were stupid arrogant Volka el Darien giving his fellow Lieutenant Hanya Lein grief for being a merchant's son, as if he were one of those fools they had so often had to warn off in taverns who had laid a caressing hand on her leg when she had not invited any attention by look or word. In all the years of love and loyalty he had had from and had felt for Tashka, he had never imagined that look would be turned so deservedly on him.

"Prithou, Maien," he said softly.

"What were you about?" she repeated.

"I wanted ... a kiss!" he said, sitting back in the straw and flinging his head back to meet her stare. "What will you? For three years I have denied I felt a thing for you but friendship since you are my junior officer. You were my care, my honour and my victory, not my love. I have beaten men for things I heard them say of you in my troop and I can say it with a clean heart, I never let myself look on you with eyes. Then, I go home and am told ... you are my betrothed. All those years, you were a woman, you should never have been my officer ..."