“Nor shall any of us forgive him, Drypettis,” Sheera said, cutting short what threatened to turn into a discursive catalog of the governor’s sins. “We have all seen the evil effects of Altiokis’ rule starting here in Mandrigyn. If it is to be stopped, we must stop it now.
“We must stop it,” she repeated, and her voice pressed heavily on the words. “We are fighting for more than just ourselves. We all have children. We all have families—or had them.” A murmur stirred like wind through the room. “Since we can’t hire men, we have to learn to do what we can ourselves.”
She looked about her, into that shadowy, eye-glittering silence. The candlelight caught in the stiff fabric of her golden gown, making her flash like an upraised sword blade.
“We’ve all done it,” she said. “Since Iron Pass, you’ve all stepped in to take over your husbands’ affairs, in one way or another. Erntwyff, you go out every day with the fishing fleet. Most of the fleet is now manned by fishermen’s wives, isn’t it? Eo, you’ve taken over the forge ...”
“Had to,” said a big, cowlike woman, whose whips of ivory-fair hair marked her as a relation of Gilden Shorad’s. “Woulda starved, else.”
“And you’ve taken Gilden’s daughter Tisa for your apprentice, too, haven’t you? Sister Quincis, they tell me they’ve even been appointing women as provisional priests in the Cathedral, something they haven’t done in hundreds of years. Fillibi, you’re running your husband’s store—and running it damned well, too... And nobody cares whether any of you wears a veil or not, or has a chaperon. Business is business.
“Well, our business is defending the city and freeing the men. We’ve all proved women can work as well as men. I think they can fight as well as men, too.
“I think all of you know,” she continued, her voice growing grave, “that if you put a woman with her back to the wall, fighting, not for herself, but for her man, her children, and her home, she’s braver than a man, tougher than a man—hell, she’s tougher than a cornered rat. And, ladies, that’s where we are.”
If she asked for volunteers, they’d turn out to a woman, the Wolf thought. She has a king’s magic: that magic of trust.
Damned arrogant bitch.
Sheera’s voice was low; a pin could have been heard dropping in the breathing silence of the orangery. “No,” she said, “I couldn’t hire men to do it. But I hired one man—to come here and teach us to do it ourselves, we’re wilting to fight. There’s a difference between just giving money, no matter how much money, and picking up a sword yourself. And I tell you, ladies—now is the time to see that difference.”
They could not applaud, for the sound would carry, but the silence was a magic crown on those dark curls. Point them the way, Sun Wolf thought cynically, and they’d march to the mines tonight, the silly bitches, and be dead by morning. Like too many rulers, Sheera had the quality of making others ready to go out and fight without ever asking themselves what it would cost them.
He gave himself a little shove with his shoulder against the doorframe and walked to where she stood before them in that aura of candle flame, flamelike herself in her golden gown. At this movement, she turned her head, surprised. Maybe she didn’t think I’d speak, he thought, with a prickle of anger at that certainty of hers. He turned to the devouring sea of eyes.
“What Sheera says is true,” he agreed quietly, the gravelly rumble of his voice pitched, as a leader must know how to pitch it, to the size of his troop. “A woman fighting for her children—or occasionally for a man—will fight like a cornered rat. But I’ve driven rats into corners and killed them with the toe of my boot, and don’t think that can’t happen to you.”
Sheera swung around, the whole of her body glittering with rage. He caught her gaze and silenced her, as if he had laid a hand over her mouth. After a moment, his eyes returned to the women.
“So all right, I agreed to teach you, to make warriors out of you; and by the spirits of my ancestors, I’ll do it, if I have to break your necks. But I want you all to understand what it is you’re doing.
“War is serious. War is dead serious. You are all smaller, lighter, and slower on the run than men. If you expect to beat men in combat, you had damned well better be twice as good as they are. I can make you twice as good. That’s my job. But in the process, you’re going to get cut up, you’re going to get hurt, you’re going to get shouted at and cursed, and you’ll crawl home so exhausted you can hardly stand up, because that’s the only way to get good, especially if you’re little enough for some man to lift and carry away under his arm.” His eyes picked the diminutive Gilden Shorad out of the crowd and met a hard, challenging, sea-blue stare.
“So if you don’t think you can finish the race, don’t waste my time by starting it. Whenever I get a batch of new recruits, I end up shaking out about half of them, anyway. You don’t have to be tough lo start—I’ll make you tough. But you have to stay with it. And you have to be committed to killing people and maybe losing a limb or losing your life. That’s war.”
His eyes raked them, gleaming like a gold beast’s in the dimness: the whores, sweet as all the spices of the East with their curled hair and painted eyes; the brown laborer women, prematurely old, like bundles of dowdy serge; the wives of merchants, now many of them merchants themselves, soft and well cared for in their lace and jewels.
“You decide if you can do it or not,” he said quietly. “I want my corps here tomorrow night at this time. That’s all.”
He turned and met Sheera’s eyes. Under her lowered lids he could see the speculation, the curiosity and reevaluation, as if she were wondering what she had brought to Mandrigyn.
6
This is a sword, Sun Wolf said. You hold it by this end.”
He glared at the dozen women who stood in a line before him, all of them wheezing with the exertion of an hour of warming-up and tumbling exercises that had convinced them, as well as their instructor, that they’d never be warriors.
“You.” He pointed to Gilden Shorad’s partner-in-crime, the tiny, fragile-looking Wilarne M’Tree. She stepped forward, bright, black eyes raised trustingly to his, and he tossed the weapon to her hilt-first. She fielded it, but he saw by the way she caught herself that it was heavier than she’d been ready for.
He held out his hand and snapped his fingers. She threw it back awkwardly. He plucked it out of the air with no visible effort.
“You’re going to be working with weighted weapons,” he told them, as he’d told the two groups he had worked with last night and would tell another group later on tonight. “That’s the only way you can build up the strength in your arms.”
One of the women protested, “But I thought we—”
He whirled on her. “You ask for permission to speak!” he snapped.
Her face reddened angrily. She was a tall, piquant-faced woman with the red-gold hair of a highlander, her breasts small under their leather binding, her legs rather knock-kneed in her short linen drawers, the marks of past pregnancies printed on the muscleless white flesh of her belly. After a moment, she said in a stifled tone, “Permission to speak, sir.”
“Permission granted,” he growled.
Permission to speak, he had found, was one of the best ways to break the first rush of hasty words. Most recruits didn’t know what they were talking about, anyway.
It worked in this case. Her first outburst checked, the woman spoke in sullenness rather than in outrage. “I thought we were training for a—a surprise attack. A sneak attack.”
“You are,” Sun Wolf said calmly. “But if something goes wrong, or if you’re trapped, you may have to take on a man with a sword—or several men, for that matter. You may have to hold off attackers from the rest of the party or maintain a key position while the others go on. You won’t just be fighting for your own life then, you’ll be fighting for everybody’s.”