us by.
“Do you know anything about the raiders?” I asked.
“The Paikans? Dogs. All of them,” Bojdan spat.
I liked the large man better for the reaction. “They took my family.”
“They all but own the coast and more ever north. Ask Jal sometime, he’ll piss himself complaining about the extortions they rip from him to ‘allow’ him to keep trafficking the spice road.”
“They burned Lesser Khaim,” I told him. “And my home.”
“They have reached that far north? They call what they do the Culling. They believe it is their holy duty. You’re lucky to live: they go after young women and children. Eliminate the breed cows, they say.”
I stared at him. “How do you know all this?”
“Their preachers are all over Mimastiva, these days,” Bojdan said. “Things will get worse in the East, now.”
“Why do they do it?” I asked. What bizarre blasphemy did they preach?
“They blame us for the bramble,” Bojdan said, and pointed at a small wagon with a single auroch pulling it. “The surviving Paikan of the four you faced is in that wagon…”
I cut him off. “I keep saying, I didn’t face all four of them. It was just one, and he knocked me to the ground easily. They hobbled me and left me.”
Bojdan nodded as we watched the wagon pass. For a moment, I thought about swinging aboard, and using my axe to kill the man inside. But Bojdan saw the thought crossing my face, and he smiled. “Don’t think about sneaking off in the night to come and kill him. Jal will know it was you, and you wouldn’t want to experience his anger if he were to lose his ransom.”
It was better not to endanger my chance of getting to Paika, I thought. As the wagon passed on, I saw a glimpse of a figure sitting behind iron bars, his back to the world. I didn’t recognize him as one of the two Paikans I’d fought.
“How long until we get to Paika?” I asked.
“Five weeks. Maybe six. The caravan is slow.” Bojdan folded his arms. “We’ll find you a place to sleep, and get your axe sharpened up. And then I guess I’m the one stuck training you so that the next time you decide to take on a group of Paikans, you might at least kill one of them.”
For the first two days Bojdan set me to walking alongside the caravan to get my feet back under me. We passed through more scrub and rock on the cliffs, but even in those two days, we began to move downhill, toward the ocean. We passed coves of sand, nestled in between the scallops of coast. My ankle was somewhat tender, and at night, I’d walk back to the wagon near the very end of the caravan and curse the pain.
But by the third day it was a dull ache, and Bojdan let me up into the guard wagon as we eased past a tiny fishing village perched over the ocean. Fishermen in rags raced up foothills, loudly hawking dried fish hanging from poles on their backs.
I noticed none of the other men on the guard wagon would look me in the eye. I could feel that they resented my being there.
We stood higher than all the caravan here, and I could see the five other guard wagons scattered throughout the snake-like convoy behind us.
“We used to have scouts running out ahead, beside, and lagging behind,” Bojdan told me. “But Jal cannot afford it anymore. So we must be more vigilant than ever.”
As he said that, he looked around at the villagers to our side, pressing close to the wagons, shouting and trying to barter as the caravan stolidly moved on.
I pointed at the gilded, brassworked arquebus Bojdan had over his shoulder. “But what about that? Isn’t it a good weapon?”
“All weapons are good, if used properly,” Bojdan said. He handed me the device. “It is loud, and almost anyone can use it, with some training. It sends bandits scurrying well enough.”
It was heavy, and clumsy in my hands. I looked down the long barrel, its surface etched with thin, serpentine dragons. “I want to learn how to use this properly…”
He smiled.
I learned how to pour the powder, light the matchlock, and raise the arquebus to the side of the shieldwall to balance the ever-heavy barrel.
Powder was expensive, so Bojdan drilled me for the day without it. Over and over again I mimed putting in powder, putting in shot, tamping, then setting the gun on the ledge and aiming. I did it until my shoulders were sore.
“Look past the barrel,” Bojdan urged, “to your target. That tree right over there. They are not accurate like a crossbow, or arrows, but you should still make the effort to aim.”
This time the gun was loaded. The acrid burning match, pinched between the serpentine lock, had been pulled back and was ready to strike. All I had to do was pull the trigger, and the burning fuse would descend into the pan.
“Okay, fire it,” Bojdan said.
I did, and the world exploded in light and smoke. “Sons of whores,” I shouted, startled, and when the smoke cleared I saw a mess of shredded leaves and some broken branches far to the right of where I had aimed. And my shoulder hurt.
Bojdan’s men laughed at me. “It’s got a kick, yeah?”
But Bojdan didn’t laugh. “Clean it, get a new one in, try again. Same tree!”
I reloaded rapidly, but not quick enough. The tree was almost obscured by the Roadmaster’s wagon by the time I set the barrel on the shieldwall.
Bojdan grabbed it. “That was not bad, but not quick enough. So let’s not shoot our employer with stray shot today. Shoot that tree.”
I aimed at our sides again, and this time I was expecting the unholy roar of the weapon. Smoke burnt my face, and tears stung my eyes, but pieces of shot had fanned out and hit the tree I’d aimed at.
“Good,” Bojdan said.
And then it was back to walking alongside the caravan for me.
In the second week, after more drills, Bojdan decided I could handle the arquebus well enough. We had left the coastal cliffs long behind us, and wound our way through soft plains near the ocean’s edge. Trees, and further inland, woods, began to hem the road we traveled on, not just bramble and brush. “You know as much as us about the arquebus,” he said. “Now it’s time to think about close quarters. I will teach you to use your axe.”
For this we left the caravan, once I’d retrieved the executioner’s axe. We walked out into the woods as the wagons slowly rumbled past. Bojdan came with his scimitar, which was always at his side, and a small round shield he’d taken from the wagon’s wall.
He looked me up and down. “You may think that because you are a woman that you are not a match for my men in the caravan. But if a one hundred pound warrior came to me, I would not turn him away merely because my men weigh twice what he does. I would, however, have to understand how best to use him. He is a tool. Some tools are large and heavy, useful for clubbing and smashing things. Some are thin daggers, useful for stabbing quickly.”
This was the longest thing I’d heard him say, and it sounded carefully thought out, like a speech. “Did you think of how you would say this all last night, as you sat sentry?” I asked him.
“Shut up. There are hard lands we will pass through, and we will be attacked, and you will protect the caravan.” He pulled his shirt apart to show scars on his chest, then pushed his sleeves up to show a wicked scar that cut deep into his upper arm, biting into the muscle there. “Whether you be a trained warrior, or an old lady, the skill of fighting lies not in what you can pick up, but in how much flesh you carve, and how well you will carve it, Tana. No one cares whether the person who does this is large, small, woman, or man. Even the best die suddenly on the battlefield. Death is death.”
That was a true thing. But I held the axe out in my two hands. “You want me to use this axe, not a sword? Or a scimitar like you?”
Bojdan tapped the hilt of his blade. “Do you have a sword? Have you suddenly come into money, and can afford to buy one from someone here in the caravan?”
“No,” I muttered.
