Kerowyn's Ride

Court into apoplexy! You can’t offend them.”

“In other words, I wouldn’t be able to do a single damned thing that I’ve been trained and working at for the past three years,” she pointed out bitterly. “I can’t offend them—by ‘them’ I assume you mean the men—by competing with them. You want me to give up everything I’ve worked for all this time, and even my recreations.”

“You could advise me in private,” he said hastily. “I need that, Kero, just like I need you! And we could practice together.”

“In private, so no one would know your lady wife can beat the breeches off you two times out of three,” she said acidly, deliberately telling the truth in the most hurtful way possible.”

“Of course, in private!” he replied angrily. “You can’t do things like that where people can find out about them! After all, you won’t be a common mercenary! Do you think I want anyone to know—”

“That I’m your equal, and their superior. How good I am.” She stood up. “In short, you want a combination of toy soldier and expensive whore; your delicate lady in public and whatever else you want out of me in private, with no opinions or thoughts of my own—except in private. Thank you, no. I told you that night we first talked that I wasn’t prepared to sell anything other than my sword. That hasn’t changed, Daren. And it isn’t likely to.”

She rose to her feet and stalked toward the door, so angry that she no longer trusted her temper with him and only wanted to be away from him so she wouldn’t say or do anything worse than she already had. She grabbed her cloak as she passed the door, and he made no move to stop her.

She was walking so fast, and was so blind with suppressed fury, that she didn’t realize until she was down in the dimly lit stables and on her way out the tunnel to the rear entrance that she had also snatched up Need on her way out.

She paused. For one moment that startled and alarmed her. Was the sword controlling her—had she so lost her temper that she’d lost her protections against its meddling? Then common sense reasserted itself. Just good reactions, she decided. Finally I’ve gotten to the point where, when I head out of my room, I snag a weapon without thinking about it. She flung the cloak over her shoulders, fastened the clasp at her throat, and belted the sword beneath it. Doesn’t it just figure, she thought angrily, as she strode out into the chill late-afternoon sunlight, that when I finally get to the point that I’m reacting like a professional fighter, Daren pulls this on me? Offering me anything I want—as long as I don’t do anything that embarrasses him. Like act like a human being capable of thinking for herself.

Another thought occurred to her, as she pictured the kind of pampered pet Daren seemed to want her to become. Dierna would have given her soul for an opportunity like this....

Suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks, just outside the hidden entrance to the stables, the wind molding her cloak tight to her body. So what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I want this easy life on a platter?

She shivered, and pulled the cloak closer about her as another whip of breeze nipped at her. Why am I going out to fight for a living? Why do I want to? What kind of fool am I, anyway?

She resumed her walk, but at a much slower pace. She paced the hard-packed path through the forest with her head down, eyes fixed on the frozen snow, but not really seeing it. If he’s offering this to me, it pretty much negates what I first told him, that I’m going to be a mercenary because no one is going to keep me fed and clothed ... he’s offering that. I don’t have to do this. So why do I still want to?

She raised her head, and looked around, half hoping for some kind of omen or answer. There were no answers coming from the silent forest, only the mocking echoes of crows in the distance and the steady creaking of snow underfoot. There were no answers written against the sky by the bare, black branches, and no revelations from the clouds, either. She walked onward, following the familiar path to the river out of habit, her nose and feet growing numb and chill.

Well, she decided finally, I suppose one reason is that I’m good at fighting. It would be a damned shame to let that talent go to waste. It would be stupidity to let someone else do the job who isn’t as good at it as I am....

The wind died to nothing, and her cloak weighed down her shoulders as if embodying all of her troubles. That thought led obliquely to another. I’m good at fighting. Of course, it would be nice if there wasn’t any fighting, if bandits would stop raiding, and people would stop making war on each other, and everyone could live in peace. But that isn’t going to happen in my lifetime—probably not for a long, long time. So it makes sense for people who are good at fighting to go out and do it—because if they’re good at it, that means the fewest number of other people die.

That was essentially what Tarma had said to both of them, a hundred times over; that her job and Daren’s was to learn everything they could about advance planning, to protect those serving with and under them, to keep their casualties to an absolute minimum.

But there are going to be people like bandits, like the Karsites, who don’t care how many people die. People with no conscience, no honor. I know that a lot of folk think mercs don’t have either—but if that’s true, then why the Codes?