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Coming up on the snow season meant my unit had a full season of training. The snow season truce prevented any action along the borders. We lived in huge, poorly constructed and maintained barracks and trained incessantly.
Few know much about the shield maid corps now. To enlist as a shield maid required passing an initiation. Most other units will take a warm body in a uniform. Those who survive basic training ship out to the front and may or may not return for the more advanced training to become an officer. For the majority, army life was that simple. The shield maid initiation is a series of tests designed to weed out any imposters. The first requirement was verification by a touch healer that the candidate was indeed female and a 'maid'. Touch healers are so much more rare now, but even then I knew little about the workings of their abilities. The second requirement was some strength of arms. Batches of candidates were assigned to battle each other in tournaments which were judged by the uppermost commanders of the corps. It was extremely rare for one who lost their tournament battle to be judged worthy of continuing to the third test. I was such an exception, having had, in the first round, the misfortune to be set against a general's daughter with advanced training. I had no hope of winning, but just enough training to prolong the battle to the bell. The judges decreed I had potential and passed me along. The third test was a set of puzzles in various forms. Words, numbers, colours, mazes, interlocking rings... finesse and intelligence were required to solve the required three quarters of all presented puzzles. Few candidates have ever solved all of them. Of those doing the initiation with me, only one other managed the feat. The fourth test was the most subtle and again involved a variant of touch healer, the ones who dealt with illnesses of the mind. Shield maids must have Potential. What a nebulous concept Potential is. It can refer to psy gifts. It can refer to an extraordinary destiny. It can refer to sheer determination to succeed. Some candidates have a combination of those. Some only have one. None are told exactly what Potential they have. Part of being a shield maid is learning that for ourselves. By the time initiation was over, the snow season truce was in effect for the year. Of the hundred or more candidates going into the first test, only a score of us remained, just enough for a training class. We were sent for uniforms and haircuts, assigned to barracks and an instructor. Everything was training. Everything was discipline. From rolling out of bedrolls before dawn to dropping into them late at night. The score of us did everything together, rubbing away the frictions between girls from all stations in life and counties of the kingdom. The past came to mean nothing between us. Only our present, our chilly, exhausted, incessant day in, day out routines. By the end of snow season, we knew each other as well as we knew ourselves. We had been rubbed raw and rebuilt, ready to take on active duty as shield maids. The first battle of the blossom season was to be a decisive strike against our neighbours to the west. Our unit was to spearhead an attack against a border fort which had been rebuilt during snow season. Instead, later blamed on poor communications, we ended up behind a cavalry unit and saw little of the failed action. Through the next year, we would be on the wrong end of strange orders and confused communications. While we saw some battle, none of it was anything like we'd been trained to expect. Some began to curse at us, claiming we'd been favoured by an upper level general. Others thought we were cursed. So it went for two more years. Snow season saw us in increasingly advanced training. The other three seasons saw us caught on the fringes of the action no matter where we were sent. Worse, whatever potential each of us supposedly had, none of us were able to establish what it was. If any of us had psy gifts, there was no evidence. Unless one of us was destined for extreme obscurity, there was no sign of anything extraordinary. The determination we went into our first year with deteriorated over subsequent years until, by the end of our third year together, many were thinking of resigning or requesting to be transferred. What we'd found ourselves in the midst of wasn't even close to what we'd signed on for. We were ordered to one last battle, one intended merely to be a limp last effort at taking a border village before the snow season truce came into effect. There was no value to the village beyond a few potential recruits for the general army. There was no strategic value to the land, nor were there exploitable resources left. Placed behind a battle weary unit of regular foot soldiers, there was little chance of us seeing much action. Officers were few on the field and orders were to take the village, if possible, with as little loss of life as possible. I doubt orders for the other side were much different, although it was a defensive battle for them. They had evacuated the villagers and, in all, it was to be little of anything. We went out, dispirited and disillusioned, and the half hearted battle began. Suddenly there were twice as many opponents on the field, but these new soldiers were fresh and dressed in uniforms no one had ever seen before. They fought with abnormal strength and determination and the regular army units fell around us, slaughtered to a man. But these new soldiers, these unheard of strangers, didn't engage us. When we tried to engage them, they backed away. We found ourselves surrounded. And then we were nowhere at all. There's a kingdom many days travel from here which is constantly warring with all three of its neighbours. The fighting stops for snow season, with promises and rumours of peace negotiations come blossom season, but the fighting always resumes instead. This constant state of war leads the nobility to keep their women and children confined to estates well away from the borders. It's these estates, with their carefully managed farmlands which keep the kingdom self-sufficient and without need of trade partners instead of enemies. But to be born a child of the nobility there is to be sentenced to life in a gilded cage. Perhaps the cage extends to the next nearest estates, but it's still a cage. There is no travel beyond these central estates. There is no word of life beyond them either. The whole world is the estates which keep the kingdom running well enough to perpetuate the war.
Curiosity is a curse in a child so born. The curious are silenced and punished until they fall into line with the demands of their elders. Well, in most cases. The few who persist in their curiosity eventually find some means of escape and the tales told of their fates, true or not, provide material for crushing the spirits of the next generation. I was a curious child, but in the care of a wise woman who recognized it early and took care to channel my energy into seemingly appropriate pastimes. To all others, I appeared to be a complacent, dutiful young girl. The means by which my curiosity was kept hidden were as secret as the trait itself. I didn't know then, who the allies of my nurse were. Who kept her supplied with the books which introduced me to a world beyond both the estates and the eternal fighting on the borders. I was taught, in secret, real world history and geography, natural sciences, self defence and wildland survival skills. I learned to recognize accents, weapons, and plants. To properly identify animals and their tracks. To count and name all the kingdoms of the known world. It seems it very suddenly occurred to my father that his daughter had grown into a woman. For one day I was treated as a child and the very next my marriage to the son of the nearest neighbour was announced. I knew the young man in question well enough to know marriage to him would be torture of the highest order. He was as ignorant as a pupil of his tutors could remain and viciously cruel to every living being around him. These traits were concealed, if poorly, from his elders, but all too obvious to those his own age. Our wedding was to be held early in the next blossom season, although arrangements began the day of the announcement, which was made in the midst of the elder season. Before the first elder moon phase had passed, my nurse procured for me the clothes of a common boy. My woman's shape was concealed by means of tight, body altering garments which could be concealed beneath the shirt and trousers. There was an old all-purpose knife such as a common boy would own and a pack which held a second set of clothes and some food and water. My hair was cut after the fashion of a common boy and I was instructed in the proper accent of the local common folk. In this disguise, I was smuggled from the estate in the back of a cooper's wagon. I was aware both my parents and my intended would seek me out. The cooper's cart carried me across three estates, but nowhere near far enough from my home. I had to walk cross country, across freshly harvested fields to reach the outer edge of those central estates. Even then, my parents had guards who were capable of seeking me out so long as I remained inside the kingdom's borders. My nurse suggested I seek employment at an inn for a time until I could find a traveller I could convince to smuggle me out of the country. Being less convinced of my own powers of persuasion, I changed my disguise for the garments of a poor county undertaker's daughter and enlisted in the army in a shield maid corps.
I sit on the opposite side of the small, smokeless fire and set my weapons aside. From my pocket, I take a flask and drink deeply.
“We'll start by building a house out here.” My guard frowns, “So close to the road?” I nod, “This is a dangerous steading. Who would want to risk being too far from aid?” The words earn me a skeptical look and a shake of the head. “The bane of the dragons is worried about being far from aid?” I laugh. “One step at a time. I'm no foppish lordling to live beyond my means.” “No foppish lordling would accept this steading,” My guard chuckles, “So it's to be a house and close to the road? Why not a lodge for weary travelers?” I take some time to consider the idea before nodding, “The Earl granted me permission to hire whatever staff I deem necessary. Not that I have the coin at the moment,” A thought occurs to me, “You said we need a metal worker?” “Aye.” “Do you know of one who would be willing to risk coming out here?” “Aye,” A trace of a flush steals across his features, “A journeyman, mind... and a woman...” I study him with a raised eyebrow, “You seek my permission to marry already?” He flushes crimson, “I guess I do.” I chuckle, “Then you have it. Just be quick about it. I want this lodge to have a solid roof before snow season.” “Aye. Ye'll have that.” His eyes study me briefly, “The Earl will want to see ye married, ye know.” I shake my head, “The Earl would rather see me conveniently killed by a bear.” “Mayhap,” My guard adds a log to the fire, “But he needs to cement an alliance with Earl Haiver, who has a far too vocal younger son.” I sigh, suppressing a groan. If I had wanted to be married to some empty headed little lordling, I would have stayed home and allowed my father to marry me off. “Ye'll see.” My guard settles back onto the log he is using as a seat. I change the subject, “Hot supper or cold?” “I'm all for hot.” I pick up my bow and quiver, “I'll be back with something to roast.” My guard nods. |
AuthorAlexandra A. 'Lexa' Cheshire is the author of numerous novels and short stories published through Howling Wolf Books. Lexa is a wife, mother, cat owner, and music lover. Archives
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