Women of Steel.
Chapter One.
The valley was a swirl of silvery mist, the dawn's dew clung to their armour. The dismounted knights and their fellow women at arms shivered in the growing autumnal sunlight. They stood in line, facing their expected enemy. A terrible year has passed since the women had taken up the steel. They had lost much, their homes, lands and even their honour but now had returned.
Their leader, a lean hard-bitten noble lady, who was once unknown to a man's touch, stood looking out at the battle lines partially obscured with trees to the hillside and the drifting mist. In her eyes, a trace of bitterness and a smouldering fire ate away at her innards- a fire that could only be quenched with blood. For she had lost her maidenhead to the Captain of the Free Corps Francois Albrecht, who now occupied her walled town. She had been stripped, abused and passed around the captain's vile lieutenants before she was cast down into the dungeons, naked and bruised, to suffer nightly visits from the lusts of the town's new masters.
But she had escaped.
She had found shelter.
She had learned the discipline of the lance and the sword.
She found the courage to return to Angers.
Now she had returned, to claim her town, her people and to exact revenge from Captain Albrecht.
Her revenge would be a sea of blood.
Lady Aliénor shrugged, helping the reworked armour rest more easily on her thick flaxen gambeson. Fifteen months before, the same armour she wore had been her brother's, and after he fell in battle, she had ordered the talented armourer in her walled town of Anger, in deepest Frankia, to rework and adjust the steel for her frame. The Armourer had looked at her with open-mouthed disbelief, but the Lady was stone-faced and insistent. The Armour looked downcast,
"Milady, no woman has worn armour. It is unheard of!" He stammered, unsure of what he might say.
"Monsieur Le Armurier, I must ask you to comply with my wishes! We will soon be facing a great danger, and I should expect many of my fellow women to ask you to adjust the armour of former wearers to their slender frames!" Her words were hard and cold and the Armourer's reticence crumbed in the face of the stern look of the noble lady. The Armourer regarded the pile of steel that had been so recently the property of the Lord of Angers, nested in the valley of the Nante region of Frankia. With multiple incursions by Bretons or Poitierians and even bands of roving free-corps soldiers, they found themselves temporally without a war to serve in and so resorted to banditry. The Lady Aliénor glanced to her left and her trusted lieutenant hefted the pile of armour and laid it out on the heavy wooden bench. The Armourer looked down and checked each piece from the pauldron to the breastplate, he then looked up,
"I can rework the breastplate, palkard and vambrace, "The Armourer looked up, "the work should be easy enough, Milady." The Lady of Angers smiled,
"There will be much work for you in the months to come, keep your forge hot and take on as many apprentices as you may. I want as many suits as possible ready for the noble ladies to wear should they be called upon. I fear they will." Her tone was serious, the Armour looked up, now fearful of the implication.
"Are you expecting battle Milady?" his words stumbled from his lips, for he knew the battles between England, Burgandy and the Fledgling Price of Orleans had ceased in an uneasy stalemate. Now, as the days of summer died, the fighting would fall into a sullen pause.
"I fear so, the free corps are disbanded and soon banditry and brigandry will scour the land and some may find our valley. There are few men now, and I do not intend to suffer at the hands of such as they. I will not have our town pillaged by such vile men. I and my noble ladies will fight in the stead of our fathers and brothers." She scowled at the Armourer, who looked away and busied himself.
After weeks of intensive labour, she stood, in the armour that fitted her like a glove. Then as more ladies joined her ranks, she stood at the head of an armoured company, comprised of her sex. An company that she hoped who deter those who would find the quiet valley of Angers, when they saw the shine of armour worn by knights and who rode one, instead of drawing battle lines to find easier prey.
It had almost worked.
As the autumn's red and gold replaced the lush green of the leaves, a band of veteran men were seen on the borders of the valley. The riders wore black garb and flew no standards or coloured pennants. A Free Company under no lord's command, an assembly of fighting me with no loyalty, except to the next paying Lord.
A scout had seen them in the dawn light and rode hard to tell the Lady of Angers,
"At least a hundred men, all rough-hewn and bedraggled, " The young boy had reported.
The Lady knew what they were and immediately called for all her forces to muster,
"A show of brilliant steel and fluttering standards of our houses will show these brigands that Anger is no easy treasure to rob. To horse!" The Lady hid any sense of apprehension or fear, but her heart thundered inside the skin of metal. The gathered women cheered and took to their mounts. Within an hour, over eighty brightly armoured riders broke up the wet ground as they galloped off to meet the invading troops. The Lady Aliénor had learned much from her warlike father and gallant brother, she knew the lance, from boar hunting and the bow and arrow and even the rudiments of the sword from lessons with her father's master-at-arms. Some of her ladies had also had similar experience, if her scheme worked, their appearance would be enough to frighten the Free Company away.
After a brief clash of arms, her optimism tasted sour, as the blood in her mouth. As Albrecht, Captain of the Burgundian Free Company, looked down at her. Her bright armour was smeared with the thick rich mud of the churned-up field, her helm had been kicked away. Her father's one-handed 'bastard' sword was now in the hands of the Captain, but the look of lust in his smile was terrible.
By the afternoon, all the signs were that Aliénor's stratagem would work. The women rode to the crest of a hillock overlooking an open freshly ploughed field and arrayed themselves in a line across the hill. Their standards held high and their armour glinted in the autumn sun. The red and gold of the leaves to one side of the field seemingly provided cover to their left flank.
Aliénor looked across to the black horde on the other side of the field, they were a motley band, dirty from travel, but something about them made the hair on Aliénor's neck bristle. She looked hard, she had hoped that with her ladies' show of armoured might, the brigands would take flight.
She had seriously miscalculated.
On the other side of the field, Captain Francios Albrecht scrutinised the bright armour of his opponents, he turned to his sergeant, a scarred ugly man and shrugged,
"They do look impressive! What do you think?" Albrecht whispered, careful not to show indecision in front of his other band of soldiers for hire.
Herget rubbed the thin scar down his cheek, "We're out of options, we haven't eaten for three days, the horses are done and hungry and we're nearly out of water. The men are tired but in an evil mood. If we ride out, you'll lose them two or three a night. By Sunday, you'll have no one left," He spat not the earth beneath his horses' hooves.
