08

The Red-Haired Knight

Nos. 6, 7 and 8

The Red-Haired Knight 06

The Marechal: Julian

Julian, the professional. Julian, the mercenary. Julian, the strategist. Julian, the tactician. Julian...the man?

Deep in the border forest of the Prosperous Valley, out of sight, but near to the border post, where his Lady slept. Julian poked at his campfire. He had scouts out ahead...a good day's gallop ahead of his Lady. They would alert him first of any danger to her or the Valley. They were good men, rough in their ways and not gentle with enemies, but fiercely loyal to the Lady.

Lord Edward had hired Julian a year before, predicting trouble with his neighbors. The good Lord Edward expected raiding as a prelude to war, his honorable nature did not envision an assassination.

It had become that Julian was the prime military advisor to the Lady. Though only thirty, Julian had a decade of experience. His father raised him to be a soldier. He never knew his mother, but the upbringing his father supplied was tough but fair. Julian had endured many physical trials. His father joked that the training of Spartan boys was easy, compared to how he treated his son. But no Spartan boy ever had the luxury of the number of books his father encouraged him to read.

Julian was an apt pupil in the physical arts and the training of soldiering. An excellent bowshot mounted and on foot; he was skilled with sword and lance, and a berserker with axe and Warhammer. But his absorption of the military genius of East and West, naval, cavalry, and footmen was far in excess of what his father could tutor.

"My son, you have twice the brain I have...I will find a tutor who will train that to a fine edge as I keep you strong."

And so...Master Peter entered his life for the rest of his apprenticeship in the arts of war.

Master Peter was not a warrior...he was a war scholar...a war mage. He placed a great deal of his training on thinking rather than action.

"A great war leader never has to actually fight...fighting is the failure of your plans. This is not a criticism...you will fail...you are fallible, and your enemy may not act in a way that is predictable.

"Your father training you for the fight is valid...unless you can control your opponents...fighting will happen...when it does ensure ahead of time that you have the SMARTEST and best-trained people. Good weapons, of course...but second-rate weapons with first-rate planning and training will prevail over the best weapons wielded by the poorly trained and the poorly led."

Well, Julian mused...Master Peter would be impressed by his current employer, the Lady. She inspired her people and appeared fearless in battle. Julian knew that she was NOT fearless...but she led as if she were immortal... She was skilled in personal combat and an excellent rider, but she was no tactician, still less, a strategist. She knew herself and knew her flaws. She trusted Julian to fill in those spheres.

Instead of trying to improve on what she did not have, she perfected what she did have; her body was kept fit, she rode in full armor, to the extent it was practical without trying to her charger. She marched as any spear carrier; she swung her sword against a practice post, until her arms were as stone, and the post was splintered.

Unlike her soldiers, she slept well and comfortably. She needed to be fresh because she worked harder than any of her men; except, Julian.

Julian was comfortable near his little fire, a fire that threw little smoke and was shielded in such a way that beyond a few meters it did not betray his position. It would not do for a squad of spear carriers or a group of cavalry, but for one man covered in a warm cloak, it was fine.

This employment was important, not only to his future employment but to his own growth as a 'war expert.' The Lords of the land saw themselves as 'warriors' and trained for combat. For raids and duels that sufficed. But as the scale of the conflict grew, they were out of their element. Often brave, even to the point of recklessness, they lacked the perspective and patience to study their enemy.

When they were wise enough to acknowledge their limitations, they sent for someone like Julian, whose life was the study of war. In this war, his study was of the Lady's remaining enemies. These were the cautious Lords, the wise men, the magicians, the poets. Their patience was well known. They might not strike this season, or this year, nor perhaps not even the next.

As he pondered the possibilities, a wolf appeared outside of the firelight, but Julian knew it was there; he suspected the pack was there. Julian did not know these wolves, but he knew wolves, and wolves knew of him. He smiled a tight smile, there would be interesting conversations until dawn.

The Red-Haired Knight 07

Malle at the Border

The Lady had appeared from the border post of the Prosperous Valley just before dawn. Her guards had worked in shifts through the night, the sergeant in charge made sure he had the dawn watch because firstly that is when enemies attacked and secondly, he knew the Lady would rise early.

She was tall for a woman, he thought, by the terrible morning mist she was taller than he was. Even unarmored, she was formidable. For her before-breakfast exercise, she wore a mail shirt over a padded garment and a heavy-leather kilt. A baldric over the mail carried her battle sword; a light but strong blade easy to use, both mounted and on foot.

The sergeant knew the routine; well, really, there was no routine, but this morning he was alerted that the Lady would run to the Lake of Origin to bathe. Really more than bathe-- she would swim the length and back.

There was a well-stocked hut at the lake with dry clothes for the Lady, and her horse would be led there. Two of his youngest and fittest men had already left and should arrive at the lake well before the Lady.

All the men were tasked with looking away as the Lady swam. But this morning, there was little chance of seeing more than a blurred shape in the mist. Actually, that worried the sergeant more than a young spear carrier raising his 'little spear' at the sight of the nude Lady...warrior and reputed witch.

This day, as the Lady prepared for the run, spoke to the sergeant, "The young men should scan the surroundings as I swim, but you must watch me. It is folly to be there to protect me from harm, yet not have eyes on me."

The Lady was correct and matter of fact. The sergeant would ride following the Lady, as she ran the narrow path to the lake in the forest. In truth, she was a graceless runner; as talented as she was on horseback, she was a strong but awkward runner.

In less than an hour, the lake was reached, the Lady sweating profusely, but she recovered her breath quickly. The sergeant's face and armor were covered with bits of branches...the narrow forest path rarely saw a mounted man.

He dismounted and tethered his beast, he had no love of horses, nor dislike either, they were military equipment to be used and cared for properly, but he had no attachment to any one animal, simply taking what was suitable in the stable.

As he looked up from this task, the Lady had already begun to strip off the garments she was wearing. The sergeant would retrieve them for the journey back to the border post. A servant would launder the clothes and burnish the mail shirt.

The Lady's naked form was visible just for an instant before she plunged into the water of the lake-- milky-white skin dotted with freckles and, of course, the long flame-red hair draped halfway down her back...she gave it little care, other than to brush it out at night, as he had observed when summoned to receive instructions for the next day, most evenings.

Her legs were long and thin, abbreviated calves, big knees, and strong, lean thighs. Seeing her from behind, the sergeant noted the narrow hips and waist flaring up to wide shoulders and muscular arms. Those narrow hips were much commented on, in whispers when she wed the Lord Edward...the wise women opined that she would have difficult births and, indeed, she did. It may have been why she had 'only' the two sons.

The sergeant marveled, even though he had witnessed it so many times, the contrast between her amateur running style and the almost fish-like skill she exhibited in the water. Swift, effortless, strokes brought her quickly to the island in the middle of the lake, where she emerged, smiling...not to him, but from the joy she got from the swim.

As a water goddess, she stood on the shore of the island, shaking the water from her limbs and squeezing the water from her soaked, long hair. Stripping some vine from an overhanging branch she bound her hair for the return swim...

Exiting the water, the Lady gave the sergeant a silent command with her eyes. You may look, I will bond you to me this way.

He blinked in acknowledgement. This was not a lust bondage, but something else, he was bound by her naked power, more than a Lady, without trappings she was, WHAT SHE WAS. That unnamed and unnamable power, the power of the female, the power of the earth, the power of water, the power of flame-- all one.

The Red-Haired Knight 08

Malle and the Sergeant.

Malle stood nude, in the early morning sun, warming and drying her body fresh from her lake swim. Her eyes still locked on those of her sergeant. What she saw was unquestioning loyalty, devotion, and guilt.

This man, man before soldier, boy before man, soldier before sergeant, was of her age. From a childhood of beating, short rations, cold, and desolation. The best men of the Valley did not become soldiers. And the men who did, often had few other choices. Prosperous peasant families controlled most of the good land, the rest was pasture of varying degrees of quality for shepherds and dairy farmers.

Those with skilled hands, or fathers and mothers with skilled hands, were the Valley's craftsmen and craftswomen, the tailors, the seamstresses, the knitter, the metal workers, the leather workers. Those who tanned the leather were the lowest of the craftspeople, and those who sold their urine to the tanners were beneath them. The piss poor.

This was the sergeant's heritage. This much the Lady knew beforehand...before she locked eyes with the sergeant. She remembered the foul-smelling young man, his first day of drill, the first day he wore Lord Edward's father's livery. The ridicule, the now-sergeant was subjected to. Ridicule he bore patiently.

After that day, she paid little attention to the young soldier. Until the day she saw him again, as the senior man assigned to lead her sons on their baptism of military life. Their father, the Lord Edward schooled them on the military arms, the wearing of armor, the use of weapons, the art of using weapons while mounted.

But he insisted that both boys would experience as he did, at their age, the duties of the men of the Lord's Guard in patrolling the frontier with the Wild Lands.

Prosperous Valley had had no wars in the lifetime of any of the current warriors or their Lord, but the People of the Wild Lands, the nomads and sometimes bandits, would raid the farms on the borderlands whenever the hunting and gathering were poor in the Wild Lands.

The Lord would compensate the farmers, but troops were sent into the Wild Lands to chastise the Nomads. These simple people had no weapons, except for weak bows for hunting, and flint-tipped spears for finishing off the game. They could not hope to hurt men clad in, even the lightest, armor.

Malle never questioned what this 'chastisement' entailed. As there was rarely fighting, she imagined that the tribes were merely sternly spoken to. These shy people took even a raised voice against them as a terrible disgrace. Being caught stealing was a terrible disgrace. The nomads were so poor that there was no way they could repay what had been stolen.

Looking into the sergeant's eyes, she now saw the cause of the sergeant's guilt. The Wild Peoples true punishment was to treat the band of soldiers sent to chastise them, as they did the men of the tribe, at the time of fertility. The disgrace was that this was performed not at the time of fertility and risked angering their ancestors.

The women drew lots as they did to please their own men, but instead, one woman copulated with all of the soldiers sent against them. This was never an enormous number, but still, one woman would 'pleasure' up to a dozen men, much larger than their men.

This practice had existed since the time of Lord Edward's father. So, Lord Edward, her beloved, had participated in this foul practice at least one time. And so had her sons! Any offspring of these unions were killed as the Wild Peoples saw these babies as both cursed and supremely ugly. It was a powerful, brutal deterrence.

"Sergeant! Sergeant?"

The voice? The sergeant blinked...he was staring off into the distance, the lake. The nude Lady was no longer...what had she done to him? How long had he stood here?

A young soldier stood by him, leading the Lady's riding horse, not her war horse, the Black Devil. As the sergeant regained his senses, the Lady emerged from the hut by the lake, where she had changed into her hunting garb, no armor, a leather kilt over riding breeches, and a wool tunic with a thick-leather vest tight to her torso. As much as possible, she went bare headed to show off her brilliant red tresses.

He caught her eye before she mounted, and knew he was forgiven, for what he knew not, but a long-standing guilt had been removed from his heart. As the Lady turned her steed to ride home, he was bound even tighter to the Lady.

As she rode back to her estate and a day of rest, Malle indulged herself in a grim smile: With such as these, I fight magicians and poets.

Many thanks to my long-term editor Kenji Sato!

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