Ilse Witch

“I’ll see you tonight, Hawk,” he called back over his shoulder.

He paused suddenly to look at Black Moclips. He would never see her again, he knew. She was the best ship he had ever captained, maybe the best he ever would. He hoped her new Captain would prove worthy of her, but he doubted it. Whatever the case, he would miss her more than he cared to imagine.

“Lady,” he whispered to her. “It was grand.”

Then, looking past the Commander to the squad leader, he shrugged his indifference to the whole business. “Lead the way, Cap. I put myself in your capable hands.”

Whatever his thoughts might have been on the matter, the squad leader was smart enough to keep them to himself.

FIVE





The flat-faced, burly line sergeant had been drinking at the bar in the back room of the company blacksmith’s for over an hour before he got up the nerve to walk over to Little Red. She was sitting alone at a table in the rear, clouded by shadow and the kind of studied disinterest in her surroundings that made it clear she was not to be approached. The line sergeant might have recognized as much five tankards of ale earlier, when his judgment was still clear enough to warn him against foolish behavior. But his anger at the way that she had humiliated him the night before, coupled with false bravado fueled by the quantity of his drink, finally won out.

He squared himself away in front of her, a big man, using his size as an implied threat.

“You and me got something to settle, Little Red,” he declared loudly.

Heads turned. A few soldiers rose and quietly moved for the doors leading out. The blacksmith’s wife, who tended bar for her husband in the midday, glanced over with a frown. Outside, in the sweltering heat of the forge, iron clanged on iron, and hot metal thrust into water hissed and steamed.

Rue Meridian did not look up. She kept her gaze steady and direct, staring off into space, her hands cupped loosely around her tankard of ale. She was there because she wanted to be alone. She should have been flying, but her heart wasn’t in it anymore and her thoughts were constantly on the coast and home.

“You listening to me?” he snapped.

She could smell the line sergeant, his breath, unwashed body and hair, soiled uniform. She wondered if he noticed how foul he had become while living in the field, but guessed he hadn’t.

“You think you’re something, don’t you?” Perhaps because of her silence, he was growing braver. He shifted his weight closer. “You look at me when I talk to you, Rover girl!”

She sighed. “Isn’t it enough that I have to listen to you and smell you? Do I have to look at you, too? That seems like a lot to ask of me.”

For a moment he just stared at her, vaguely confused. Then he knocked the tankard of ale from between her hands and drew his short sword. “You cheated me, Little Red! No one does that! I want my money back!”

She leaned back in her chair, her gaze lifting. She gave him a cursory glance and looked away again. “I didn’t cheat you, Sergeant.” She smiled pleasantly. “I didn’t have to. You were so bad that it wasn’t necessary. When you get better, which you might one day manage to do, then I might have to cheat you.”

His bearded face clouded with fresh anger. “Give me back my money!”

Like magic, a throwing knife appeared in her hand. At once, he backed away.

“I spent it, all of it, every last cent. There wasn’t that much to begin with.” She looked at him once more. “What’s your problem, Sergeant? You’ve been drinking at the bar for the last hour, so you’re not broke.”

He worked his mouth as if he was having trouble getting words out. “Just give me my money.”

Last night she had bested him in a knife-throwing contest, although that would be using the word contest rather loosely since he was the worst knife thrower she could remember competing against. The cost to him had been his pride and his purse, and evidently it was a price he had not been prepared to pay.

“Get away from me,” she said wearily.

“You’re nothing, Little Red!” he exploded. “Just a cheating little witch!”

She thought momentarily about killing him, but she didn’t feel like dealing with the consequences of doing so, so she abandoned the idea. “You want a rematch, Sergeant?” she asked instead. “One throw. You win, I give you back your money. I win, you buy me a fresh tankard of ale and leave me in peace. Done?”

He studied her suspiciously, as if trying to determine what the catch was. She waited him out patiently, watching his eyes, the throwing knife balanced loosely in her palm.