Amazonia - The littlest warrior

Night has fallen over the White Horde encampment.

I'm standing with Dancer beside me on a hill overlooking the river, the partial moon shining bright overhead in a sea of stars. The torches and cooking fires of the camp look like stars as well, winking occasionally as a person walks past. The shaman apprentice I saw earlier, now holding a torch lit from their sacred fire, resembles a shooting star as he runs across the white bridge far below.

Listen to me, thinking about shooting stars. Next I'll begin babbling about fairy lights. Turning away from the view, the wood we'd gathered on our way back from the troll cave is laid out in orderly rows upon a low altar of fire blackened stone, smelling of the almond oil the White Horde uses in their lamps. The corpse of the little girl lays beside it on a bier made of lashed together tree branches. Lys had given me instructions before we'd confronted Asena, and once the Wardogs had finished building the pyre, we'd brought the body to the front gate where Lys and Karl had been waiting with the child's parents.

The moment Lys released us, I'd followed Titan to the tent where Asena, still sound asleep, was laid out, then hunted up Prince Timur, heading for the steam-bath tent. To his surprise I'd joined him. After the usual staring at my chest, he'd noticed my scars and began asking about them, which led to stories about my gladiator days. In return, he'd told me all about the council, and the shaman's prediction concerning the two paths.

He's on the other side of the funeral pyre now, standing beside Khan Khingla and Avitohol, along with the Khan's remaining wife, who could give Asena a run for her coppers in fierceness. Titan's standing behind them with his arms folded across his chest. Many of the other nobles are with them as well, everyone dressed in well made tunics covered in embroidery, while the girl's parents and the rest of her family have on more threadbare clothing that's just as heavily embroidered.

Why in Hades name have I started giving a half-copper about clothes? It's got to be the Rune sword's doing, Antonius' spirit somehow affecting me. It's gotten to the point where I can't bear not having the sword with me, the weapon now strapped to my back even though everyone else, except for the guards standing beyond the ring of torches around this hilltop, are unarmed. Timur's beginning to understand my relationship to the Rune sword, and told me as long as I remained apart from the ritual, there would be no problem.

What he doesn't understand is why the Great Khan's giving the little girl a hero's funeral. As I understand it, when someone in the White Horde dies, their body's brought to a sacred place under the open sky and left exposed on a low bier for the Warg-horses and ravens to consume. It's their last offering to Tengri, who I guess is their idea of God. However, if that person dies doing something heroic that greatly benefits the tribe, their body's burned and the soul sent straight up to heaven, wherever that's supposed to be.

Timur doesn't understand but I do; he's never been a girl paraded naked for men to grope and leer at, keeping her face an angry mask until she gets her chance to kill the men who saw her as just another slave. He's never been a child suffering from terrible pain, and from sorrow at the deaths of her friends, a child who knew exactly what the troll would do to her... and didn't flinch. Oh yes, she deserves a hero's funeral.

Which it seems she's getting. The ritual's being conducted in their language by a young shaman with a shaved head, wearing red robes and burning some kind of herb in a bowl, which he's inhaling before blowing the smoke over the body at the moment. Greywolf is standing on the far side of the pyre as well, along with Karl and Lys, all of them in Germanic looking tunics and trousers with a V neck and embroidery along the hems... Bells of Hades, I'm doing it again.

Lys has begun moving towards the altar, and I take the opportunity to join the two of them as she calls out a question in their guttural language. The parents look at each other as Karl says in a low voice, "Lys just gave them the chance to speak with their daughter one last time."

Dancer stops beside me. "That's impossible. Dead is dead."

The little girl's wearing a white dress now with no embroidery, a white sash around her throat covering the gaping wound and another covering her plucked out eyes. "Not according to Lys," Karl replies. "She says that at the moment the soul leaves the body, it also leaves an imprint of the person on their bones, especially the skull, meaning the body knows what the person knew right up to the moment of death."

I ask, "Why the bones?"

Karl shrugs. "Ask Lys if you really want to know, but the best that I can figure out is this: bodies decay, but bones remain."

Looking past him, Lys seems to be answering their questions, the man looking at his wife as Lys explains something. It looks like she's going to be the one deciding whether to wake the child or not. The stout woman, her face hardened and wrinkled by the wind and sun, closes her eyes.

She reopens them and gives Lys a firm nod. The young shaman's scowling as if this is an affront, but everyone else is eagerly watching as Lys walks towards the body with her onyx black hair shining in the firelight... I think it's beginning to glow. Lys stops and kneels beside the child's corpse, reaching out with a bone thin finger and touches the child's face between the eyes. The body jerks and twitches.

Then the little girl sits up and speaks a word sounding like, 'Mommy?" Lys rolls out of the way and stands as the woman bolts over to her daughter and picks her up, bursting out crying as the man wraps his arms around both. While the woman rocks the dead child back and forth, Lys turns and joins us. "I cast a preservation spell over the body after I received it from you, but I cannot do anything about her daughter being cold as clay."

"I don't think her parents care." Greywolf hesitates a moment. "Lys, I think I may owe you an apology. Asena always told me Necromancers are evil, but this was one of the kindest acts I've ever seen."

Lys sniffs. "Obviously, Asena never mentioned the Shadow Fae."

"She never mentioned the Fae at all until Muzen showed up with Yrg. Her stories were all about necromancer priests of death cults, like Set in ancient Egypt."

Beyond her, the mother has let go of the child and the two seem to be talking as Lys' expression turns thoughtful. "I cannot say I am surprised. Unlike the cults of men, who desire power for themselves, I only use my gifts in the service of the person or group sheltering me, as Yrg is doing for Muzen, and as the other Fae in the city of Winter's Heart do as they serve the queen. Serving is ingrained into the very being of a Fae at birth."

"I don't want to offend you," Dancer says, "but Yrg told us that you were on your way to becoming a queen yourself when the transformation twisted."

"I heard everything Yrg said and yes, she told you the truth. I am caught in the middle of the transformation, as much queen as I am Fae, though I will not gain her characteristics of size and power until the transformation is complete... which would mean dying and being reborn into an undead state." She looks around at us. "I realize most human necromancers would give everything they have to reach that point, and a part of me yearns for the transformation to be complete as well. Yet I fear I would lose so much more if that happened and I became a Lich-queen."

I ask, "Are there any more like you alive?"

She shrugs. "One of my sisters I know is dead, and the other two likely met her fate as well. Though it is possible that both of them are part of these death cults Asena told her son about."

"While you serve the Great Khan." Greywolf remarks.

"Of course. He wants his people to accept the path of settling down and becoming a kingdom, and if letting a parent speak to their dead child a final time brings them closer to that path, then I shall do it. Or whatever else he wants."

Time to sound out Lys, as Timur asked me to do. "What if it happened that a different path than the one Khan Khingla wants was taken, and a different warrior was made Khan of Khans? Would you still serve?"

Lys raises her stylus thin eyebrows. "Everything spoken of in council is supposed to remain a secret."

Hades hairy eyeballs. "I'm only asking a 'What if?' question."

Her grin resembles broken shards of black glass. "I like playing the game of 'What if?'. So, what if the Great Khan dies tomorrow? My service is to him, and I would remain at his side until the funeral games are over and the new Khan set on the throne."

Greywolf gives her a puzzled look. "Funeral games?"

Karl replies, "The first Khan who united the tribes had a rebel Etruscan general as his adviser, and they adopted a few Etruscan practices as their own. Like always building the encampment as a fortified town, or games held to honor people, either those who've done something heroic or the death of someone important, like a tribal khan."

"Or the death of the Khan of Khans," Lys says. "Now, regardless of which brother becomes Khan-"

"It's got to be Avitohol," Greywolf says, interrupting. "The Great Khan said so."

Lys glances over her shoulder. No one's looking at us, the Great Khan crouched down to speak with the child as her parents watch, ready to burst with pride from their expressions. Lys looks back at us. "Greywolf, we are playing, 'What if?'. What if a fracture occurs within the tribes that make up the People, and instead of doing what Khan Khingla wants, to let Prince Avitohol lead them into settling down and becoming a kingdom, they decide to let Prince Timur take charge instead? Then I would serve Khan Timur, plain and simple."

"What if it's not that clear cut?" Greywolf argues. "What if some wanted to go down one path, and some down another?"

Karl shakes his head. "It doesn't work that way. When the Great Khan dies, the clan leaders will meet with their clans, then the clan leaders will meet with the tribal Khans, and the tribal Khans will meet and decide on the new Great Khan. Should one tribe not like the outcome, they can leave the People and strike out on their own, but that's unlikely. Once the choice is made, pretty much everyone will swallow their objections and support the new leader."

"It won't be me." Greywolf looks around at all of us as he speaks in a low voice. "I'll never serve Timur, even if Asena decides to. She can hurl me into next week and it won't change my mind."

Karl scratches his head. "Truth be told, Avitohol won't either. He's got the right to form a new tribe, but I don't think Timur would let him take very many people with him. Not without a fight."

"There will not be a problem if the Great Khan lives another ten years," Lys says, her dark eyes glittering as her gaze meets mine. "Let us continue the game, shall we?. What if someone decides they do not want Khan Khingla to live another ten years, or even one? After this raid is over for good or ill, I will be keeping a close watch over him to make sure he remains alive."

Anger flares like a flame inside me. "I'm Prince Timur's Bloodguard," I hiss, "not his Hades damned assassin."

"The prince would never consider such a thing," Karl says before Lys can respond. "Timur's a hard man and stubborn, vicious as a Warg-horse in rut, but he's got his father's sense of honor."

I incline my head, letting the anger go. "I agree with you, which is one of the reasons I pledged my loyalty-"

"Greywolf," Titan's voice booms across the hilltop, "the little warrior's family wants to honor your bravery in luring out the trolls, by having you be the one to light the funeral pyre."

Greywolf gapes a moment before closing his mouth. "Yes sir, I'll be right there."

Karl claps him on the shoulder. "Best not to dawdle. Take it at a dead run." Greywolf rolls his eyes and takes off as Karl chuckles. "I've wanted to use that phrase since forever."

As Greywolf reaches them, Lys glares up at Karl. "When God gave out brains, you thought he meant drains, and asked for a clogged one."

Dancer, Karl, and I all turn our laughs into coughs, which isn't hard as the apprentice shaman holding the torch is getting close, and the smoke's blowing right in our face. The shaman obviously knows Greco-Roma, because he's speaking to Greywolf as the torchbearer slows to a walk and stops on the far side of the hill. Greywolf nods, and walks towards the apprentice shaman as I put my head near Karl's ear. "Let me ask you a question, since you know Prince Timur better than I. What will happen if he becomes Khan of Khan and Lys begins serving him?"

Karl glances at Lys, who seems intent on the little girl who has laid back down on the bier, which is now being lifted onto the stacked wood. Greywolf takes the torch and walks towards the pyre as Karl pulls me away from the others. "If you mean will he ask her to raise up undead warriors to fight for him, then the answer is probably yes. His sense of honor only extends to his family and the people he respects. In war, he's the type of fighter who will use any and every dirty trick to win, and that includes using Lys' talents."

The shaman seems to be giving the final blessing as I ask Karl, "How big of an army are we talking about?"

Greywolf touches the torch to the wood as Karl shrugs. "There's something called the 'Law of Hundreds', which states a necromancer can only control one hundred undead at a time. But here's the rub: an undead necromancer can still use his power to raise a hundred undead creatures and control them, with the undead mage himself controlled by a living necromancer."

My eyes widen. "Who's only controlling one undead, right?" Karl nods and I calculate numbers in my head. "If she had one hundred undead Necromancers, Lys could theoretically raise an undead army ten thousand warriors strong."

"Most necromancers don't have the power to raise more than a few undead, but unlike humans, she was born with dark mana flowing strong inside her. And there's no telling what she could do if she ever became a Lich-queen." Looking at the horror on my face, Karl claps me on the shoulder. "Be of good cheer. The Great Khan is strong and healthy, with Lys working to keep him that way. Once Avitohol ages a couple summers and survives his manhood trial, all the tribes will be a lot more willing to support him and this idea about settling down. Things are stony now but they won't be for long, trust me."

Karl winks and walks over towards Lys, leaving me alone for the moment. I can now sense my Wardogs even when I can't see them, and one of them is getting close... Fox, for sure. I glance back as she walks out from the darkness. "Apologies Domina, for secretly listening. I heard everything the others said."

I turn my head forward. The oil soaked wood's catching fire, and everyone's beginning to take a step back as I murmur, "No apology needed. So, what do you think?"

"That you, Domina, will never need to become Prince Timur's assassin. I will make sure of it."

Hmm, that's odd. I glance back at her but she's keeping her gaze on the funeral pyre consuming the littlest warrior's body in a great blast of flame.