The Black Ospreys

by Michelle West

Rosdan Press, 2011

Toronto, Ontario

Canada

SMASHWORDS EDITION: 978-1-927094-05-1

Copyright 2011 by Michelle Sagara

All rights reserved

Cover design by Anneli West. Four Corners Communication

The Black Ospreys copyright Michelle Sagara 2005, first appeared in Women of War ed. Tanya Huff and Alexander Potter

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Novels by Michelle West

The Sacred Hunt Hunter's Oath Hunter's Death

The Sun Sword

The Broken Crown The Uncrowned King The Shining Court The Sea of Sorrows The Riven Shield

The Sun Sword

The House War The Hidden City City of Night House Name Skirmish*

War*

*Forthcoming in 2012 and 2013

Table of Contents

Introduction The Black Ospreys Other Stories by the Author

Introduction

Women of War is the only anthology Tanya Huff had any hand in editing, at least that I’m aware of. If it isn’t, it’s the only one for which I was asked to write a story. In fact, I was asked twice, because Alexander Potter also asked if I had one to contribute (technically, I suppose I was only asked once, as Tanya pretty much said, “you’re writing a story for this.” She can, because we worked together in the bookstore full time for many years before she moved out of the city).

What makes it particularly fitting, though, is the character of The Kalakar.

I first met Tanya Huff when I was hired to work at Bakka Books, by then-owner John Rose. She was the manager. She had sold some short fiction to Amazing, and had a finished novel making the rounds; I had sold nothing, and in fact, started work on my first novel that year. Tanya has worked the writer’s panoply of jobs—and one of those was as a cook in the Navy, because she figured when women were allowed to actually join ships, it would be the support staff first. She’s practical that way.

One of the things we’d do, in those early years, was talk about writing. Tanya in particular would talk about the book she’d be working on next (whereas I was still trying to finish the one I’d started, which ended up being four books). And one of the novels she meant to write—which she, of course, no longer remembers—was about a leader of a unit of mercenaries. The thing that stuck with me was the leader was a woman who never left anyone under her command behind. People were loyal to her because she was worth that loyalty, and she returned it. I can still hear her voice as she described this military captain of men.

Fast forward quite a few years, and I am working on Broken Crown. When I created Ellora, The Kalakar, I could only see Tanya Huff. This very seldom happens to me, but I described her

as I saw Tanya (although, to be fair, my writer brain does not possess one tenth of Tanya’s verbal wit). Ellora is, of course, important throughout the whole of The Sun Sword.

Tanya’s read all of these books. She didn’t notice anything unusual about The Kalakar, the woman who created the Black Ospreys. But when her unofficial son finally read these books many years later, the first thing he asked me was, “Is The Kalakar based on Tanya?”. Stewart clearly paid attention. Then again, we both have the advantage of seeing her on the outside.

When I was asked for a story, the origins of the Black Ospreys came to mind, and in particular, Ellora’s part in both their creation and their survival. And I wrote it for Tanya. And, of course, she didn’t notice.

(Tanya said, after reading this introduction: “I’m kind of stupid that way.  But, in my own defense, Ellora is significantly cooler than I will ever be.”

This is actually completely untrue.)

The Black Ospreys

THE AVERDAN VALLEY at night: moon low and red, stars bright. Light enough to see by, no torches required, although they were lit and carried. The earth was broken, the scent of newly turned dirt almost overwhelming.

Commander Kalakar stood at the side of one of her oldest friends, Commander Allen, called the Eagle, and with reason. His eyes were bright in the darkness; bright and keen—but they were dark as well. He touched her shoulder, just that; no words necessary, and therefore none offered. Standing side by side in companionable silence, they could count the dead.

Not accurately, of course; that would come in the morning, and the days that followed. And she would be there, for all of it. Looking for her own House colors among the fallen, looking beyond the crest of sword and rod that signified loyalty to the Kings, and the Kings’ army.

“Ellora.”

She nodded quietly.

“The master bard has offered his services, if you require them.”

She wanted to say no; the dead couldn’t hear his song, after all. But she bit back the word, held it, transformed it into motion. A nod. Some things best left unsaid could be, for now. The living would remember that a master bard of Senniel College had been present upon the field. And the living—most of them—would care.

She didn’t give a damn.

Verrus Korama AKalakar joined her as Commander Allen took his leave. He was injured, but not incapacitated, and he carried pen, ink, the slate across which paper would be laid. For the names. For the names, most of which she wouldn’t remember, to her shame.

“We won,” he said softly. To remind her.

“We always do,” she replied. Heavy words. She let pride seep through them and fall away. “Where is Duarte?”

Korama closed his eyes.

* * *

In the South, over a dozen years past, they had come for war. The Empire in whose army Ellora AKalakar served hadn’t started it, but they responded to its call. She had crossed the stretch of water that knew no natural divide, in the large, long boats of the Empire of Essalieyan. At the head of the armies were three Commanders: Devran ABerrilya, Ellora AKalakar, and Bruce Allen. They were known as the Flight, three great birds of prey, Northern birds: Eagle, Hawk, and Kestrel. She flexed those wings now, as if she could stretch pinions and return to the safety of perch and hood after a long hunt.

But she had unleashed the fourth: Ospreys, the Black Ospreys. It was to the captain of that disbanded unit that she now strode, stepping carefully over the remains of fallen horses, men, broken weapons—the detritus of success. The stench didn’t bother her; her nose had gone numb with exposure. The living had already been culled from these fields, this broken, terrible place that was the aftermath of magic. Some would return, but in dignity.

Some, never.

So many Annagarians here. Once they had been her enemies, or the sons of her enemies. It made no difference now; they looked at her, numb, and the fact that she was a woman upon their fields, in the depths of their valleys, failed—at last—to register. Some men drank, and some sang; Northern words blended with Southern until she couldn’t separate them. Nor did she try.

She was an officer, after all. She had accepted that duty almost the day she had accepted the service of men; gods only knew what those men held sacred. She knew what she did. She had learned to cultivate tunnel vision with care.

Tonight, the tunnel was long and dark.

Primus Duarte AKalakar was alone. And not alone. Hovering there, at the edge of his grief, and enmeshed in their own, stood the men and women who had once served the Kings—served her—as Black Ospreys. They paid their respects, in as much as they knew how, to their fallen. Duarte, holding the body of Sentrus Alexis AKalakar, knelt in their center.

Ellora had crossed this valley before to reach him. It had almost been easier then. The twelve years that separated that passage from this one were at once insurmountable and flimsy.

* * *

Duarte AKalakar looked up. Looked past Cook, past Fiara, past the listing banner of the Tyr upon the field. His grip tightened briefly. He did not want to let go. Could not, he realized, hold on. He had been called Primus for more years than he cared to count, and it all came to this, this

moment. Loss. His fingers brushed hair from the face of a dead woman. His lips touched her forehead. Hard to believe she could be at peace now; she had never been at peace before.

“Duarte.”

He rose, carrying Alexis. Listing, like the banner, under her weight. He would miss her anger. It was the first thing she had offered him, when they had met in the South. He had been AKalakar. She had been Alexis.

Cook, seeing the Kalakar, offered his arms, and Duarte hesitated. He wanted to carry Alexis home.

But home, he realized bitterly, had always been in Averda. In the Dominion of Annagar, the land of their enemies, when the creation of the unit had first been sanctioned. He handed Alexis, with care, to Cook; Cook had always been the largest of the Ospreys, and against his broad and bloody chest, she looked small. Diminutive. She had always seemed that way to him when she slept—and only then. He paused. Put her long blade in slack hands. Cook shifted her body so

that it lay against her chest.

Primus Duarte AKalakar stepped through the small barrier of the living, and went to meet the woman whose House Name he bore.

* * *

Duarte had not been born AKalakar. Nobody was. He had been offered the name when he had arrived in the office of Ellora AKalakar. She was not, then, the ruler of House Kalakar, but it was acknowledged that she was damn close. Her hair was a pale, thin gold, shorn so it rested in a wave above blue eyes; her face was round, her bones wide, her lips slightly pursed in annoyance.

She was surrounded by paper. If there were any order to the piles that littered the huge surface of her desk, it was an entirely intuitive order; he didn’t doubt that she could find what she wanted, but he did wonder if there was anything of value to be found there.

It was clear that she wondered the same thing.

“Duarte Sorrelson?” He nodded. He was dressed in the robes of a different order, and from the tightening of her expression, it was not an order she favored. Then again, the magi did little to make themselves popular with anyone outside of the Order of Knowledge. He had made

certain to wear the symbol of the mage-born across his chest; it hung there, quartered moon, each quarter graced by the iconic symbol of one of the four elements.

“AKalakar,” he replied. As she did not tell him to sit, he ignored the fine, empty chairs that

girded the visitor side of that desk, biding time, as if it were a test.

She pulled one piece of paper from the wreckage, glanced at it, and let it fall. “You’ve come seeking employment.”

He nodded.

“You are a member in good standing of the Order of Knowledge.”

He hesitated for just a moment, and then said, with the barest hint of a frustrated smile, “The words good standing would probably be contested.”

To his surprise, she looked at him, really looked, as if he had said the first thing that made him worth looking at. “You don’t look like a mage,” she said at last.

He shrugged. “Lack of gravitas?”

“Lack of slouching. Lack of beard. Lack of hubris.” She stood then. “Understand that I am not looking for a House mage. We have enough of those.”

As it was not yet clear what she was looking for, Duarte chose to be respectful; he said nothing.

“You are aware that House Kalakar maintains a large House Guard?” He nodded. It wasn’t exactly a secret.

“Do you have problems with the concept of military authority and military discipline?” “Not the concept, no.”

She raised a pale brow. “Sit.” He sat.

“You were trained with the warrior magi?”

He raised a brow. “The Order of Knowledge does not commonly discuss its constituent parts with those who are not members.”

She shrugged. Waited for a different answer. After a moment, he shrugged as well. “Yes.”

“You are not, I see, considered powerful for one mageborn.” It was almost an insult. “No, I’m not.”

“And you were considered somewhat unorthodox in your approach to your studies within the Order.”

He nodded again. Assessing her, being assessed. “The Kalakar House Guard is in need of a mage.”

“I believe it has two.” “It had two.”

“And now?”

“Now it is in need of at least one.” There was no humor at all in her smile. There was, however, a challenge. “How good is your Torra? ’

“Almost flawless.”

“Good. That would be useful; mine is lacking.” She paused, and then added, ”A number of my soldiers speak the language well enough for the type of diplomacy they’ll be involved in.”

“How long?”

Her smile stilled. “How long?” “How long until the war is joined?” She said, “You’re bright for a mage.” He waited.

“Two months.”

He nodded. “You have other applicants, no doubt. I’m interested in the post.”

“I have five applicants,” she replied. “I can second several if necessary. You understand that you will be part of the Kalakar House Guard, should you accept this post?”

He nodded.

“Familiarize yourself with our rules,” she told him. “There will be paperwork to sign. I will have it delivered to your domicile.” She paused, and then added, “Members of the Kalakar House Guard are offered—and expected to take—the House name.”

So, he thought, that was true. He tried not to look eager. It fooled neither of them.

* * *

Commander Kalakar met him in silence on the field. She did not ask about Alexis; she could see the answer in every shift of exposed muscle. His face. His hands.

But she offered him this much. “She was mine.”

He nodded bleakly, saying nothing. The sky was bright, and the possibilities of the future were, as they always were for the living, endless. The dead walked a different road, and short of following Alexis, it was a road closed to them both.

He was not yet tired of living.

But he understood the honor she obliquely offered Alexis AKalakar, and he hesitated. Once,

there would have been none.

* * *

The border skirmishes that characterized diplomacy between the Southern Dominion and the Northern Empire had done little to prepare the armies of the Twin Kings for the savagery of the battle itself.

Months, months spent at sea and on dry land, hoarding food and guarding supply lines, had brought them to Averda, for it was in Averda, at last, that there was any purchase upon the heart of the Dominion’s gathered forces.

Whole units of enemy Annagarians had been destroyed to the last man, for they failed to understand an offered surrender. Whole armies had been offered up as carrion, and among the fallen, many of the Imperial officers and soldiers who had worn the Kings’ colors with such early pride.

This was expected; war was war.

But the actions of the enemy within this war were almost beyond comprehension. Whole Imperial villages had been razed, their occupants destroyed, their bodies left in smoking ruins: men, women, and children all. The South employed slaves in almost all levels of life: they had not seen fit to take slaves from these villages. They had left death, and death was ugly.

Not beyond imagining, for a mage.

But for the soldiers? The laws that prevented like deaths chaffed and strangled, and in the end, many of the Kings’ own were offered to the gallows for the actions of reprisal.

It was to the gallows that Duarte looked, as they were erected. But it was to the woman he

owed his allegiance that he at last went.

* * *

“Give them to me,” he asked Commander AKalakar quietly. He forced deference into the words, and it was not entirely feigned. Having seen Ellora AKalakar at the head of the House Guards that were her pride, he had discovered that she could lead men anywhere, and they would follow. Because she was almost one of them.

She was writing. On the field, there were few things that were so necessary that they needed to be signed by a commander. Among these were writs of execution. Each commander was responsible for signing the warrants of those men whom, in the opinion of the military police, deserved death. It was considered a formality.

Duarte meant to test this supposition.

Exposure to Southern sun had darkened Ellora AKalakar’s skin and her complexion; exposure to Southern warfare had darkened other things. She looked up from this task, Verrus Korama a shadow by her side, as he always was.

“What do you mean?” She asked him, half bitter. “Will you serve as official executioner here?”

“Yes,” he said, stark word offered in the darkness of shadowed tent. There were stockades being built, but it would be days before they were finished, and the hewing of wood, the lifting, the fitting, would occupy the army for some time.

“Why?” She set the papers aside, staring at him.

“I’ve listened to the Annagarian prisoners,” he told her quietly. “You all have.” She nodded.

“They are convinced that the Northern armies are too weak to wage war,” he continued softly. “The presence of women upon the field only strengthens this belief. We will slaughter the whole of the Dominion without shaking that certainty if we continue to fight on the terms that we have.”

“We are the Kings’ army,” she told him firmly. But she lifted a hand, and after a moment, Verrus Korama chose to retreat.

“And how many of our own—how many of our civilians—will we sacrifice in the name of those Kings? The Kings are not here. But we are.”

“Tread carefully.”

“I am. But you are signing writs of execution for two women and one man, and I think, AKalakar,” he added, using the House name, and not the military title, “that I can make better use of them.”

She said softly, “What use? If I grant you this request, there will be some difficulty for me; Commander Devran ABerrilya is not noted for his tolerance of poor discipline.”

“A better use than gallows fodder, although it’ll end—for them—in the same way.” He was silent for some time. “We need a different way to wage war.”

“What different way?”

“Their way. We need to speak their language.” He did not flinch; he did not move. He did not fail to meet her eyes. “You cannot ask this of your regular units.”

“Ask what?”

A game. But he was adept with words. “That they become your personal monsters.”

Her pale brow rose. “I accept no monsters in my service, Duarte AKalakar. I accept men and women who accept my command.”

“They will,” he replied. Games, all games, these words. He knew what he had to do. Had come far enough in this war, and with this woman, that he was willing to do it. To be her sacrifice. “But they have already proven that they have the strength—or lack of moral fiber—to do what I think must be done.”

“And that?”

“Change the face of the conversation.” As if war were just that, no more.

Verrus Korama returned when Duarte AKalakar left the tent. He stood in the same spot that he always occupied; to the left of her back, his hand upon his sword. His expression was smooth and neutral; he was her calm. She had none. The hand that was raised above the inkwell shook. She understood the anger that had driven these soldiers to their acts of desperation and rage; to rape, to disembowelment, to desecration of the not quite dead. To execute them, however, was the order of the Kings. Distant kings.

“Well?” She asked, without turning. Without signing the documents. “You know what Commander ABerrilya will say,” he said quietly.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Devran.”

She could feel the Verrus’ smile; it would be brief.

“Castration of prisoners of war is considered a capital offense.” She said nothing, waiting.

“But I believe that Commander Allen might listen if you choose to make your request. These executions will not be popular with the men.”

“Will we win this war?” She asked him. Because she could. Doubt, in the silence of her own space, was her own business.

“Not without loss. Perhaps not without the loss that Duarte AKalakar envisions.”

“You must know what he intends.” Because she did. And she had never been a woman who ascribed to the theory that the ends justified the means. Pragmatism warred with something else, and she knew that it might win. That it would be costly. How costly? Ah, that was the question. “If we lose,” she said, to herself, exposing all, “then all we will be are—”

“Monsters.”

She knew a moment of anger, then. But she had always been a pragmatic woman. An intuitive one. She understood everything that Duarte AKalakar offered her, and she had never expected that offer to come—if it came at all—from a mage.

“Call Duarte AKalakar back to my tent,” she told him quietly.

* * *

Primus Duarte AKalakar faced the Kalakar, arms shorn of the weight of the dead in a way that he would never be. “This was her home,” he said at last. His words were bitter, but his voice was soft.

After a moment, she nodded “Yes. This was. She was never at home in the peace of

Averalaan. Not after the war.”

Because this was honest, because they were two officers alone, Duarte relented slightly.

“Not before the war, either. She came looking for death. She didn’t much care whether it was her own.”

“Only the first time,” the older woman whispered. Because this, too, was true, he said nothing.

“I made you a promise.”

He nodded, remembering it.

* * *

Alexis Barton. The first name on the list of three. Fiara Glenn, Auralis, no family name given. It was to Alexis that he had gone first, and perhaps, had he chosen a different person, things would have unfolded in a different way.

But he hadn’t.

He had crossed the grounds trampled to mud by the boots of Imperial soldiers. Had listened to their whispers, their curses, their Weston phrases of anger. Even their songs, delivered in anger like a prayer to the god of war. Which god, which war, no longer seemed to matter. This he expected. But Alexis? He could never have expected her.

She was knife thin; the ocean passage had been unkind. Her skin was dark and red; it appeared that the sun had been unkind as well. But her face, like the face of a bird of prey, was bright-eyed, unhooded, and she met his gaze with contempt and defiance. She knew that the gallows were being built, alongside the stockade; could see the wooden beams, some too new in

her opinion, as they were raised by ropes and battered into standing shape. She could even see the graves that they’d be granted: traitors’ graves, in foreign soil.

Her hair was dark and lanky. What food she had been afforded remained, rotting in the sun; she had taken the water, no more. She had been stripped of rank—sentrus, he thought—and the colors of the unit that she had come with. He knew the unit, or rather, could look it up; it was written beside her name.

As was her crime.

“Alexis Barton,” he said, as if he were calling roll. Her eyes narrowed. She’d been stripped of regulation weapons as well: short sword, daggers. He doubted she had the strength to pull a bow. But even without these, she was dangerous.

“That’s my name,” she said when it became clear he was waiting for an answer. “You stand accused of breaking the edicts of the Kings.”

She shrugged. “The Annies don’t read enough Weston to know the edicts.”

“No. You understand that the civil treatment of prisoners is one of the things that differentiates us from the enemy?”

She spit. “Not the only thing.” Her back was to the pen; she faced him, her knees beginning to bend.

He lifted a hand, and fire flared in a bright ring around her feet. It was a warning. It was the only warning she would get. But her brows rose, and she chuckled. “They sent a mage?” She whistled. Low whistle.

“You are not a member of the Kalakar House Guards,” he told her grimly. “But you are a member of the army under her command. Your behavior here reflects upon her. Do you understand this?”

Her reply made clear that she did, and that it didn’t matter. He almost smiled. But the humor would be lost on this Alexis.

“You served the Kings,” he replied calmly. “Look where it got me.”

“Could you do it again?”

She stilled. She always stilled when she heard something worth listening to. “Any time.” “Your sentence will be held in abeyance, should you choose to serve.” he told her quietly. She looked at him as if he’d either sprouted another head or had started talking in Torra, the

Annie tongue. “Abeyance? Big word.”

“But not one with which you are unfamiliar.”

She shrugged. “I’m familiar with a lot of words.”

“I am Primus Duarte AKalakar,” he told her quietly. “And if you choose to accept my offer, you will be a sentrus in my company. You will wear my colors, and the only law you will serve is my law.”

“And what law is that?”

“War’s law,” he replied grimly. “And the Kalakar’s.” “What about the Kings?”

“They’re not here.”

“Then who do you serve?”

“Commander AKalakar,” he replied. “Choose.”

She shrugged. It was her way of saying yes. He knew it, and would come to know it better, in time. “If you do not prove useful, the gallows will still be your home.”

She reached out and grabbed his hand. He almost burned her, but something held him back. “This isn’t our war,” she said, voice low. “It’s theirs. They called it. They made the rules.”

“Yes,” he replied, tightening his hand; replying to her unexpected grip.

* * *

Fiara Glenn had been more difficult. Her rage was harder to contain, and he had endured fifteen minutes of it before he cut her short. The offer made was curt; he was under no illusion. Those that made their way to the gallows could not all be of use. Some, the gallows would claim. He could not be certain that she wouldn’t be one of them, and he chose—carefully—not to care.

But when she found out that Alexis was his first sentrus, she folded suddenly, swallowing fire as she tried to remember basic discipline. He knew then, that they were either friends or co- conspirators. Wasn’t certain if this was a good sign or not.

And that left only Auralis. The man who would one day be known as the Bronze Osprey, with his bitter anger, his dark past, his desire for death. Duarte had seen men like him before; men who weren’t truly aware that the death they wanted was their own.

Auralis had almost found it, and if he wasn’t at peace with it—and he wasn’t—he was almost unprepared to have it snatched away. He hadn’t spoken a word. Confronted by, confounded by, Duarte AKalakar, he had simply nodded, as if he had expected no less.

* * *

“Where is Auralis?” the Kalakar asked, as Duarte sifted his way though memory walking slowly.

“I don’t know. With Kiriel.”

The Kalakar said nothing. The memory through which he walked, she now walked, and it was just as tortuous a passage.

* * *

By the end of the week, he had ten men and women in his service. They came from different units, and they were wary, ugly, angry. Only Cook was peaceful, although he had not yet earned that name; he was Jules from the Free Town of Morgan, and if he had a family name, he wasn’t sharing.

Of the men, Cook had taken most easily to army life. His place upon the gallows had been secured by a berserk and terrible rage, one that took him in fits, and left him shaking, almost unaware of his surroundings. Shorn of this rage—as he so often was—he became an odd peace- broker. His size guaranteed his safety, but only barely. His fists did most of his talking otherwise, but without the rage to drive him, he never hit first. He almost always hit last. Cook was unique. He was humble in his acceptance of the offer of service over death.

The rest?

Given that they walked on the edge of certain death, and at that, at the hands of their own, it was hard to instill in them the respect due the Kings’ army. Duarte didn’t bother to try; that respect would render them useless for his purposes.

Commander Ellora AKalakar had come to visit.

Duarte had not expected her, and was genuinely surprised when she interrupted his training run by the simple act of observing it. He was barely aware of her presence, but Auralis and Alexis stopped almost instantly, as if disturbed by the shadow she didn’t cast; the sun was high.

He could still see her clearly as she was that day.

“I know why you’re here,” she told them, taking up a sitting position on a large, round rock and crossing her arms. It would have been easy to mistake that comment, and many of his ten did. But Duarte looked at her carefully.

“And I’ve come to tell you this: You serve me. I am Ellora AKalakar, commander of the third army. You are the walking dead.” She had their attention. Held it. “You have committed

crimes for which the Kings’ military police would see you executed. Fair enough.

“I believe you’re worth more than that. You are not a part of the Kings’ army, upon this field. You are part of the Kalakar House Guard.”

Duarte’s attention was riveted on her. When he had approached her, he had chosen caution; he had couched each phrase with care, so that she might have the opportunity, in the end, to disavow his small company.

But it was not just his attention. The words Kalakar House Guard had a power, both within and outside of its ranks, that had not yet become myth. It was a near thing, though. Because it was known that Commander AKalakar’s House Guard was her family. The whole of it; she had no children, and had disavowed all ties of kin when she had chosen to take the House name. And she had done it gladly.

“What you will be asked to do in the name of this war, only the gods know,” she continued. “But you will be asked it, and more, inmy name. You will be AKalakar, and you will be counted as AKalakar.”

Duarte closed his eyes.

She rose. “There are three birds of prey upon this field. The eagle, the Hawk and the Kestrel. I offer you the unenviable position of becoming the fourth, fleet and small.” She gestured, and Verrus Korama came to stand beside her. He held a standard, which he unfurled before their

eyes.

It was not well made; there were few enough who could be spared for such endeavor. But it didn’t matter. Upon the field of Kings’ Gray, wings stretched, claws extended, flew a black bird. Black Osprey.

A whisper went up among his men, his women, these handful of criminals that had yet to become a working unit, if it ever would.

“Your crimes are you own,” she told them. “And I will not ask you to detail them; they are your past. It is your present—and your future—that will define you. If you came to the Ospreys by the paths of the gallows, you have come, unknowing, to House Kalakar. If this war is to be won, we must alter its face; we must build our own legends, our own nightmares. Build as you must, and only as you must.

“I demand service,” she added. “And loyalty. They are the only things I will ask of you; they are not the only things that will be asked of you. But serve me loyally from this point on, and that

is all that will grace your service record at the end of this war.

“You are mine,” she told them. “And if you have success in this war, you will be mine. I

will not disavow you, and I will not desert you; all roads that lead to the gallows start—and end

—with me.”

She left the standard pole planted in the ground, and shored up by rock. She left without another word. But words followed in her wake.

* * *

“House Guard? You take a risk,” Korama told her, when they were well away.

“I have to,” she replied. She stared at her mailed hands; the sun was bright and unrelenting. “And if we take the risk, we take it openly. Duarte is no fool; what he needs from me, I can’t yet say. But I can give him what I can.” She paused, and then smiled grimly. “We need to let them hunt,” she said, seeing clear sky. “We need to learn to speak a different language.”

War’s language. Death’s language.

“You never did care about keeping your hands clean.”

“Not much, no, but then again, I don’t have to. Some other poor bastard will be cleaning off the blood.”

* * *

Not all of the men seconded to the unit were part of the third army, and this caused strife almost instantly. Devran ABerrilya surrendered none of his dead, but Commander Allen chose to trust the instincts of Commander AKalakar, and in the weeks that followed, more men and women, execution papers unsigned, were taken from the shadows of the gallows.

Some of the men, Duarte almost rejected out of hand. He read their records, and he understood that he could make no easy use of them. But one use did suggest itself, and in the end, with reservations, he accepted them.

The raids upon the supply lines had been ferocious, and worse, the Annies were burning their own stockades as they anticipated lost ground. Food, always an issue with an army of any size, was in scant supply and the heat of the Southern summer, drier than the season that graced Averalaan, made men mad. The colors of the Black Ospreys were stitched upon surcoats that had been grudgingly surrendered by quartermasters across the encampment in ones and twos. Armor was returned to the Ospreys, and with it, weapons. Their attitude hovered between surprise and arrogance. He expected no less.

It was his duty to train them; his training was difficult. He had learned enough magery in the Order of Knowledge to test their reflexes; to test their ability to move silently and without detection. He was not a kind taskmaster, but he didn’t have to be; popularity was not his concern.

Fear was. Fear could either make a man very smart or very stupid.

Alexis AKalakar was not a man. And she was not afraid. Not of Duarte, and not of the commander. She offered him the respect due his rank—but it was an ungainly, imperfect respect. The Ospreys had not been chosen for their ability to dress well.

When they numbered fifty-five, he began to teach them the shorthand that would be become their silent language; it was almost the language of thieves. It was certainly the language of assassins. They took to it as well as the uneducated could be expected to: very.

“This is a lot of training for not a lot of work.”

He looked up from the paper he was examining. They were, as always, writs of execution. Without replying, he handed them to Alexis. He couldn’t have said why, had she asked. But she was Alexis. She didn’t. Instead, she took them. Leafed through them, her dark eyes focused, flicking over the spares lines that described crimes, names, units.

“AKalakar?” she asked him, when she had finished. It hadn’t taken her all that long. He wondered, for the first time, what she had been in her life before the army. When she had joined. Although the army had always been open to women, few indeed were those who picked up sword and stood in recruiting lines.

“AKalakar,” he replied. “And Commander Allen’s. Commander ABerrilya will send us nothing.”

She shrugged. “Given his reputation, it’s probably just as well.” It surprised him. “Why are you here, sentrus?”

“To pass along a bit of friendly advice.” Her expression was at odds with the word friendly. Her voice was thin edge.

He nodded slowly.

“Keep an eye on Kreegar.” He nodded again.

She set aside five of the writs. “These,” she told him quietly. “You know them?”

“One of them. But I’d take a risk on the rest.”

“The others?”

“Fiara will kill at least two of them.” “If she does, she’s dead.”

Alexis smiled grimly. It was the only way she smiled, but it changed the landscape of her face. “I know.” She turned from the tent, stopped bent slightly, in its flaps. “But Fiara, you can trust.”

He almost laughed. “Not a single one of you could follow the orders you were given, not even when it meant your death otherwise.”

“Maybe we didn’t like the orders.” She shrugged. “Take ’em if you want. Fiara can look out for herself.”

He stared at the papers for a long time, musing. In the end, he kept five.

* * *

Where food was scant, alcohol was less so. It was a mystery to Duarte, who seldom drank; a mystery and a great annoyance. The first time, he chose to overlook it. Two men were sent to the infirmary with wounds that would render them useless for at least two weeks. The second time?

He shed his forced nonchalance. Drinking after battle was a time-honored tradition. Drinking right before it, time-honored as well. But this? He found the men—and woman—who were drinking and he set the alcohol alight. There were cries of surprise and pain as bottles dropped and cracked, some shattering where they hit the sparse rock along the plateau. Alcohol made men brave.

And stupid. Terribly stupid.

One, scarred, ugly in ways that had nothing at all to do with appearance, took exception to his loss. He recognized the man: Kreegar. Alexis’ gift. His dagger glinted in the dying blue fire as he rose swiftly, his Weston a smattering of words that would make street thieves proud.

Duarte, dressed in the finery of a Primus of the Kalakar House guards, lifted a brow. “Put it down,” he said quietly. It was not a request.

Kreegar swore. He wasn’t drunk enough to stumble; he certainly wasn’t drunk enough to slur his words. Just enough to be foolish.

He lunged at Duarte, who didn’t bother to move.

In all, the Kalakar Primus was underimpressed. They had trained with him. They should be aware of what he could do, by now. Of course, they hadn’t seen it all. He was their Captain,

Primus Duarte of the Kalakar House Guards. He was also their last jailer.

He used fire that would have been almost pathetic among the Warrior mages of the Order of Knowledge, seconded to the Kings. And while the fire burned, and Kreegar screamed, he stepped in with his sword. It was not his favored weapon. Favored or no, it did its work. It passed

through Kreegar’s chest with unerring accuracy.

And Kreegar? Passed on to the Halls of Mandaros, where judgment awaited him.

All sound died; the wind seemed to hold its breath as he watch the twenty Ospreys who now lingered around him in a circle. If they chose to attack him, it was over.

He could see indecision at play across many faces, some more familiar than others. If the gallows hadn’t held them back, death wouldn’t. The silence strengthened, thinned, grew oppressive.

It was broken by Alexis, who turned to her companion. “Pay up,” she said, holding out a flat palm.

Her companion was Auralis. “Pay up?” “You said six days. I said three.”

“It was four. The way I see it, there are no winners.” “Then open your damn eyes. I was closer. You owe me.” Fiara laughed. “Don’t mess with him, ’Lexis.”

“The hells. Pay up,” she added, sliding her dagger out of the sheath. “Sentrus,” Duarte said coldly.

Everyone started at him He stared at Alexis. Her expression shifted instantly into a clean anger, but she jammed her dagger back into its sheath. She was fond of it; she didn’t want to lose

it.

Or have it embedded in her chest. “The rest of you, back to your tents.”

Fiara whistled; she made a fist and pumped it once. “Sentrus,” she said, managing both syllables without a sneer.

Alexis still faced Duarte. After a moment, she said, “Do I get a raise?”

“My tent,” he said, still cold, ”Now.”

* * *

All studied casualness was gone the minute the witnesses were. Alexis faced him across his

pathetic excuse for a desk. Field desks were terrible, unless you were a commander. It was a rank he would never attain. And he thanked the gods daily for that fact.

“You’ve been here three weeks,” he told her quietly. He did not refer to her promotion. “I’ve had Dunbar confined three times; I’ve broken up eight fights. I’ve killed three men, including Kreegar.”

She lifted a hand. ”Permission to speak freely?” she said, with a trace of humor. His raised brow told her how much he appreciated the attempt. “Granted.”

“Nine fights.” He thought, for a moment, that had he actually been a commander, the army would be alot smaller. “Nine, then. Your point?”

“Give us something else to fight. Soon.” “Sentrus—”

“Alexis will do.” “I decide that.”

She shrugged. “Whatever. You can add a stripe or a quarter circle to the arm. Or the armpit. It won’t make a damn bit of difference. No one trusts you. No one trusts each other. You have no idea if we ever will.”

He nodded quietly.

“But with people like us, there’s only one way to test it. We’re not theoreticians. We’re not even army. We’re just…your cadets.” She said the word with a grimace. Lifted her hands, signaling, of all things, retreat. “We only learn one way, Primus. We don’t know what you want. We can guess. Some of us are pissed off about it; some don’t give a damn.”

“What do you ‘guess’ we want?”

“You want us to fight like the Annies fight. We’re ready to do that.” She paused, and then added, “But we’re not ready to sit, to wait, to be picked off because we’re stupid. Give us a fight.”

He nodded quietly. “Sixty-seven men and women. You’re one decarus. Who will the others be?”

Her brows rose and then lowered, as if they were wings.

“Not Fiara,” she said at last. “And if you repeat that, I’ll kill you.” “You’ll try.”

“Even odds. I’ve seen you fight. But unlike Kreegar and half of the rest, I paid attention.”

He nodded grimly. “Continue.”

“Auralis, maybe. You’ll have to bust him down, but he’ll do.” “That’s two. I need at least five.”

“Margie. She’s grim, but she’s got enough discipline to keep things in line unless all hell breaks loose. Stepson.”

“Stepson? He’s a—”

“Psychotic, yes. But fear works. He knows you’ll kill him if he blinks the wrong way;

you’ve been itching to do it. That’s what four of us? Put Cook up as well.” “Cook is—”

“Bloody big.”

Duarte hesitated for just a moment, and then he nodded again. “Don’t let the tent hit you on the way out.”

She muttered something rude under her breath. It was a start.

* * *

Ellora AKalakar liked maps.

Which was good; she had to look at a lot of them, and some were of questionable accuracy. She made marks on them, pinned flags to them, removed flags from them, watched as whole river boundaries were redrawn. Birds were the scouts of choice for the Northern army, but a bird’s-eye view was not always accurate, and very, very few people could get information from conversation with birds. She found some amusement in watching them try.

Then again, she found mages more or less amusing in general. They were obdurate, arrogant, overweening in their vanity; they fretted about things that she hadn’t worried about since the vagaries of youth had been shaken off with a vengeance. With the exception of the warrior magi, they were all considered elderly, although she privately thought much of that age was like carefully applied make-up; age and wisdom, or age and power, were often conflated among mages.

That, and she liked their beards.

Had she hated the magi, she would have found them amusing anyway, because Devran ABerrilya could not abide their presence for more than an hour at a time. He was not a man given to outburst; instead, he used silence like a blunt instrument. He was positively glacial on this particular day.

It was the first time she had pinned a black flag to the map. She thought he might reach out to sweep it away, and apparently, so did Bruce Allen; the Eagle hovered between them, his shadow like outstretched pinions, while the mages talked among themselves.

At length, however, they finished, and they turned their attention to the maps that held them all. The Terrean of Averda and the Terrean of Mancorvo were the most detailed portions of the map; there were only two passages into the Dominion, one through each. But Mancorvo’s pass went through the mountains; Averda’s did not.

It was therefore in Averda that most of the battle was likely to be fought. “What will your Ospreys do?” Commander Allen asked quietly.

“What they have to.” “And that?”

She shrugged. “Change the face of the Northern army.”

Devran’s face grew slightly pinched. “The face of the Kings’ army does not require changing.”

“We’ve had this argument,” Commander Allen said. He Looked at Ellora, his gaze keen. “You’re sending them into the heart of the Annagarian front.”

She nodded. “They’re few enough.” “They won’t make it,” Devran replied.

Her turn to shrug. She did; it was artless. “They were carrion anyway. What do you care?” “They broke the Kings’ laws.”

“The Annies don’t care about the Kings’ laws, and we’re not in the Empire.” “I said we’ve had this argument.”

Devran rose. “Will you let her play these games?” “They’re not games,” she replied evenly.

He ignored her. He often did. “Her men are barely part of the army; they serve her. I do not want our command structure to devolve into a personality contest.”

“You command your army,” she told him. “I’ll command mine.” “You will answer to the Kings.”

No, she thought, but she didn’t bother to say it. She looked at the markers and pins. I’ll answer to their wives, their children, their parents. If they have any who give a damn.

* * *

Sixty-six men and women were not a small force, unless held against the balance of the Imperial army. Primus Duarte AKalakar watched them warily. Truth? He didn’t like them. They didn’t like him. He was counting on the fact that they hated the Annies more. He had tested this hatred a handful of times, culling their numbers; choosing, with deliberate care, the men who could best serve as examples by dying. He was not a torturer; he generally killed quickly. He did not kill officially.

That would require paperwork and time, neither of which he had in abundance.

No, he thought, as Alexis lifted two fingers in the silence of the occasional snapped branch. It would require distance. It would make him just another servant, albeit one with rank. This way, he was master, or no one was.

It was close.

With the Black Ospreys, it would always be close.

By killing swiftly, and without any compunction, without any sign of hesitation or remorse, he made the game deadly. More, he made it clear that they were his.

He waited a moment. Alexis lifted her left hand, and flattened her palm. He lifted his own, then, as if he was a conductor, and brought them together. She nodded, left her men, her fingers dancing wordless in the air.

She had learned quickly. And she moved.

He was almost captivated by the speed and silence of that graceful motion. His eyes were still on her when she reached his side, and she noticed; she noticed everything. Her brows rose in amusement, but her eyes were steady and unblinking when they came to rest upon the village. The valley contained it. Here, between the perch of too many trees, they could see the planted fields, and beyond them, the huts that were home to the Dominion’s slaves. Beyond those huts, a stone manor, the only such dwelling, and behind it, the tall structures that were, in theory their target. Granaries. They were guarded; he could see horses moving in the distance. They were more easily counted then men. In fact, in Averda, they were counted and prized more highly then men.

He did not look at his hands.

Alexis did. And she smiled. They had traversed the forests with care, avoiding the mounted patrols and guardposts that the Annies relied on. The Imperial army was a theory, now; the Ospreys were surrounded, in all directions, by the forces of the Tyr’agnate of Averda. Callesta.

Learn to speak a different language, he thought. He glanced back once. Just once.

The night would be filled with sounds of terror: laughter, screaming, the cries of the dying. Some of them would be his; most would not. Twisted fate, then, that the ones that would linger longest, in memory and nightmare, would be those that were not.

But they were parchment, paper; they were the things upon which the first of the Northern messages would be left. Over the corpses of the dead—the many, and the helpless—the banner of the Ospreys would be the only moving thing by night’s end, and it would move by the grace of the Southern wind.

Wind was the only thing the Southerners seemed to fear, and the wind carried the Black

Ospreys.

* * *

Ellora AKalakar looked up as Verrus Korama entered her quarters. He was quiet, which was not unusual; like Devran, his silences were often more telling than his speeches. He handed her a tube; she touched it. Beneath her hands, it warmed, waiting. She spoke a phrase, placed her thumb against the edge of the tube that would either open or explode, and waited.

This was Duarte’s work.

Korama waited while the tubing fell away; waited while she uncurled the missive it contained. He even waited while she read it, his posture pitch-perfect, as if it were the only grace-note in a particularly grim second act.

“Kallos has fallen,” she whispered. The paper fluttered to her desk. She did not touch it again.

“There was resistance,” he said, when it became clear she wouldn’t.

She understood what he offered, and refused to accept it. “There would be,” she replied, black humor edging all of the syllables. “Any bets?”

He frowned. “Don’t,” he told her quietly. “Don’t?”

“Don’t think like an Osprey. They have that luxury, AKalakar. You don’t.” Luxury. “Did anyone survive?”

“In the village? Possibly. At night, it would be hard to be certain.” She didn’t ask about prisoners.

She didn’t ask about anything. She had come to war, and with her, had brought the certain callousness that any officer must. She balanced on its edge.

* * *

“Kalakar.”

She had not looked away from Duarte.

“The Ospreys were born here,” she said quietly.

“And they were laid to rest in the North,” he replied, equally quiet. “We surrendered the colors there. We thought it wouldn’t matter.” His shrug was dismissive. “We were never a peacetime unit.”

She looked at him, gave him that much. The darkness hid many scars. “This was a different war.”

“A cleaner war.” “Duarte—”

“Alexis will stay in the South.”

And you?

* * *

By the time they were sent to the third village, word had spread. The Northern armies were known, in the South, by the visage of the Osprey, and its wings were black.

The prisoners that the rest of the army gathered—and admittedly, they were few—spoke of the Ospreys in bitter, implacable Torra. They spoke of little else, and the words were both curse and promise.

You could have painted targets on their backs, Duarte thought, gazing at his unit. But they would have been small targets, and at that, in constant motion.

The Annies thought they numbered in the hundreds. In the thousands. They thought the wind carried them. They thought the Lord of Night blessed them. Duarte was willing to admit that if there was a Lord of Night, they worked in his shadow.

He thought about clipping their wings.

But it was only thought. And if he didn’t join them in savagery, if he didn’t join them in murder, he gave them the opportunity to vent their rage, to plant the seeds of a different rage in their enemies. Anger made fools of all men.

Even Duarte AKalakar.

* * *

The villages around the granaries became focal points for the Tyr’s cavalry units. The valleys were not kind to horses; the Ospreys, who used them seldom, less so.

They added horsekiller to the long list of epithets they wore as badges. They took their greatest losses in that enterprise. And they suffered the bitterest of their divisions there. Men, women, and children? They were seen as mirrors. Their deaths were markers, the oldest variant of an eye for an eye.

But the horses were harder. Not for Duarte, and not for many of the Ospreys. Fiara, however, was livid. As if the horses were helpless, and the children were not.

Alexis reined her in; it was close.

Duarte felt the first hint of unease, then; he was prepared to kill Fiara—but he didn’t want to kill her. Wanted, in fact the opposite. It was unexpected. Unaffordable.

The Ospreys had lost and gained men; the gallows were empty, their shadows paler and more peaceful than the shadows the Ospreys cast. But each new Osprey that survived Duarte, that survived the insane and suicidal missions that Duarte himself chose, became AKalakar. The name meant something to them.

But not, in the end, as much as the Black Osprey did. He hadn’t expected that.

He didn’t expect, truth be told, that any of them would survive this enterprise, this terrible act of madness that their war had become. There were even moments—all of them silent—when he welcomed the thought.

War made killers of men and women.

His embraced them. They were his.

Commander AKalakar waited.

* * *

She watched the Primus as he crossed the plateau; watched the silence that enfolded him. He did not seem to be aware of it; he was aware of his armor, his steps, the path that led to her and from her.

By his side, in the ragged surcoats that now meant almost everything to the Annies, the Ospreys walked across the camp as if they owned it. She could almost understand why Devran hated them; they were feared. They knew it.

Primus Duarte gave a curt order to the woman who stood closest, and she, in turn, transmitted that order. Hard to imagine that men who could swagger in such a ragged line could also come to so abrupt a halt. But they did, and they watched Duarte recede as she watched him approach.

She said, “You don’t look so much the mage.”

His smile was slightly lopsided. His eyes were ringed dark, his hair flat against forehead and skull. Like the rest of the mages upon the field, he decried helms, and he never wore them.

She couldn’t argue with success. “Primus.”

He snapped a brisk salute. He was probably the only Black Osprey who could. “Commander.”

“Report.”

He did. She forced herself to listen. It wasn’t as hard as it might have been; there was fascination in his words, and because of it, they were fascinating. She could trace the spiral path of his flight, and it made her uneasy.

He waited, and when the silence stretched, she realized he had finished speaking. And would never finish. The man who had come to House Kalakar seeking employment was almost entire absent.

“Duarte,” she said, without thought. He waited.

“The Ospreys have been noted by the Tyr’agnati of both Mancorvo and Averda. The

Tyr’agar himself has, for the first time in the course of this war, put a bounty on your heads.” He allowed himself to nod.

“The Tyr’agar is in control of the field.” She paused, and then added, “He is not the equal of his generals.” She wanted to tell him that he could stop. Wanted to, and knew that it was a lie. He had what they wanted: the attention of the Tyr’agar. Now? They had to focus it, hone it, keep it.

“Your men are the face of the army,” she whispered. And saw his reaction, clearly. Turned away.

* * *

“You’re drinking.”

Duarte looked up from the lip of the canteen, Alexis stood in the lee of what could charitably be called a tent. The months that had worn away at his reserve, draining what could

equally charitably be called youth, had not touched or tarnished her. She moved like a cat, a hunting cat.

When she moved. It was clear that tonight she didn’t mean to.

He shrugged. Stared at the canteen. Something as civilized as a glass had long since been rendered useless. “It’s a habit I’ve picked up,” he told her. She shrugged, stepped into the tent. He could not remember the day; could barely remember the month. But he would remember her, always.

“I’ve got nothing against drinking,” she told him, taking the canteen from hands that had gone nerveless, “but they say you shouldn’t drink alone.”

“They don’t say anything to me,” he replied, smile hollow but present, as if his face were a mask.

“They do,” she said. All humor had left her slender face. It took him a moment to realize that she was replacing the canteen’s stopper. “I think you’ve had enough.”

“For what?”

“For now.” She set it aside, Or rather, tossed it aside. Her eyes were dark, keen. She took a seat beside him. He really had had enough; he didn’t speak.

She surprised him—she always would. Caught his hand between hers. Her arm was dressed, her shoulder dressed; she had almost been killed by the crescent blade of a Southern horseman. Almost didn’t count for much.

Cook was a bit of a medic. He certainly wasn’t much of a cook. “What have you done this time?”

She laughed, and the sound was startling; it was clear and high. Most of her laughter was guttural, visceral.

“I won a bet or two. I busted Auralis down a rank,” she added. “You can’t.”

“I can’t. You can. And did.” “Funny. I wasn’t there.”

“It was. Funny,” she added. “He missed.”

With Alexis, it was hard to tell how much of her humor was based in fact. He didn’t ask. “What did he do?”

“He pinched Margie’s backside.”

Duarte laughed. It, too, startled him. Enough that he fell silent, staring at her hands. They moved across his skin, fingers drumming, silent language. A question. The wrong question.

“Yes,” he said, shaking her off. “I’m fine.” “Did you hear that we’re wanted men?”

“From Commander AKalakar. Where did you hear it?”

“From just about everyone. The Tyr’agar was enraged when we left the horses—” “Enough, Decarus.”

She stopped instantly. Because there was death in the tone. Even for her.

When she spoke, she was cautious. The way people who stepped on the mage-fields were. Each word was deliberate and slow. “It’s not easy, is it?”

His expression didn’t change.

“You were a city boy. You were always a city boy. Look at you now. You had money,” she added bitterly. “You must have. Maybe even a family.” She shook herself free of the bitterness; it was a touch too close to dangerous.

“Now you’re surrounded by murderers, thieves, rapists. Every day, and every night. You almost have to be one, just to get by.” She paused. “But you’re still there, on the thin side of the edge, behind an officer’s rank.”

“I don’t keep my hands clean.”

“No. You don’t. But outside of the fighting—where there is much—the only people you’ve killed have been Ospreys.”

“And what would you have me do, Decarus?”

“If you were any other man, I’d tell you to join us,” she whispered. She looked at the canteen; he caught the bent profile of a nose that had been broken at least once and was lovely because of it.

It wasn’t what he’d expected. Alexis never was.

“And as I’m not, as you so quaintly put it, any other man?”

“Don’t.” She stood. “I didn’t understand you the first day we met. And after the first village, I thought I might. But by the third?” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t bet money on anything you

might do. So I’ve been watching you.” “I’ve been watching you.”

Her smile was a brief, sly flash of teeth. It was a miracle that she still had them. “Not in the

same way. Or maybe not only in the same way.”

Dangerous ground, here. But he rose as well. “What have you seen?”

“You’ve come as far as you can. The rest of us? We can go farther, Primus. Some of us— Cook, Amberton—can pretend it’s in the name of duty. Most of us don’t bother. But most of us aren’t thinking either. Most of us haven’t figured out that we’re here because of you. Oh, we know we’d be feeding the vultures.” She paused, watching him. He let her worry.

But worry had its own rhythm, “Most of us think you need us because we’re killers. Most of us think you don’t need anything else from us.”

“They’re right.”

“But most of us don’t understand that we need you because you’re not.” Her hand touched the canvas beside the tent flap, and she winced. “You’ve let us fly,” she told him, looking away. “But that’s only half the hunt. Some of us are finally ready to land, Primus.”

She looked, for a moment, weary. But only a moment. “Hood and jesses,” she said softly, as if the words could actually mean something to her. “Rein us in.”

“There’s only one way to rein in the Ospreys.” She shrugged. “I know.” She started to leave. “Decarus.” Pause. “Alexis.”

And turned back. “We know what we are,” she said quietly. “Make us something more.” “If it weren’t for what you are—”

“Duarte, we can go on like this until the army slaughters us all—doesn’t much matter which army. But you can’t. I’m not asking you to do this for our sake—hells, I don’t even know what

‘our’ means. I’m not even asking you to do this for my sake, because I can keep going with the rest. I made my choice, the first time. You gave me a different choice, and I made that one, too. I thought it would help.”

He had never asked her why she had done what she had done. Didn’t want to ask now. “And did it?” This was as close as he would come.

She shrugged, looking bored. Bored Alexis was at her most restless, her most dangerous. “We fear you.”

“With reason.”

“But it’s more than just fear.” “Maybe for you.”

She shook her head. “Not just for me, Duarte. Take the risk, now. Now is the right time.” And he did. He reached out for her wrist, caught it, held it. She almost pulled away. But she

didn’t. He drew her back, into the tent. And she stayed.

* * *

She was the first of the Ospreys that he loved. The first that he trusted. Of the latter, he would find a handful more, over the swift passage of days. The former? He could take another lover if he wanted to part with his balls. Alexis never made a verbal threat, but it was clear, by the end of the following three days, that she was his.

Or more accurately, that he was hers.

This did not come as a surprise to the Ospreys, much to his chagrin. Fiara was smug enough to let slip that she’d won a betting pool, and Alexis’ icy stare was enough to let him know what the betting pool had been about. It should have angered him. It amused him instead, and short of contemplating the rage of the man who had forced them all to war, there was little that did.

He took what he could get.

And found that in the taking, his position had changed. It was a subtle change, for Duarte himself remained much at a distance, ready to kill when judicious pruning was required, but he was trained by the Order of Knowledge; he noticed it.

Alexis had not precisely made him one of them; no more had he made her stand apart. But the line that had separated them blurred, and he realized that she had become the dark face of a den mother, daggers in hand, death waiting her displeasure. And by association? He could not think of himself as father. But she spoke for him, and he allowed it.

He was busy thinking of other things that she’d said. How to rein in the Ospreys without clipping their wings and diminishing their shadow?

Now, he thought, was the time to take risks. But they were Alexis’ words.

* * *

“We’re Kalakar House Guards.”

He was prepared for the stares he received, but not prepared to listen to argument; since his expression made this clear, no one offered any.

“We’re Black Ospreys, first and foremost, but Commander AKalakar has always made it clear that we’re part of her personal force.” He paused. Let the words sink in as far as they could; given the Ospreys, he was lucky if they scratched the surface.

“The House Guards won’t argue with her. But they won’t accept us as soldiers. Or hers.” “We don’t need ’em.”

Flame shot out in a thin stream; it was met by a curse that did not quite elevate into a scream. Warning shot. He didn’t usually give them.

“We’re baby killers,” he said. “Looters. Rapists. They don’t think we know how to wield swords. They don’t think we know how to fight a war.”

“We’re fighting an Annie war.” He held his hand.

“We’ve been fighting an Annie war on Annie terms,” he told them. “And on their terms, we’ve done some damage. But we’ve done damage to slaves, buildings, a couple of horses.”

“And their riders.”

He shrugged. “Three men. Four. Against sixty.” They were the Ospreys’ favored odds.

“We’ve proven that we can go where the House Guard can’t.” He paused. Gazed out at the Ospreys who lounged against trees, flat rocks, open ground. For just a moment, he regretted the absence of Commander ABerrilya, because this was the Osprey idea of discipline, and it was a pity to waste it.

“We wanted fear. We have it. The fear of every slave girl and child in the Dominion.” This, this was not what they wanted to hear. Too bad.

“But because we’ve proven that we can survive, it’s time to up the ante.” “To what?”

“We want,” he replied, “the fear of the men who count.” “The Tyr’agar has a price on our heads.”

“Yes. For property damage.” One or two grim chuckles. Better than he’d hoped for. “But now we start in earnest. Are you ready for that? You, Sorren? Fiara?” The latter

nodded. The former looked suspicious. He wondered which of the two was the smarter. “Are you ready to actually fight? Can you watch each other’s backs when the people are running toward you, rather than away? Can you kill men who have a good chance of stopping you?”

Auralis AKalakar laughed. “I can kill pretty much anything that moves. Do they scream?” “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we find out?”

* * *

Verrus Korama came, as he often did, when the sun was fading and the sky was changing hue. But there was something in his posture this eve that made Ellora take notice. She frowned. It was an open invitation to discussion.

Instead he handed her a report. It wasn’t sealed; it wasn’t magically keyed. Not Primus Duarte’s, then. She took it, and held it before the glow of burning oil. “What is this?” She said, when her eyes stopped halfway down the page.

“I believe,” he replied quietly, “that your Ospreys are stretching their wings.” “Has the primus lost his mind?”

“There are those who would argue that happened months ago.”

Her frown was deeper than his; light made it more severe. “He took on their cavalry scouts in broad daylight.”

“Apparently.” “With pit traps.” “Apparently.”

“How the hells did he dig them without being seen?” Korama shrugged. “He’s mage-born.”

She snorted. She’d had enough of mages long before she’d set foot on dry land. Her eyes caught the thread of Weston that she’d abandoned, and she read, her pale brows rising and falling as her eyes crested the words. In the end, she laughed.

“The main body of the three armies were nowhere near the scouting party; the scouts were returning from the front. It’s unlikely that they expected this level of aggression within their own territory. The Ospreys took casualties,” Korama added.

“I can see that. How accurate are these numbers?” “Ask the birds.”

She’d sooner ask the birds than the mages who flew them. She flipped the paper over. Turned it down and read on. The last page was written in a bold hand, thick, dark strokes of ink above the plain signature of Commander ABerrilya.

“Yes,” Korama said, before she could speak. “The Commander wishes to know why you chose to deviate from your plan.”

“Tell him to get stuffed.”

At that, Korama’s brow rose. Predictably and comfortably. “I will tell him,” he said stiffly, “that he was busy on the front, and you did not have time to confer with him about your change of plans.” He turned to leave, and spoke without looking back. “Primus Duarte has changed the direction of the war; I believe it is his intent to change the face of the Black Ospreys.”

Ellora said nothing. A lot of it. But some tightness of chest relaxed, and she could allow herself to admit how worried she had become. Not for the war; that was its own burden. For Duarte. For the House Guard.

“Verrus?” “Commander.”

“Tell the quartermaster the Ospreys have lost their standard again. Tell him we need a

dozen.” It was their calling card, after all.

* * *

Auralis was swearing. In and of itself, that was not unusual. He was, however, swearing at the Ospreys under his nominal command. His swift action in the attack upon the scouting party had regained him the rank of decarus, and he seemed determined to make the most of it while he had it. Gods, knew, with Alexis’ temper and Auralis’ open lack of respect, it probably wouldn’t be long.

But the tenor of the swearing was unusual. And because it was, Duarte listened. That he used magic to do so annoyed Alexis.

“Would you prefer I go in person?” “Yes.”

She was in a mood. He could squelch it with a curt, cold word, but chose instead not to make his night miserable. He gestured, cutting the magical ties that girded the small encampment, and rose. Alexis followed, like fate. Or fury.

“…your armor is practically moving on its own!”

Duarte’s brow rose. He glanced at Alexis. She smiled, but it was brief.

“We’ve done three times what the rest of the damn Kalakar House Guard couldn’t do once. Shale, you lazy bastard, where the hell is your kit?”

There were no latrines to be dug; the Ospreys, as always, were on the move. But three of Auralis’ men were on kitchen duty by the end of the tirade. Only one attempted to argue with the decarus; he was in Cook’s tent. A reminder, as Auralis made clear, that there was a step lower

than sentrus.

“This is your work?” Duarte asked Alexis, as they watched the men begin their practice. “Not mine.”

“Why did he mention the House Guard?”

“Because we’re part of the House Guard,” she said, with a thin smile, “and he’s a competitive sonofabitch.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Love, there’s always something I’m not telling you.” But she caught his hand and squeezed it before letting it drop. Alexis’ idea of a public display of affection usually involved bruises.

“Cook’s men?” “Medic tent.”

“We don’t have a medic tent.” “We do now.”

“Alexis—”

She said, voice low, “Cook is willing. He’s knocked six heads together, he’s broken two ribs, blackened three eyes. The men,” she added. “He doesn’t usually try to hit the rest of us.”

“Alexis—”

“You told them what they had to do. You killed two men. They listened.” She looked at his face without touching it. “I want the rest of your cache,” she added.

“My what?”

“You’re not drinking so much.” “Alexis—”

“It’s worth money.”

He shrugged. She laughed. One or two of the Ospreys looked up at the sound. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Yes,” she told him, smile creasing her lips. “You aren’t?”

“I’m the primus,” he replied, with what dignity he could salvage.

“You are. But you take your chances with the rest of us. It’s enough, Duarte.”

* * *

The Ospreys lost no battles. They were chosen with care, with the subtle magery that had been, in the end, unsuitable for the warrior magi with whom he had chosen to study. They struck

quickly, moved quickly, burned forests when they needed an easy way to retreat. They carried food enough for lightning strikes, and lost days to foraging, but the days they lost were also days in which those who would walk again could take the time to find their feet.

But they always traveled back to the army; Duarte always made his report. Commander Ellora AKalakar spent more time with him in the presence of the House Guard, and he in turn, more time in the company of the House Guard. It was not always easy.

But the last time they returned, their numbers winnowed, new members waiting, the Kalakar took him aside in full view of the House Guard, and asked him the most significant question she had yet asked where others could hear her speak.

“Where are the fallen?”

The question made as much sense as any officer’s questions did; Primus Duarte stared at her for a moment, as if trying to translate the words into a language he better understood.

“You’ve spent little time in the ranks of my House Guard,” she said, pitching her voice so that it carried. The wind helped. “So I’ll make myself clear. Bring the fallen home.”

“It will cost us time,” he said at last, as the full import of her words made themselves clear. “Bring them home,” she said again, “or tell us where you left them.”

“Beneath the banner of the Black Ospreys,” he told her.

She nodded. Turned to Korama.

* * *

Aside from the growing outrage of the quartermaster, Ellora heard few complaints. And she listened for them when she walked among her own. The House Guard spoke quietly of the Black Ospreys, but every now and then, they let the unit’s colors blend with their own.

The black bird of prey was scattered across the front. The Ospreys chose to leave it when they left the scene of battle. It was their signature. And it was hers.

* * *

Devran ABerrilya was in a sour mood. Although she knew it was petty, she was satisfied. Commander Allen was diffident and calm. The map spoke for them.

“He’s shaken the confidence of the Tyr’agar,” the Commander said. “The Tyr has moved two of his armies onto the plateau, and one into the valley.”

“Valley’s no good for cavalry,” she said with a frown. “Better for magic.”

“There isn’t a surfeit of magery from within the enemy’s rank.” He circled a large area of

the map. “We can approach the army on two sides.” “When?”

“Three days. Maybe four.” She nodded.

“Commander AKalakar?” “Commander Allen.”

“Good work.”

* * *

“The dead don’t give a shit,” Auralis said, with a grunt. Fiara’s complaint was more succinct.

“The commander does.” “Tell her to carry them.”

Duarte’s expression was about as soft as stone. “She does,” he said. And surprised himself by believing it. No one else offered any argument, and this surprised him as well. The Ospreys had taken the time to bury their dead when they had it. They no longer left the wounded to fend for themselves. Once or twice, Duarte himself had stepped in to cloak the retreat of those who dragged the fallen behind them; he could not hide the blood trail left for long, but it was always long enough.

It took them an extra two days—two day’s worth of food—to reach the army base. The Kalakar was waiting for them.

The House Guard, in full dress, was behind her.

She ordered the House Guards forward, and they obeyed in silence, joining the Ospreys; the difference between the field and the camp evident in the state of their surcoats, the length of their stubble, the overall smell of a road that was carved by feet alone.

The House Guards took the dead. They handled them with care, with a solemnity that even the Ospreys couldn’t have managed. Or so Duarte would have bet—which was probably why he didn’t.

The dead served as a reminder to the living. They were accorded the full honors of the fallen, and if the medals that decorated them briefly meant nothing at all to their corpses, if they should have meant nothing to their comrades, they did.

* * *

“We need the Ospreys,” Ellora said quietly. “Where?”

“With the House Guards.” “With the army?”

She nodded. He waited.

“We need the colors,” she said, surrendering. “But you built them, Duarte. I would never have said that they would become what they’ve become. I would have been willing to bet,” that word again, “that they’d give up the flag to the House Guard.”

“They might.”

She raised a pale brow. Her eyes were a shade of gray-blue, clear, far-seeing. “Ask them,” she said. “But ask carefully. Don’t be surprised at their answer.” She paused. “And don’t kill them for it, either.”

“She wants what?”

* * *

Duarte faced Alexis across about five feet of space. No desk to hide behind, no chair to sit in, no bed to lie on. The sun was high above them, and around them, in the loose, languid circle Commander ABerrilya so despised, the Ospreys waited.

“The Tyr’agar has moved his armies into position,” Duarte said, speaking, as Ellora

AKalakar had commanded, with caution. “This could be it.” “What could be what?”

“The Annies aren’t well-organized. The Tyr’s armies are, but they’re not the only men on the field. We’ll have armies across the plateau and in the valleys, and the commanders think the Tyr’agnate, at least, will be present in the valley.”

“And the Tyr’agar?”

He shrugged. “Less clear. We’re not a large unit. We aren’t accustomed to working within the main body of any army. We’re not used to battlefield orders. The Commander recognizes this.

“But she wants our colors to fly on the field. I think,” he added, taking a risk, “that if it were up to her, they would be only our colors.”

“And she’d take the colors without the unit?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good to me,” Auralis said, stretching. Duarte considered busting him to sentrus before Alexis could. It had become a bit of a contest—one of many. “But then again, I wouldn’t mind mooning Commander ABerrilya.”

The mention of his name always had an effect on the Ospreys. Usually it wasn’t useful. Today, it might be.

“Realistically,” Duarte continued, “it’s the Osprey that bears weight. There probably isn’t a man in the Annie armies that won’t recognize it. And there probably isn’t a man in the armies that won’t make straight for it, either. Not a good bet.”

“You’d let her do this?”

He met Alexis’ cold, cold glare. “She isn’t standing the unit down,” he said at last. “But the House Guard aren’t Ospreys. We are.”

“We’re sixty, give or take a few. They number in the hundreds, and within the third army, even that’s insignificant. But the Black Osprey isn’t.”

“No.”

“One Decarus.”

He turned to face the others.

Auralis shrugged. “I’m in, if you are.”

Two, Cook nodded. Fiara spit. Margie smiled.

“They’re ours,” Alexis said, meaning it. “Whatever that bird means, we made it. Where are you going, Primus?”

“The commander is waiting,” he said, with gravity. “I’ll tender her our response.”

* * *

Twelve years later, Duarte stood beside the woman who had taken her House, becoming the Kalakar in the process. Across the long, dark stretch of broken valley, trees riven and fallen over bodies that it would take days to recover, he could see the standard of the Tyr’agnate of Callesta. Ramiro kai di’Callesta stood beneath it.

“Do you hate him?” Ellora asked. It wasn’t really a question.

Enemies become allies, and allies, enemies, with the turn of time and circumstance. “No. What we did, we felt we had to do. And what he did showed his mettle, even then.”

“He was younger. He lost his father in early fighting.” “He was no fool. Not then. Not now.”

“No,” she said softly. Remembering. “He knew what the colors would mean to the Tyr’agar, and the armies of the South.” She was careful not to use the derogatory term Annie. But for the

moment, it was difficult.

* * *

Sixty men. Three standards. It was overkill. It was, in retrospect, an early target. It was also the only target worth striking in the South. Black Osprey. Northern Osprey.

Northern army. They were to be positioned in the valley in two days’ time. Two days was a

long time, for the Ospreys. Too long to listen to the military patrols. Too long to pretend that

they had a hope of maintaining Imperial discipline. Duarte had them on training runs through the valleys’ height—the valleys that the Imperial army had claimed as their own. Beneath the heights, the fields lay, and behind them. The blackened ruins of villages that had been destroyed by either side. No food there; nothing of value.

He reined them in; they let him. They really were birds of prey. His, he thought. But he thought, as well, of the Commander.

She wanted the standard; he’d given her the unit. He wondered if she would surrender the latter to battle. The Black Ospreys had done what no unit had honorably done in the history of the Empire. What better way to lose it? To the Annies. To the real war.

She could say a eulogy as she laid the colors to rest.

Alexis touched his shoulder, and he turned, catching her hand. Thinking of death, of her death. It hurt him in ways that he had never thought to express. Wordless, she kissed the side of his face. “Do you trust her?” she asked, her lips beside his ear. The reason, he realized, for her open display of affection.

“She left the choice to us,” he replied. It wasn’t much of an answer. “She’d be rid of us,” Alexis continued.

He put a finger over her moving lips. “Don’t go there,” he told her. “I’m not allowed to go where you go?”

He realized that she might hit him, but took the risk anyway; he caught her and held her tightly, her chain shirt making marks across his chest.

* * *

But they didn’t have time to reach the field before that battle started. Hubris, on their part really. If they could go where the enemy was, the enemy could approach them in a like fashion.

They had warning, but not much; they were in the place where the valley narrowed, and the trees along its twisting paths made poor haven for cavalry. The sound of horses were few, the snapping of branches, the sounds of any unit’s movement.

But the banner that appeared from between trees that had grown apart, as if they were an open palm, was no Imperial banner. It was red, and across it, the sun in gold shone, eight distinct rays catching and scattering light. The standard of a Tyr’agnate.

And the Tyr’agnate, much like the Ospreys, did not suffer his standard to be raised when he was not upon the field.

Poor field, narrow field. And through it now, the war horses of Averda came, great, armed destriers. Crescent blades had been drawn in silence; Duarte had just enough time to wonder how long they had waited.

He lifted his voice in a cry that had nothing to do with training; it was primal, but unmistakable: his own. He had magic; he used it, sent a flare straight up, where it burst in a gout of traveling flame, like a blossoming flower.

The army was close; he knew it was close.

But not so close as the Tyran of Averda’s ruling lord. Against men such as these, the

Ospreys had only triumphed by planning, by stealth, by ambush.

And the canny man who ruled these lands—who had lost so much to the Ospreys—had at last learned to speak their tongue. There was a precious irony in that. And death.

* * *

Auralis drew both swords, roaring as he did. The dignity of rank deserted him, as did the months of training, discipline, the months of odd leadership that he had been forced to surrender and return to, like a child’s bouncing ball. Around him, the men and women who had started to panic froze; they knew what this meant, and the familiarity of it provided what Auralis himself no longer could: command. Authority.

He had no fear.

Instead, he laughed, wild and reckless, and he used the cover of trees to advantage against the horsed men who came with their swords. Had they polearms, it might have gone differently.

But even without, Duarte could count, could add, and could certainly subtract. He turned to Alexis, an instinctive movement that had nothing—and everything—to do with the ambush. She was already gone. He wanted to grab her, to hold her, to hide them both. But it was wrong, and

had she remained, she would have failed the Ospreys.

She knew it, damn her.

He used fire where fire could be used; he used the ability to hide where it could be used. Both strategic. This was not unlike an exercise, except in one regard: death was certain rather than a danger.

He welcomed it, as Auralis had done, but for different reason. There were no slaves here, no women, no children, no old men. There were killers. Northern killers, Southern killers, with almost nothing to separate them.

The Ospreys began their plummet.

* * *

Ellora AKalakar saw the flare as it erupted in the sky. So did the rest of the army. As a body, the army moved slowly. Not so the Commander. Verrus Korama was by her side in an instant.

She pushed past him, but he caught her arm. Held her gaze.

So many things, in it. Too many. She knew what he offered, and she hated herself for just a moment, because she saw, clearly, that after the war the Ospreys would be a liability. Had always known it.

“I told them,” she said, tearing herself free. “They’re mine. Call up the House Guards—get them moving. Now.” His smile was its own reward; he was gone almost before she’d finished speaking but not before she’d drawn her sword.

Hold on, Duarte. Hold on.

He didn’t count the fallen.

* * *

He could barely count the living. Mages were seldom required to stand in the middle of the battle; they had other uses. Fiara was wounded, but the man who had wounded her was dead; she could not bring herself to kill the horse that she had injured.

He could, and did.

He sent fire skyward again; it was the last time he could afford to spend power on such a display. He had never bothered with horns; none of the Ospreys had. Theirs had been a language that was best used in silence. Now? Screaming. Death. Slaughter.

“Alexis!”

She was there. Gone. He drew his sword, and followed her, forcing himself to think. To use the talents that had been too meager for the warrior magi, in a different life. He called the Ospreys to him, pitching his voice in Weston, aware that in so doing, he was also calling the enemy.

But the Ospreys arrived first, and he saw that Cook carried both the standard and Margie. Only the standard would remain; he could see death clearly where Cook wouldn’t.

There were trees on all sides; they were a narrow formation that would make the horses impossible to utilize. Men would have to dismount, to fight here.

And they did.

Minutes might have passed; he couldn’t say. He cursed the commander in silence, but only in silence; he saw that the Ospreys had planted their standard—his standard—in the damp, thick ground of the forest shade. They surrounded it as if it were the only thing that mattered.

To the Annies, it was.

They began to carve their way toward it. They didn’t have time to be vicious; where they could spare movement or motion, they were, but they were focused. On the standard. On the Ospreys who, twenty now, protected it with their lives.

It had always been something worth killing for. When had it become something worth dying

for?

* * *

She hadn’t used the sword in years. Not this way. But she used it now, and by her side, her

House Guard, silent and grim, used theirs. She had not waited to gather them all; she had taken only those who were already prepared to fight.

They were prepared. The moment they glimpsed the standard of the Tyr’agnate, the moment realization dawned, they were hers, an extension of her rage and her anger. An extension of her pride. She lost them as she fought; the living stepped over the injured and the dead, moving inexorably down the flank of the eastern valley toward its center.

Bowmen would come; they would come late.

She paused for just a moment, and lifted her horn to her lips.

* * *

Duarte heard it.

He thought that loss of blood and loss of power must have addled his wits; that hope must

have crazed them. The Annies didn’t like to fight women, but they had long since stopped thinking of Ospreys as women. Fiara stood bleeding and Alexis stood beside her; they were back to back, holding short swords. They might have fallen had Auralis not intervened; Duarte couldn’t.

He had been left to guide them, his words reaching them over the din of clashing sword, the rush of sound. It was almost too much; his hand gripped the standard pole for balance, and the Black Osprey fluttered against his forehead.

Three men fell; he could clearly count the Tyran that approached. They, too, were injured;

their armor was rent, their swords notched and bloody. They hardly seemed like men at all.

But neither had the Ospreys, in their early evening flights. Fire flared at their eye level, glinting off helms as they fell back. One more, he thought grimly. Just one, and he would be finished.

But it didn’t come.

Instead, seeping through the encroaching ranks of the Callestan Tyran, came surcoats and colors he recognized. Men, he thought. And a woman.

Although she was yards away, a hundred yards, maybe, he could see her face. She was not a mage; she wore a helm. But her skin was pale, and her movements certain; her eyes were blue

and clear. She was a commander; it was almost impossible that she could be here, at the forefront of her House Guards, face bleeding where Annies, had tried to slow her down.

But she kept coming, and as she did, he heard the Ospreys raise voice, saw them find a strength that had almost abandoned them. They called out her name, as if it were a battle cry and not a prayer.

She had come for them; they were hers.

And Duarte AKalakar surrendered them with a tired grace.

* * *

Two thirds of the Ospreys were dead when the Callestans called their retreat. Scattered among them, dying, were Kalakar House Guards. Cook, bent among them, treated them all as if they were his. He looked once to see the standard, and he offered it the grim salute of a nod, no more.

The commander of the third army made her way to Duarte AKalakar, and only when she reached him did she doff helm. Her face was a mess. It would heal, and given her medics and her

resources, it would heal well—but he memorized the new wounds that cut across familiar silver scars; these had been taken, and given, for the Ospreys.

She said, “You didn’t think I’d come.”

It was a gentle accusation. As gentle an accusation as she was capable of making.

He bowed head. She raised it, bending to lift his chin. “AKalakar,” she said. It was the title of all men—and women—present. “Take your standard. Take the men who can walk beside it. The third army is waiting for us.” She grimaced. “And probably not with a lot of patience.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I would have spared you this,” he said at last.

She said, “I know. But I’m Ellora AKalakar.” She lifted her head, and added, “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Decarus Alexis AKalakar, and she’s waiting for you.”

He turned, in pain, and pain was good.

Alexis caused more.

* * *

He stared at the Kalakar now. Helmless, in the dark, she might have been the same woman. The same woman under whom the remains of the Black Ospreys had served; the same woman who had taken them, broken, into the House Guards when war had at last come to its close. She had not left them to die within the valleys; she had not abandoned them before the military tribunal.

But in the darkness at the close of this second war, she surrendered at last to the inevitable. “You served me,” she told him.

Past tense. He heard it clearly; it was deliberate. “Yes.”

“Who will you serve, now?”

“I don’t know.” He bowed to her. “But Alexis belonged in the South, Kalakar. This was her home, and I brought her back to it.”

“She changed.”

It hurt him. “So did the war.” “Duarte—”

“I don’t want to leave here here,” he added. “Not alone. She was the heart of the Ospreys.” “So were you.”

He shrugged. He had to take his leave of the Kalakar, and it was a parting that he had

foreseen twelve years past. When it had failed to happen, he had sworn he would serve her forever.

So much for oaths.

“Alexis is waiting,” she told him gently. He nodded.

“And the House Guard is waiting as well.”

And nodded again. “Let me carry her,” he said.

She hesitated for just a moment, and then she gestured. Verrus Korama came to stand by her side, as he often did. He carried something in his hands, and she took it from him, dismissing

him as wordlessly as she had summoned him.

Turning to Duarte AKalakar, she gave him what she carried: The flag of the Black Ospreys.

THE END

Short Stories by Michelle West and Michelle Sagara

The first six stories released are connected to the Essalieyan Universe of the novels I write for DAW as Michelle West. Since those are my most asked-for short stories, those are the stories I wanted to make available first. The rest of the stories will be released in chronological order from the date of their first appearance, which are listed in brackets beside the titles, along with

the anthology in which they first appeared. All of the stories have new introductions (which will probably come through in the samples if you’ve already read the stories but want to read those.)

In the Essalieyan universe:

1. Echoes (2001, Assassin Fantastic)

2. Huntbrother (2004, Sirius, the Dog Star)

3. The Black Ospreys (2005, Women of War)

4. The Weapon (2005, Shadow of Evil)

5. Warlord (1998, Battle Magic)

6. The Memory of Stone (2002, 30th Anniversary DAW Fantasy)

* * *

7. Birthnight (1992, Christmas Bestiary)

8. Gifted (1992, Aladdin, Master of the Lamp)

9. Shadow of a Change (1993, Dinosaur Fantastic)

10.            For Love of God (1993, Alternate Warriors)

11.            Hunger (1993, Christmas Ghosts)

12.            Four Attempts at a Letter (1994, By Any Other Fame)

13.            Winter (1994, Deals with the Devil)

14.            What She Won’t Remember (1994, Alternate Outlaws)

15.            The Hidden Grove (1995, Witch Fantastic)

16.            Ghostwood (1995, Enchanted Forests)

17.            When a Child Cries (1996, Phantoms of the Night)

18.            The Sword in the Stone (1997, Alternate Tyrants)

19.            Turn of the Card (1997, Tarot Fantastic)

20.            The Law of Man (1997, Elf Fantastic)

21.            Flight (1997, Return of the Dinosaurs)

22.            The Vision of Men (1997, The Fortune Teller)

23.            By the Work, One Knows (1997, Zodiac Fantastic)

24.            Under the Skin (1997, Elf Magic)

25.            The Dead that Sow (1997, Wizard Fantastic)

26.            Kin (1998, Olympus)

27.            Step on the Crack (1998, Black Cats and Broken Mirrors)

28.            Diamonds (1998, Alien Pets)

29.            Sunrise (1999, A Dangerous Magic)

30.            Elegy (1999, Moon Shots)

31.            Return of the King (1999, Merlin)

32.            Work in Progress (1999, Alien Abductions)

33.            Water Baby (1999, Earth, Air, Fire and Water)

34.            Faces Made of Clay (2000, Mardi Gras Madness)

35.            Sacrifice (2000, Spell Fantastic)

36.            Shelter (2000, Perchance to Dream)

37.            Pas de Deux (2000, Guardian Angels)

38.            Déjà Vu (2001, Single White Vampire Seeks Same)

39.            To Speak With Angels (2001, Villains Victorious)

40.            Lady of the Lake (2001, Out of Avalon)

41.            Truth (2001, The Mutant Files)

42.            The Last Flight (2001, Creature Fantastic)

43.            The Knight of the Hydan Athe (2002, Knight Fantastic)

44.            Legacy (2002, Familiars)

45.            The Nightingale (2002, Once Upon a Galaxy)

46.            A Quiet Justice (2002, Vengeance Fantastic)

47.            The Augustine Painters (2002, Apprentice Fantastic)

48.            How to Kill an Immortal (2002, The Bakka Anthology)

49.            Fat Girl (2002, Oceans of the Mind VI, ezine)

50.            Diary (2003, The Sorcerer’s Academy)

51.            Dime Store Rings (2004, The Magic Shop)

52.            To The Gods Their Due (2004, Conqueror Fantastic)

53.            The Stolen Child (2004, Faerie Tales)

54.            The Rose Garden (2004, Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City)

55.            The Colors of Augustine (2004, Summoned to Destiny)

56.            Unicorn Hunt (2005, Maiden, Mother Crone)

57.            The Snow Queen* (2005, Magic Tails; with Debbie Ohi)

58.            Shahira (2006, Children of Magic)

59.            Choice* (1997, Sword of Ice: Friends of Valdemar)

60.            Childhood’s End (1998, Tad William’s Mirror World)

61.            Winter Death* (2003, The Sun in Glory: Friends of Valdemar)

*Set in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar, as the anthology titles suggest

For more information—or just to say hello!—I can be found online at: Twitter:  @msagara

Facebook:  Michelle Sagara

My blog about my written works: Michelle West & Michelle Sagara