Her armor fit like a glove.
Karin’s body had changed in the decades since the Second Crusade. Though muscles still rippled under her wrinkled skin, her arms and legs had grown thin, and the boy tightened the cracked leather straps as far as they’d go to keep them snug against her gambeson. It still reeked of brimstone and orc bile.
But the steel plates shone as brightly as her Goddess-touched eyes, filigree traced through them by an armorer who’d trained the one who’d trained the Order’s current blacksmith. She stood straight and proud for the first time in years. Her strength seemed to return as her fingers wrapped around her greatsword’s grip. Now the initiate was saddling a horse—not her horse—Redoubt was too old for the long ride and the battle at its end. But a horse.
No. A pair of horses.
He’d finished loading her saddlebags. Enough supplies for a half-day ride out, the fighting, an overnight, and the slower return trip. There would be a return trip—there always had been—and Karin would go back to being ‘Great Grandmother’ Karin. But for now, she felt thirty years younger, a hale fifty-and-some, able and strong—a Sword, not a great-grandmother.
But the boy…
Aldric—that was the boy’s name—had his own bag over his shoulder, his own clean gambeson on, and his own sword. A simple longsword paired with a heavy steel shield. His armor shone, but the steel was serviceable, not a silver, steel, and golden mirror. An initiate’s gear, not a paladin’s. Was he to be the Goddess’s Shield? The Goddess hadn’t chosen him, and he was so young. “This is my quest,” she said, staring at him.
“Of course it is. But I’ve got one too,” Aldric said. “The Highlord charged me with keeping you safe, which means being your Shield and finishing your quest if you…if you fall.”
“Damn him,” Karin muttered. The Goddess’s power flowed through her—not as much of it as on their campaign to drive back the orcs and free the kingdom to the river’s far bank—but enough for this quest. The Highlord had no business assigning an initiate to watch her back. She put one foot in her stirrup and, with some effort, hoisted herself up into the saddle. “Keep up, keep quiet, and keep at my back. The Goddess protects.”
“The Goddess avenges,” Aldric replied seriously. He strapped his sword and shield to his horse’s saddlebag, and Karin watched as he pulled himself easily onto his charger’s back. Mentally, she revised her assessment. While he was a boy—he’d always be a boy to her, he was so young—he was also a mostly-trained initiate of the Order. He was strong enough, and with the Goddess’s help, he’d be a suitable Shield.
Besides, she wasn’t campaigning against orcs or Calthurax’s undead legions this time. This was a single village being raided by a warren of goblins that had gotten a little too bold.
The goblins would most likely break and run before a Sword and Shield. And if they had to fight, they wouldn’t be as brutal as the orcs or undead—or the crusade into Hell itself.
Aldric would be fine. She hoped.
She spurred her mare toward the monastery’s gates, saddlebag thumping and Aldric three horse-lengths behind. Goddess, it felt right to be riding toward evil with a Shield at her back.
Karin felt alive.
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Karin’s ass hurt.
Her hips and teeth hurt from the bouncing she’d been through for the last two hours. Her legs hurt from her mare’s wide body. But mostly, her ass hurt. She didn’t have the padding between skin and bone she’d had on her last campaign. A curse almost passed her lips, and she bit it back; she’d forgotten what a long ride in full harness felt like. How could she have forgotten? This had been her life.
She swung her leg gingerly over the mare’s back and lowered herself out of the saddle. Her decades of training and practice said she should be able to do it one way, but her joints forced her into a different one. She hit the ground awkwardly, but recovered. “Six for the horses to recover, then we’re riding to the village. Be ready for fighting, but hope we don’t have to,” she said.
Aldric dropped off his horse.
His legs didn’t buckle when he hit the ground. The horse and sweat smell rolled off of him as he stomped into the woods, his armor clanking as he undid his belt. She looked away. Boys would be boys.
While he found a tree, she quickly rubbed down the too-hot horses and led them to a creek between the willows. Hers fought her the whole time, and it took almost two minutes to get them to the water, but once there, they drank willingly enough. The old expression about horses and water flitted through her mind, and she smiled.
‘You can lead a horse to water,’ her father would say when she was a girl, ‘but you can’t make it drink.’ She’d proved him wrong; the leading was the hard part. Horses wanted to drink after a long ride. What they didn’t want to do was move.
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“Alright, five minutes,” she said as Aldric returned, fastening his belt.
“What will the battle be like?” the young man—not a boy, Karin reminded herself, not a boy—asked.
She stared at him. His beard was a wisp of peach fuzz; he was young, but he’d been through a dozen full-contact training battles. His brow bore the mark of someone who hadn’t ridden the owlbear yet but who knew everything about it except the ride itself. She could be honest. She had to be honest.
“Battle is hell. If you survive long enough, you’ll watch people you know die and not be able to save them. But this one won’t be as bad. You’ll get a taste for it and take up the Sword, or you won’t and keep the Shield. This one’s only against goblins, and the villagers can probably hold their own once we’re there.”
“Can they?” Aldric said.
Karin didn’t say anything for a while. Something tickled her nose. A smell. A familiar smell she took a minute to identify. Then she cleared her throat. “I hope so. The air smells like smoke. We need to move.” She pulled herself onto the mare. It felt harder than it had the first time.
Aldric smiled wanly as they started riding again. Karin wished she’d had more time to stretch her sore muscles.
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The smoke stench didn’t fade as they rode closer to Riverbend. It got worse, filling their nostrils and stinging their eyes as they approached the village tucked in a clearing beside the Fairwine River. Karin glared at the fires burning along the village’s thick wall.
“Are we too late, Great-Grandmother?” Aldric asked. He’d pulled his shield and longsword from their bindings, and now they hung from straps at his shoulder and waist, but he hadn’t drawn his blade.
Karin’s greatsword hung from her hand, blade naked and shining in the late afternoon sun, and if the tip sunk a bit lower than she’d have liked, Aldric didn’t seem to notice. He looked to her for guidance. So, despite the gnawing worry as the fires smoldered against the thick wood and packed earth, she shook her head. “No. Come. The Goddess protects.”
He nodded and, finally, drew his blade. Karin breathed a sigh of relief. The owlbear needed to be ridden, and Aldric hadn’t frozen up yet. He’d ride it. She spurred her mare into a quick gallop and barreled toward Riverbend, her Shield’s faster, lighter horse easily keeping pace behind her.
They hit the goblins like an avenging bolt from the heavens.
A moment later, Karin hit the ground with a crash like thunder.
Goblins swarmed around her. Swarmed over her. Pinned her sword arm to the ground and pounded on her plate-mail with crude spears and axes. She roared. The battle was upon her, and the Goddess’s wrath took over. She shook goblins free as her joints screamed below fifty pounds of steel. She raised her greatsword overhead. Brought it down on one in bone-and-hide armor. It split beneath her blow, and Karin’s sore limbs felt new life. This was what she was made for. Battle. Blood. Glorious, righteous combat against the monsters that would threaten her sister’s family and those like them.
Her blade moved almost of its own accord. Intercepted a crude axe that dripped blood. Not goblin blood. Not hers. Not Aldric’s, either. He still sat on his horse, longsword beating at the sea of green around him. Where had they all come from? Her blade lashed out and caught another goblin in the shoulder. Took its arm off in a fountain of red-brown blood. The backswing cleaved into another, slicing a gaping wound through hides and pockmarked green-gray flesh.
The Goddess protects. She’d said those words a hundred hundred times. Never avenges—always protects—a reminder that the whirl of battle and the thrill of blood weren’t her purpose. Just as Shields needed a reminder that blood and wrath were necessary. But Swords had to be careful—the battle wrath was always just below the surface. Caution and restraint first. Then violence, but always controlled.
So, when the sword thrashed out its arc of destruction, she had the presence of mind to stop it an inch from the farmer’s neck.
He lay on the ground, the lower half of the goblin astride him. The upper half lay a few feet away, and its blood had splattered across Karin’s shining, already-dented armor. No armor survived contact with the enemy—not unmarked. She pulled herself out of her wrath-filled heart with all her will and let her mind take over.
First, the farmer. Then, the fighting.
He was wounded. Perhaps fatally. The spear jammed into his stomach would take a miracle to recover from, and Karin’s racing heart tried to take control again. To avenge his death. Had it always beat so hard in a fight? His flail—a farming tool not built for war but devastating enough—lay nearby, red-brown blood on it, and so did a couple of dead goblins.
She knelt, feeling Aldric loom over her with his heavy steel shield. He’d make a proper Goddess’s Shield someday. He knew what to do. She hoped she’d get to see it: Aldric, a full-fledged paladin, striding across some flame-scarred battlefield, holding the line behind his Sword. The boy would be immovable.
The Goddess’s power filled her. Silver-white light. Warmth. So much warmth. It soothed her aching muscles and filled her vision. And a soprano voice that echoed through her bones and out her throat. “In my name, child of the Goddess, accept this gift of healing hands.”
Karin’s right hand pressed into the wound. Her left pulled on the crude spear—little more than a branch with a sharp rock for a point. Her greatsword lay across her lap, blade out of the dirt. This was her purpose: to heal, protect, and hold her battle wrath in check with the Goddess’s power and wisdom.
Aldric slew another goblin. His grunt felt miles away and in her ear at the same time.
Holy energy flowed through Karin in an endless torrent. It burned at her more than the smoke in her eyes, finding her weak points—and Goddess, she had so many weak points. So many more than the last time she’d channeled the light. Her arms burned. Her fingers ached.
And the man’s wound slowly knit back together. The Goddess’s light wouldn’t stop burning at Karin’s joints until the man was fully healed. He sagged into the mud-covered road, eyes mercifully shut and quiet tears leaving trails in the muck and ash on his stubble-strewn face. He looked peaceful despite the blood that soaked his linen shirt. Rested. He’d live.
The silver-white glow left Karin’s eyes, and she pushed herself up to a knee, gripping her greatsword with shaking fingers. There were more goblins to fight, but her joints ached, and the Goddess’s light had taken more out of her than it should have—than it ever had before.
She wanted to fight.
The battle wrath wasn’t enough, though, and as Aldric did battle against the remaining goblins, it was all Karin could do to stand over the wounded farmer and hold the greatsword menacingly overhead. When she’d caught her breath, she’d rejoin the fight.
It would have to be enough.
It wouldn’t ever be enough.