Gambit of the Battle Maiden

[Katharina]

Login: Camus Black
Character: Shallyah Rethshinei

Opening

At times, one is left to wonder if there are limits to depravity in this world. That was the thought of Koaresh Rethshinei upon finding the pillaged remains of a small encampment set up by a caravan of travellers that only had the intention to find shelter during the night in a jagged gorge.

Koaresh was a human, mature and scarred, possibly in his late forties. His body was honed and shaped as a weapon itself, muscular and hardened by the hazards of life in the cold dales and countless hours of physical strain. While his features appeared that of a barbarian, he carried no clan markings or adornments. Wearing only a studded leather armor, fur boots and a greataxe, he had taken to a wandering life of solitude, and pursued personal goals.

At the time, he had been searching the dales for a brutal barbarian tribe led by a bloodthirsty shaman, in which all members were men. And he seemed to be right on track. The sight that he had been presented with was breathtaking. Amongst the chaos, the caravan and tents had been burned, and the bodies of the men had been beheaded. Women, while only had their throats slit with some sort of short bladed weapon, had suffered a far worse fate judging the state of their ragged and torn clothes.

None of them had been been honored neither in life, or death by their assailants. Not a prayer, burial or even the minor decency of an incineration had been granted to them. While not a priest, Koaresh tended the bodies with as much dignity as he could before continuing his trek in the mountains. It would take many cold nights for him to find his destination, and he had to follow the track before it went cold.

But snowstorm and blizzard were commonplace in the area, and it took still many months for Koaresh to stumble upon the tribe's camp. When he finally did so, he spent days observing their movements, the income and outcome of men, their numbers, their guarding posts, sleeping and eating habits. And when the time was right, the hour before dawn, he struck. The tribe appeared to consist of thirteen men. Thirteen that fell one after another to his great axe's blade.

He had chosen the precise time when the men of the camp would be spred over and ususpecting what was to descend upon them. Only three of them weren't sleeping at the moment of the assault, and even though he attacked no man in their sleep, the precission and speed of the attack caused tremendous confusion. His planning had gone as far as to evaluate and estimate how long would take him to defeat each of the men so he could avoid being flanked and overwhelmed.

Koaresh's skill with his great axe did the rest. His swings were true and precise, in a style that was not based on mere brute force. While there was certainly muscle behind every swing, there was also an impressive technique, unexpected elegance for a man of his build and size. There was a kind of symbiosis between man and weapon. The last to fall was the shaman, who died in a shriek of pain before Koaresh found that the tribe had been tainted by the worship of a demonic totem.

With the small tainted tribe removed, and with it the threat it posed, Koaresh used the first lights of the morning, detail which he had also planned, to search the camp. What he had not planned is what he found in one of the tents. In a corner, a young woman cowered, scared and sobbing. She did not look anythng like a barbarian, her hair was snow white and judging by the little he could see in the dim-lit tent, she appeared to have been very was beautiful, but that beauty seemed to have waned due to physical and mental punishment. Koaresh approached the woman trying to appear friendly, when she began to convulse.

Koaresh spotted then that the woman was holding her bulging stomach, and understood the situation quickly. Much moreso when he noticed that the woman had broken her water. He quickly rushed forth to unbind the woman and assist her with the delivery. Having a closer look, Koaresh determined that the woman was definitely not barbarian. The maths almost made too much sense remembering the assaulted caravan he found roughly nine months before that day. In being a male only tribe, they had taken the most beautiful of the women in that caravan to use her for breeding, and had given the woman a life of slavery, stripped of any dignity. She probably wasn't the first, and would have not been the last, if Koaresh hadn't put an end to the tainted barbarians.

Koaresh instincts guided him in the process, and eventually he held a healthy baby girl, with big, curious grey eyes. For a moment, he got lost into those eyes as they looked back into his, until he heard the voice of the woman in front of him. "Sha… llyah..." she called, as she had stabbed herself with a knife-like tool that was within her reach after she was unbound, ending her own life quickly. It appeared that the woman, humilliated, stripped of her dignity and having seen how all her family was slaughtered with her own eyes, had no will to continue living. All she had at that moment, her newborn daughter, was given to the man that finally allowed her to put an end to many long months of anguish and suffering.

Push

Koaresh had been deeply touched by what he had witnessed and could not abandon the newborn child. He had considered leaving the child at the doorstep of some tribe or settlement, but that would leave him the uneasy feeling of not knowing what exactly happened to her and there were likely other reasons too that drove him to take upon himself the responsibility of raising the child as his own that he would not share. The years had passed, and while he had no notions on raising children, he did the best he could. He had named her Shallyah, as he understood the dying words of her mother were her wish for a name to her child. But Shallyah's raising had not been a pleasant one. Koaresh was a lone wolf, and a nomad. Always on the move, always after purposes that his own conscience dictated him.

The little girl had proven to be resilient to the environmental hazards of life in the cold vales, surely aided by the barbarian blood in her veins, and made it past her early years. But the overprotection that Koaresh offered her ended as soon as Shallyah was able to walk, eat and think reasonably for herself. Koaresh had to show her what life is like too early, because the setting in which she was growing would not forgive anyone out of compassion, not even a child like her. He could not keep babysitting and overprotecting her, specially not in the cold vales of the north.

The combination of genes in Shallyah had given her a fast metabolism, and even at the earliest ages her body had an athletic and developped build, not only in shape and size, but also in her precocious ability to coordinate her movements in stressed situations, such as running or jumping. At five years old she was already capable of arming simple traps to hunt snow rabbits and small birds, and make campfires by herself to cook them. At six years old, she held her first weapon, a short battle axe that she was taught to use with two hands.

While she didn't really swing the axe against anything alive for a few years more, she was instructed to always carry it with her, get used to its weight and make it a constant partner of her life. With time, she proved very proficent and efficient with her weapon under the teachings of Koaresh, and she grew ambitious and curious on her choice for preys to hunt. The first time she she dared to try a timid young deer. In time she went for young stags. The months and the years passed, and she made her first attempts to hunt adult animals with significant success as the axe became an extension of her own body. During these years she learned to respect her weapon and treat it as part of herself, to adress it as a part of herself, and not an object. She was taught to care for her axe and to understand it, for anyone could use a two handed axe - even creatures like ogres or trolls - but to truly master a weapon is something at the reach of very few. And to understand her weapon she had to listen to it.

"Listen to her, Shallyah. She will lead you to your mark as you lead her into battle. Hear her whisper when you swing her in the air, for she tells you if your grip is firm, and if the angle of your swing is right, and if your mass center is balanced, and if your footing will hold true. Hear her complain when you miss your target, for she feels bitternesse as you do, and asks you eager to prepare yourself for the next swing. Heed her muttering when she is deflected for she advices you with every little creek and rattle how you should aim your next attack. And when you do hit your mark, do heed her sobbing and watch her weep bloody tears from the wounds of your foe, for she, like you, does not enjoy ending lives, but knows that it is part of surviving and fighting for what you believe in, and thus unavoidable. Only when you have learned to listen, only when you understand her you will be in the way to mastering her, and mastering yourself."

In that, Shallyah's childhood was all but skipped for to survive the unforgiving vales and tundras of the north, every aspect of her growth and development had to be precocious and there was no room for child games. This, also denied Shallyah the social growth that most children had, as the only company she ever kept was her putative father and mentor. Being a lonewolf himself, there wasn't much he could teach her in that area either, although he did imbue her with morals and ideals.

Besides, it was only her social growth that suffered, not her intellectual one. At her age of twelve, Koaresh presented Shallyah with a new lesson, and a new challenge. One that would ocupy endless hours of the rest of her days under his tutelage. He set on a tree stump a board painted with sixty-four squares, thirty-two white, thirty-two black in alternate pattern. Thirty two wooden pieces arranged upon it. Koaresh explained the rules and instructed Shallyah to move one of the white pieces. That was just the first of countless games for which the young girl found a vocational passion. With each game, Koaresh taught Shallyah how chess could be applied to a real life situation, sometimes not even related to battles or wars. Because of this, Shallyah gained an insight uncommon to someone who lived by her steel. Her mind sharpened as did her capacity to judge and evaluate situations.

At her age of fourteen, Koaresh considered her a full adult in all aspects, and had her make one of the most important choices of her life. He gave Shallyah a hand-written book on the gods that adressed them by their titles or deeds, names not mentioned. It contained their dogmas, backgrounds and ideals. She was given one month time to read it well, and choose. The following month, when Shallyah returned the book to Koaresh, she had marked one page. At the heading of the page there was a hand-made illustration of a red knight chess piece with stars for eyes.

The choice did not surprise Koaresh, and quite pleased him. But more than her choice for a deity that she identified herself with, Koaresh knew that Shallyah had grown with what in his mind were strong and honorable ideals. She knew to respect prey and rival in armed conflicts both in life and death, and understood that violence was not a means to achieve goals, but an unavoidable consequence of the the way life is, and the choices made by those involved. She had learned that her weapon is not a mere tool, but a part of herself, her savior and her companion. And she had learned to use her intellect to approach every situation with a cool head and a strategic sense to achieve the best possible outcome, both in her regular life and in the fray. To his own eyes, Koaresh had managed to refine the raw rock that Shallyah was into a worthy gem.

Promotion

Three years had passed since Shallyah had become a full adult in the eyes of her mentor. Being only seventeen, that could have sounded like a joke about anywhere else, but not for one that had grown in vales and tundras of the north and had to learn to be capable of surviving on her own as soon as she was able to walk and use tools.

All the values that Shallyah had learned had taken roots within her, and she had found herself determined to sustain them. Her bond with her great axe had tightened as she never left its company, as well as she had developped an attraction towards the craft and resolution of complicated theoretical situations. She and Koaresh would often sit to debate theories like the best possible approach if they were to assault one particular fort or town. Both discussed and evaluated every little detail, from the geography and terrain to the training and equipment of the defenders, and kept going for hours until very late in the night.

Shallyah did not only act and think like an adult woman at that point, her body had transformed and she also had the appearance of a fair young lady. Her shapes weren't as curvey as women who had enjoyed an easier life, but she had grown tall and strong for a human, giving her an athletic build that had Koaresh fabricate a larger axe to match her size and strength. Together, they had shared more than mere deer hunts in the last few years as they kept on the move. They had tackled other threats such as the den of a winter wolf that had attacked children in a village while they played outside, or diferent bandits and corpsethieves.

The day had come when Koaresh needed to have a talk with Shallyah, and so, after one of their chess matches in which Shallyah beat her mentor and master, Koaresh spoke to her with solid, fatherly words.

"You will do the hunting alone tonigh, Shallyah. And you will not return." - he paused, watching the girl's puzzled eyes, to continue speaking. - "I am an old man, and while I have spent many years in solitude pursuing goals that I thought worthy, I once had my own life, and I was allowed to freely choose my path. In this day, I believe you capable of beginning your own life so you can choose your own path. Only you are owner of your fate, and sticking with me in this nomad life won't bring you a plenty life."

Shallyah attempted to protest, but Koaresh interrupted her - "Listen, my girl. You may or may not decide one day that you would like to carry a life like my own. But so far you have not known anything but this. You had no childhood, no friends and many other things that a young girl like you should enjoy. You need to try those things, compare, and choose. Believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you, but this is for your own good. At the moment of your birth I was a bitter, resentful man, and you brought spark to my life. I will miss you, but that is how it must be."

Koaresh looked directly into her eyes as he spoke - "You grew strong, both in body and mind. Travel to the civilization, and give purpose to that which you have learned. Make yourself respected and loved, make friends and enemies, make good choices and also make mistakes, because that is the right of every mortal. Whatever you achieve, remember your humble origins so your mind is free of the taint of pride. And whatever destination you choose, try to enjoy the journey."

Shallyah rose and gave a tight hug to Koaresh. The young girl had grown strong, and that included her character. She felt like crying, but she did not want that to be the last image that Koaresh had of her. Behaviour which was shared by Koaresh himself as he patted her back lightly. He held her one of her hands with both of his for one moment, pressing a leather collar with a chess pawn piece into it, and then nodded to her. Shallyah nodded back, and picked her great axe to go hunt. She did not know where her steps would take her to, but she remembered a tale Koaresh told her about a barbarian settlement called Norwick towards the southeast. For a destination, it sounded as good as any.

[Black Rider]

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