Free The Executioness by Tobias S. Buckell, J.K. Drummond

shoulder, still eyeing the commander before me. “Axes where you cannot.”
    “An arquebus is an expensive weapon for vain lords and the rich caravan. Do I look made of gold?” But I could hear in his voice that I had won. That he was taking me seriously.
    “It took me a week to learn to shoot the arquebus. You’d have an army in that time.”
    “Anything else you want of me, besides what little fortune my army has amassed, then?”
    With my axe still in front of me, I looked over at him. “Yes, I have another demand. We need a woman, called Anezka, from the caravan, if your scouts can find her among the survivors who are fleeing. She will be our link to getting us the supplies we need, and a new army.”
    Jiva clapped his hands. “It will be done, if she is alive and can be found. Now both of you, come in from the water, we need to return to camp and rest. Tomorrow we need to get further into the woods.”
    I held my axe in one hand, and held out my other to my opponent.
    He spat a tooth out, and then grinned and took it.

Part Four

    It did not happen as quickly as I wanted. But, it happened nonetheless.
    First, with Anezka by my side, we recruited tallywomen from the remains of the caravan, and hagglers from the nearby villages. They melted off into the chill of the Northern forests with us, where the Paikans had to get off their horses and brave the bramble and tight brush.
    Forges in half-destroyed towns built arquebus barrels, and woodsmen in the remains of once-great cities crafted stocks. Women all over began to carry axes, no matter where they went, or what hour of day it was.
    And the Paikans did not know, for women taught other women how to fight with an axe or reload their arquebuses, and those women taught others. And what men paid close attention to what women did together?
    Too few.
    And those few that paid too much attention, found an axe buried in their skull.
    Anezka’s old caravan contacts kept food and supplies moving throughout old forest trails to us. Destroyed by the lack of trade and cullings, many were all too happy to help us in revenge for the caravan’s destruction and antipathy to Paika. They even brought word of purges in Khaim, strange stories about the streets running with blood and the air above them glowing blue. 
    Jiva slunk into a gloom after the first months. “An army of widows,” he complained. “We will be laughed at and destroyed.”
    “So take us on raids,” I told him. “Kill anyone friendly to Paikans, burn their temples. But we will keep the women in hoods, so that we don’t reveal ourselves just yet. You will see how strong they are in real battle.”
    Jiva resisted at first, but eventually took fifty women, armed with axes. Fifty men and fifty women fell upon one of the larger towns near Paika, overwhelming the thirty or so Paikans guarding the temples there. I watched the turrets of their temple topple into the flames with grim satisfaction, and then galloped with my sisters and brothers back into the protection of the northern forests.
    And that was the last time Jiva spoke of weakness. His men stopped huddling off in the corner of the camp, feeling outnumbered. They passed among the women, and ate and joked with us.
    “And now we have an army,” Anezka muttered to me, when she saw that happen. I’d started to forget my previous life. My new life was weeks and weeks of drills, transporting the parts of arquebuses, and walking through dangerous forests.
    “But do we have enough?”
    “We have as many as we dare recruit. Any more, my supply routes fail, or we go broke. We have a month of supplies, money, and goodwill left,” Anezka said.
    She had a long scar on her cheek. Given to her when the caravan was destroyed.
    It had been easy to recruit her. She’d gone from smiling caravaner to bloodthirsty soldier. Anything that would destroy Paika, or end with a Paikan’s death, she enjoyed.
    She carried a dagger now. Along with her axe and a heavy blunderbuss