Free My Sister's Song by Gail Carriger Page B

were to say
that every step of that spring day was set for me to remember it in
the week to come. Perhaps this is true. Had Arite not tampered with
the bees I might never had thought to make warriors of them. But
here I am getting ahead of myself (that too, is the mark of a
warrior).
    I was back in the forest
three days later. A two day march away from the place Arite and I
found the bees, but still the same forest. My scout group and I
were on a routine search. The Council of Ten Tribes, in its
doubtful wisdom, had allied with our neighbor and long-time enemy,
King Mithridates. We both heard the growling stomach of Rome who
would devour us both. It was decided that together we might prove
less digestible, like a rotten piece of meat. We would not kill
her, of that we were certain, but we might make Rome unwilling to
taste our particular region and focus on another.
    It was like a bitter wine
to Mithridates, having to ally with us Heptakometes. We had kept
him out of the lush south-east region of the Inner Sea for our
entire recorded history. Our mobile groups of warrior-scouts
harried his sluggish troops from the trees and then vanished.
Unfamiliar with the terrain, unable to find food, and harassed,
Mithridates’ soldiers inevitably ran. It wounded his dignity to
ally with us - but even he recognized Rome for the hungry beast she
was. It chewed our pride as well, until we saw the first centurion
of Roman soldiers on our land. A bristling, impenetrable porcupine,
with spines of spears and fur of chain-mail. The spring of Arite’s
thirteenth year they were already beginning to harass our southern
border. The villages to our west sen warriors with the news.

    Three scout groups from our
village, mine among them, were dispatched to help our southern
neighbors. Thus we moved through the forest toward the border of
our territory and into the unknown.
    Joheri came into my tent
and woke me well before dawn. “The other scout leaders and I have
decided, Mithra, that you are to go ahead. You are the swiftest,
the quietest and the most seasoned of my warriors. I want you off
now, south along the stream, we will follow. You are to report back
by eventide. Not to worry, we will disassemble your tent and carry
your pack.”
    So it was that I was the
first Heptakomete to see Romans on our land. I actually heard them
first. They walk very loudly for the conquerors of the world. I
wondered, as I climbed a convenient tree, how they could stand to
announce their presence in such a way. They passed right under me,
so close I could have spat upon their silly fringed helmets. As
they passed, I realized the reason for the noise. The warriors in
our village number thirty in all, but there are always scout groups
out, even in the winter months, so all thirty are never together in
one place. The most warriors I’ve seen at any one time is maybe
sixty-five, the representatives who met with Mithridates, two
summers before. All I knew was that below me there were many more
than sixty-five. I had heard, but not believed, that the Romans
traveled in squadrons of one-hundred strong. All male, theses
warriors were garbed in matching leathers and carried something
called spears (very long knives) and shields (like great squares of
tree bark). Never had I truly believed the stories until I saw the
centurion below me.
    I did not move as I sat in
my tree above them, I hardly even breathed. All I did was count. I
counted one hundred and one men. As luck would have it, the leader
called a halt beneath my tree. I watched as they broke ranks and
settled in the shade as far as I could see, leaning back against
the bark or each other. They pulled out rations and began to eat,
murmuring quietly in their peculiar tongue. They drank a blood red
wine from brown flasks and ate a bread which was fat and almost
white in color. I watched the leader closely. He sat a little apart
from the others, surrounded by four men, whose helmet plumes were a
little taller than the