Free Die for the Flame by William Gehler

cottage, Helan was making a place at the table for the traveler. “Anyone coming down the road from the east?”
    “No. The road is empty. I have had a bad feeling all day that something will happen soon.”
    “They’ll send someone to tell us if anything happens.”
    Ranna felt she had lost almost everything when the Kobani had killed her husband, Orlan. He had fought against the Maggan in the Great Grassland Wars and survived, only to be killed in a frontier skirmish. She had lived in constant fear as her only child, Clarian, had taken his father’s place, fighting with the Grasslanders against the Kobani until peace was achieved. It had been a year of grateful peace on the frontier and then war again. She suddenly felt her age. A stiffness of body and weariness of mind weighed on her.
    She busied herself helping Helan with the noon meal. Helan put her arm around Ranna and gave her a light squeeze. Ranna tried to keep tears from coming, and she bravely flashed a feeble smile. She could hear the two young boy-soldiers in animated discussion with the traveler as they approached the cottage.
     
    The sun was hot on Lillan’s shoulders as she observed the maneuvers of her newly formed mounted archers. Targets were stretched out across several fields below the hillock where she sat on her horse. Her junior officers directed wave after wave of galloping archers toward the targets, arrows arcing up toward the targets, many of them missing their mark. She shrugged in irritation. Well, she thought, just a few weeks ago they were archers on foot. Shooting from a galloping horse, after all, is another matter.
    She glanced to her right and saw Clarian in an adjacent field demonstrating to a gathered troop how to charge a straw-stuffed dummy from horseback, fling a lance into it, then spin the horse and draw out a sword, slash down into a second dummy, and sprint away. She felt a warm sensation inside when she thought of him—almost as warm as the beating sun—and especially now as she watched him, tall and lithe in the saddle, commanding respect for his skill. She was sure he watched her when he thought no one was looking. She wished there was time for them to talk more, alone. Lillan resolved to get him to herself soon. Perhaps that very night.
    A young officer rode over to Lillan, who sat astride her horse. It was Sajan, a fair-haired man with cheery blue eyes who was from the same village.
    “Lillan!” Sajan called out as he pulled his horse up next to hers.
    She smiled at him. “Hello, Sajan. How is training going?”
    “Not bad. I need more wagons and horses to carry my archers, but other than lack of transportation and the fact that many of my archers are half my age, I’m ready to march!”
    Lillan laughed. “But can they hit a target?”
    “Yes, they can. They are quite good, actually. But when they get tired, they want to rest, and they complain something awful. I don’t remember complaining like that when I was their age.”
    “I’m sure you were the perfect son. But then again, you weren’t a soldier at their age.”
    “No, I guess not,” he said with a chuckle. His smile quickly left his face, and he sat his horse round-shouldered, looking out across the training fields, which were full of soldiers going through drills.
    His pensive look caught her eye. “What’s really bothering you, Sajan?”
    He paused before answering, flexing his neck as if it were stiff. “I don’t know if my contingent will be able to stop the enemy once we engage them.”
    Lillan’s horse nipped at Sajan’s, and Lillan reined him in and then leaned toward Sajan to get his attention, her voice firm. “They must, or they will die. Tell them. And tell them this. In the battle, see only targets, just like the bales of straw stacked out there on the training grounds. Targets. Everything is a target. The enemy is a target. Put the arrow in the target. Then put the next arrow in the next target and the next. Do not think. Draw