Chapter Twenty – The Scavenger

(Author’s note and advisory: this chapter contains several graphic descriptions of war-related violence.)

The forest is an unforgiving mistress. Yes, the Ancients can bless those who live in the Realm of Nature by treating it with respect, but such blessings are only available to those who know where to seek them; and even for the wise, those blessings are usually fleeting. When one is in the forest, the goal is to eat before sunset and survive to see another sunrise. Perhaps it is possible to contemplate the future, but too much thought on the future and too little on the present is vanity.

Danka took her young slave into the mountains with those thoughts in mind. Strange to think, just a year before she had lived a pampered life in the Grand Duke’s castle, and now she was about to embark on a life as a wanderer in the Duchy’s wild country. She tried to remember all of the training she had received when she was a Follower. She would need every bit of that knowledge to make it through the rest of the summer and prepare for the upcoming winter.

Danka and Isauria spent the first week traveling east, ever deeper into the southern Danubian forest. The outcast was determined to get far away from Malenkta-Gordnackta and anyone who had known her during her sojourn in that town. For the rest of her life she would harbor deep resentment against its inhabitants. She hated the men for willingly going out on slave-capturing raids, but she even more, she loathed the town’s women. She had spent months teaching them everything she knew about collecting food in the forest, sharing much of the knowledge passed to her by Babackt Yaga and the other Followers. However, along with distributing practical knowledge, Danka had made the mistake of trying to pass along the philosophical wisdom of the Cult of the Ancients. She subconsciously wanted to influence the beliefs of her neighbors and have them reward her by accepting her as their de facto spiritual leader. She failed to understand that attempting to appoint herself as a spiritual guide was an act of hubris, and the Ancients always punished hubris. Danka’s self-appointed spiritual mission failed miserably and its only result was for the former cultist to be accused of being strange and then to be ignored, ridiculed, and ultimately ostracized. She felt betrayed by her female neighbors and resented the fact they had not accepted her as part of their community. So, she wanted nothing to do with the women of Malenkta-Gordnackta and never wanted to see them again.

As soon as she was far enough from the town that it would be unlikely she’d run into any of its inhabitants, Danka had an important decision to make: which direction to continue her journey. The countryside immediately to the east and southeast was covered with thickly-forested low-lying hills, which contrasted with higher mountains that lay to the north. The mountains were part of a crescent-shaped chain that separated the southwest portion of the Duchy from the southeast part and at that time the highland region was completely unsettled. Beyond the northern mountains lay the Black Swamp of Misery, which was in reality a large marshland that fed into the Rika Chorna River. Either the mountains or the swamp would have been good places to hide, had Danka been a fugitive. However, she considered herself a traveler, not a fugitive, and had no desire to spend her remaining time in the Realm of the Living in a squalid cabin with an illiterate serving-girl in a lonely, isolated settlement. The only hope for either the woman or the girl to have a fulfilling Path in Life was to keep moving and see where the Ancients led them.

Danka decided to journey directly eastward and stay within a day’s walk of the Duchy’s southern border during the entire trip. At that time she had a vague idea of going to the Vice-Duchy of Rika Chorna and seeing if she could settle there. Danka did not know what to expect from the inhabitants of the Vice-Duchy, but it was away from western Danubia, which was what she wanted at the time. So, she and Isauria would continue working their way east, spend the summer in the forest, and eventually emerge into the Eastern Valley.

As was customary for Followers of the Ancients, whenever they were in the Realm of Nature and temperatures permitted, Danka and Isauria walked completely naked, wearing nothing but their boots. Isauria was not bothered by Danka’s order that she carry her clothing in her traveling pack instead of on her body. She already was used to being nude: as a collared slave she had been denied the right to wear clothing at any time. So, the naked girl plodded behind her naked mistress, with the heavy supply pack cutting into her bare shoulders and Danka’s uncovered bottom and thighs always in front of her.

Danka was not a sympathetic or patient teacher, because the Realm of Nature is not sympathetic or patient. Also, the former peasant had experienced very little sympathy in her life, so she did not know how to display it to anyone working under her. Danka was not kind to Isauria as we would understand kindness in modern times. She expected Isauria to carefully listen to everything she said and to follow her instructions exactly. On the few occasions when Isauria did not meet her expectations, she was harsh with her voice and quick to use the switch.

———-

Isauria’s Path in Life would be to remain Danka’s servant and companion throughout 1756. She continued to wear her slave collar, partly because Danka did not have the tools necessary to remove it, and partly because Danka knew it would be best for the girl to consider herself a slave until her mistress felt she was ready to face the harsh world on her own.

The quiet girl clearly was not ready to fend for herself when Danka purchased her. Yes, she had endured several traumatic events during her short life, but trauma does not necessarily prepare a person to face the world. Isauria’s only practical knowledge consisted of looking after sheep (from the days before she was taken captive) and housework (from her year living in Alexandrekt Bulashckt’s household). As for fending for herself in the forest, she was still a child, as naive as any guild-master’s daughter.

So, it was Danka’s Path in Life to teach her ward how to survive in the Realm of Nature. She trained the girl how to find anything that was edible, how to hide among the trees and find shelter, how to anticipate changes in the weather, how to identify animal tracks, and how to pack supplies and move about undetected. Within days Isauria knew how to forage for roots, mushrooms, and fruit. She knew how to set campfires and prepare a campsite, while Danka was hunting or looking for promising trails. Her daily routine was grueling, but she became invaluable to her mistress.

During her first months in the woods Danka would teach Isauria how to set traps, tie knots, and make snares. She showed her the basics of fishing, which the girl picked up with ease. Isauria was fascinated with everything having to do with fish and became much more adept at catching fish than her mistress. Other skills learned by Isauria over the summer included searching for springs, collecting rainwater, making and reading maps, compass-reading, land navigation, using the stars to navigate at night, and moving about in total silence. The girl learned quickly and became competent at living outside. By the end of the summer Danka knew that if anything happened to her, Isauria would be able to survive on her own, at least for a while, and continue traveling.

In spite of her willingness to use the switch, by the standards of slave owners in eighteenth-century Danubia, Danka was a good mistress and most foreign captives would have been happy to exchange places with Isauria. She never struck from anger or frustration, nor was she spiteful or condescending. She never did anything to humiliate her ward, which was a huge improvement in the girl’s life over the treatment she had received from Alexandrekt Bulashckt and his nephew. Instead, Danka’s treatment directly reflected on how well the girl performed her duties. As long as Isauria followed instructions, she had nothing to fear. If she didn’t understand something, her owner encouraged her to request clarification. It was important that Isauria understood her responsibilities and why she needed to perform each duty in a certain way, so the only stupid questions were the ones she neglected to ask.

The social distance that normally would distinguish an owner from a slave was absent in Danka’s relationship with Isauria. Danka used the lower-class form of “you” when addressing the servant and told Isauria to use the same form when responding. Danka’s speech reverted to her peasant background, with Isauria expected to address her mistress in the same way a guild apprentice would address a mentor. Whatever food was available she shared in equal portions. She cared for the girl’s medical needs and allowed her to rest when she was sick. As for the travelers’ sleeping arrangements, Danka had with her a single sleeping roll, which she shared with her servant. Peasants were used to sharing beds, so Danka shared the sleeping roll with her ward in the same way she had shared her bed with her sister while growing up.

There were other ways Danka let Isauria know that she did not consider her mere property. She began to teach the servant to write during the rare occasions they weren’t occupied with wandering, hunting, scavenging, or gathering food. Isauria recognized the importance of writing, so on her own she practiced tracing letters in the dust whenever she had to opportunity, to the great satisfaction of her mentor. When Danka prayed to the Ancients, she insisted the girl accompany her. Over the summer Isauria learned about Danka’s religious beliefs, to include singing some of the ancient hymns and speaking a few words in archaic Danubian.

———-

Danka had never been as experienced at hunting or tracking animals as she was gathering edible plants. She had some basic information about forest animals from her year in Babackt Yaga’s settlement, but even among the Followers hunting was a task mostly carried out by the men. Out of necessity, her hunting skills greatly improved over the summer of 1756. She snared her first rabbit two days after entering the forest. A week later she killed her first deer, a partially grown fawn. Over the month of June there were a few more rabbits and another deer. The dead animals were both a blessing and a hindrance. The hunts meant a better diet and a supply of animal skins, but also considerably slowed down the journey. Every time she killed an animal, she and her servant had to spend time at camp preparing smoked meat, preparing tanning solution with the animals’ own brains, and scraping, stretching, and tanning the hides.

Along with basic survival skills and reading, Danka felt that her servant needed to know the basics of combat. She was concerned about being a woman alone in the forest and wanted the assurance that if she were attacked, Isauria could come to her assistance. Using the second dead deer’s carcass for practice, she taught Isauria several maneuvers with her dagger, making sure Isauria knew how to stab deeply and cut muscles and arteries, in spite of her small size and relative lack of strength. Using sticks, she taught her servant the basics of fencing and sword fighting. The sword-fighting was the hardest skill Danka passed along to her servant, because every time she did anything having to do with sword fighting, she had to struggle against the flash-backs of her final moments in Babackt Yaga’s settlement.

———-

Danka owned two weapons: her crossbow and the dagger given to her by Farmer Tuko Orsktackt. The crossbow would be useless if she ever ran out of bolts. By July running out of ammunition was becoming a real concern, in spite of her efforts to conserve and retrieve used bolts as much as possible. She just had to find more bolts and obtain a weapon for her servant and another for herself. The only items she had that she was willing to part with were a few animal skins, which would hardly suffice for what she needed to purchase. She realized that to obtain the weapons she wanted, she’d either have to steal them, or steal something else of value so she could purchase them. With that thought in mind she decided to make her way back to the settlements of eastern Horkustk Ris province, but would try to avoid getting close to Malenkta-Gordnackta. If she had to dishonor herself by stealing, at least she wanted to make sure she didn’t do so around people she knew.

It turned out she did not have to venture out into the cleared area of the province to obtain the new weapons. As the woman and the girl silently moved through the forest, they came to a clearing where they heard the pitiful crying of the voice of a teenaged boy. As they approached the crying sound, it abruptly stopped. Danka crept along some rocks and saw what had happened, a man was standing over the corpse of a boy that he apparently had just killed. The dead boy was wearing nothing but a pair of trousers and had his hands tied behind his back. The man was too distracted cleaning the boy’s blood off a sword to notice that he was not alone.

Danka decided she wanted the sword. The man was a murderer, so he probably would not be missed. Anyhow, she would avenge the dead boy. She armed her crossbow and crept closer to her target. She slipped behind a bush next to the clearing, stood up, and aimed. The man turned around just as the assailant released her bolt. He had enough time to see a young woman, naked from the waist up, pointing a crossbow at him. He screamed as the bolt pierced his chest. He was mortally wounded, but the shot did not kill him immediately. The scream turned into an agonized gurgle as he flailed on the ground and desperately grabbed at the bolt to remove it. Danka re-armed her crossbow and stood over her victim, her eyes full of sadistic triumph. She didn’t know why the man had killed the boy, nor did she care. The only thought on her mind was the weird joy of watching a person much stronger than herself helpless, struggling, and dying on the ground. Eventually the man coughed up blood and started shaking. His eyes rolled up as his movements slowed and stopped.

Danka looked around to make sure no one else was nearby. She noticed Isauria’s terrified face staring at her through the leaves. She retrieved the sword and held it up.

“Servant Isauria. Come here.”

The terrified, trembling girl approached her.

“Here’s the weapon I promised you. Go to the stream, rinse it off, and make sure it’s completely dry.”

“Yes, Mistress Danka.”

While Isauria was occupied at the stream, Danka searched the clearing and the corpses for anything useful. Her victim’s shirt was ruined, which was too bad, thought Danka, because it looked expensive. However, the man’s boots and trousers were intact, so she pulled them off the corpse. The boy’s peasant vest and shoes were lying on the ground, which she took, as well as the rope used to bind his hands. Best of all, the man had an expensive dagger and a coin purse containing three silver and seven copper coins. She pulled the crossbow bolt from his corpse. It was broken and useless, but she did not want to leave it for anyone to find.

After having taken anything of value from the bodies, she left them. She thought about trying to bury the boy, but abandoned that idea when she heard a dog barking in the distance. She tapped her servant on the shoulder and they slipped away into the brush. Danka never learned what had happened between the man and the boy, or whether there had been any justification for the boy’s death. The dispute between those two was of no concern to her. What mattered was that she now had money and items to trade for additional crossbow bolts.

Danka led her servant to the edge of the forest. She turned northward and reconnoitered the cleared area until she spotted a large village likely to have a blacksmith who could supply her with crossbow bolts. She then put on her trader’s disguise and consolidated her belongings into a single backpack that Isauria would have to carry. She took Isauria’s sword and told the girl that, following protocol for a slave, she would have to remain naked. The girl struggled with the heavy burden as Danka led her into the village.

Danka replenished her depleted supply of crossbow bolts and had both her dagger and the sword sharpened by the smith. While waiting for her weapons, she visited the tanner to have her servant’s boots repaired and to sell a deerskin and the stolen boots. She spent her remaining coins on salt, a specialized hide scraper, flint for starting fires, sewing supplies, two loaves of fresh bread, and a sweet-roll for her ward. Isauria looked at her mistress in dumbfounded gratitude when she was handed the treat. For an ordinary person Danka’s generosity would have been a trivial gesture, but for a slave to be given something like a sweet-roll was a huge signal of goodwill and approval from her owner.

The traveler was enormously relieved when she returned to the woods with her supplies replenished. She stripped and put away her clothes, split the load into two backpacks, retrieved her bucket, and directed her servant to follow her to the southern border of the Duchy.

As they traveled, Danka took advantage of breaks to continue teaching Isauria how to use her sword. She also decided it was time for the girl to learn how to operate the crossbow. Isauria struggled with a weapon that seemed almost as big as herself. Drawing back the bow took every bit of strength she had and at the beginning she could barely keep control when the trigger was released. However, she persevered and eventually Danka felt she was ready to use a few of her precious bolts and aim at targets.

———-

At the height of the summer, in the middle of July, Danka led Isauria southward on the pair’s foraging expeditions. They traveled along the southern border, where the woods opened up to the Lord of the Blue Moon’s territory. They emerged near a village that seemed completely deserted, with every structure in sight destroyed or burnt. The people were gone. Danka commented that the Lord of the Red Moon must have invaded the area.

Isauria, whose family had been massacred by the Lord of the Blue Moon’s men, glanced apprehensively towards the open country, clearly having no desire to leave the safety of the Duchy. However, Danka wanted to explore the settlement and a couple of nearby abandoned manors, hoping to scavenge for useful items that had been abandoned during the fighting. They hid the majority of their supplies and at night forded a shallow spot in the river. Upon crossing, they both got dressed in their trader’s guild outfits, even though no one was in sight. Unlike the relatively casual attitude of Danubians, women in the Kingdom of the Moon absolutely never appeared naked in public, even at night or on their own properties or in isolated areas.

They cautiously made their way towards the ruins, their path illuminated by moonlight. Danka was used to traveling through the forest in the dark, so moving along an open road under a full moon was easy. The ominous ruins loomed at the top of the embankment. The woman and her servant slowly moved uphill, listening for footsteps and smelling the air for anything unusual. Danka heard the light scattering of animals moving about. There was a very slight whiff of carbon and of corpses that had long since decomposed. Apart from that, the only smells were those in any typical open area.

It turned out the village had been abandoned for a long time. Still, it was not a pleasant place. The streets were a labyrinth of ruined buildings and rubble. Much worse were all the skeletons, some still intact and some scattered, which were everywhere. The streets and houses were full of bones. Many more skeletons were hanging on the walls, the victims of impalement. An even worse detail were the numerous skulls that were mounted on poles stuck into the ground, with their empty eye sockets staring at the two visitors.

Danka froze, her feet firmly anchored to the ground. Her world went completely dark. A pair of bright yellow eyes appeared in the distance. They were tiny at first, because they were so far away. They slowly approached and grew much larger. The Destroyer’s face filled Danka’s vision as her knees shook with terror.

“Danka, Danka Siluckt, I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you’d come. I knew you’d return to me. I knew that, because I gave you no choice.”

“Wh, what do you, what do you want from me?”

“I want you to know me. I want you to know me well. You will have to learn my ways, if you want to remain in the Realm of the Living, and if you want your little slave to remain in the Realm of the Living. To know me. That is all I ask of you.”

“I don’t want to know you. I serve the Ancients. I don’t serve you.”

“The Ancients are not here, Danka Siluckt. Do not concern yourself with the Ancients, because they are not here. This is my realm, not theirs. If you don’t wish to believe me, try praying to them. They will answer you with their silence.”

“But, what do you want from me?”

“I’ve already told you what I want, Danka Siluckt. You will learn my ways. And as you come to know me, I will act through you. You will prosper, and your slave’s safety is assured.”

“And, you did this? Everything around me, this is your doing?”

“Mine, or the Lord of the Red Moon, if you prefer, this was a Blue Moon village, you know, the Lord of the Red Moon paid these subjects a visit, on my behalf, as you might guess.”

“Why?”

“Yes indeed, why? Why? Why? Why?”

The eyes vanished and the ground released Danka’s feet. Danka realized that Isauria was holding onto her arm, with her small body badly shaking.

“Mistress Danka, Mistress Danka, the owl.”

Sure enough, a large owl was sitting on a nearby ruined wall, its unblinking eyes staring at the woman and the girl in the cold moonlight. The bird took off and silently vanished.

“Mistress Danka, you were talking.”

“That doesn’t concern you, Servant Isauria. You don’t want to know.”

“Yes Mistress.”

“Come along. It’s getting light outside. We need to search around, see what we can find.”

“I… I’m scared, Mistress.”

“Of course you’re scared. And perhaps, you think I’m not? It doesn’t matter, because fear won’t fill our stomachs. We can be scared all we want, but we still have to see what’s here.”

So, as the sky lightened, they searched the town. It was a cool dreary overcast morning. The forlorn weather seemed perfectly suited for the bleak ruins and their endless supply of skeletons. Each skeleton had its own depressing story, from being the remains of a once-living person who died a horrible death. The woman and the girl were reluctant to go anywhere close to the corpses, but they needed to closely examine each one. Occasionally there would be a ring or a coin next to a set of bones, something that was overlooked when the Lord of the Red Moon’s troops massacred and looted the town. They spent the entire day going through the destroyed houses, finding metal items such as cutlery, tools, and a few porcelain cups and dishes that had miraculously survived the fires and building collapses.

By mid-afternoon Danka had collected enough objects to fill three sacks. She was surprised the town had not been more thoroughly scavenged. She did not know that priests from the Lord of the Red Moon’s army had officially cursed the area, which made it off-limits for anyone in the Red Moon faction. All of the Lord of the Blue Moon’s supporters had been killed or had long since fled, so the only people who would consider coming in were wandering Danubians, who were rightly concerned about being captured and tortured by foreign soldiers who were still bitter about the defeat in Horkustk Ris.

The woman and the girl returned to the Duchy after dark, carefully fording the river with multiple sacks of loot. Most of the items were metal that she would trade to a blacksmith for additional crossbow bolts. However, some of the tools she would keep in case she had to set up a shelter to pass the upcoming winter. Some items, such as a few rings and a necklace, would be very valuable if she could find an honest buyer and negotiate a good price.

The wanderer and her slave stashed everything in a small cave along with Danka’s bucket. They foraged the next day’s meal and rested in preparation to cross back over and look for anything they might have missed on the first trip. Danka already had enough for a very nice day of trading, but she became greedy. She wanted more. So, there would be at least one more dangerous day across the border foraging among the ruins.

Isauria continued to be scared out of her wits, but Danka’s emotions had changed. Instead of raw fear, she felt hostility, determination, and cold anger. She wasn’t sure who to be angry at, but finally vented her emotions against the Ancients, who had forsaken her and forced her into her current situation. So… the Destroyer was right. The Ancients were indeed silent and no longer watching over her. Maybe the Ancients had departed, or maybe they were never watching over her in the first place. What mattered was that they currently were not part of her life. Her only reality was the Destroyer.

Danka and Isauria ventured more into the remaining houses and poked around in the rubble. The skeletons of people who obviously had died while being tortured were all around them. Depravity and atrocities were the only reality the residents had faced on their final day in the Realm of the Living. In one ruined room, the partially mummified remains of three children hung on hooks, facing another decomposed body that had been chained to a post. Probably the corpses were of children impaled in front of a parent who was forced to watch. Danka took a deep breath and continued searching.

Two coins, an axe head, a bayonet, some lead musket balls, a buckle, another coin, some metal buttons, a pair of shears, hooks, a piece of chain…

They moved on to a house that still had its walls, but was missing its roof. It seemed to be a good place to seek shelter, because it had a commanding view of the surrounding collapsed ruins. As Danka pried open a burnt strong-box, she felt a silent tap on her arm. Isauria pointed at the window and held up two fingers. Danka armed her crossbow and crept to a break in the wall. Two armed men were outside, suspiciously looking around. One of the men was wearing a bloody Danubian tunic and carrying a crossbow, but because of his long hair it was obvious he was not Danubian. The other man looked like a deserter from one of the Kingdom’s armed factions.

Crossbows were not commonly used in the Kingdom of the Moon, so Danka hoped that perhaps the bowman’s companion would not be able to operate it. Anyhow, she decided that she wanted the weapon for Isauria. She knew that her life was in grave danger and that she should have been scared, but her thoughts focused on seizing the crossbow and whatever else those men had on them. She calculated how best to kill the strangers. Using sign language, she ordered Isauria to be ready to take and re-arm her crossbow as soon as she fired it. Isauria held onto her sword, trembling as Danka took aim. At the last second Danka decided to switch targets. She’d not kill the man with the crossbow, but instead target his companion. She calculated the man with the crossbow probably did not have much practice and would miss when he fired. A missed shot would give her precious time to reload and kill her second victim.

Danka released her bolt with deadly accuracy. Her target spun around screaming, so his companion did not immediately know where the shot had come from. The man frantically looked around and took cover. Danka tightened her lips: she had not expected the bowman to hide and save his bolt. She handed the crossbow to Isauria and took the sword. The girl gasped and grunted as she struggled to reload the weapon. Danka ignored her and peered through the window, only to see the bowman’s head facing in her direction… she swallowed and tried to suppress her fear. He had figured out her position. She took the crossbow from Isauria and passed back the sword. She motioned Isauria to move back against the wall and guard the back door. The girl was shaking so badly that she could barely hold her sword. Danka figured she’d be useless, and that she would have to fight on her own.

Danka heard a frightened gasp and a crash behind her. As she spun around, she saw that a third man had burst into the room and Isauria had brought her sword down upon his neck. The enemy was injured with a painful cut , but not incapacitated. He screamed, grabbed the girl, and rolled on top of her. Fortunately his injury gave Danka time to react before he could kill the girl. With every bit of her strength, Danka kicked him squarely in the face. Stunned, he fell off Isauria, giving her time to recover the sword.

“Finish him!”

Isauria hacked at the intruder while Danka turned back to the window, just in time to see the first opponent charging towards her, armed with a musket equipped with a bayonet. Her crossbow misfired, but she hit him in the leg, causing him to miss when he lunged with his weapon. The musket tumbled to the floor, but the man hit Danka in the stomach with his fist, knocking the wind out of her. He straddled her and clenched his hands around her throat. Danka was about to pass out when she heard a high-pitched scream. The grip on her throat loosened as Danka’s assailant turned to attack the girl who had just tried to stab him in the back. He grabbed both the sword and the girl. Danka recovered and grabbed her dagger and plunged it into the man’s thigh. She clenched her teeth and stabbed again, digging the blade into his hip. Isauria pulled free, grabbed a stone block, and hurled it at the man’s head. Danka stabbed again, but the blow was ineffective. The man grabbed Danka’s wrist and tried to force the dagger from her hand.

Isauria was the one who killed the assailant. She picked up another block, and instead of throwing at the man’s head, held on to it and brought it down on his skull with a tremendous blow that cracked the bone. She screamed with her high-pitched voice as the rock found its target. The man’s bloody body went into convulsions as Danka held her throat and tried to recover her breath. Isauria was on her knees, crying.

For a moment neither the woman nor the girl could react to what had just happened. They were winded and bruised, but fortunately neither was injured. The enemy’s convulsions stopped as both men’s blood stained the ruined floor. Finally Danka recovered enough to stand up. She stripped the bodies of their belts, holsters, and boots. She cut off the buttons and retrieved a coin-purse and some beef jerky, which she gave to Isauria. She retrieved the musket and a packet of gunpowder. The musket would not be of much use to her in the forest, but would certainly fetch a nice price in the market.

Finally, Danka led her servant outside, to search the third body and recover the foreigner’s crossbow. It was not in the best shape, but could easily be fixed. A sword, more boots, another dagger, and some crossbow bolts were added to their sack of loot.

The mistress and her shaken servant made their way back to the river, weighted down with sacks of metal and tools. Much more important were the new weapons. Danka now felt that they both were adequately armed for whatever awaited them in their Paths in Life.

———-

Danka and Isauria spent several days moving their items to a safer location away from the border. They returned to the village where they had previously traded, sold the musket, and exchanged most of the metal objects for more bolts and supplies needed to get them through the winter. Danka decided to purchase a donkey from a young farmer to carry the supplies, which she paid with her collection of scavenged jewelry.

When they left the town, Danka formally presented Isauria with the captured crossbow, a satchel of bolts, a canteen, and a fine dagger. The girl quietly accepted the weapons. Her Path in Life, like that of Danka, would include violence. She was barely twelve years old, but already had killed two men.

They retrieved their remaining tools and supplies and traveled well to the east of their first incursion into the Kingdom of the Moon. As they moved through the backcountry, Danka intensified Isauria’s training and education. There were enough crossbow bolts for Isauria to use on target practice, there was mock sword fighting, and practices with close combat. Danka produced some parchment and ink for Isauria to practice writing, and ordered the girl to keep a journal of their travels and observations. Isauria’s life was hard and the learning was frustrating, but she did as she was told and never complained. She did not understand what type of life her mistress was preparing her for, but obviously it was not to be a house servant or a sex slave.

Throughout the trip, the donkey turned out to be a bothersome necessity. Yes, they needed help carrying their supplies, but having a large animal slowed their progress and made them much more visible in the forest. Danka had to give up the idea of traveling to Rika Chorna that year: she announced that she and Isauria would winter in the mountains and go east the following spring. They’d build a comfortable shelter, sell or butcher the donkey in the fall, and continue their journey on foot after the snow melted in the higher elevations.

Meanwhile, Danka calculated they would continue to scavenge the ruins of the Kingdom of the Moon for valuable items. The Danubian outcast and her servant kept close to the edge of the forest, leaving behind the donkey and crossing the river at night to search the ruins for items that might be useful. However, when they returned south, nothing awaited them but disappointment. They continued looking for anything they could scavenge, but apart from some rusted metal, they found very little in the ruins. No… from the villages to the east, nothing remained.

As Danka and Isauria wandered the edges of the Kingdom of the Moon, all they could see was the work of the Destroyer. It was true that two years before Danka had witnessed plenty of cruelty and devastation on the Grand Duke’s campaign, but what she had seen in 1754 came nowhere close to the absolute desolation that had swept across the southern kingdom. It was all the same, everywhere they went. It seemed that both the Lord of the Red Moon and the Lord of the Blue Moon had completely lost their sanity. As a result, the Kingdom of the Moon was dying.

The civil war had been going on for just two years. At that time Danka and Isauria had no way of knowing there would be eight more years of war to go.

———-

At the end of August, the journey of Danka and Isauria paralleled territory that was more firmly under the control of the Lord of the Blue Moon. The villages had not yet been invaded and that section of the Kingdom seemed intact, at least for the time-being. As a lone Danubian, Danka was much more at risk if she attempted to cross into the hostile territory, so the explorations would have to cease. She considered moving well to the north of the border, to avoid risk of running into bands of Blue Moon troops that might want to cross and forage in the Duchy’s territory.

She changed her mind when she came across a group of foreign woodcutters who had crossed the river to exploit the Danubian forest. The lumberjacks had cleared a sizable area, leaving it exposed to the south. As anyone from the Duchy would have viewed it, the men were invaders who were stealing Danubian resources and usurping Danubian land.

Danka decided to take it upon herself to “defend the Duchy”, as she put it. In reality what she wanted was the foreigners’ equipment and camping supplies, after having spent a month wandering ruined villages searching for items to scavenge in vain. “Defending the Duchy” was pure fiction, but it justified the fact she was about to attack the woodcutters so she could take their belongings.

The Danubian wanderer directed her servant to lead their donkey to a watering hole, secure him with some food so he would not be tempted to wander off, and to off-load and hide their supplies. Meanwhile, Danka scouted the logging camp. It seemed there were about 20 men working in the area, some were cutting down trees, some preparing charcoal, and four others were cutting boards. When she saw all of their equipment and supplies, Danka’s mouth watered. Axes, saws, hammers, nails, a small forge, weapons, four oxen, chickens, leather, finished boards, ale, glassware… all for the taking. The only thing that stood between her and all that loot was 20 men, who she’d have to figure out how to kill.

The loggers posted a guard throughout the night, but otherwise their security was completely deficient. Danka figured the most difficult task would be killing the sentry in silence. She had plenty of training and experience moving through a hostile area in silence and killing with a dagger, so the other men she could kill in their sleep. There would be some danger, because she’d have to move among the loggers. A single mistake, or a chance awakening, would ruin her plan and most likely end her life.

As she observed the foreigners, Danka realized it would be better to go after them at dusk, after they finished working but before they went to bed. Towards the end of every afternoon several wagon teams arrived from the south, loaded boards and charcoal, and left behind a supply of fresh meat and ale. The men feasted and usually became obscenely drunk. One-by-one they wandered into the bushes to urinate, often becoming lost as they tried to get back to the camp in their drunken stupor. As they stumbled into the woods, they could be killed individually, without their companions knowing anything was wrong.

Danka and Isauria put on their boots and leather peasant skirts. Like the legendary nymphs, the female guerrilla archers from two centuries before, they carried nothing but their weapons and were completely naked from the waist up.

Isauria slept curled up at the base of a large tree while Danka crept forward to watch the final hours of the loggers’ routine. As always, the wagons from the south arrived to take away boards and leave behind a supply of ale and fresh meat. The smell of the cooking tormented the Danubian, who was used to the Spartan diet provided by the forest. The tree cutters and charcoal burners drifted in from the edges of the encampment towards a large fire. They took their first portion of strong ale, one full bottle per man.

As she crouched in the darkness, Danka counted 22 foreigners altogether. She felt the Destroyer’s presence, like a hand on her shoulder. Greed and hatred filled her soul as she watched her future victims finish their first round of ale and take a second round. They consumed vast quantities of meat as they became drunk. Danka slipped back to the tree to summon Isauria, who was sitting in the darkness and cradling her crossbow with a terrified expression. Danka explained what was about to happen as they returned to the camp. She would pick each target and have Isauria accompany her as backup, knowing that she was proficient enough with the crossbow that she could rely on her to fire the second bolt at each enemy.

When they returned, they heard bushes rustling and the distinct sound of a man relieving himself. Danka tapped her servant’s arm and aimed her weapon at the silhouette. They fired silently and killed silently, as befitting of Followers, woods-women, and Danubian nymphs. The man fell to the ground without making a sound. Isauria performed with her crossbow as Danka expected, but she was terrified at the turn of events and her mistress’s merciless behavior.

They crept around the encampment in the dark, waiting for the next drunkard. Within a few minutes a second man was lying in the brush, dead from bolts he never saw coming. Within an hour, half of the loggers had been dispatched in the woods. Those remaining at the fire were too drunk to defend themselves. Danka led Isauria into the camp itself, planning to dispatch the cook next, since he seemed to be more sober and alert than his companions. Two bolts finished off the cook, and when his assistant discovered his body and frantically looked around, he was next.

The men remaining at the fire began to realize something was not right. No one who had gotten up had come back. Two went out to investigate, as Danka and her slave slipped out ahead to intercept them in the bushes. They staggered around, the alcohol blunting their awareness to the silent danger that awaited. Two more shots… four more bolts… two less men in the camp. Another man stumbled into the darkness and was stopped by the two assailants.

The men remaining in the camp now were standing up and reaching for their muskets. Finally they realized the camp was under attack. Danka decided to act quickly against the surviving foreigners. She and her assistant fired rapidly at a young man with a large musket. He fired as he fell, the noise from his firearm adding to the confusion of the others. Danka and Isauria re-loaded and fired again. Four remaining men now realized where the bolts were coming from and incoherently shot in unison. Danka and Isauria rolled to the side just in time to be clear of the musket balls that whizzed past them. They slipped through the trees as the men came after them. They snuck around to the opposite side of the camp and shot into the back of a logger who was facing in the opposite direction. They had just enough time to reload their crossbows to take out another man charging in their direction. By now the remaining pair of loggers were in a pure state of drunken panic, calling out to companions who no longer were alive. They fled back into the camp towards the oxen, trying to reload their muskets. Danka scuttled through piles of lumber in pursuit. She stood up and aimed at one of the men. He turned and frantically aimed his musket, but it was too late. Danka released her bolt and her victim fell screaming. Isauria caught up to her and fired a finishing shot into his chest.

Only one logger remained alive, but it turned out he was the most difficult to kill. By now he had sobered up enough to stay hidden and listen for the enemy’s footsteps. Danka had to order Isauria to go out into the woods and throw rocks to flush him out while she moved about the camp. The man saw her and for the next hour they chased each other around wood piles as the fire slowly died. Finally Isauria, who had remained hidden, ambushed and shot the man in the stomach, and it was Danka’s turn to finish him off with a second shot.

The woman and the girl did not have time to think about anything apart from surviving the fight while it was happening. Now that the loggers had been exterminated, the enormity of what they had just done began to sink in. A young peasant woman and her adolescent servant had committed a massacre of 22 human beings. Danka felt nothing but cold triumph, but Isauria was clearly distressed. As they looked around at the bodies, Danka noted the girl’s bewildered and frightened expression.

“In the forest, the wolf must kill to eat, and it’s better to be a wolf than a sheep. Is that not so, Servant Isauria?”

Isauria took a deep breath. She was trembling, but she forced herself to answer:

“Yes, Mistress Danka.”

“I am a wolf. A vicious she-wolf. You’re a wolf too. A smaller wolf, not much more than a cub, but a wolf nonetheless. Is that not so, Servant Isauria?”

“Yes, Mistress Danka. That is so.”

“Very good. With your help, I have re-taken this land for the Duchy. You did well tonight and pleased me with your performance.”

“Thank you, Mistress.”

When Danka looked towards the moon, an owl, that owl, was perched on a branch watching her. The Destroyer said nothing. The bird simply sat for a while, observing the campsite, before flying off.

———-

Danka and Isauria feasted on the remains of their victims’ beef and pork. As much as she also wanted to indulge in their ale, she avoided it, knowing that she needed to keep her wits about her. For lighting she told Isauria to re-stoke the fire as she began looting the camp. The first priority was to examine all of the visible corpses, to make sure they were dead, retrieve any bolts that were not damaged, and look for small valuable items such as coins, daggers, rings, and medallions. At daybreak she’d have to explore the woods to look at the other corpses, the ones hidden in the bushes.

Next, she gathered all the weapons she could find and moved them to the edge of the clearing. She piled axes and saws near the weapons. She gathered up all the cooking utensils. Her heart jumped into her throat when she saw a large barrel of salt and several bags of flour. The tools… the supplies… the weapons… if she could just take all those items and secure them, not only would she be rich by Danubian standards, but she’d also have everything she and Isauria would need to live in comfort throughout the winter. As the day broke and there was enough light, she ransacked the sleeping cabin while Isauria stood guard.

Isauria appeared at the entrance and silently called her mentor’s attention to a noise she had heard outside. Danka looked out, noticing that the birds had gone silent. She and Isauria armed their crossbows. She could hear movement in the bushes as a woman’s voice called out to her in Danubian:

“Come out and put your crossbows on the ground. There are only two of you and there are a lot more of us. We want to meet with you, but you must disarm your weapon and step away from it.”

Danka exchanged glances with Isauria. When she hesitated, the voice continued: “Don’t be a fool. Put down your crossbow and stand where we can properly see you. We’re not planning to take it from you.”

“Who are you?”

“We are Defenders of the Duchy. Now put down your crossbow. Then we’ll talk.”

Very reluctantly, Danka disarmed her crossbow and set it on the ground. Isauria followed suit. The woman and the girl moved forward two fathoms and stood in the open. Ten Danubians, three women and seven men, stepped into the clearing through the bushes. The women were dressed like Danka: in short leather skirts and boots. The carried crossbows and the only item each wore above her waist was a satchel for bolts. The men wore green tunics that were open on the sides. They wore nothing underneath apart from sturdy boots. Two of the men had short swords, two had muskets, and the others had crossbows. The oldest man in the group stepped forward. The woman who had called out to Danka from the trees continued:

“Please salute our commander. And we will show you the same respect you choose to show us.”

Danka tapped her servant’s shoulder and reluctantly saluted the stranger by tapping her right fist to her left shoulder. Isauria copied her mistress’s actions and saluted as well. The older man returned the salute.

“Greetings. My name is Commander Saupeckt. I lead military operations in this region. As you’ve already been told, we are Defenders of the Duchy. Now, what is your name?”

“Danka, Commander Saupeckt. My name is Danka Siluckt.”

“Excellent. So you weren’t stupid enough to lie about your name. And your companion? What’s her name?”

“Isauria.”

The commander looked over the servant.

“You’re not Danubian… ”

“No, Master. I’m from a manor south of Malenkta-Gordnackta.”

“Commander. I’m not a ‘Master’, I am a Commander.”

“Yes, Commander… Commander Saupeckt.”

“That’s much better.” Commander Saupeckt directed his next comment at Danka: “We’ve been watching you for several days. You’re a competent woods-woman, but if you were as good as you think you are, you would have noticed our presence. We’ll have to work on that. You obviously know how to operate a crossbow. I congratulate you on your success here.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

“I may congratulate your success, but that is not to say I’m pleased with what you did. Because of this massacre, this area will be full of Blue Moon troops, seeking to find out what happened to these loggers and avenge them. There are three nearby villages to the east that we’ll have to evacuate and defend. Because of the time of year, you’ve just placed the region’s fall harvest at risk. We’ll spend the fall in combat instead of strengthening our defense network, which is not what I was planning. I did want to confront these loggers, but they were not a top priority. Not now, not at this time of the year.”

“Yes… Commander.”

“So, the question in front of us is not what has been done, but where do we go from here. With your experience, you’ll have an easy time redeeming yourself. You will do so as a nymph under my command. As of now, you are members of Oana’s squad…” the commander pointed at the oldest of the three women, the one who had called out to her, “both you and the girl.”

Danka said nothing, trying to think how she could stall for time and slip away. The sharp-witted commander saw the doubt in her eyes and continued:

“We’ve already secured your belongings and are taking them to the main winter camp. You’ll find them waiting for you in your sleeping quarters. They were not as well-hidden as you thought.”

Danka gave up on any thoughts of escape. Without her equipment and supplies she could not hope to survive the winter in the mountains. She and Isauria had been drafted into the militia and that was the end of it. She’d have to make the best of her situation, just as she had to make the best out of being a concubine for the Grand Duke.

“As for what’s here, everything in this campsite belongs to the Duchy. I will give you first pick at choosing one dagger and one short-sword. You can keep one medallion, one ring, and a fourth of the coins. The coins are compensation for your efforts and reimbursement for selling us your donkey.”

“Yes, Commander Saupeckt.”

“Good. Now, report to your squad leader.”

Danka and Isauria turned to Oana. She gave Danka a sharp look, until the newcomer realized that she needed to salute. By saluting, she acknowledged that she was under Oana’s command and obligated to obey her orders.

Additional Defenders arrived to help clean out the logging camp. They picked up all the tools, bedding, and cooking utensils, cleaned out the bunk house, and drove away the four oxen. Meanwhile, Oana led Danka and eleven other female archers to the road, where they would ambush and kill the wagon drivers tasked with resupplying the loggers for the day. As they set up, Oana treated Danka the same as she treated any of the other archers in her squad. She was expected to follow orders, coordinate with her peers, and perform her duty with her crossbow. The fact she had joined the unit just minutes before meant nothing. For the time being, she’d be able to keep Isauria as her assistant, but the squad leader hinted Isauria’s role and her relationship with her mistress would change within a few days.

The ambush of the teamsters later that afternoon was anti-climactic. There were eight of them: when Oana ordered her nymphs to fire their crossbows, the foreigners all died instantly. The Danubian women took control of the mules, picked up the bodies, loaded them into the wagons, and continued the journey to the camp. By the time nymphs arrived, the logging compound had been completely dismantled. The Defenders already had made off with the best wood: the rest was used to create a funeral pyre to dispose of the victims from the night before, as well as the eight new corpses. The bodies were laid out in a neat row, ready to be thrown onto the fire from a wagon that was being used as a platform.

A poorly-dressed Priest from the Old Believers’ sect arrived to say a prayer for the dead foreigners. As soon as he finished, several men came out with flutes and a drum. Oana’s nymphs, including Danka and Isauria, stripped off their skirts and boots. The women spent the next hour dancing naked while the musicians played and the men took turns mounting the wagon to toss corpses into the fire. It was an ancient and sinister celebration of death and victory, an acknowledgement of the Destroyer and the power that “the Profane One” held over the Realm of the Living.

Danka learned the dance and repeated it as best she could. She now was a member of Oana’s squad of nymphs and a Defender of the Duchy. As such, she had her duties, which she would perform as well as possible.

She glanced upward at the tree tops. After a scanning the branches for a few seconds she found what she was looking for. Sure enough, from a distance two unblinking yellow eyes were staring back at her.