“Is she still here?” one of the privates muttered.
“Thought she’d wash out after the first week.”
“The first day.”
All six of the men in the group sniggered as Lieutenant Rysha Ravenwood approached. It didn’t matter that they were all enlisted men and she was an officer. Here, training for acceptance into the elite troops, ranks were set aside, and everyone was simply referred to as recruit. Or rookie if the instructors were being condescending. Which was most of the time.
“She must be sleeping with one of the instructors,” the private whispered.
“Who? Captain Kaika?”
More snickers.
“Nah, Kaika only sleeps with the king these days, I hear.”
None of the mutters or whispers were soft or subtle, and they floated across the muddy obstacle course to Rysha’s ears. She pushed her spectacles higher on her nose—a nervous and unnecessary habit, since she had them secured with a strap—and debated whether to pretend not to hear the words or to say something clever in response. The trouble was that she was much more likely to be clever in a five-paragraph essay than on the spur of the moment.
“I told you mule humpers to run the obstacle course, not have tea beside it,” came a call from across the muddy field.
Captain Kaika, the first and thus far only woman to be accepted into the army’s elite troops, strode toward them, scowling impressively. Unlike with the other instructors, the scowl never reached her eyes. She always seemed more amused by the recruits than irritated by them, though she could get denigrating and snippy with the best of them.
Rysha stood to her full six feet as the captain approached, the auburn-haired woman having a rangy, athletic form similar in build to her own. Unfortunately, that was where the similarities ended. Kaika was ten years her senior and had even more years than that of military experience. Most of them in the elite troops.
It was all Rysha could do not to burble and gaze in starry-eyed wonder whenever the captain approached, for here was someone who’d done everything Rysha wished to do, making a name for herself while going on dangerous missions to distant lands and earning the respect of her male comrades. She also had the respect of her superiors, as well as the king himself. Other things from the king, too, if the rumors were to be believed. Rysha didn’t hope to emulate that part of Kaika’s career.
“Let’s go,” Kaika shouted, pointing at two of the privates. “The timekeeper is ready. Get over that wall, under those logs, and through the rest of the course as quickly as possible. Sergeant Branigan is waiting for you at the end, ready and eager to play the role of Cofah infiltrator.”
She pointed at the man at the far end of the field, a beefy veteran as broad as he was tall. He waved a cheerful fist.
Eager, indeed.
Nobody objected to his role as “Cofah infiltrator,” even though Iskandia had officially had a ceasefire with the empire for the last three years, ever since a team of soldiers had captured their emperor, and King Angulus had squirreled him away into exile somewhere.
“Ravenwood,” Kaika said, waving to her before Rysha could shuffle to the end of the line.
Rysha jogged toward her, tamping down a surge of delight that the captain knew her name. Kaika wasn’t a full-time instructor at the training camp. She came in and worked with the recruits for a week here and there between her regular assignments, spy missions that took her all over the world. Rysha nearly swooned at the idea of going on such adventures.
“Yes, ma’am?” she asked, clicking her heels together and delivering a salute.
“You need those spectacles all the time?” Kaika asked without preamble.
Rysha covered a wince. Nobody had commented on them when she’d simply been enrolling in the army as an artillery soldier, but this was the third time one of the elite troops instructors had asked about them. It wasn’t as if they kept her from doing the same training everyone else was doing, and she had extra sets in case she broke a pair. She thought she would make a wonderful spy if she passed the course. What enemy soldier would expect a bespectacled woman playing the role of traveling professor to, in reality, be a spy from the Iskandian army? And the gods knew, she could play the role of professor easily enough.
“Only if it’s important that the world not be fuzzy, ma’am,” Rysha said.
“So, that’s a yes?”
“Yes, ma’am. I can read without them.” Which Rysha had always thought seemed backward. She was fairly certain all those years of reading growing up were the reason her vision had gotten bad. Shouldn’t close-up words be fuzzy instead of objects in the distance? Her father’s vision worked like that.
“Reading. You planning to do a lot of reading in the elite troops?” Kaika snapped her fingers and pointed, and another pair of men raced over the wall and onto the course.
Most of the men were helping each other over. Would Rysha’s partner help her? Was it possible she could jump to the top of the ten-foot wall and pull herself over without help? Despite coming from a bookish family, she’d loved sports all her life and done well at them, and she had height on her side. She might be able to make it.
“Is there not scintillating reading material to enjoy on missions, ma’am?” Rysha asked, sensing Kaika might be one of the few instructors to appreciate a recruit with a sense of humor rather than one that spat monotone yes, sirs and yes, ma’ams. Or maybe she just wanted that. She wanted to be the captain’s colleague and friend, not simply one of the dozens of recruits in the spring class, someone easily forgotten.
“Scintillating? I don’t know. How do you feel about porn and comic books?”
“Uhm, I guess it depends on plots and character development.”
The look Kaika gave her was more puzzled than amused.
“Those being more common in the latter than the former, I understand,” Rysha offered.
“Uh huh. Your turn.” Kaika pointed at the wall. “Let’s see if you can keep those beer bottle bottoms on your face.”
Rysha’s cheeks warmed as the remaining recruit snickered, a corporal who’d been snickering earlier too. And also, she realized, her partner for the obstacle course. She supposed it wouldn’t be professional to ask for someone else.
Kaika had turned away, anyway, exchanging waves with a man in black fatigues and a brown leather jacket. He walked onto the field from the opposite end, and she strode in that direction.
“Our times are getting recorded this run,” the corporal said as Rysha stepped up to the starting line next to him. “If you slow me down, I’ll have my father do everything in his power to get you kicked out of the program.”
Rysha launched a bewildered look at him, wondering what she’d done to earn his rancor. They’d only spoken a few times during their first week. She knew some of the men strongly felt that women didn’t belong here, but they didn’t make threats about it. From what she’d heard, it was hardly necessary. The handful of women who tried out for the program each spring never made it out of the training. The elite troops had their own physical performance requirements, ones much higher than the army as a whole, and there were no concessions made for women. They had to pass all the same tests that the men did.
“Who’s your father?” Rysha asked, forgetting that nobody wore uniforms with nametags during the training and glancing at his chest. The mud-spattered fatigue jacket offered no hints to his identity.
“Lord Oakridge,” he said, lifting his chin.
A noble? So, what? Rysha was one too. In the not-so-distant past, all military officers had come out of the nobility. The army supposedly turned a blind eye to bloodlines now, promoting people based on merit and whether they’d passed various educational courses, but there were still plenty of nobles in the service. Why did this fool think he was special?
And why had he come in as an enlisted soldier, for that matter? Had he gotten kicked out of the officer academy? Or chosen this path because he thought it was harder and he would come out tougher?
“Oakridge?” Rysha offered her best haughty sniff. Actually, it was Aunt Tadelay’s best haughty sniff. For her, it wasn’t a joke or an affect. “From that tiny district in the south? Isn’t half of your land a desert?”
His smug expression turned to a glower. “More land than your family has, I bet.”
“You’d be wise not to take that bet.” Rysha faced the wall, indicating she was ready to focus on the course and stop talking to him, even though she knew he now had to be wondering who in the hells she was.
Not that throwing her parents’ titles around here would do any good. They certainly wouldn’t use their influence to help her get into the elite troops. Her mother and father would be absolutely delighted if she bombed out of this and was so dejected that she turned in her commission and left the army, returning to the worthwhile and respectable field of academia. Only Grandmother Adee approved of her temerity and sent weekly letters, encouraging her to stick with it.
“Ready?” the bored sergeant responsible for timing the run asked.
“Yes,” the corporal said, pulling his suspicious glower from her.
Rysha crouched, ready to spring into action. “Ready.”
“Go!”
She sprinted for the wall, matching the corporal’s pace. Their boots sank deep into the mud and churned it out behind them, but they both made the obstacle in good time. He leaped, caught the lip, flung a leg up, and disappeared over the top.
Bastard. He hadn’t even paused to see if she needed help. Since, as he’d just acknowledged, they had to finish the course together, demonstrating their ability to work as a team, it was illogical for him to leave her behind.
She growled and sprang into the air, determined that she wouldn’t need him. Her fingers just caught the top as her chest smashed against the wall and her breath whooshed out.
She’d hoped to bring a bunch of momentum into the jump to help her over, but she hadn’t gotten as good of a grip as she needed. All her body weight dangled from the tips of her fingers. As much as she wanted to duplicate the corporal’s feat, she wasn’t strong enough to hold herself up like that for long. She wiggled and tried to hitch her way higher on the wall, despite its lack of handholds. That did no good. She tried swinging from side to side like a pendulum, creating momentum so she might hook one leg over the top.
That was more effective. Her forearms trembled, and her fingers threatened to give way, but she managed to heave herself sideways, half-twisting in the air to fling a leg over the wall. Her right hand slipped, and her heart lurched into her throat as she envisioned dangling there from one calf. But she kept her other hand affixed, growled, and pulled herself to the top.
Straddling the wall, she allowed herself one breath and a quick look down to gauge her so-called partner’s progress before swinging herself down the other side. He was mired in the mud under the log course, struggling to get his big form through it. Good.
As Rysha hopped down, she noticed Kaika, who was now talking to the man in uniform on the far side of the field, looking in her direction.
Rysha grimaced, proud that she had gotten over by herself, but also aware that hadn’t been her most graceful moment. Hopefully, the wall had hidden her struggles from view.
She sprinted for the logs, diving under them to low-crawl through the mud. Spring in the capital was typically wet and rainy, much like fall, winter, and half of summer, and this year was no exception. The mud sucked and pulled at her, spattering her glasses and filling her nostrils with its earthy scent. Her visions of catching the corporal were dashed, though she did gain ground on him.
By the time she got out, he was only a third of the way through the jumps-and-ropes section of the course. This part, she did easily, balance and agility more important than raw strength.
He fell off one of the three-inch-wide platforms and had to start over. She didn’t bother hiding a triumphant grin as she passed him. After her struggle with the wall, she doubted they would make the cut-off time, but at least she would reach the end before he did.
She jumped down on the far side and jogged toward the “Cofah infiltrator.” She would have sprinted, but there was no point in getting there without her partner. They were both supposed to fight him. Against many opponents, having two men to one would be an advantage, but the sergeant grinned and raised his fists, not appearing disadvantaged in the least.
The two previous recruits were crawling away from him, their heads low. Blood streamed from one’s nose and spattered into the mud.
“Let me lead,” the corporal growled, panting as he drew even with her. He shot her a dirty look as he passed.
“I’ll gladly let you take the first punch.”
He ran toward the sergeant without looking back. Rysha rolled her eyes. Technically, she only had to find a way past the man. They didn’t have to engage with him.
Rysha jogged after the corporal, hoping to find a way to take advantage while he distracted the sergeant. That was how a lot of teams did it, one member trying to take down the Cofah infiltrator while the other made it through. It wasn’t ideal, but it was considered a better outcome than both being pummeled into the ground.
She would be content with that outcome. Rysha had boxed with her brothers growing up, and done all the hand-to-hand combat courses for her basic army training, but she had no doubt the scarred elite troops sergeant could fight at a higher level.
The corporal launched himself at the man, clearly hoping to take him by surprise. As if that was possible in this scenario. Still, he made a valiant effort, throwing a series of jabs and straight punches.
The corporal wasn’t slow, but the sergeant’s arms moved fluidly, blocking the attacks with whip-like speed. And he looked bored while he did it.
Rysha started to circle around them to get past while they fought, but the sergeant stopped playing and launched a single punch, a single punch with the power of a steam hammer. The corporal flew backward, his feet leaving the earth. He landed on his back in the mud and didn’t move.
The sergeant turned toward her, his eyebrows raised.
“Do you like women in spectacles?” she asked, throwing in a Cofah accent for good measure and giving her best flirty smile.
She couldn’t imagine it being effective when she was wearing shapeless black military fatigues covered with half the mud on the course. When surprise blossomed on the sergeant’s face, she suspected it had more to do with her audacity than anything else.
But he recovered and raised his fists. “No.”
“What about wagers?” she offered, searching her mind for inspiration. With her partner out of the fight—and out cold, it appeared—she highly doubted she could best the sergeant in a fight. “Or, better yet, trivia. Did you know that it takes 1700 pounds per square inch to break a human femur bone? Far less for the nose. I’ve read it only takes about ten pounds of pressure. The nose is mostly cartilage. Did you hit the corporal there in the nose? There are a couple of bones there, at the top. The nasal bones form the bridge of the nose. Did you know that punches to the nose and other parts of the skull can cause brain damage or even kill a person? You’ve heard of concussions, right? If you gave me a concussion, it could have a permanent and negative effect on my brain and hinder my ability to perform everything from simple daily tasks to complex equations. I would be a much poorer officer. I might not be able to perform my duties at all, and all the time and money the army has invested in my training would be lost.” She looked at his fist. He was looking at his fist. “Do you want to be responsible for that?”
She’d edged closer as she spoke, having a notion that she might break into a sprint and make it past him while he was pondering the devastation his fists could do.
“I’ve had a lot of concussions,” he said instead, looking at her with a concerned expression.
How surprising.
“Sometimes, I don’t remember things so good anymore,” he added.
Rysha nodded sagely. “The effects of brain trauma aren’t always noticed at first, but injuries can have a cumulative effect and grow worse over time. Symptoms include difficulty concentrating, difficulty making decisions, and forgetfulness.”
He looked away from the field, toward the distant Ice Blades Mountains. Rysha opted for easing past him, rather than sprinting. Seemingly lost in thought, he didn’t lunge for her. He could have likely caught her without punching her, but she didn’t point that out.
As soon as she was a few meters past him, she sprinted toward the end of the course. The time was probably irrelevant at this point, but she might as well finish as strongly as she could. If nothing else, this had been practice for the next time she ran the course. They had three chances to qualify during their weeks of training.
“Sergeant Branigan!” Kaika yelled, her arms outspread in exasperation.
Rysha winced, knowing the captain had seen their exchange, but she didn’t look back. She picked up her pace and lunged across the finish line.
“What the hells was that?” Kaika added as Rysha dropped her hands to her knees for support while she caught her breath.
“Sorry, ma’am,” the sergeant yelled back. “She started talking about brains and concussions and symptoms. I couldn’t hit her after all that.”
“You don’t have to hit people. Just stop them.”
“But I like hitting.” Branigan looked at the unconscious corporal. “I mean, I did.”
Kaika dropped her face into her hand.
Rysha hoped she hadn’t ruined one of the elite troops’ best fighters. With luck, he wouldn’t care if he was giving enemies concussions.
A snort came from the side, the timekeeper. “Four minutes and twenty-nine seconds,” he said.
The time required to pass was four minutes and thirty seconds. Rysha offered him a lopsided smile. She felt proud that she’d made it, but she had a feeling her method of bypassing the final challenge would disqualify her. If she’d wanted a unit that would reward creativity, it would have been the aviation or intelligence divisions. Intelligence officers went on spy missions too. But there were already plenty of women serving in those units. She’d wanted a challenge.
“Lieutenant Ravenwood,” Kaika called. “Report.”
Rysha straightened. “You think I’m in trouble?” she asked the timekeeper.
“Recruits usually are.”
“Comforting.”
“You signed up for this. Nobody said it would be comfortable.”
“Guess I’m all right with being uncomfortable.”
The timekeeper’s lip quirked up. “That’s not typical for a noble.”
He was the same man who’d started the clock, having trotted around the outside of the course to reach the end to catch people’s finish times, so he’d heard her conversation with the corporal. The corporal that the sergeant was now picking up and carrying off the field. For medical treatment, presumably.
“Or a woman,” the timekeeper added.
“Captain Kaika doesn’t seem to mind discomfort.”
“She’s like one of us.” The man shrugged. “And she’s definitely not noble. Too bad. The king could marry her if she was.”
“Does he want to?” Unlike her older sister, Rysha had zero interest in court intrigues, scandals, or romances, so she hadn’t followed the king’s personal life. She only knew him politically speaking, and then only from newspaper reports.
“Some people think so.”
“Does she want to?” Rysha couldn’t imagine the freewheeling Captain Kaika settling down to marry someone and produce babies. Especially heirs to the kingdom.
The timekeeper’s lip quirked again. “Some people think so.”
“Any time it’s convenient for you, Lieutenant!” Kaika stood with her hands on her hips, staring across the field at Rysha.
Rysha chopped a wave to the timekeeper and ran to join the captain and the man at her side. He wore a scarf in addition to the brown jacket, the latter sporting two pins, a bronze flier pin and a silver wolf head. The tabs at his collar marked him a captain, and his nametag read ANTILON.
He grinned as she jogged up and saluted. “That was cleverer than a fox coming up into the henhouse through a loose floorboard, Lieutenant. Loved it.”
Kaika clubbed him on the arm. “Don’t encourage her, Duck.”
Duck? Was that his first name? Or maybe his pilot name, Rysha supposed, remembering reading unorthodox sobriquets in the newspapers whenever Wolf Squadron had been paramount in repelling the Cofah or pirates, something that had happened frequently three years earlier. Those events had been among the reasons that Rysha switched from an academic path to a military one. Here, she believed, she could make a difference.
“Why not?” Antilon—Duck—asked. He had a backwoods drawl, and was probably from the eastern half of the country. “General Zirkander would have loved that move.”
Rysha spent a few wistful seconds considering that maybe she should have applied to the flier unit, after all. Women weren’t that common there. She still could have led a remarkable career. Of course, she threw up if Draven, their steam carriage driver, took the turns out to the estate too roughly. That didn’t bode well for enjoying flying.
“Zirkander, as Colonel Therrik would be quick to point out, doesn’t have anything to do with the elite troops,” Kaika said.
“So, we shouldn’t rub our pilot attitudes all over her when she’s with us on this mission?”
“I don’t think Lieutenant Ravenwood wants you rubbing anything on her.”
Duck looked her up and down. “Not even a sponge?”
At first, Rysha thought that was some sexual innuendo, which would have flummoxed her since the baggy fatigues and the mud combined to do an excellent job of hiding her feminine attributes. Then she realized he was referring to the mud. After crawling under the logs, her entire front half was slathered with the stuff. Maybe her back half too.
“She might be too heavy for a flier with all that extra weight.” He pointed to a sizable clump balanced on her shoulder.
Rysha cleared her throat. “Did you say something about a mission, sir?”
“Ah, yes. It’ll be cracking. You two are to report to General Zirkander’s office right away.” Duck tugged out a pocket watch. “Actually, five minutes ago. But I didn’t want to drag you off your course.”
“That’s good. I made a passing time.” Rysha looked at Kaika, not expecting praise but hoping she might at least allow the time to go down on her record. Technically, the instructions had only been to “get past” the Cofah infiltrator. Nothing about how it had to be done.
Kaika snorted. “It figures. Come on, Lieutenant. The citadel is on the other side of the fort.”
“I’ll see you two later,” Duck said, waving rather than saluting. “I’ve got to oversee getting the fliers ready. We leave tomorrow!”
Rysha gave him a puzzled look over her shoulder as she and Kaika walked away and his words started to sink in. What kind of mission could she be asked to go on? And by General Zirkander?
Not only did Rysha have nothing to do with the flier battalion, but she’d only been out of the academy for three months. She was at the beginning of her elite troops training. By military standards, she was a raw rookie with little to offer. More than that, her first three months had been spent with the ground troops, an artillery unit. Why would she be sent off with pilots?
“Do you know what this is about, ma’am?” Rysha asked, matching her strides to Kaika’s long steps.
“No idea, but the order was for both of us. Usually, if the flier people want me along on a mission, it’s to blow stuff up. I have no idea how they even know you exist.” Kaika looked at her, eyebrows raised, as if she might have the answer.
Rysha could only shrug. “I don’t know how they know I exist, either. I have had some history papers and results from science experiments published. Just this winter, one was reprinted in the Iskandian Journal of Modern Physics.”
“I’m sure Zirkander reads that to pass the time when he’s in the outhouse.”
Rysha’s cheeks warmed. She hadn’t meant to imply that most soldiers read academic journals, but surely, it was possible that some did. The officers all had university experience, including the pilots. Most of them had mathematics or engineering degrees. And wouldn’t someone who wheeled around in the sky be interested in physics?
As they climbed the stone steps off the field, some of the drying mud flaked off Rysha’s trousers. She halted mid-step.
“Wait, ma’am. I can’t go see a general like this. I have to change first.”
“Duck said we’re already late.” Kaika kept walking up the steps and didn’t look back.
“But—”
“Don’t worry. Zirkander isn’t like other generals.”
Rysha didn’t find that comforting. Very little today was comforting. Had she truly told the timekeeper that she liked to be uncomfortable?
