Vasdema
Recruit
Harken all to the tale of Katryn Ravenhair, Bandit Queen of Zhemya and Serpent of the North. Come hear tell of her humble beginnings.
Katryn was born to Baldim and Tarya Zhemyaving in the early hours of the 1st of Summer, 1054, before the first sun of the new season shone down upon Calradia. Unlike so many Sturgians, her hair was almost as black as the Raven, marking her as pure Sturgian stock, not "contaminated" as her father would have called it, from intermingling with Nord blood. So from a young age he would call her his little "Katti Ravenhair". Later in life, she would call him a drunken sot, fit only for wallowing with the pigs. Only once of course, for it takes only one lesson to realise that as much as a belt across the face hurts, a belt buckle clipping the ear is worse.
Born in an earlier period she would have lived in relative luxury, for her great-grandfather had been Lord of Clan Zhemyaving and master of Ustokol Castle. But following his death, machinations at court had found the title passed to another clan. Even worse, her grandfather had inherited his father's debts, and while only modest, he no longer had the income to pay them. So he was left with no choice but to sell off the majority of the family's smaller holdings to the other major landowners of the area. In the end, he didn't even have enough tenants to qualify for the title of Boyar, although his peers who he had fought and bled beside still afforded him that respect.
That privilege was not extended to his son Baldim, however. Fortunately, he still held enough social status, along with his arms and training, to serve as a druzhina to a friend of his father. Unfortunately, at some point while Katryn lay inside her mother's womb, her father had committed some transgression that was never, ever spoken of. A transgression that had been so terrible as to have him stripped of what little remained of the family name and fortune.
So it came to pass that Katryn Zhemyaving was born not in a castle, but in a dilapidated shack, in the shanty town under the shadow of Omor's walls.
Still, for Katryn, it was the only life she had ever known. Running through the winding paths of the slums, with her little "clan" of misfits, leading them into mischief and adventure. Moments filled with laughter and uncomplicated joy. Moments that offered her a respite from a father who was oft drunk and always bitter. She would come to cherish those innocent times in the coming decades.
Baldim took on small tinker jobs, when he was sober enough to focus, that is. Little things like fixing tack or shoeing horses. Jobs small enough to avoid the attention of the trade guilds in the city. Tarya supplemented their income with sewing and washing, something that had provoked many an argument between them. He said it was beneath a woman of her station to be doing common work, but Katryn was a quick study of the human condition, and she knew it had to do with his pride.
When she was five, her brother Nozhon was born. Much like her father, he too would end up lost in the past, dreaming of restored glory but unwilling to do anything to attain it. But unlike her father, later in life she wouldn't have thought Nozhon fit to wallow with the pigs - because she didn't think he could be trusted not to rut with them.
Soon after Nozhon's birth, they had moved into a larger shack. It was a funny place. It had two rooms instead of one, with a curtain separating them, and each with a separate door to the winding paths of the shanty town. Katryn was also forbidden to ever go into the second room. She figured it had something to do with her father's work. Probably something that would get him into trouble with the guilds.
Noticing that the people Katryn was beginning to run with were closer to miscreant than misfit, her mother had arranged an apprenticeship of sorts with a seller of small goods just outside the main caravanserai inside the city. While at first dismayed at being forced from her friends' side, the joy of all the new experiences inside the city quickly outpaced that feeling. Every day was a rejuvenation, for while night after night there had only been tension and silence at home of late, the day always brought new wonder. An Aserai trader. A mercenary company from the Empire. A Vlandian knight. A Camel! In Sturgia! Was the poor thing not cold?
As for the stall itself, its owner Johrig was one of the the most patient and kind men she had ever met. He may also have been the oldest. While otherwise hearty and hale, he was slowly losing his eyesight. Despite that, he maintained a certain gravitas, untempered by self-pity. But he did need sharp eyes to watch the merchandise and count the coins. At the end of her first week he paid her 2 whole denars. She ran home more excited than she had ever been in her life.
In Calradia, even among the nobility, it's common for families to share a room to cut down on heating costs, even to the point of having servants sleeping amongst the rushes on the floor. This is especially true in Sturgia where the trees are hard to hew and they're worth more than their weight in denars at the right market. So no child is without knowledge of what passes between a man and his wife between their blankets. But when Katryn ran through their little shack and went in the other room looking for her mother without thinking, the man she found labouring on top of her was most definitely not Baldim. As she backed slowly through the curtain, all the pieces falling into place in her mind, she saw her mother, always such a proud woman, close her eyes in shame.
The world seemed a little dimmer after that. From that moment on, her loathing for her father and later Nozhon, only grew. He looked upon Tarya with disgust, as did Nozhon when he grew old enough to understand, yet she was the one putting food on the table. The long silences and looks of contempt quickly turned to rage when Katryn's mother fell pregnant with Fodor and then Alishka. However, if her father had one virtue, it was that he didn't take their uncertain parentage out on them. Unfathomably, they loved him and Nozhon both.
As the seasons turned and the years passed, eventually time caught up with old Johrig and he passed away peacefully in his sleep. He was the closest she had ever had to an actual grandfather, and with his passing she felt the first real grief of her life. At the end, she had been making the trinkets sold at his stall for him, as his eyesight had failed him completely. But by touch alone, he had been carving a small, metal raven for her. She found it by his bedside after his funeral, its feathers unfinished, but beautiful nonetheless. As she picked it up, tears started to bead and then flow. She was still sobbing on the edge of his cot when one of the merchants of the city came in to seize Johrig's small house and all his goods. This was to be her second look into the grim nature of reality.
"What have you got there, woman?" said the merchant peremptorily.
"My, my necklace, sir."
"Not if it was in this house or at the stall, it's not. Put it back."
"But it's mine! Johrig carved it for me."
"Put it back, now!" the merchant said in a final, slightly menacing tone.
"No. I won't."
"Guards," he called shortly, not even bothering to glance at the two men shuffling behind him, "Guards!"
"Yes, sir?" inquired the shorter one as he stepped up beside the merchant.
"This girl is a thief. Arrest her, take her to the square and cut off her hand. Now."
She was so shocked she couldn't do anything except gape incredulously at the man. The two urban militiamen, obviously placed with him to resolve any issues he had in seizing the house and shop, looked uneasily at each other. They hadn't imagined they would round out their day chopping off a woman's hand. But this was an extremely powerful merchant with the ear of the Steward.
"What seems to be the problem here?" came a familiar voice from the doorway.
"Nothing, soldier, just dealing with a thief," said the merchant to the heavily armed man.
The previous year, an argument between two bands of mercenaries, one Battanian and one Vlandian, had led to all out fighting inside the caravanserai. Since then, Olek, Lord of Clan Kuloving and master of the entire city of Omor and its surrounds, had kept a detachment there to prevent any future problems. Unlike the militiamen, the soldier didn't answer to the Steward of the City, only to his Lord, and his Lord's son Olek the Young, and he especially didn't answer to merchants. Most importantly, this particular well-armed and armoured individual, that went by the name of Torig, had spent most of the past year just outside the caravanserai, two yards from Johrig's stall and more importantly, its vendor, one Katryn Zhemyaving.
Looking up in hope, the words spilled out of her in a terrified jumble, "Johrig was carving this raven necklace for me, I came straight here after Johrig's burial rites to get it, but now this man's accusing me of stealing it, but it really is mine. I swear."
After a second's pause and a twitch of the mouth that she surely must have imagined considering the seriousness of the situation, Torig said "Good enough for me. Let her pass," almost lazily as he pivoted on the ball of his right foot and moved to walk away, leaving the merchant huffing behind him.
When he heard no movement behind him, he stopped, then slowly turned half-way back, his palm caressing the pommel of the blade at his belt.
"Need I repeat myself?" he questioned in a tone completely lacking in inflection. Katryn's spine shuddered just hearing it said; she would have hated for it to be directed at her. Unsurprisingly, the militiamen almost tripped over themselves getting out of the way. She scooted past and didn't look back.
For the next three days Katryn took on odd jobs as she tried to find permanent employment once again, but on the fourth day her life changed once again. A deputy Biritch of the city, tasked with various summonses and servings, arrived at the doorstep to their shack. The wrong doorstep as it turns out, but fortunately her mother hadn't been with a client at the time, not with her adult daughter currently underfoot. When he had showed up, Katryn had thought the merchant had complained to the Steward, and she was about to face punishment. But he was there to inform her she had been levied as a member of the urban militia.
She had been dumbfounded. But as she turned to her mother following the man's departure, the slightest trace of a smile lingering on her lips betrayed her handiwork. She had obviously prevailed upon some client of hers, perhaps a militia captain or simply a city clerk, to place her daughter on the levy list. As she hadn't entertained anybody in the last three days, she must have set things in motion before Johrig's death. Katryn, on impulse, gave her mother a half bow, which her mother returned with a regal nod.
Her father had, somewhat predictably, exploded in rage. Even Nozhon was taken aback by the anger in his voice. Baldim scremed that his daughter wasn't some half-Nord sow, to be thrown into the wall of battle. She was better than that. Katryn listened for a few minutes in resignation, but eventually, an incandescent rage grew within her. She had heard a similar refrain her whole life. Enough was enough. She shouted back that they were not boyars, that they were not even common druzhina, they were smerdy.
Her father was a swarthy man, but he turned absolutely pale at that. Smerdy. Peasants. He half-sat, half-collapsed in a chair so quickly that even she took a step forward instinctively. Her mouth worked a few times trying to find some words, but she couldn't and deep down she didn't care too. Somebody should have said the words a long time ago. A glance around the room saw her mother and eldest brother looking down at he floor, while her youngest siblings glared daggers at her. She left the shack to its deafening silence and never graced its door again.
Unlike the Voyi, the levies raised in a time of war, the urban militia of Omor served a term of ten years. So it was for the next few years that she found herself standing guard atop walls, patrolling the city streets, inspecting caravans at the city gates and thankfully not cutting off the hands of young women. It was on her first night watch upon the wall, looking out at the stars, that she realised just how much she longed to be free of Omor and the ties of her past. She already had some money put away from her time working for Johrig and resolved to save as much of her pay as possible in order to escape this wretched place come the end of her term.
Along with her duties came two other things, one expected and one not. The training was very much expected and she practised heavily with the bow. There were few crossbows in the garrison, but each recruit was familiarised with the weapon in case they needed to pick one up from a fallen soldier and use it in the midst of a siege. She even learned some engineering, discovering what parts of the wall bore the load and where to shore it up. But the thing she had not expected was the camaraderie. The nights spent off-duty in the barracks with these strange men and women from all parts of the city quickly endeared them to her.
Out in the world, momentous changes were afoot. Some said Sturgia was going to war with Battania. Others that Sturgia was going to war with the Empire. It was shortly after three years of service that the hosts of Sturgia moved west to do war in force. For a whole week, the Clan Lords gathered on the fields before Omor, heeding the call of Prince Ragnavad. When they returned a year later, they spoke of a great alliance between the Battanians and the Sturgians which had led to a mighty victory against the Empire, the slaughter of the Legions and the death of the Emperor himself. All of Omor seemed to shut down as the city erupted in celebration. Katryn so wished to have been there, to have seen these places and fought in these battles, instead of remaining trapped guarding windswept battlements day after day.
Of course, even victory celebrations cannot last forever, and the war continued for a time against the new Emperor. But there were no more stunning victories. Only a series of defeats, that combined with the ever-present friction between Sturgia and Battania, culminated in the collapse of the coalition and a return to peace with the Empire. As more seasons passed, old hatreds were renewed and new slights delivered, and border skirmishes with the Battanians became all too common.
Anticipating war, a contract was placed with a local merchant magnate to lay in an extra 1000 bushels of grain. While the grain was indeed supplied, her company, under whose charge it had been given, quickly found that it was infested with weevils. By the time they sifted out the weevils and then picked through the compromised grain, there were little more than 800 bushels remaining. They all knew that complaining would not only fall on deaf ears, but would likely invite punishment, perhaps even charges of theft, to cover up the corruption. So her company had no choice but to pool their funds and replace the grain out of their own pocket, pushing freedom further from her grasp and hardening her heart even further against the merchant class.
A year on, the incidents at the border erupted into full blown war. Having inherited the title of Clan Lord after his father's passing, Olek the Young called up levies from the freeholds and the city, and with every man needed, even Katryn's father and brother marched off to war, the stains upon the family name ignored out of pure necessity. Her mother came in person to tell her before taking her younger siblings and joining the camp that inevitably follows all armies. Despite still being a handsome woman, her age was taking its toll, and it was obvious that she would have to ply her trade amongst the less discerning soldiery.
But Lord Olek was unaware that the castles of Kranirog and Mazhadan had already fallen. Furthermore, the Battanians had stolen a march on him, and were camped out in the Forest of Chornobas, waiting for him to leave his city relatively undefended. So it was that Katryn discovered the true nature of war as Omor was encircled and put under siege. Olek's eldest son Urik took change of the defence with a confidence that belied his mere 20 winters. Seeing a man six years her junior living such a life only confirmed to her, with a pang of quickly suppressed jealousy, that she had barely lived hers at all and as she saw the army arrayed below the walls she feared she might never get to.
Of course, she realised that all was not yet lost. For unless Olek's forces were destroyed, the army before the gates could not receive supply trains from home; they would be dependent upon whatever they had brought with them. Furthermore, word would have reached Balgard and possibly Varnovapol by now, and the levies would already be assembling. So unless they had enough troops to also take the castle at Ov, the hosts of Sturgia would soon surge across the landbridge and on to Omor. Which meant the enemy had weeks, not months.
Omor was built upon the ruins of an Imperial city, which was itself built upon the ruins of an ancient Calradic one. That pretty much precluded sappers mining under the walls and then firing the supports to bring it down. Not in the length of time the Battanians had available to them. Which left only one option. A direct assault. With so much stout timber close at hand, they could build a ram and ladders with ease, perhaps even a siege tower. But she imagined they'd simply stick to ladders. For Omor had the one problem that all walled cities have. A gigantic perimeter. It would take a quarter of the population to effectively cover the walls. So the enemy's best bet was a feint on one section of the wall and then a push on another.
As it turned out, she would have to wait but a week to see her predictions come true. Just before dawn on the seventh day, word was passed along the wall that a ram was trundling up to the main gate at the southwest end of the city. Katryn was stationed on the northwest wall, with no way to see or even hear what was going on. She tried to take comfort in the fact that a group of reserves below her position had not been redeployed, but she knew that it meant that Lord Urik didn't think that this was a serious attempt at a breach, either.
Her company had been stationed on one of the towers that dotted the wall. Many of them fidgeted, the wait and the not knowing putting everybody on edge. As the sun rose behind them, and the darkness gave way to gloom, Marena, a particularly sharp eyed member of Katryn's company, shouted of shapes in the mist. As her and her brothers and sisters at arms peered outwards trying to figure out if there was indeed something there or if it was just a trick of the light, the arrows started to fall from the sky.
Everyone scrambled behind the parapet for cover as those terrible shafts, a full cloth yard long, rained down all over the wall. Coming from far outside her own bow's range, there was nothing Katryn could do but watch in horror as her friends were cut down where they stood. Sandr took one in the shoulder and toppled over the back of the tower, little Gundi took one to the eye, felling her instantly, and Tor thrashed on the ground with two in his belly, his screams mercifully cut short as a third caught him in the chest.
Between volleys she risked a look through one of the crenels and saw the enemy infantry advancing in a huge wave. They were nearly in bow range. She had absolutely no idea what to do. All of her training went out of her head. Then her company commander, an aging veteran by the name of Andriy, was suddenly there at the merlon beside hers. Her relief must have been palpable, because he favoured her with a small smile and placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder before taking a quick look at the battlefield himself.
Mere moments later he had them firing down into the mass. Her hardened commander knew his work. If they couldn't squeeze behind a merlon, they knocked on one knee, then took turns loosing their arrows through the crenels on the men down below. At first they were relatively free of danger, shooting between Battanian volleys. But once the enemy had raked the battlements for a few minutes with those awful clouds of death, they began shooting in lines. There were far fewer arrows coming in, but there was only a second at most between each volley. Even worse, their archers were slowly advancing, so they would soon be picking their targets.
She found herself going numb inside. Knock, wait for the order, take position, draw, loose, take cover. She was vaguely aware that people were clutching themselves when she fired her bow. Knock, wait for the order, take position, draw, loose, take cover. She even saw some go down and not get up. Knock, wait for the order, take position, draw, loose, take cover. As the enemy finally forced their way on to the wall under the tower, Andriy signaled her to concentrate on those enemies. Knock, wait for the order, take position, draw, loose, take cover. In some detached part of her mind, she was aware that at some point the reserves below the wall had been committed and more were flowing in from the south. Knock, wait for the order, take position, draw, loose, take cover. It went on and on until time became meaningless.
Then all of a sudden she realised there were no more enemies atop the wall to shoot at. That was when she glanced out at the battlefield. At some point Urik had sallied out of the city with his cavalry. There were clumps of dead and riderless horses where the Battanian longbows had made the druzhina pay heavily for their charge. But once they had gotten in amongst the archers, it had obviously been a slaughter. Now the infantry were retreating in good order, rather than be ground up against the wall like sausage meat. She joined her brethren firing at their foes as they withdrew, but they were quickly out of range. For her, the battle was over.
