It’s that time again! Next up, the third book in the Legend of the Jade Phoenix Trilogy, Falcon Guard.
I’ve mentioned it so often I feel like a broken record, but ah fiction...how much joy it’s brought me over the years. In fact, I’ve stated emphatically that BattleTech would be long dead and forgotten, IMO, if it weren’t for the wonderful fiction (both sourcebook and story) that has kept the universe alive and kicking!
Several years ago, now, I had a dream-come-true moment when I helmed the creation of BattleTech: 25 Years of Art and Fiction. In there I was able to work with every single BattleTech novelist who published more than one novel, drafting a whole new selection of great short stories covering a wide range of eras and styles. That book still ranks as one of the highlights of my career.
If you love fiction and haven’t seen this book before, you should absolutely check it out (not to mention it’s a wonderful look at 25 years of brilliant BattleTech action.
Grand Dame Marcelyn Lichter, The Falconheart was the fourth Falconheart and served during the War of the Ebontide, the Midday War, and briefly during the Bloodjoy Uprising.
As the only female Falconheart to be named, Marcelyn rose to prominence shortly before the War of the Ebontide when her elder brother, Marcus, proved incapable of accepting the mantle of command. Marcelyn, gifted and peerless on the field, accepted the charge laid forth by her cousin, Hadrian, and quickly joined battle against the landing Falomyrian forces.
Renowned as one of Blackmarsh’s finest duelists, her initial interactions with her rivals – Richard Falomyr and Tylan Bloodjoy – saw her fledgling levies bested; however, determination and resourcefulness kept the army from breaking and allowed them to continue skirmishing against the Falomyrian hosts. She eventually defeated Lord Richard at Dawnpoint and accepted Tylan’s surrender after a day long battle shy of Dawnhaven, itself.
Marcelyn trained her cousin, Magnus Albrecht, who would later go on to be viscount and a Falconheart himself. Because Hadrian’s war against the witches of Blackmarsh had demonized femininity, the duality of his savior being a woman and his own proclamations against the weaker sex saw him instead mask Marcelyn’s deeds beneath the name of her brother, who had long since fled Blackmarsh.
Marcelyn’s legacy was obscured until Madelynne I saw fit to undo the damage done by naming Marcelyn posthumously as a grand dame, a distinction not held in Blackmarsh though borrowed from the historical figure Catharyn d’Carguere of Highpass.
Art was provided expertly by @diermina, who never fails to do an awesome job.
Part 3 of the Trobairitz story. This has neither been the most exciting nor the most resonant story for Maryem but I thought I should write about her homesickness coming to a head and how she was helped to tackle it.
Part 1 here.
Part 2 here.
As she lay on her side Maryem heard singing. No, humming. Something between the two, the old woman’s voice flitting between half-mumbled lyrics and tonal notes while the firepit at the center crackled. Smoke filled the interior and yet she knew it was kinder than the harsh mountain winter outside.
Slowly, she started to stir. Or tried. Pain shot from her shoulder to her leg the moment she twisted, her breath leaving her so fast it had seemed sucked out of her. The old woman, the stone speaker, clucked her tongue.
“Tsk. Don’t move, you foolish girl. You’ve enough bones to set already.”
And now here she was.
“Fool of a girl,” Nan repeated, “I've sung it to you before.
Stone is hard, but embraces all
Thou thinkst thee air, thyself shalt fall.”
A man was humming a different tune outside. Much different. Heavy beat, driving, his melody accentuated just before his blade hit the grindstone in the tent next to Maryem's own. It wasn't Nan’s song; she contained her disappointment as though it couldn't be revealed to herself.
Any mask worth wearing is one worth keeping, Nan had said. If the truth of homesickness must be kept from the natives around her then it best be kept from herself, too. In time all that nonsense will be forgotten. In time she will return home a hero. It had become a chant nearly every morning, one that she forgave herself for saying a little more every day.
But it was no longer day.
This was only evident once she remembered that the flap of her tent didn't point east, but west. Her bones and her stitched belly protesting at her sudden and violent rise, she nonetheless tore out of her bedroll, pushed the tent’s entrance aside.
“Blessed earth,” she heard herself cursing. It was well after six at least, sunset but a few minutes away. Meat was roasted over flame, much richer than their provisions could provide.
Maryem had already heard the activity around the Fifth Wing’s camp die down with her exit. She didn’t care. Someone needed to answer.
“Why--who allowed this to happen?!” The camp fell silent as the grave.
They had been briefed the week before the maneuvers would happen each and every day while the first rider, Sir Kelmith, was away at Gravestone. The news that had filtered in from Ashmark was scant, but telling in its own way simply by his continued absence. There would be war. If anyone doubted that much they were at least smart enough not to say it.
“Speak now!”
Four riders sat around the campfire. Two were of the old guard, men whose service to House Graves stretched much further than her own. The other two were of her age or thereabouts, faces who were set in fear when she broke ranks to challenge Commander Morrow. She expected the latter to buckle under her pressure, inexperienced as they were--but the older men took a stunned quality to their silence, too, meeting her eye each in turn for only a moment before they could betray no more guilt, and looked into the fire.
The only one to speak up, his willowy form rising from behind one of the Falconguard, was Giraud.
“Ah. I suppose that would be me, my fair lieutenant. But do not blame the others, they of course only went along when they thought you would be fine with the… day of rest.” His excuse was topped with a saccharine smile, as easy to topple over as the man himself.
“I do not believe you.” Giraud’s smooth-talking veneer was cracked within moments. He was a weak man with a weak mask, a bawdy peasant who played at penning great ballads, yet could only play the favorites of the minor lords and ladies who hired him out. Who would believe his lies? Were the knights so desperate for the break that they would hide behind any excuse?
Maryem knew two things about command: that she was too young and she was being watched, if not groomed for it. She could hardly call herself the finest fighter out of the Fifth Wing, let alone the Falconguard. Among her fellow riders were the finest lancers, the strongest swordsmen, and duelists without peer. Knights who knew when to charge and when to disengage, where to billet camp, how to stay in formation. As Sir Kelmith’s second she was to be the one to see his orders made physical, to be the reminder of each and every knight’s duty to His Grace and to the Crown. The expert, the example, the one who was sure and in the mire where their commander was aloof and facing ever-forward.
Whatever maneuvers Sir Kelmith had planned were nearly made irrelevant by his absence but she stepped in and, running herself ragged in the process, had drilled her elder subordinates in duels and tilts and riding to forget all about his tense departure. Each night she curled into her tent with a sick pain in her gut, each dream a nightmare until this evening’s recollection.
She turned her gaze until she nearly spun herself around taking in the camp. If her authority was ever there before this slip in protocol then it had at least partially returned: each and every knight awaited her orders, or her scorn. While anger flashed hot inside her she put that aside for the moment. But without the distaste focused on an outside target she felt felt it turn against herself.
She started slowly: “None of you are eager to linger out here. That I know well. But we are at war, or will be soon. By my oath to His Grace I am bound to see you ready for that storm. And if there need be reason for us to slow, if there is anyone among us who cannot go any further without rest, then they best say so to me.
“Now speak.”
Once more there was a well of silence, infinitesimally small yet still enough to make her heart sink. She could only breath again once Sir Edwin stood, frowning deeply.
“It’s… you, ma’am.”
Giraud made such a show of nodding vigorously that it briefly distracted Maryem from the insult therein.
“Aye, ‘tis true! Think how long you slept for, hm? Nigh a day now, no?
“Each night you fall back into your tent worse than the last. You need the rest--not that you are weak, but! Rest, you do need it.”
Sir Aelder, a Grave man who’d seen more than one dire wound to his roughshod face, was next to join in: “They’re right, ma’am. And before you think we’ve been doin’ nothing but dice this whole time I think you should know: Sir Edwin and the bard prepared a little something for when you woke up. It’s not much, but…”
She followed Sir Aelder’s eyes to the fire, venison hoisted over the flame. The weeks before had born host to her stomach either tumbling or grumbling in the sight of most food. Thankfully it was the latter now; the roasted deer was exactly what she needed after going so long without a meal.
“Please, Dame Maryem,” the bard pleaded as he fell back onto the log that was his seat, “surely our fears are unfounded, but perhaps they need to be assuaged nonetheless?”
Nigh a full day, she repeated in her head. Was I that close to falling apart? If the young falconguard was not yet the woman needed to lead a wing then for the sake of her knights she felt she needed to at least act the part, to push herself further than any man or woman before her; and perhaps that yet held true, but in this case the worried glances held no disrespect. The concern for her seemed not to preclude their duty. And that venison smelled like heaven.
“Very well,” she finally announced, waving the more scattered knights from round their camp. “You already whittled the day away ostensibly for my sake--therefore I could at least enjoy the fruits of your labor.”
With a little indulgent cheer from the knights they gathered around the fire, waiting for Sir Edwin to cut off the portions. A week ago she would have passed the eagerness for rest, wine, and supper; now she was not so sure, and she felt a warmth not present since before facing Tabitha Morrow’s axe.
Giraud had deigned to stick to the Fifth Wing like a parasite since their deployment to this low part of the Grave, giving a show to accompany any dinner for the knights, occasionally visiting the tavern a few miles away to ply his trade for travellers but always returning. At first Maryem believed he merely wanted another chance to bed her; but he was more perceptive than she had first thought, his flirtatious teasing quickly gone once they arrived at the camp. Yet he still stuck around. Why?
For his oft-crude ways and general weasley behavior around the dame-lieutenant he was all the more welcome here tonight, relating tales the Blackmarshers had heard a hundred times before with small differences. He had a talent for comedy, playing off any tragic moment with a well-timed and completely irrelevant anecdote about some bumbling side-character while the Grimms slid into depravity and the Albrecht fought Falomyr for supremacy.
Yet in the sense of great deeds he seemed to fall short. Or perhaps that was the stories, themselves. They were still thrilling to hear and yet Maryem could only think of Sir Edwin, putting an arrow through a lancer’s eye before another squire could be impaled by his charge; or replay the sight of the Falconheart’s blade breaking into useless shards.
That Giraud had been asking after Maryem’s duel at Direpoint was obvious, though even now he tried a surreptitious glance at the knight before announcing that he had a new chanson prepared. It was as full of pretentious, elevated language as she had come to expect from Giraud’s more emotional performances. The melody and cadence were, of course, directly ripped from another tale--that of Dame Marcelyn Lichter. Flattering as it was to be compared to her in such a bombastic way, she was sure the old falconheart would be none too pleased.
At the end of the poem, to which Maryem added to the applause with her best summonable smile, Giraud turned with a grin and a glint in his eye.
“Dame Maryem. I have seen fit to ask this question several times but it seems I must shame you in public to get an answer--so tell me, just what is it that you hum in your sleep?”
The question was anticipated long before he had said it. Apparently she had hummed it first in Ashmark; next she was humming in her tent, which a squire only noticed when he was forced to wake her from a particularly deep sleep. In truth she had no idea whatever kind of song that was--at least, not until this evening.
Stone is hard, but embraces all
Thou thinkst thee air, thyself shalt fall.
“It is an old song, Giraud. And not one fitting the mood.” It was an old tragedy, in truth, made all the more dense by its transcription from what Nan had said was Old Arathi to make it prose. But there was one section in particular, in what had been dubbed the Founding of the Golden Banner, which had inspired her so as a child.
Maryem looked over the fire. Giraud stared back. At once she knew just why he had hung around the Fifth Wing, and it had nothing to do with Sir Kelmith. Giraud was as much a listener as he was a speaker, as much a collector as he was a purveyor. And here, at this moment, he was hungry for more.
She was happy to oblige him.
She chortled, tossing a stick into the flames. “But I suppose you all tire of bawdy Highpass drinking songs sold as chansons. You wish to hear a story, do you?”
At the murmur of assent Maryem beamed. A brief pause; for a second the breath caught in her throat, as though it were not a tale worth telling. Or as though it were not a tale she was worthy of telling. It only lasted a moment. She tried again, and the words spilled from her lips, voiced raised over the roaring fire.
Listen
I speak of a kingdom with many kings
And a tribe of many chiefs
Arts with many masters
And a people on the precipice
And in this time there was one who was three, who wished to be one.
Stone is hard, but embraces all
Thou thinkst thee air, thyself shalt fall.
Maryem sucked in the night air. It felt sweet and clean, as far from the miasma as she could possibly remember. It was home. She kept going.
MARYEM has lost RECKLESS
MARYEM has lost HARDHEADED
Watching a documentary on women in the US Military, it was from back in 2011 so DoD policy was still to deny females any direct combat roles but then there are a bunch of interviewees saying "the lines are starting to blur."
