Melania

History

From where Melania stood it was twenty paces to her father's workshop in Peresopnytsia. The same again to the town watch yard across the road. She did not go home.

The workshop repaired carts, farm implements, horse harness and simple weapons for the watch. The family was not among the richest townsfolk of Volhynia but lived securely and could hire hands when the work was heavy. Her father had two sons and held the same expectations for his daughter as everyone else.

Melania carried the repaired gear over to the watch yard, knew most of the watchmen by name, and could spend hours watching them drill. While still a girl she began asking to train with them. At first it was taken as a game. When she was told the spear was too heavy, she came back the next day. When it was explained that she was holding the shaft wrong, she remembered and tried again.

In the end one of the senior guards, a woman named Ulyta, began teaching her seriously. She spoke almost never about the force of a blow. Instead she made Melania watch her opponent's feet, the distance between people, and the open ground around them. A good spearman, Ulyta repeated, begins the fight before the first thrust: you have to know where the enemy can step, who is standing behind him, who is covering his flank, and where you yourself will be after the blow.

That was what came most naturally to her — and it was exactly where strength counted for least. Melania had a good sense of distance, saw errors in how people were placed quickly, and learned to wait. One short thrust at the right moment always pleased her more than a long exchange of blows.

She saw her first real fight at twenty. During a great fair a small band of robbers tried to break into the town; part of the watch was outside the walls, so everyone who could hold a weapon stood at the gate. Melania among them. The skirmish did not last long, and she barely remembered any individual blow — but she remembered very well the man beside her who kept trying to give half a step of ground and got in everyone's way because of it. After that day Melania never went back to the life her father had planned for her.

After that came the watch, then small companies beyond the walls, roads, merchants, other captains, other people. In nearly two decades under arms she has been a town watchwoman, a hired sword, a caravan guard, and simply one shield in somebody else's line. She stopped counting skirmishes long ago. Melania came into the Kyivan lands already grown, on somebody else's contract, and never became a local: she still does not speak the way people speak here, and hears it every time she opens her mouth.

Over those same years Melania learned what she cannot do. She dislikes long marches off the roads, can barely read sign, is unsure of her way in the forest, and knows nothing about hunting. Her element begins where the enemy is already in sight.

The spear stayed her main weapon because it gave her what she values most: the ability to act not only on the man in front of her but on the ground around him. Melania cannot bear a disordered scrap in which everyone picks an opponent and forgets the rest. She watches where her comrades are standing, where a gap has opened, and whose body is in whose way. If one thrust can make trouble for two men at once, that is a better blow to her than the hardest blow against one.

With age her manner has grown more restrained still. She tries less often to correct a bad position by moving and thinks more often about not ending up in one at all.

The throwing axes came late. In one hired company Melania served for some months alongside men from the western lands who carried at the belt a short axe with a narrow flaring blade — a francisca. The weapon was not from these parts: it came along the same roads that brought cloth and salt into Volhynia, and local smiths took it on reluctantly, because the shape has to be held exactly or the axe flies anywhere it likes. At first Melania thought it an unreliable trick — until one such throw stopped an opponent who had almost broken out of a fight. She traded for her first francisca from those same men before the company went on south, and began practising herself.

Thrown weapons never became a separate speciality for her. Melania does not compete with archers and does not spend an axe on a man simply because he is far away. She throws when an enemy has drawn off a few paces, when he is awkward to reach with the spear, or when a wounded man has to be finished without giving up good ground.

She grew used to heavy armour long ago and does not consider it a sign of cowardice or clumsiness. To Melania armour is one more part of a properly chosen position: if you have decided to stay where you are, be ready to take what comes back.

A few years ago she joined a small company under a retainer named Boryvoi. She was already experienced and was seldom impressed by captains; Boryvoi was the exception. He disliked needless risk, did not start a fight without cause, and almost always thought about the line of retreat before the fighting began. He explained his decisions and did not ask of people what he was not prepared to do himself.

Which is exactly why she remembers what came next so clearly. The company was ordered to hold a river crossing until the main force came up. There turned out to be far more of the enemy than expected; Boryvoi understood quickly that the crossing could not be held and ordered a withdrawal. Behind the crossing lay a small settlement.

Melania refused to go. With several others she stayed to delay the attackers while the inhabitants fled into the forest. They bought enough time. Two of those who stayed with her were killed.

Boryvoi called her decision senseless insubordination. Melania answered that his order was right from a military point of view and unacceptable from a human one. They never served together again.

Since then she has been wary of captains who speak too easily about necessary losses. It has not made her an enemy of discipline — the opposite: in a fight Melania is more disciplined than most. If a plan has been agreed, she holds her place and expects the same of others.

Which is why Dzvenyslava irritated her, for a long time, more than anyone. Where Melania sees an appointed position, Dzvenyslava sees a place that was the best one a minute ago. Where Melania expects to find a comrade beside her, Dzvenyslava is already going round the enemy from the other side. To Melania that is a breach of the plan. To Dzvenyslava it is the plan continuing. In time Melania noticed that she almost never changes position without a reason. It did not become less irritating, but it gradually forced an unwelcome thought on her: sometimes trusting a person means letting them do something other than what you agreed.

With Hlib it went worse, because this time she was wrong in a different way. They wintered in the same band, and Melania placed him at once among the people who explain their decisions by an order. Hlib did explain them. Except that he had left the service over it and she had not: she had answered Boryvoi back and then gone on fighting under other men exactly like him. Melania did not say that in the argument, and she still regrets it.

Away from battle she is calm and companionable, likes sitting with the others by a fire, enters a conversation easily, and does not hide her past. Her father's trade left her with enough practical skill to be useful in camp: she can true an edge, replace a strap, tighten a loose shaft, mend the wooden part of a cart, or work out quickly what exactly has broken. Her own belongings, meanwhile, are often lying anywhere at all. Her weapons never are.

She has little patience for people who talk a great deal about things they have never done, and loses respect quickly for captains who take somebody else's risk more lightly than their own.

Before she served under Boryvoi, Melania spent a few weeks working alongside Mstyslav's warband. He gave his son a small forward party to lead several times — enough for Liutobor to feel like a commander, and not enough for his father to grant him real responsibility. Even then he had the same habit of being out in front before the people he was leading. At first Melania respected it.

What began to trouble her was something else. A captain risks other people's lives not only by staying behind. Sometimes it is enough to take the first step himself — people will follow because he took it. Liutobor is nearly always ready to pay for his own decision first, and Melania is not convinced that makes the decision itself any better.

She never did say it to Liutobor. Every time she was about to call that kind of courage irresponsible, she would remember her own decision at the crossing — and stop.

Last year, in a narrow street, a younger fighter was pinned by two riders, and Melania went to help him although she could see from the first step that she would not be in time. She was caught by the belt and pulled back. She did not thank anyone and did not argue — she simply held half a step closer to him than the plan called for, for the rest of the day.

The two who stayed with her at the crossing were called Hordiata and Vyshata. Melania is convinced to this day that staying was right, and to this day does not know whether they would have stayed if she had not stayed first. She does not say the names out loud. Out loud, nobody asks for them.