Come Taste the Steel, Part 1

"Shhhhhh!" the young woman shrieked at him as she pulled her bandage back up. "Please don't give me away! I implore you!"

"Tell on you?" burst out Reiner. "I should whip you!" Reiner was deeply dismayed. How could it be that a connoisseur of womanhood in all its forms had been deceived in such a way? How was it possible that he had not noticed? Now that he knew the truth, it was so obvious it was painful. The hairless jaw, the slender frame, the full lips, the large dark eyes, but in plays he had seen girls disguised as boys who were more convincing! He decided that if this had been possible, it was due to the audacity of the act itself. A man simply could not accept that a woman could disguise herself as a soldier or lead the life of a soldier, so any flaw in the charade, any uncertainty as to her sex, was discarded before it was even conceived because no one would even think to consider the possibility that a soldier could be a woman. He shook his head.

"What do you intend by this foolishness, you lunatic child? What took hold of you to make you indulge in this pitiful set-up?"

The girl raised her chin.

"I do my duty. I protect my native land."

"Your duty, as a woman, is to give birth to more soldiers, not to take up arms yourself."

The girl laughed mockingly.

"Really, and do the harlots you intimate with in the brothels fulfill that duty?"

The question caught Reiner off guard. He expected the girl to cower before him, not answer his arguments.

"Uh, some, yeah, I guess. I'm sure there are. But that's another matter. What you have done is a perversion. A scandal!"

"You talk like a fanatical priest. I thought you were a sophisticated man."

Reiner blushed. The young woman was right. In the the theaters and brothels he had frequented before he was recruited he had met women who dressed as men and men who dressed as women, and he had made light of the matter. He felt more outraged by the fact that she had deceived him than by what she had done. Nevertheless, he continued to feel troubled.

"But women are not made to be soldiers! They are too weak. They can't do the work that war demands. They have no stomach for killing."

The young woman drew herself upright.

"Has my work as a soldier seemed to you deficient? Have I lagged behind? Have I neglected my duties? Have I shrunk back from danger? I admit that I am not strong and not at all good with a sword, but what archer is? Was I any less a soldier for that?"

"You were." Replied Reiner, who at last felt he was treading on solid ground. "Look at the trouble you've caused. The nonsense about not sharing a tent. Not allowing the surgeon to heal you. And twice you've killed fellow soldiers to stop them from revealing your secret...the poor guy whose death landed you in jail, and now Gustaf."

"I did not kill them to protect my secret." Replied the girl humbly. "I would have been angry with them if they had ratted me out, but I wouldn't have killed them." She looked Reiner in the eye. "In prison, I told the truth. When my tent mate found out what my sex was, he tried to force himself on me thinking I would give in to his will to keep him quiet." She shuddered. "Gustaf tried the same thing, though in a worse way. He said he would give me another reason to wear the bandages. He tried to cut me with the scalpel like he did that poor girl."

Reiner gasped.

"Brave bastard." He looked up at the young woman. "But, you understand, if you had been a man neither of them would have tried anything. The temptation would not have been there."

The girl clenched her fists.

"No. They would only have confined themselves to attacking peasant girls and harlots instead of me, and besides, no one would have stopped them!" She calmed down and dropped her head. "Forgive me. I lose control. I know that my place is not in the army, that my presence constitutes an alteration of the norm, a crime." He raised imploring eyes toward Reiner. "But aren't we all criminals? Aren't we all a bunch of outlaws? Must you expel me for that? In all other respects I am a good soldier. I beg you not to tell the others. I could not bear to have them turn against me, or worse, treat me like a china doll. At least let me get to the end of this mission. When we return to the Empire, you can do as you wish. I won't complain."

Reiner stared at the young woman for a long moment. Revealing the secret would pose a greater problem than keeping it; however, allowing a girl to fight and put herself in danger was contrary to all his instincts as a gentleman and lover of women. He gritted his teeth. He had to think like a captain and do what was best for the group, not for a single individual, and for the group it was better to have one more fighter and work in coordination as a unit.

"What's your name, girl?"

"Franka. Franka Waller."

Reiner sighed and gently pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I've done a foolish thing. It would have been better for me not to have known you by any other name than Franz. That way it would have been impossible for me to make a mistake." He shrugged his shoulders. "Anyway, it can no longer be remedied. Gather your gear, the others are getting too far ahead."

Franka looked at him uncertainly.

"So you won't tell on me?"

"No, may the gods confound you. I need you. But I make no promises to you by the time we return to civilization. I hope that is understood."

Franka did the military salute gracefully as a smile appeared on her lips.

"Perfectly, captain. And, thank you."

Reiner grunted and set about gathering the things from Gustaf's bag as he tried to push the image of Franka's naked breasts from his mind. He would find it hard to think of her as a boy again.

A while later they caught up with the others. Hals shot Franka a baleful look.

"I'm surprised he didn't murder you too, Captain, being alone with him and..."

"Let's drop the subject, pikeman." Reiner said. "I've heard the story from the boy's mu... and I believe him. He showed me some cuts he has on his chest and they are just like the ones Gustaf made on that young lady. It seems our surgeon had broader tastes than we suspected."

"That may be so." Pavel said. "But don't expect me to sleep next to him."

The men continued in pursuit of the distant marching sounds. There were no stairs in the strange round tunnels, only steep ramps connecting one level to another. On the ramps were carved footholds that looked like they were arranged for four-legged beasts, not two, something that brought Giano back to his delirious chatter about rat men. The marching sounds continued to echo just above their heads, and they ascended five levels before they began to sound ahead of them.

"Let's pick up the pace until we find the canyon ruts." Reiner said. "I don't want us to miss the path."

They hurried on, although they were all exhausted from the interruption of sleep. Hals was hopping animatedly with his improvised crutch, while Giano held Ulf by one elbow because the big man had not quite regained his balance after the blow to the head. Oskar shuffled like a sleepwalker in the middle of the group, calm now that Reiner had given him another sip of Gustaf's preparation. The journey was somewhat more comfortable because they no longer needed torches. The pale green glow of the walls was enough to see by, although it gave them a sickly skin tone that was unpleasant to look at.

A few hours into their march, Hals found a large broken blade they had abandoned in a shadowy alcove. It was huge, with a handle so large that Ulf found it hard to close his fingers around it. There was dried blood stuck to the split blade.

"Orcs." Pavel said. "No doubt about it."

Hals scraped away the dried blood, which fell in flakes.

"There's no way to tell if she was left here last week or last century." Reiner grunted, concerned.

"Well, we can't be any more on guard than we already are, can we? Let's move on."

They resumed marching, and despite what Reiner had said, the men were actually more alert: they glanced nervously over their shoulders and startled at the shadows. Reiner let the others get a little ahead of him and continued walking alongside Franka.

"I still don't understand how you became a soldier." He said. "What took hold of you to get you into this life?"

"Love." Franka sighed.

"Love?"