Only a dozen years ago a young lieutenant of the free company of mercenaries called the Vanduzee Slayers, upon crossing the camp of his unit, heard the shouting of a brawl near the paymaster's tent. But as the officer drew closer to the disturbance, he saw that the paymaster had been knocked down. Stranger still, the brawlers were a man he knew, and a young woman he didn't.
"Just put that, little girl," said the male, "or you might get cut when I take it away from you."
"Take it if you can, sack-belly!" she jeered defiantly.
"Hold!" yelled the lieutenant as he strode forward. "Let her be. What started this?"
"The paymaster wouldn't sign me up for a soldier," complained the woman. "I knocked him down and this one butted in."
"Why do you want to be a soldier."
"Why do you want to be one yourself?"
"Get rid of her, Lieutenant," said a man. "She's trouble."
"Do you have a name?" the officer asked with a smile.
"Not anymore," the maid replied coldly.
"We have to call you something besides, `Trouble.'"
Her manner relaxed a little. "Trouble's more polite than most of the things I've been called lately."
"Then with your permission, I'll call you Lady Trouble."
She shrugged. "Just Trouble, if you would. I'm no lady."
Thus we have the one story of how the heroine Trouble received her strange name. To unravel the mystery of Trouble, the tempestuous warrior?maiden, is not an easy task; the stories are many, but the facts few. Solimar of Milun was a friend of the war?maid during the March of the Pretender, but never managed to penetrate her reticence. But, he has, nonetheless, has given us a good description of her in his recent Memoir of the Marchers:
"She called herself Trouble, and the name fit. She was Trouble for any trooper who attempted to treat her as the beautiful woman she was instead of the warrior peer she desired to be. She was the most skillful than any shield?maid I have ever known and the gods had made her as strong as a man, though she had the build of a village bride. Her preferred garb was mannish. Her face was never painted and she kept her hair bobbed short. Her accent seemed to be Immerite, but no prompting by me could ever make reveal her home village nor any detail of her upbringing, which, I felt, had to have been remarkable.
Trouble could write in a fluid and eloquent hand, suggesting a good upbringing but, again, she would confirm or deny nothing. Sometimes I wondered if she was an outlaw trying to avoid pursuers. Yet the way she was never furtive, like a stealthy fugitive.
"The woman seemed so harsh in many ways, yet good, brave, and noble of heart. I know that she must have held had many secrets and they tortured her. Whatever her demons, they must have claimed her at a young age, for the maiden whom I knew as called Trouble looked only some nineteen years of age."
But age may be only another mystery clinging to the woman named Trouble. From her earliest to her latest descriptions, a span of twelve years at this writing, despite a hard life in the heat, the cold, the sun and the rain, Trouble has always looked to be no more than nineteen years old. Given her fighting prowess there is little wonder that some poets have not speculated that the maid is actually the daughter of a god.
Is Trouble a goddess or even half a goddess? Several strange stories make us wonder.
A man named Felje, several years ago a stable boy in the city of Plibba, was cleaning the stalls while a small band of mercenaries loafed near the outer doors, keeping clear of the midday sun. Suddenly a slim figure became silhouetted against the glare outside.
"Who's runs this stable?" the newcomer asked in a husky, but unmistakably a woman's, voice.
At the sound and the look of her, all heads turned her way.
"You ??! You were in Bylina, weren't you?" growled one mercenary. "What if I was?!" she answered back.
"That's her!" a man yelled. "That woman slew sergeant Gebo!"
"Grab her!" bawled someone else.
The stranger's blade was fast, but as three swordsman pressed in on her, a throwing knife darted to her breast and only the approach of the city patrol sent the ruffians fleeing before they finished their murderous work.
Young Felje yelled for the passing patrol, then knelt over the woman
and saw the deadly seriousness of her wounds. She was taken to the
physician, but none expected the girl to live. Even so, Trouble hung
on through the night and a day, and yet another night. In two days
she walked away healed of wounds that would have invalided the mightiest
of men for an entire season.
Trouble served with the Vanduzee Slayers for only a short time despite
a fine war record and a quick promotion. A pattern emerged over the
next several years, as they maid left her mercenary calling to go wandering.
Friends believed she was searching for something, but did not know what
it might be. She was reported frequently calling upon wizards, including
those of the Witches Kitchen, the famous Schardenzar, the Invisible School
of Thaumaturgy, the itinerant healer Nonnus, and even the dreaded master
of the Tower of Zards. Stories and ballads recount these strange
meetings, but who can say what is true and what is the fantasy of minstrels?
Between such forays, Trouble usually rejoined the Vanduzee Slayers, which
seemed to be the only real home she knew. As is unusual in the career
of a shield maid, promotion followed promotion rapidly, despite her frequent
departures at the end of a campaign. Wise in tactics, personally
brave, Trouble eventually found that the Slayers had lost their chagrin
at serving under a female officer. In fact, being led by such a remarkable
one as she, a veritable goddess of battle, lent status and fame to their
band.
At the end of a war near Jipols, the Slayers again faced unemployment,
and the necessity of breaking up or going into brigandage. Usually
at such times Trouble would have departed, but emissaries from a rebel
prince of Yannagyhara arrived at Jipols with a large treasure and even
larger promises. They spoke for Marodi, the older son of Sultan Yosuf
the Stormer. His father had favored his half?brother Horem the Small
over him, making him his heir. Marodi had to had to marshal his regional
forces around his satrapy in Dahoon and send for mercenary aid.
So began what is called "The March of the Pretender."
The Yannagyharans were surprised and routed back to Harl, the seat of the
Sultanate of Yannagyhara and flocks of defectors swelled Marodi's ranks.
The mercenaries were elated, for the war seemed to be ending victoriously
without a real battle.
But Sultan Yosuf had summoned new levies from the south and placed Horem
at their head. These were hard?bitten troops used to fighting savannah
raiders and foreign foes. As the armies deployed, all expectations
of an bloodless victory spilled into the sun?heated stones.
The decisive battle was fought at Repezus. Marodi had been warned
not to expos himself needlessly, but when he saw his brother flying his
defeat with only a small bodyguard, he rushed forward with his own small
company, wounding the hated Horem, but being himself killed by his brother's
bodyguard.
Horem personally mutilated his sibling's body, so that none of the Strumpets
of Paradise would smile upon him, then covered his retreat with the mysterious
"Smoke of the Snake," a magical incense which cloaked his broken phalanxes
in a cloud of impenetrable mist. The mercenaries had nothing left
to fight for and the Yannagyharans were rapidly going over to the sole
remaining prince. The mercenaries began an arduous withdrawal, friendless
in an alien land. They were dogged by Horem's raiders, but Trouble
was at her best during this agonizing march, or at least her admirer Solimar
chose to wax eloquently over his friend's cleverness and daring.
The marchers were at first ill?trained to deal with the hit and run tactics
of Yannagyhara's horse archers, but Trouble devised a system of flank guards
comprised of marksmen wielding larger and heavier bows, which rained punishing
death upon the enemy and forced them to keep their distance. Nevertheless,
a heavy attrition of senior officers led to Trouble's election as commanding
officer in the course of the retreat.
The enemy wizards became the most deadly challenge to the marchers.
Trouble led a hand?picked band of men in a risky raid against the tent
of the enemy wizards. The wizards fought back with magic bolts, slaying
several mercenaries on either side of Trouble, but incredibly the maid
herself was unharmed, except that her garments were burned way away.
Astonished, the magician could think of no other defense before she was
among them dealing death. The man who handed the commander his cloak
swore that on Trouble's naked thigh there was the tattoo of a sesa flower
?? a ancient marking for Mivioran slave girls! The look in her eyes
told the soldier not to ask questions.
At the Stone Man Pass, the mercenaries knew they had achieved safety.
But here Trouble surprised her comrades by splitting off and returning
south. Solimar her rumors that his friend was seeking the Waters
of Jurba, a magic item which was becoming known in the gossip of southerners
visiting the caravan towns of the Minarian borderland.
It is the strange property of the Waters of Jurba to change the sex of
one a bather. Solimar scarcely credited the story, and had no explanation
for any such mad quest. Though he did pause to wonder whether the
maid who chose to live like a man was not determined to become one in fact.
Whatever her true intention, Trouble returned to Minaria a little over
a year later, still a woman. But Trouble had changed in other ways.
She had always tended to aloofness and brooding. Now she seemed to
be a one in nearly continuous despair. Some said that while in the
south she had loved and lost. Some say it had happened by the agency
of a spell, a weakness she learned too late that she possessed.
The warrior-maid was apparently haunted by nightmares. Friends came
rushing to the sound of her shouts in the night. "Do you see her?!"
she cried.
"What?" asked a comrade.
"That ghost ?? half woman ?? half fox!"
From that day there were comrades who came to doubt Trouble's sanity.
Was it because she believed herself haunted by a spectral fox?woman that
she vanished from sight for more than a year? Some at first believed
she had succumbed to the Great Plague then ravaging the coastal cities
and the river ports of the Deep. Some said that she had joined a
holy order and was seen in the company of the holy man Nonnus, assuming
a new identify and denying her old one. Some gossiped that a love
affair that had gotten her with child and that she preferred to bear it
in secret.
But whatever the reason for her absense, Trouble was suddenly back upon
the stage of major happenings, apparently unchanged, except that those
closest to her thought she might have been a little more contemplative,
a little less defensive. But this time Trouble was not leading any
army of hard?bitten freebooters, but a rag?tag band of Muetaran peasants
in desperate revolt against the patrols of their overlords.What tie had
Trouble forged with the common people of Muetar in the course of her lost
year? What it might be is only one more of the mysteries surrounding
this remarkable war?maiden. Alas, peace with his kingly foes allowed the
full force of the king's vengeance turned against the rebels a few months
later.
Trouble won a striking victory over the Muetarans at Quill Lake, but her
half?trained troops broke under a charge of chivalry at Fern Valley and
were decimated in pursuit. The disaster was near total at Drum, where
the harrying by light calvary did not cease until most of the survivors
were surrendered at the Wanderer's bank, or drowned in a desperate attempt
to cross it.
Some believed Trouble died there also, but after a few months she had appeared
again, this time in Bartertown, seeming a sadder, but hardly a wiser or
older woman. As we write this she is said to be forming a new Free
Company, seeded by veterans from the Vanduzee Slayers, and from many of
the other bands in which she had served. But the name Trouble
has by now become a symbol of hope to the discontented peasantry of Minaria,
chaffing at the old indignities which have begun to seem intolerable in
the light of their rising prosperity and expectations. Still, how
many of them would consent to be led into a war of annihilation as were
the peasants of Muetar?
Poets and storytellers weave many explanations for origin. Some say
she was the daughter of the war?god and a mortal. That might explain
her strength, her seeming agelessness, her healing power, and her reputed
resistance to magic. But do gods truly still mate with mortals in
these degenerate modern times?
Some say that was a slave girl, until a magical sword gave her strength,
health, long life, and victory in battle, but that she becomes an ordinary
woman subject to the dangers of the world when she puts it down.
Yet where is this magic sword? Several different swords have been
described by her observers over the years. And if she had once been
a slave, what slaver alive today would place upon her flank such an obsolete
mark as the sesa flower?
Other say that Trouble is the daughter of a sorcerer, but that her powers
were mostly passive. The strangest story of all concerning Trouble
is a persistent one, though where it come why so many repeat with so little
evidence no one can say.
According to the story, Trouble was once a male knight. His amorous
behavior angered either his own lover, or incited the jealously of his
paramour's suitor. In vengeance the injured party, whomever tht might
have been, poured a vial of the Waters of Jurba into the knight's bath.
This cruel trick transformed him as he bathed into the woman afterwards
known as Trouble.
Those who repeat this rumor say that a second exposure to the Waters is
all the bewitched knight needs to end the curse and resume the life so
cruelly taken from him. That, they say, is why Trouble was said to
seek the magic waters. But we need not take this theory to heart.
The metamorphosing Waters of Jurba have never been reported to bestow upon
its victims mighty powers such as Trouble desplays and, besides, it would
appear that the warrior?maid never even heard of the Waters of Jurba until
the March of the Pretender, long after he had become a well-known woman
warrior.
So many rumors, all so contradictory, may contain a kernel of truth, or
maybe not. Until Trouble speaks without reserve, or until somone
in her confidence betrays it, we shall not know what it is that drives
the strange and unmaidenly woman whom men call by such an unflattering
name.
"It is rage that drives Trouble," says Solimar, "not hate. It is
hard to love her, yet hard not to. Why does she wear her matchless
beauty like a penance, or treat her remarkable qualities as though they
were the cruelest of curses? Even one who knows Trouble best, never
really knows her at all."
What can a biographer add to that?