I am quite astonished to witness this- a sight I was promised not to forget, a legend in its own time, one of the greatest fighting forces in our world. Yet it is not at all as I had anticipated, not the thousand female warriors baying for battle, not even a hundred girl soldiers, all prepared for war.
They look so small to me, so few, no more than twenty young women in soft black dresses, standing together, cold in the yellow light of fading day and falling leaves. The motherfolk walk among them, offering a few silk shawls to those who are the coldest. But the shawls are few, and many of the girls go without.
And here is one, trembling harder than all the rest, and no warmth nor comfort is offered her.
"Why do you not give her a cloak?" I ask one of the motherfolk.
The woman looks from me, then to the trembling girl, and back to me. "She is not cold," She tells me, as if it were some great error on my part to assume so.
But I am not here to recommend strategies or provisions for the soldiers. I am here to chronicle, and to chronicle only. So when the horns are sounded, and the young women rush forwards, slender swords outheld, I tell myself that my heart does not pump with fear and fury, and that I am not afraid for the lives of these innocent girls.
The one I saw before, who trembled, does not run with the others. She lags, and stumbles, and does not pounce forward with the same zest as her comrades. If I were to allow myself fear- which I do not- I would have the most of it for her. She is smaller than her sister warriors, and will be the first to fall. I feel this with terrifying certainty.
Then this child raises her hand, and there, held in a gauntlet of iron, is a mighty sword, and this sword gives her more strength and fury to be into the battle than her comrades, and more strength and fury than I have seen in any woman, or any man, save those possessed by true madness.
The girls around her were seized by her great yells, and they charged with still greater passion, and I saw the enemy quake before them and they were slain to a man, their bodies thrown unto the earth, poisoned with the redness of their blood.
And the girl soldiers stood unharmed, for the fury of their frailest companion was greater than that of any army, and she had fed that strength to them and they were victorious and the joy and blood and rage knew no limits, and I was there, as chronicler, to this great happening.
But this was yet only the second most amazing happening of that day, that I was fortunate enough to be a witness to, to see with my own eyes the miracles of life and death and strength beyond words.
For the girls did not exult overmuch in their victory, but were calm and composed, as befits those who command a power not of this world. And their heroine, the slender, trembling girl, lay on the ground, with the iron gauntlet and its blade still upon her hand.
A calm smile was upon her face, though her eyes were vacant with exhaustion. Whatever terrible forces she commanded, they were doubtless what had caused her trembling, and her collapse now.
Her eyes drifted to the far end of the clearing, and mine followed, and there stood Death. He was a specter of autumn, which is fitting, the time that is the dying of the year, when light comes to darkness, and plants fade beneath the soil and trees are laid bare and naked and all becomes cold.
A skeleton of corn husks and wheat sheaves, dressed in the veils of a bride, newly dead, and carrying, not a scythe, but a staff, of the same crumbling gold, and his right hand empty.
The girl faces him, but does not yet stand, and I long to shout her some warning, for this is Death come to claim her, and she must evade him, but my voice does not speak, nor my lips part, for the fear that curls in every fibre of my being desires life, and calling the name of Death when Death is there beside you is too dangerous.
The girl, unafraid, now stands, and the skinless face seems to smile at her, a smile of all teeth and no warmth. The smile of a predator.
As the phantom and the human child both raise their weapons, I see that this sword, this magic sword that granted her strength and victory, is his sword, Death's sword, and he has come to claim it back again. How she won it is unknown to me, but I know she cannot hope to use it against him now. To ask any sword to slay its master too great a task for mere metal to complete.
I could swear that, though the woods were empty beside the girl, myself, and this horrid apparition, there were the sounds of bells chiming, and a choir of dark yet celestial voices raised in song.
Death and the girl met in battle, and I found myself to be correct. The sword would not slay its master, nor could it defeat its sister instrument, the staff. The girl knew this as well, and did not attempt to kill Death. Rather, she wove herself around him, slashing and wounding him. For, as the sword could not defeat the staff, nor could the staff best the sword.
Suddenly, terror once more gripped my tender soul. Somehow, through means to quick for my mortal eyes to follow, Death had placed the girl upon the ground. She seemed undismayed by this development, and as he stepped forward to deliver the killing blow, her foot lashed out, landing on the bones of his leg.
The crack was loud, and I saw his knee shatter apart. Then the girl was up again, now faster than her wounded foe, and struck again, again with her foot, and struck the staff. It split, and strange light poured from the severed ends. The bottom half dropped from Death's cold hands, and she was there, grabbing it and tossing it aside.
Death was now left with but a fragment of his weapon, and he discarded this as well. There was fury on his faceless face, but she knocked him away, and turned from him, her foe defeated. Again, I wished strongly to shout a warning, for he was not defeated.
She strode quickly from him, dismissing his inferior state. But he was there, directly behind her, ready to seize her life straight from her physical form, and leave her corpse cold and soulless.
That was when she turned again to face him.
What I had not seen, in my fear, nor he either, in his rage, was where she had walked to. She now stood with both pieces of the staff, and the sword, and turned all upon him.
The blaze of light and strange noise was enough to erase the moment from my memory, if I had not blinked, and seen the girl there afterward, dropping the staff, glowing and warped, as though seen through a depth of water, and walking away, bearing, as her weapon, the sword of Death.
