The Tigress Roars

Writers note: Another month, another short-story. This time, back to military fiction. Get introduced to Harneez Naju, who I plan to be a major character in the back half of a series I’m planning. She is heavily based (in terms of inspiration and some biographical details) on the historical figure Sada Kaur, the woman who basically united the Sikh Confederacy (made up of 12 warrior Misls) into the Sikh Empire under her son-in-law Ranjit Singh, who she made Maharaja of Lahore. There are, I must stress, numerous differences between my character and this historical figure: Sada Kaur didn’t immediately become the leader of the Kanhaiyas Misl when her husband fell in battle but instead became her father-in-law’s heir and only took over four years later when he died, for example. My version is a little more dramatic. I am also in no way trying to capture the personality of the real figure, which in my opinion is a fool’s errand anyway. Nor is the Naj Ahari religion supposed to be a fantasy version of Sikhism, though they share the concept of being recently founded and rebelling against an empire trying to repress their religion (ok, yes, and changing the surname to a shared religious one, but that’s it). Anyway, it’s a little over 5,000 words and should take 15-20 minutes to read. Also, the picture attached is a painting of Sada Kaur herself.

The Tigress Roars

She could hear the cannons in the distance but could see none of it. Harneez had requested that they set up her pavilion on high ground from which she could oversee the battle but her husband had refused. No matter how unlikely, he would not allow even the vaguest possibility of a stay cannonball slaying her. And, when the War Leader made a decision, no soldier of the Host would question it.

She sat in that pavilion, shaded and sipping sherbet, while but a mile away men and women fought and died for their people and their faith. In earlier battles, she had insisted on sitting atop her horse with pistols and tulwar at the ready, in the battle-garb of a woman-warrior of the Host. The loose blue trousers and matching knee-length tunic with its white detailing, completed with a saffron sash and matching veil over the hair and around the shoulders to emulate the turban the men wore.

But sitting astride a horse under the beating sun took its toll. She wore her uniform still, sari discarded for the duration of the fight, but both her steed and herself had found a preference for the shade. The reserve commanders liked it too – being invited in for shade and iced drinks seemed not to undermine their sense of martial stoicism and masculinity when the invite came from the War Leader’s wife. While the Naj Ahari let women join their warrior Hosts, culture took a long time to change and war was still a man’s game – and sipping drinks in the shade was a woman’s. Only a tenth of the Host’s warriors were female, and none of its senior commanders.

Umed Hipan Naju, Speaker of the Host, who represented it at the Gathering of the Hosts, was talking to her. Something about the Gathering wishing to raise a larger fleet and how much it would cost. She could only focus on the battle she could not see. Wondering and worrying which way it was going. She made some response to placate him. He was an effective politician and at times even a friend – though Harneez disapproved strongly of the practice of keeping one’s old last name and merely adding the religious one, rather than replacing the one with the other – but sometimes the man did not know when to close his mouth. She smiled at him and, after another non-committal reply, he fell silent.

In the distance, Harneez saw kicked up dust from a group of horsemen. A small group, galloping towards them.

‘Banner Captain?’ she called to the commander of the reserves, Banner Captain Deep Naju, of the 2nd Banner.

‘They’re ours, my lady. Orders from your husband, no doubt, to throw us in finally.’

The horsemen grew closer. Harneez watched them come as she sipped her sherbet. When they got close enough, she rose and strode out to greet them.

To her shock, the group was not merely an adjutant or minor commander with a small guard, but was headed by Commandant-General Taranjt Naju, Commander of the Muskets and to all intents and purposes her husband’s deputy as commander of the Koisun Tain Host’s military forces, one of the seventeen warrior Hosts that made up the Binayr Confederacy. Decades older than her and her husband, he was a veteran of campaigns uncounted which had given him the bearing of a noble and the complexion of a commoner.

Besides him sat other senior commanders. Commanders needed on the frontlines. One of them held her husband’s banner. Why were they here? Why had they abandoned her husband, their general and War Leader, in the midst of battle? They dismounted.

‘My lady,’ Taranjt said, bowing in an almost unprecedented show of deference. All Naj Ahari were equal, after all, despite whatever positions of leadership they attained. Harneez saw his face as he rose and the expression confirmed her worst fears. ‘I am sorry. I bring gravest news. Your husband —’ Harneez put a hand to her mouth; she did not want to hear it. She turned away and began crying even before the words left his mouth. ‘—he’s dead. He was hit in the neck. Died before he hit the ground. We’re bringing his body now. I am so sorry, Harneez.’

She felt numb. She had heard the words, and felt them, but they existed in another world.

‘Banner Captain, strike the pavilion and stand by to cover the retreat,’ said Taranjt. ‘I’ll conduct the withdrawal from here. Guns first; we can’t abandon them if we can help it. We’ll give ground slowly. Except on our left – we need to withdraw there before we’re overwhelmed. They can pull back and cover the centre.’

The commandant-general’s words pierced Harneez’s bubble of grief. Confused her. She set aside her husband for the moment to try to understand them. They were retreating? From the site of her husband’s death? They would turn General Bakhtawar Naju’s martyrdom into the Host’s disgrace? Impossible.

‘What do you mean, retreat?’ she asked.

Taranjt seemed surprised to hear her make a sound.

‘Morale will collapse once the soldiers realise, my lady, and the battle rests on a knife’s edge. We need to get out with the Host intact.’

‘Our warriors will be inspired by my husband’s martyrdom and fight all the harder, assuming their commanders still wish to lead them.’

‘My lady, our left is collapsing. Once it does we may well be overrun. I cannot risk it.’

Harneez was struck by a thought. Any authority she had came from her husband’s status. Without him, what was she? Taranjt continued to use an honorific only out of respect for a fallen comrade and his widow. She had no status. No authority.

Except she did – she had all her husband’s authority. None knew his mind like she did; none could say better than her what he would have done. And he would have attacked.

‘Give me the reserve cavalry,’ she said.

‘My lady?’

‘The reserve cavalry – we’ll throw them against their right, break through and threaten their baggage. Shore up our left in the process and force them into a retreat.’

‘My lady, I’m not sure—’

‘I am,’ Harneez replied. She indicated for her horse to be brought out and stepped in close to the commandant-general. ‘Taranjt, don’t disgrace him. You have seen the battle and I have not, so I will step out of your way if truly this is what we must do. But ask yourself this first: in your position, if his commander had fallen and the battle could go either way, what would Bakhtawar have done?’

‘I am not your husband, my lady. He could give a speech, inspire us, and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. He didn’t play the odds, he threw them out and fought like he could not lose. That works. Until it doesn’t.’

‘Give me the reserve cavalry. I’ll lead them myself as my husband cannot. Give us this one chance and I will give you your victory, just as Bakhtawar would have.’

Taranjt didn’t speak for a few moments. His eyes were glassy. Harneez realised she was not the only person grieving and having to put that grief on hold though it threatened to overwhelm.

‘You can be so like him, you know. More diplomatic, perhaps. A little more charming. But fiery. Passionate. Everything that was best about him. You rubbed off on each other. A little too much, perhaps.’ He paused again. ‘Very well. Lead the cavalry. I’ll hold the centre as long as I can. Keep the guns firing rather than withdraw them. Goodluck, Haneez. Go with the Divine.’

She bowed her head in thanks and kissed the older man on the forehead. The other commanders were looking at her, shocked at what she was about to do. She smiled, then almost started crying again, but pulled herself together and walked out of the tent to her waiting horse. She mounted him – a swift gelding her husband had presented to her as a gift – took two pistols and a tulwar from an attendant and let out a deep breath.

‘You, with my husband’s banner, fall in. And whichever of you commands the cavalry reserves.’

‘Me, my lady,’ said a young man who had already mounted his horse. ‘Colonel Jassa Naju, 3rd Column, Right Wing. My condolences. I am yours to command.’

‘Very well, Colonel. With me.’

They trotted their way over to where the colonel’s cavalry column had taken shelter from the sun in their tents, a few hundred yards away. At Harneez’s indication, he called his grand captains, the commanders of his squadrons, over and ordered them to form up the column.

‘How many soldiers do you command, Colonel?’ she asked.

‘Seven hundred five-and-thirty, officers and enlisted, as of this morning, my lady.’

‘And do you think those seven hundred five-and-thirty can turn the tide of a battle?’

‘My lady, with you at their head not one will show the enemy their backs. I have absolute faith that they shall fight to the last.’

Harneez inclined her head to acknowledge his confidence but noted that he had not strictly answered her question.

In but a few minutes, the entire column was arrayed before her, a gap between each of the five squadrons and, within each squadron, a smaller gap between its two bands.

‘Warriors of the Host,’ she shouted, hoping her voice would carry, ‘you see before you my husband’s banner. And, I am grieved to tell you, my husband’s widow.’ A ripple went through the assembled warriors. ‘Your War Leader, General Bakhtawar Naju, fell fighting for you. Fell fighting against those who would stamp out our faith and reconquer our people if given even the slightest of chances. So I ask you, will you give them that chance?’

Cries of ‘no!’ and ‘never!’ arose from the column.

‘I thought not. It is the blood of willing martyrs that saves our people every day. Martyrs who continuously push back the Fistasi and will one day rid our lands of them. Martyrs like my husband and all those others who have already fallen in this battle. But every martyr hurts. Every one leaves behind a family and comrades. Every one diminishes our community even as their sacrifice preserves it. My brothers and sisters in the Divine, the Fistasi over those hills are killing your siblings. So I shall lead you to save and protect them. To score a victory that they shall not soon forget.

‘I ask you to look to this banner, to my husband’s banner, and to follow it and the grieving widow besides it. To spit in the eyes of our enemies and tell them that we feel every martyrdom as a personal insult and shall return them fivefold, tenfold, a hundredfold! So long as this banner stands tall, we shall too, and we shall keep fighting until we have chased the Fistasi off the field of battle and then further until they are finally cleared from our homelands. Follow this banner – to victory!’

The column shouted and banged the butts of lances against the ground. After a few moments, a chant arose.

‘Tigress! Tigress! Tigress!’

‘You have a moniker, my lady,’ said Colonel Jassa Naju into her ear.

Harneez almost wept. Her husband had called her that, in jest. His little tigress. The Naj Ahari warrior Hosts had been called the Tiger Hosts for decades, since the early days of the Binayr Revolt when there had been only one Host of Naj Ahari, rather than the three there later became. Because of the saffron turbans and sashes they wore, some said, though others said it was the other way around. Or because of their ferocity in fighting the Fistasi, which outmatched the other warrior Hosts that made up the Binayr Confederacy: those who followed the old religion rather than the new Naj Ahari faith, founded but a century past. The Naj Ahari Hosts had embraced the association. She stopped herself before the emotions got too much and focused on the task at hand.

‘I will leave the military details to you, Colonel, but I want to hit their flanks like a hammer while threatening to skirt around and overrun their guns and lines of retreat.’

‘Thank you, my lady. My lancer cavalry in the first three squadrons can charge them. The light cavalry in the fourth and fifth will screen and make that flanking manoeuvre. We will need to watch for enemy cavalry.’

‘Leave them to any other available forces if you can. We cannot be slowed down. Go for the throat and clamp down hard.’

‘Tigress indeed. As you command, my lady.’

After an array of orders, the column set off at a measured canter. Harneez placed herself, her husband’s banner, the colonel, and his staff at their head, leading them on. They crested a hill and she finally saw the battle before her.

Thick smoke obscured much of the front lines but, from what she could see, bitter fighting in the centre was taking place between infantry over a ridgeline. The Host held it but were under heavy assault. Their right was out of her sight but, on the left, they looked badly pressed. The line buckled but the enemy’s advance had been checked at a hamlet around which the fighting was thickest. Guns from both sides battered away at reinforcing units, withdrawing units, and each other, some set in the lines and others behind them on elevated terrain.

A small cavalry engagement to the right of the hamlet was broken off as she watched and the Host’s fast moving horse artillery fired into the vulnerable enemy horsemen that remained. Grapeshot flew from the guns and mowed down dozens before they withdrew back, forced to arrest their attempt to flank behind the hamlet and cut off the Host’s infantry holed up there. On the other side, two larger forces of cavalry stared each other down from a distance of a few hundred yards, daring each other to commit to the battle. Harneez rode towards them, the column at her back.

The colonel left his warriors in dead ground a little way back and had them dismount and lie down their horses as further protection against cannon-fire. He and Harneez continued on to speak to the commander of the cavalry already set up on the flank. Their commander acknowledged them as they approached.

‘My lady,’ he said, startled, before inclining his head.

‘You command these soldiers?’ Harneez asked. She recognised him but, as with many of the mid-level officers in the Host, could not quite put a name to the face.

‘The 1st Column, Left Wing. Yes, my lady. Though we’ve taken heavy casualties. Three fifths strength, no more. The Banner Captain ordered me to warn off that force of cavalry on their right, but not engage unless they make the first move. The rest of the Left Wing’s cavalry is covering the gap between our left and centre that the enemy keep trying to exploit.’

‘Your orders are countermanded, Colonel. Charge their cavalry and hold them up as long as you can. I am leading this column to break their right and outflank them, so I need their cavalry tied up.’

The colonel’s eyes darted from Harneez to Colonel Jassa Naju, his confusion and concern written all over his face.

‘My lady… my lady, do you have written orders to that effect? From the War Leader or my Banner Captain? I am afraid I cannot do anything without—’

‘The War Leader is dead, Ripudaman,’ Colonel Jassa Naju said softly. ‘We have oral orders from Commandant-General Taranjt Naju to avenge him and win this battle. Do as she says.’

The confusion turned into horror turned into anger.

‘As you command, my lady. I shall tell my warriors what we are to do. They will buy you as much time as you need – with their swords and their pistols and their blood. Everything for the Host. Go with the Divine.’

She acknowledged him then rode up and kissed him on the forehead. Bending over his ear, she whispered her thanks and that of her husband. His personal interactions with his officers was an aspect of Bakhtawar’s leadership that Harneez had always admired about him. It came as second nature to him. She tried to make it seem as effortless for her as well. The colonel blushed.

‘My life for the Host. My loyalty to its War Leader,’ he muttered low enough that only she could hear it. Then, he went to gather his forces and throw them at the enemy with the strength and ferocity of a cannonball. Harneez and Colonel Jassa Naju rode back to their forces and awaited the opportunity he was giving them.

They did not have to wait long. The colonel had sent riders to the captains of gun batteries around them and soon had a few guns firing sustained volleys at the large enemy cavalry formation in front of them. After a few minutes of slow pounding, the guns ceased and the colonel charged his forces in. The disarrayed enemy cavalry formed up to meet them and attempted a counter-charged, though they did not have the time to get up to speed.

The two forces collided in a violent frenzy. Horses collided with each other, themselves and their riders trampled by others as they fell to the ground. Some managed to ride in and through, wheeling back with red blades to rejoin the fray. Others slowed and engaged the enemy in stationary hand-to-hand fighting, wheeling their steeds to avoid enemy cuts and then striking back with their own. There were no lines, like when infantry engaged in melee combat. Instead, the momentum of their mutual charges had mixed up both formations until everyone was surrounded by a confusion of friends and enemy all striking at anything that moved. It was a horrific, brutal fight. And it was their chance.

At a word from Harneez, Colonel Jassa Naju ordered the column to form up. Musicians sounded out his orders.

‘Will you stay here, my lady?’ he asked.

‘No, Colonel.’ He declined to press the issue.

The column began its ride. The two squadrons of light cavalry – the hunters, as they were known – spilt off and went around the cavalry engagement still ongoing. The rest passed it by the shorter route and found nothing between themselves and the exposed right flank of the enemy infantry.

The canter increased to a gallop and the squadrons prepared to meet their enemy. Harneez rode at their head, drawing her tulwar and raising it above her head as she drove her horse on towards her target.

With only a hundred yards remaining, the enemy saw their danger. Their infantry ceased firing into the hamlet and tried to form up against the cavalry but had nowhere near the time they needed.

Hooves thundered against the ground. A few of the infantrymen were able to fire off their pieces. Nothing like the massed volley that they would have needed to break the charge. A few of the cavalry fell. Their comrades took their place.

Fifty yards became thirty became ten and then they clashed. Bayonetted muskets took some of the horses or their riders but the momentum of both carried them through the infantry formations, knocking down dozens. Most ran through unscathed, slashing with their tulwars at exposed heads and necks and shoulders, or stabbing with lances, the force driving the point all the way through and out the other side. Sometimes muskets were raised in time to deflect the blows. More often, they met flesh and bone. Hooves trampled as many as swords sliced and lances pierced. Heads and arms were taken clean off by the combination of sharp blades and astonishing speed.

Harneez herself slashed wildly at the army that had killed her husband. She was in the grip of both anger and fear. A combination of emotions she found hard to reconcile but had no time to consider as they drove her on.

A bayonet stabbed out towards her but, before it could reach her, the weapon and its wielder were thrown clear as another horseman drove straight into them. The force of the collision knocked the man into Harneez’s path, where he was trampled, while the steed that had struck him was deflected off to the other side. It struck another galloping horse and fell to the ground. Horse and rider were broken by the fall.

Before she knew it, the squadron Harneez had attached herself to were through the battalion they had charged and continued on to another. The three squadrons of lancers wheeled and charged, wheeled and charged, repeatedly at the enemy’s right flank. When battalions stood firm, they broke them. When they retreated, they ran them down.

Always, the officer with her husband’s banner rode by Harneez and around the dual symbols of banner and widow, the Host’s warriors were driven to ever greater feats of martial ferocity. Harneez shouted her encouragement and around her the squadron shouted back.

‘The Tigress roars, the Tigress roars!’ they screamed to each other.

Soon, Harneez could not meaningfully engage in the fight. She was so surrounded by warriors committed to protecting her and what she represented to them that she never got within range of the enemy. Frankly, she did not need to. She knew the extent of her fighting abilities – and they were not strong. Any moral advantage she gave her warriors was far greater than the advantage of her skill at arms or lack thereof.

Eventually, the squadrons stopped their assault. All the battalions close at hand had been broken and those that remained had formed into squares to avoid encirclement by the cavalry. The colonel found her.

‘My lady, we’ve done what we can to their right flank. Continuing the attack would be folly but the rest of the army can exploit our successes. And look,’ he pointed to a hill in front of them, ‘our hunters achieved their aims too. Dozens of guns overrun – captured or spiked. They will continue to run amok behind the Fistasi lines. I wish to lead my lancers into the cavalry engagement.’

Harneez looked over. The weakened column she had ordered to hold up the enemy cavalry were still fighting, but they were clearly losing. She was filled by a hatred for those horsemen opposing them.

The Fistasi themselves had almost no cavalry of their own, and everyone knew the Binayr trained the best cavalry in the world, so they relied on the native warrior Hosts living in areas under their occupation to fulfil that need. Hosts that had betrayed their people and fought for their foreign overlords in return for the privileges of religious and political freedom. Hosts that had refused to join the Binayr revolt and instead fought against those Hosts who had united to drive the Fistasi out of their lands. They were worse than the Fistasi themselves, with their foreign language, religion, and customs. They were traitors to their own people.

‘As you say, Colonel. Send our disloyal brethren to the Divine.’

The squadrons wheeled and sent themselves hurling towards the mess of soldiers and horses. Only a few guards, one carrying the banner, remained to her. Harneez turned her attention to the infantry.

As she watched, the Host’s infantry began pouring out of the hamlet in which they had taken shelter and attacking the enemy, still formed up into squares. A good formation against cavalry but poor when facing infantry. Other battalions belonging to the Host joined them. Then, as she watched, a sight to gladden the heart.

Commandant-General Taranjt Naju was leading the infantry reserves to plug the gap between their left and centre. As Harneez and her guards rode over to the fight, they broke the enemy their and the Host’s cavalry exploited the wedge created in the enemy lines – charging through and threatening the vulnerable rears of the Fistasi infantry.

Their infantry, unlike the cavalry, were a mix. Some were native, though not belonging to any Host. Instead, they were volunteers or conscripts fighting under Fistasi officers. The rest were what could be called truly Fistasi – those who followed the Veqwadite religion and were either the descendants of Binayr converts or those who had come south from Medanasis during the early Veqwadite conquests of the south.

The two – native infantry and Veqwadites – could easily be differentiated by the uniforms they wore. Some columns were the one, some were the other, but never did they mix. But whether they wore the red and white uniforms of the Veqwadite soldiers or the brown and blue given to her fellow Binayr, they were all her enemies. Anyone who fought for the Sahandom of Fistasis and against the Binayr Confederacy were foe and all would be beaten in the Confederacy’s decades long fight to liberate their homeland.

Harneez and her companions reached the lines. She had no orders either to follow or to give. But she knew what she could do.

She took her husband’s banner in her own hands. The banner of the War Leader of the Koisun Tain Host. She lifted it high and she rode back and forth along the lines.

‘Forward, always forward,’ she shouted. ‘Not one step back! This banner will go only forwards. Follow it or watch it fall.’

Wherever she went, her guards chanted. ‘The Tigress roars! The Tigress roars!’

The cry was taken up by whatever battalions she passed and continued long after she had moved on.

One battalion, standing alone and unsupported in the confusion of the push, was hit by two cannonballs in quick succession – low, skimming hits that killed at least a dozen each. They began to falter. Seeing them waver, two battalions of enemy charged them. If they succeeded, it had the potential to check the Binayr advance. It couldn’t be allowed. Harneez rode to them.

She drove her husband’s banner into the ground and drew her still bloody sword.

‘I shall give my life before I let this banner fall into enemy hands,’ she declared. She pointed her tulwar at the advancing Fistasi soldiers. ‘And I will make them pay for it dearly.’

‘Rally on the banner!’ an officer shouted.

The battalion formed up. Muskets were levelled and cracked off a deathly volley into one of the advancing formations, throwing up a wall of smoke that made it impossible to see what damage they had done.

Through that smoke came the cry of Fistasi soldiers. They charged through the acrid cloud and smashed into the Binayr infantry. Bayonet met flesh. Harneez was in the middle of it all, shouting her encouragement from horseback. A Fistasi soldier broke formation to charge at her but was shot before he reached her. One of her guards lowered a pistol and bowed his head.

The fight was a vicious wrestle, each side pushing against the other. They knocked back and forth. Soldiers died every moment. Harneez wondered if they would all keep fighting until not one remained.

But then, without warning, a few enemy soldiers broke off from the fight and ran back towards the safety of their fellow battalions. One became ten which became a hundred which became the entire enemy formation. The exhausted Binayr cheered at their victory, though not two in three of them still stood.

Harneez shouted her gratitude for their endless bravery and let a dozen kiss the banner before she rode off to wherever the fighting was thickest.

Slowly but surely, they were pushing the enemy back. Every moment, every small victory, chained into an avalanche. Cavalry punched through the Fistasi lines and flanked around to threaten their guns. Seeing their lines of retreat threatened, the Fistasi were ordered to withdraw.

It took another hour for the battle to end but the Host had already won. Still holding her husband’s banner, Harneez cheered with her warriors. Then, alone, she walked her horse back to her pavilion. She ignored the questions of her guards and the officers she passed.

After a long, slow ride, she reached it. She dropped the banner and descended from her horse. The pavilion was almost empty. Whoever remained, she ordered them out. She went through a curtain to the back and laid down on the low cot her and her husband used as a bed when forced to sleep in their tent. There, she closed her eyes and let grief and exhaustion take her.

It was hours later. The light had gone yet still no-one had disturbed her. She was dead to the world. She had wept for a while, in a curious, exploratory manner, but that had not helped. She’d tried sleeping, but it had eluded her. In a fit of rationality, she had inspected herself for injuries, but found none. The uniform she still wore was soiled with blood, but none of it was her own. Finally, she had settled on lying on the cot, staring up into the ceiling of the pavilion, her mind fogged by a thick sheen of emotions she could not even begin to separate into their constituent parts.

A voice shocked her. She had almost forgotten that other people existed.

‘My lady, would you come out? The Host wishes to speak to you,’ said Taranjt Naju.

She didn’t reply.

‘My lady?’ he asked again.

He waited a long time. She tried to will herself to stand up or at least to reply but it seemed easier not to. Easier not to care about whatever it was he wanted.

‘Please, my lady.’

‘Of course, Commandant-General,’ she said after a long silence.

He had a wait another minute long while she forced her body to get up off the cot.

‘What is it about?’ she asked, though she wasn’t sure she cared about the answer.

‘You’ll see. Come through, my lady.’

Harneez followed him through the curtain and out of the pavilion into the black night. Before her stood the Host – all of it. Each of the four banners of infantry and the two wings of cavalry, standing to attention. How many still were she did not quite know, but well over twenty thousand had stood in their ranks that morning. There were so many that she could not see them all – they were lost in the ranks upon ranks assembled before her.

When they saw her, they began to chant.

‘The Tigress roars, the Tigress roars! The Tigress roars, the Tigress roars!’

Over and over and over again they cried it, stamping feet and weapons against the ground.

‘My lady,’ said Taranjt, ‘the Host has voted. You are the new War Leader of the Koisun Tain. We are yours to command, General.’

She did not know what to say. No woman had ever led a Binayr warrior Host. She had not even been a warrior, never mind an officer. Her husband had been groomed to rule for years by his father, the War Leader before him, and had worked his way from a lieutenant to a banner captain on merit. She had no experience. No expertise. She almost choked on the responsibility being presented to her. Yet, she knew she had to accept. To continue her husband’s work – to honour him that way.

Someone came up and presented her with her husband’s banner. Her banner. He knelt before her. She kissed his forehead and bid him rise. He unfurled the banner.

‘My life to the Host. My loyalty to its War Leader!’ he declared.

‘The Tigress roars, the Tigress roars, the Tigress roars!’