Author's Note: This is a new story that I came up with last night before I went to sleep. I really like it, and I think it will be really original and interesting if it takes off. This is a short beginning, and I would appreciate your feedback to know if I should continue.
REVISED and UPDATED beginning 15 August 2007.
The Journal
Kel leaned back into her plush desk chair and rubbed her throbbing temples. It was only mid-afternoon and she was already behind on all of her paperwork, as evidenced by the desk before her covered in neat stacks of parchment and a row of bound field reports that she had not even begun to sort yet. Her eyes drifted around her large but sparse office—a fireplace on one wall, a long table with eight chairs off to the right, and a door straight across from her. The bare walls had been tastefully decorated in tapestries, two were peaceful forest scenes and on the third, an ancient battle unfolded across the cloth.
She had occupied this office for a little over a decade and had yet to add any personal touches. It still did not seem right to take over the space even after this many years. It had long belonged to her mentor and friend Lord Raoul before he had resigned his post as Commander of the King's Own and recommended Lady Knight Keladry for the job. She accepted, of course, and set about making administrative changes to bring this elite force up to the times.
Kel sighed and ran a hand through her chin length hair. It was already sprinkled with grey even at her tender age of thirty-two. The knight herself wondered if it was a trait from her prematurely grey mother or simply stress-related. It had taken nine years to open the Own to women, three more than after the Tortallan Army integrated. Sometimes she almost regretted it. Kel estimated that she had almost twice as much paperwork with more policy complaints, reassignment letters, marriage requests, and the list went on and on for both sexes. But in her heart, the Lady Knight knew she had done the right thing and her suffering was nothing compared to others.
Her eyes roamed over to an odd presence on her desk. The leather bound journal was an anomaly amongst parchment papers, lying alone on one corner of the tabletop. It had been found by one of her soldiers and sent up through the chain of command all the way to her hands. The note that had accompanied it had been disappointingly brief and vague:
A document of some interest to you, Kel. –Dom
Domitan of Masbolle was the Captain of Third Company and the only one who could have gotten away with such informality because of their history together, their youthful romance that had lasted only a few months at the end of the Scanran War. Now they remained good friends despite the military hierarchy.
On an impulse, Kel reached out and grabbed it, opening the journal to the first page. Her eyes lowered, and she began to read immediately.
No one thought we'd show up. The women of Tortall are too pure and proper to join an army, abandoning their families for a life of battle and blood, disease and death, and worst of all, impropriety. Funny how those uppity conservatives only think of commoner women as respectable when it helps their argument because it certainly doesn't work when a poor common girl is forced into an alley by a drunken nobleman.
But of course nobles also forget about girls like me—maybe it helps them sleep better at night. I am eighteen years old with no family, no home, no skills, and no money. I can read and write only because I lived near one of those schools that Queen Thayet established for commoner children. When the crown starts handing out money—in amounts that I've never held in my entire life—you take it. Sure it means risking my neck for a country that doesn't give a damn whether I live or die, but what have I got to lose? I'll get food, shelter, training, coin, and if it comes to it, someone to lay me in the ground.
I'm ahead of myself now. Grandmum always said I was too quick for my own good. I should explain how I got here. My life was—
A knock on the door shook Kel out of the diary. She reluctantly closed the book and set it back on the edge of her desk before calling, "Come in!" The Captain of First Company, Riagan, stepped forward with another bound packet of field reports and the Lady Knight groaned inwardly. She stood to receive him, taking the thick package from him and waving a hand at the chair before her desk. "Make yourself comfortable, Captain. I wasn't expecting you for another week. How does the coast look?" she made herself ask as she sat down again. The book would have to wait.