Title: Asha'man Harris
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: Fifth Series of Buffy, Wheel of Time in general
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy or Wheel of Time. I would buy them but I am broke.
Summary: Xander is missing after the battle with Glory and returns several years later a changed man (Wheel of Time events)
Xander walked around the training area looking at the progress of his command and observing how the men interacted with the other Black Coats; the three Dedicated and two Soldiers who had been assigned to the unit. This was their third day of training and there had been some improvement and a fair amount of grumbling from the Queens Guard and the Saldaeans. While they were still primarily cavalry units, Xander had insisted that they work on their sword skills when dismounted, as there were situations where a cavalry force was impractical.
One stroke of luck had been the fact that one of the volunteers had been a blacksmith. After some sting pulling with Birgitte to get access to a forge, Xander had gotten the man to go over the weapons of his fellows to see which weapons could be refurbished. Out of the combined weapons of the two hundred, the blacksmith had been able to get five swords, two axes and a long bladed dagger into reasonable condition and then had declared the rest of the weapons beyond repair.
Xander had begun a training schedule that rotated physical endurance training with weapons skill training. During the weapons skill training sessions, the volunteers were broken up into groups of 25 and were shown a move or moves with a particular weapon and then took turns to try them.
Xander was supervising some two on one drills by the Queens Guards when Birgitte entered the training area and motioned him over.
"I've got something you need to see." She said, lading him inside.
They emerged into a courtyard just inside one of the lesser palace gates, which was filled with approximately three hundred women from their late teens into the forties, alongside a half score wagons fully loaded with boxes.
"These are your reinforcements." Birgitte said.
"And the boxes?" Xander asked.
"If I may?" one of the women asked.
Unlike a lot of the women who looked like they had been living rough with worn and dirty clothes and lean faces, this woman still had a proud bearing and good, clean clothes. The quality of the clothes was several steps above anyone there, except Xander and Birgitte, including the few Queens Guard soldiers, but was not at the level that even Minor Nobility wore. Xander instantly concluded that she was from one of the well off merchant families. Xander nodded his permission for her to speak.
"The crates contain weapons." The merchant lady said. "Not top end but we used to sell them to most nations for their standard troops. Swords, axes, some daggers, a few spears. This is all the remaining weapons my House has."
"And how much are you asking for them?" Xander said, contemplatively.
There were a lot of crates in the wagons. Probably enough to equip all the volunteers, the women in the courtyard and upgrade the backup weapons for some of the Two Rivers bowmen. The problem was that Xander did not have a lot of funds at his disposal. Maybe one hundred golds, which would probably not even buy two crates worth of weapons.
"You misunderstand my Lord." The merchant lady said. "My name is Andrina. These weapons are free. When I heard Lady Birgitte was recruiting women to fight, I decided to donate these weapons and my services."
"I'm not noble." Both Xander and Birgitte half muttered at the same time.
"What about your House?" Xander asked, after a second.
"My Lor… My House is gone. I lost my father and brother with a trade caravan when the Borderlands fell and my Husband died several years ago."
"Very well." Xander said. "I am putting you in temporary command of these soldiers. Get them into some form of order."
When Xander said soldiers, he gestured to the women in the courtyard.
"When you are ready, follow these Guardsmen." Birgitte added, indicating to a pair of Queens Guards who she gave orders to escort the women to the rest of the Response Team.
In relatively short order, the new female soldiers were moving out of the courtyard, it could not be called marching yet but it was more orderly that the male volunteers had been on their first day. Xander sent orders with one of the Guardsmen to the senior Dedicated to start the women on some of the basic strength exercises. Meanwhile Xander and Birgitte began supervising palace servants as they opened and sorted through the new weapons, agreeing that any that did not go to Xander's Response Team was to go into the Queens Guard's armoury.
Xander watched from above as the unit of female volunteers rushed across the small gap and put their backs against the wall of a different row of buildings. This unit of twenty was armed with one handed swords. Two units of the male volunteers burst out of the doors of buildings at each end of the row of buildings and hitting the women from the flanks. The women at the ends of the line began to fall back defensively towards the centre, their formation going from a single line along the wall to back to back lines spanning the width of the alley. The two male units charged in, confident of winning, but the narrow alley meant their superior numbers were negated.
Once the men were fully engaged the leader of the female unit, the former merchant Andrina, called out an order and two more units of female troopers broke from the cover the first female unit had left barely a minute before and hit the male units from behind.
"Alright, that's enough." Xander called from the rooftop and indicated to the three Dedicated and Birgitte, who were scattered through the village on other rooftops, to finish the exercise.
The village, located in a remote corner of Andor's South East, had been abandoned five years before when their wells had run dry. It was now the perfect place for Xander to run 'urban combat' exercises. This exercise was to evaluate not only the combat progress of the troops but also the command of the unit leaders he had assigned. This exercise had been the three hundred female volunteers, who had dubbed themselves the 'Sisterhood of Steel', against the Queens Guards, the Saldaeans (both on foot) and the male volunteers, who had responded to the women by declaring themselves 'The Dragon's Hammer' which had slightly annoyed the Legion of the Dragon. The Asha'man had blunted all of the blades so there would be no serious injuries.
The fight below Xander had been the last engagement of the exercise, with the Sisterhood coming out on top. Xander had arranged all of the Sisterhood and the Hammer's into squads of twenty and, with one exception, they had been armed with either swords or axes. The exception squad was the Sisterhood's most potent weapon even through they not intended to fight as a coherent unit. Those twenty Sisters were the most agile and light-footed and had been armed with a pair of daggers, being deployed in pairs in order to take out specific targets. In this exercise the dagger teams had managed to disrupt the much more experienced Queens Guard and Saldaean squads by taking out their unit commanders when they thought they were safe, allowing the other Sisterhood squads to execute devastating attacks on the confused professionals.
At the orders shouted by the Asha'man, the units fell in and were sent back to Caemlyn by Gateway. Xander and Birgitte watched as the units filed past. They had progressed a long way in the last six months, but they were lucky that so far there had been no major incursions in the west that they needed to respond to. In the east, General Cauthon and his forces had responded to two incidents, both in the last month. One was a small force of Trollocs that had shown up to the north east of Cairhien and the other was the co-ordinated uprising of Darkfriends in four towns to the south of the city.
"What do you think?" Xander asked.
"They're good. Not the best I have ever seen, but I have seen standing armies that are not as good." Birgitte replied. "But the teams strength has to be some of the tactics you trained them in. I can't remember ever seeing any moves like that before."
"It helps when you can draw on a few hundred years of military history no one else knows." Xander replied.
From the first moment they met, Xander and Birgitte had gotten on well. Maybe a little too well. She had been the only person Xander had met since coming through the Portal with whom he felt comfortable enough to let a bit of his joker personality out. For Birgitte, Xander had been someone she could relax with and forget for a time the harsh realities that everyone else expected her to ignore. That closeness had been why, four months after the response team had been assembled, one night the pair of them had gotten extremely drunk together. They had not ended in bed together but their tongue's had been loosened. Xander had admitted Sundale, Buffy, Glory and how he had gotten to this continent. Birgitte had let slip that she was a hero of legend, bound to the Horn and ripped out of the World of Dreams by one of the Forsaken.
When they had awoken the next morning, fully clothed and several feet apart with their faces plastered to opposite ends of the bench in the out of the way corner of the Palace they had found, they remembered what they had said and a moment of panic flashed across their faces.
"Bloody hell." Birgitte had said, then winced at her own voice aggravating her headache. "Now you'll expect me to bloody turn entire armies by myself or something."
"Why?" Xander had replied with his own grimace. "I've known three women with strength greater than five Trollocs and I have saved each of their lives at least once. I could try but I left my Troll God's Hammer in my other pants."
Birgitte had looked at him like he was speaking another language, then a story involving an ex-girlfriend and a Troll God had floated to the surface.
Since that incident, the pair had been even closer than before, something that had caused some slight concern between Queen Elayne and the Dragon Reborn, who she had let back in after about a month. And had thrown him out again at least twice since.
They stepped through the Gateway from the abandoned village into the Palace grounds after the last of the squads from the exercise. In the training yard the squads were still dispersing, while the Two Rivers men were practicing their shooting at swinging targets and the Legionaries were practicing rapidly switching from a solid shield wall using all three units into a formation that allowed Calvary passage through for a charge.
"So, you on for hitting the taverns tonight?" Birgitte asked.
Elayne still disliked Birgitte going out drinking in taverns, or drinking at all for that matter, but they had come to an agreement. Elayne would let Birgitte go out drinking and Birgitte would not throw Elayne over her knee and give her a bare bottom spanking for being a spoilt brat. It had only taken once carrying out the threat to get the girl to agree.
"No. Not tonight." Xander replied. "It's her birthday."
Birgitte just nodded. It was a shame. Xander was fun to go drinking with, like Mat Cauthon. Now that would be a fun night… drinking with both Mat and Xander. Oh well.
She turned on her booted heel and made her way back to her office, still shared with Xander. She had some paperwork to do, but seeing the Two Rivers men reminded her that she still needed to practice with her bow. Maybe she would have some time in the afternoon.
TBC…