Frost Moon

Frost Moon Part 4

In Sector 9, Elisabeth waded through the waist-deep snow. She promised herself – for the umpteenth time –that the next person who said anything about the "Great Harmony of Nature" would be flayed alive by her personally.

The worst of the storm was easing off, so she could see for more than a few yards. Hopefully, she had followed her navigation crystal well, and not lost her way again. Fair enough that the flower eternally embedded in amber, hanging in a necklace around her neck, kept her body temperature up and kept her from freezing to death. But her lovely dress was in tatters, and her amulet did not stop her nerve endings from signaling her brain that she was soaked and inappropriately clad for 20 degrees below zero.

Not that she had had much choice. In less than fifteen years she'd mastered a curriculum it took the other witches-in-training a quarter of a century to get the hang of. She might not have been in quite as much of a hurry if she knew what waited after graduation...

She was a War Witch. Tainted by nature, but allowed to redeem herself in the eyes of our Lord the Savior through infiltration behind enemy lines and doing the kind of jobs the Church itself was too squeamish to do, using their magical and martial skills – as well as their looks and their bodies – to fight the good fight! Or some such rubbish. Average life expectancy for a War Witch? Around two missions.

The Church believed in on-the-job training, so initially the War Witches were sent out on missions long before graduation. Who would expect that the helpless girl they had just rescued was a spy for the enemy? Of course, the Rebels caught on after a while, and their postings of the rape, torture and execution of underage War Witches was a propaganda disaster. The Church was forced to make changes, and introduced regulations that meant that until graduation, War Witch parents could veto any hazardous missions. If they were actually informed about the mission. The rich families always were, but even they were hesitant in showing anything less than total devotion to the Church.

Elisabeth, being an orphan, didn't merit such considerations. As a teen, she had served a long stint in a brothel the Church used as a cover for their clandestine operations near the court of Anglia, across the Poisoned Sea. For all she knew, the whole war might just be a charade to justify the depraved pleasures of the Pope and his Cardinals around the world. Pious lot these Cardinals, making war among themselves more often than not. Still, she'd done her duty, performing – and surviving – every harrowing task the Church set her to, through graduation and beyond.

Despite her many successes, she was not the most popular witch. Her reputation hadn't given her many friends among the witches, but at least the others kept their distance. And among the Cardinals, one should never underestimate the power of envy, nor the fear of change. Several of the more complacent members of the Council were worried that the Pope might be tempted to start a new crusade, now that he had a weapon as potent as Elisabeth under his control. They would much prefer to sit on their thrones, enjoying the blessings they had justly earned, instead of being called into some holy war. Thus, the Pope's best card had to be removed from the deck.

First they tried to send her somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where she could just be forgotten. When that didn't work, plan B was simply to send her on a hopeless suicide mission. Fortunately, she had caught wind of that plan, seen the bigger picture, and made sure to make herself scarce before her pruning could be implemented.