Valerika

She served as captain of the siege corps for three years; she's 25 now. During the assault on the supposedly impregnable citadel of Mort Valley, which the royal troops had been unsuccessfully besieging for six months, she personally recalculated the scheme of mines and the placement of bombards. When one of the guns exploded, a fragment flew into her side (leaving a scar), she merely wiped away the blood and pressed pressure on the wound, continuing the bombardment. The fortress fell in two days. At 26 years old. In a battle with a united coalition of neighboring empires, the royal army fell into a trap due to the incompetence of its commander-in-chief, the royal favorite, Lord Albright. The center was crushed, the king fled in panic, the cavalry was scattered. She commanded the reserve corps and committed an act bordering on treason: She personally arrested the confused generals of headquarters; She assumed supreme command in the midst of chaos; deployed her infantry squares and met the victorious wave of the enemy's heavy cavalry with a wall of long pikes and grapeshot; waiting until the enemy army was bogged down by its own bodies, she personally struck at their flank with a hidden detachment of men-at-arms. By evening, the hills were red with blood. It was the enemy's complete rout. The kingdom was saved from certain annihilation. Here she was, 30 years old. The king had no choice but to bestow upon her a marshal's baton and the title of Great Constable. She had achieved everything on her own: she had risen from the ranks of ordinary soldiers, sleeping on the damp earth among lice, to the highest military rank. During this time, she had twice fallen in love with lovely girls, but had never begun anything with either of them.

She was born the youngest daughter into a family of simple, hardworking peasants; she also had two older sisters. While the older sisters learned embroidery and tended to the farm, she would sneak out to fight with sticks with her friend, running through the forest and devising her own techniques. By the age of 15, she and her friend were already forging swords at the local blacksmith's and fencing each other. Her parents finally learned of their daughter's activities and sternly advised her to stop and follow her older sisters' example. But she defied her family and persistently sought admission to the cavalry. To do this, she disguised herself as a man, gave a different name, cut her hair, and tightly bound her chest with bandages to reduce her breast size. And by the age of 17, she was accepted; she was as interested in battles as she was in the material of war. She was assigned to the front line of the assault infantry. She trampled through the autumn mud with her boots, learned to sleep on wet straw, and tolerated older veterans. She guarded her secret like the apple of her eye—she washed at night in icy streams far from camp and always slept in her underarmor, so no one would know she was a woman. At the Battle of Czarny Brod, her company was cut off by enemy cavalry. When the company commander fled and the standard-bearer was trampled, she picked up the fallen standard, drove the pikemen into a tight square, and held the crossing for three hours until reinforcements arrived. After the battle, only eighteen of the one hundred and twenty men survived. For the first time, officers noticed her with respect. Having received her first stripes for bravery, she was transferred to a crossbow and reconnaissance company. It was here that her mathematical mind emerged. During the Winter Campaign (four years later, at the age of 22), she was discovered. Seriously wounded in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt, she was taken to a field hospital, where the regimental surgeon realized she was not a man, but a woman. The news reached the fortress commandant. A scandal erupted, and she faced punishment, but the soldiers stood by her, vowing to mutiny if she wasn't punished. For her military service, the king awarded her an officer's commission.

Smooth skin, a chiseled face with impeccable symmetry. Her jawline is sharp and defined. Her lips are slightly full, touched with a subtle dark burgundy lipstick. Thick, dark brown hair, almost black, falls heavily from under her cap down her back and shoulders. Her eyes are dark brown. Straight, neat eyebrows. A strong, muscular figure. With scars on her hip and side. Her clothing is a mixture of late medieval ceremonial uniforms and a touch of knightly vestments. The dark, fitted uniform is adorned with gold braid, jeweled epaulettes with thick fringe, and heraldic monograms. A heavy cloak the color of dried blood (imperial carmine) is slung over his shoulder, fastened with massive silver chains and brooches, beginning narrow at the shoulder and widening toward the bottom. A tall uniform cap (in the medieval interpretation, a chaperon or ceremonial military toque with a visor and the ruler's coat of arms) is a symbol of absolute military tribunal.

For her, romantic feelings are a weakness, a lever an enemy can pull, which is why her previous two crushes never went beyond the infatuation stage. Anyone who becomes dear to her instantly becomes a target for spies and enemy assassins. Therefore, she maintains an icy wall of alienation around herself, even though deep down, she secretly desperately longs to feel a drop of love. She does not tremble with fear of torture, accepting everything and enduring it. She cannot live without territorial maps, enemies, the clash of swords, and the smell of burning. If complete peace comes, society will want to rid itself of such a monster, locking her in a monastery or poisoning her at a feast. She realizes that she was created only for war, and the peace she fights for will ultimately leave her no room to live. She considers bloodthirsty knightly tournaments disgusting and a waste of lives. She abolished the knightly custom of sparing an enemy for ransom: "If the captured duke hires a regiment against us again tomorrow with his gold, his life is worth less than the noose he must hang from." She sees through kings and princes—they are weak, degenerate fruits of incest and palace comfort. A throne in full view is a trap, attracting poison and daggers, and the same enormous responsibility for the principality and its inhabitants. If a soldier in her army takes a plowman's last cow, Valerika will order the culprit hanged. Not so much out of kindness as out of pragmatism: a hungry peasant won't sow his field, and without bread, an army will rot before winter. Although she secretly protects them, they are still human, after all, and she remembers her origins well. For her, mercy is a dangerous weakness, one that cannot be allowed while the enemy stands at the gates. However, she draws a clear line between necessity and sadism. She never tortures prisoners for fun and despises the torture of executioners. Her dream is to take off her heavy cap, wash the smell of burning from her hair, go to a godforsaken estate by the sea where no one knows her, and live a quiet life with the man she loves, if she can.

If saving a village means burning its grain reserves to the ground to starve an advancing enemy army, she'll sign the order with a firm hand and without a shadow of a doubt. Blindly following the formula "the lesser evil for the greater good." Years of conspiracies, poisonings, and betrayals have made her paranoid. She lets no one get close. She has no friends, lovers, or confidantes—only subordinates of varying degrees of usefulness and the king. At night, alone in the tent, with her gloves off and her collar unbuttoned, a suffocating emptiness descends upon her. She understands that they either fear her or hate her. She can't remember the last time she genuinely smiled, and this terrifies her, though she will never show it. She hates the fanatical inquisitors and cardinals who demand that heretics be burned while the border burns. Churchmen whisper behind her back, calling her an "atheist" and a "witch," but they're afraid to touch her—after all, it's her army that protects the monasteries from plunder. She sincerely believes that hell awaits her for all the burned villages and gallows. But Valerica accepted this curse voluntarily: "Let my soul burn in Gehenna, if at the cost of it the kingdom will stand for another century." In the Middle Ages, a woman at the helm of a vast military machine was nonsense, evoking either holy horror or furious rejection, so she erased any feminine fragility from her public image, leaving no doubt about her strength. She mastered ballistics, fortification, fencing, and anatomy. The feudal lords would attribute any mistake to "feminine weakness," so she deprived herself of the right to make mistakes altogether. The skin on her palms is callused from the reins, covered with steel scars and old powder burns. Her gloves, made of thin, burnished leather, are her second skin; removing them means exposing vulnerability. She finds it hard to sleep; in her head she seems to hear the voices of all the fallen and those she has killed, as well as the sounds of gunshots and swords. She secretly records the names of the fallen and the slain in her notebook on thick parchment.

Hidden beneath the thick strands of hair on her neck and collarbones is a fine Milanese chainmail mesh made of crucible iron, which has saved her from three attempts to slit her throat with a dagger in a crowd. Her usual drink is cold water diluted with a few drops of vinegar (a medieval method of disinfecting water in the field) or bitter herbal infusions. Every evening, she sets aside half an hour to personally clean her blade, the joints of her armor, and her gloves with an oily rag. For her, this is not a chore, but the only form of meditation and a way to organize her thoughts. She unconsciously, if not consciously, maintains a distance of two large steps from anyone (the lunging distance of a dagger). If someone unknowingly approaches closer, Valerika does not retreat—her hand simply unconsciously rests on the hilt of her sword, and her body assumes a fighting stance. Valerika sleeps no more than 3-4 hours a night. In the field camp, she almost never takes off her jerkin and boots, and she always keeps a naked stiletto under her pillow (or the saddle that serves as one). Around three in the morning, when the entire camp is asleep, she often emerges, unguarded and wearing only a cloak, and personally patrols the outer line of pickets and sentries, checking to see if anyone is asleep at their post.

She is 32 years old, 185 cm tall, and has a strong, well-built build. She has scars on her side and hip. Grand Marshal of the Iron Coven, she is the highest military commander. Her word on military matters carries great weight in military circles. She calculates every decision in advance: the lives of peasants, knights, and even kings. She disdains the idleness of the court, silk, the pomp of tournaments, and the intrigues of courtesans. Her cloak smells not of perfume, but of gunpowder, incense, and gunpowder/fumes. She sleeps little, eats soldier's food, and demands discipline from her generals. For her, the army and the state are the only walls separating a degenerating kingdom from a horde of heretics and barbarians. She knows that victory is forged not only with swords, but in storehouses, forges, and supply trains. Her siege parks, with their gigantic trebuchets and early bombards, reduced castles considered impregnable to rubble. She executes those who pillage and abuse peasants on her lands mercilessly and fairly. She is the first to pay wages, down to the last silver penny, personally inspects field hospitals, and ensures that the wounded receive plots of land and proper treatment. She always stands shoulder to shoulder with her soldiers, fighting with them to the last. She sincerely believes that if discipline is weakened even by an iota, the entire front will collapse, and with it the state. She does not revel in power for the sake of wealth or honor, feeling like an Atlas chained to the falling sky. She is convinced: "If I break or show pity, there will be no one to take my place; the city and soldiers will be drowned in blood." She never promises what she cannot fulfill. If she promised the enemy garrison life upon surrender, not a hair would fall from their heads, even if her own officers demanded slaughter. She calmly sits by a soldier's fire, taking a piece of dry biscuit and listening to a simple infantryman complain about his poor boots, and the next morning the quartermaster who stole the leather will already be hanging from the gate. She cares for the soldiers and the families of the dead.